Mr President, Commissioner, I would first of all like to thank all of my colleagues, firstly the rapporteurs of these four important reports, but also all my colleagues in the Committee on Regional Policy, Transport and Tourism for the very significant work which has been done on these four texts. I think that this is a very good example of Parliament adding value to the initial Commission proposals. We have added a considerable amount to them, which I think is positive, and in response we have had great understanding from the Commission and the Council, which means that the texts are ultimately very gratifying to us as MEPS. I would like to go back to this package to say that, as a whole, we are very pleased with it, particularly thanks to the work of Mrs Cederschiöld in the Conciliation Committee, in particular the safety package, which was absolutely necessary as a strong political signal prior to enlargement. I think that the date that we are reaching is not insignificant. At a time when we want to welcome ten new countries, we have to renew a very strong safety requirement in an area, railways, in which ultimately the job is about safety. With regard to interoperability, we know that it is one of the essential conditions for opening up the networks. Opening up to competition would not overcome the technical barriers that still exist and which mean that, for example, the Thalys locomotive has to take on board computer equipment capable of reading the different control and operation systems on the small Thalys network. Therefore, bringing all of this up to standard and starting on this vast project is essential for the future of the railways. With regard to the Agency, I think that it is very important to establish a tool to enable the Commission to work on a more daily basis on implementing this major policy and major ambition for the railways. I am personally very honoured to have been able to bring this matter to a close having made significant changes. These include, for the first time, involvement of all the social partners – in particular, but not exclusively, the unions – in working groups and management board. We would have liked to set an example in another area, as we think that for the Agency, the Council should stop requiring one representative per country, which now means that we have a representation of the Council of 25 members, two of which do not have rail networks. This shows the absurdity of the system, which creates mechanisms that will very soon be unworkable, in particular when we want to push enlargement further, towards the Balkans and perhaps beyond. I therefore hope that the commitment made by the Council and the Commission to adopt a directive in the coming years to create order within the agencies and establishing a standard model for all of them, in order to put an end to the disparities, will be respected for the purpose of better governance. Finally, regarding access to the network, my fellow MEP Mr Jarzembowski is aware of my reluctance, not regarding opening up to competition, but the fact that it brings with it a number of requirements. I consider that in this text, which is acceptable regarding freight, we are going to have to be careful about opening up to international passenger traffic. In particular, what bothers me in this text is that it states that there will be an evaluation on 1 January 2006, when 1 January 2006 is the opening date. I do not see how we can evaluate a text which will be implemented at the same time as the evaluation report. On a more general note and to conclude, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to give you a few comments on our major objective, which is sustainable mobility, and therefore developing railways and waterways, rather than giving in to the rise in road traffic that will one day pose severe political problems. I think that opening up, in the sense in which we see it, in other words as purely liberal, creating competition on the networks, is not the panacea. We are currently blindly working towards that goal. In reality, we are well aware that there is no funding for interoperability. We are well aware that there are colossal investments to make and the financial perspectives do not respond to the request for financial resources made by Commissioner de Palacio herself in order to fund trans-European transport networks and, in particular, rail networks. In short, I do not think that anything will be done. Today is a step forward without the railwaymen, because there are extremely strong national cultures in these companies, that is how it is, because they are labour companies. I think that we need to promote sectoral dialogue before issuing directives, which is what we did this time. We need to continue in this way, but I also hope that one day we will move towards a collective railwaymen’s agreement, whether they are employed by private or public companies, so that they can own this tremendous rebirth of the railways which is of benefit to everyone who wants us to have a less polluting method of transport.

Political group: PSE