Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, let me start by saying that I am very glad that it is under your presidency that I have been called to speak, as I rejoice to see you in Parliament's new bureau. The reason why the Group of the has addressed this question to the Commission is that we want, after the Villiers report, prior to the presentation of the third consultative document and before the Commission complete the draft Directive, to give a clear signal to the public and to the enterprises affected that we speak for the affected parties in the Directive's drafting process and that we want to be more involved in the discussion process, both as regards the monitoring of the Basle Committee and also the preparation of the Directive. The basic conception of Basle II, of closer alignment of the capital base of banks to the actual risks, is in our view something to be welcomed. What is of the essence, though, is what form it should take in practice, as it is only through a conversion appropriate to our economic structure that the financial sector including an essential pillar of the economy and its enterprises, above all the small and medium-sized ones, can actually be strengthened. The previous proposals by the Basle Committee on banking supervision are, in our present view, still unsatisfactory, and we believe that they should, in many instances, undergo thorough revision. Our question today is prompted by our economic structure. Eighteen million small and medium-sized enterprises in Europe create 75% of European jobs and pay 80% of the taxes. These enterprises' capital costs are therefore crucial to their competitiveness and to the maintenance of the small and medium-scale economic structure. We believe, Commissioner, that the Commission – and I would also like to know what you intend doing about this – should be an intermediary between the six Member States of the European Union that are not members of the Basle Committee and the nine that are, and that we really must do everything we can to ensure that the Nine really do represent the Fifteen. It is only if this happens that I can regard it as at all feasible to incorporate the Basle result unchanged into the draft Directive, as Commissioner Bolkestein has said in his statement. If this does not happen, all the various opinions will find their way into discussion of the Directive, leaving Parliament, the Commission and the Council far less room to manoeuvre. It is for this reason that we, that is Mr Radwan, Mrs Villiers and I, have put a number of questions to you, which we urgently want to have answered when the Directive is drafted. They relate to the consequential costs for small and medium-sized enterprises and to the issue of flexibility in the Directive's application to small and medium-sized enterprises and to banks; they also relate to the date on which the Directive will enter into force and to the Commission's role as co-ordinator between the nine represented on the Basle Committee and the six not represented on it. The question takes up the cause of the medium-scale economic structures in Europe and is intended to give voice to the questions that small and medium-sized banks and enterprises want to ask. We look forward to you giving definite answers to them.

Political group: PPE-DE