Mr President, we now come to a measure of great length, weight, size, volume, thickness and complexity with the capacity to affect a wide range of instruments. National legislation on measurements and measuring instruments has been with us a long time. It precedes European legislation and reflects the importance of accuracy of measurement on the daily life of people. All EU and developed countries have metrological institutes charged with the task of establishing traceability of measurement results. The first question to ask is: why the interest in measuring instruments? The answer is because all developed countries have complex economies which need a minimum level of measurement accuracy for fair trading in the public interest. Thus all legislation is based on the premise that the public interest is served if measuring instruments are subjected to legislative requirements that guarantee this minimum level of accuracy. A number of concepts or issues are raised in this proposal. Optionality: Amendment No 2 essentially states that a Member State will be free to decide whether or not to regulate in this field. However, Member State legislation should not act as a technical barrier to completion of the internal market, nor cause unfair competition. Regarding harmonised standards, in order to meet the essential requirements for any of the instruments covered by this directive, the manufacturer must show conformity in one of three ways as made clear in Amendment No 21. It is important that manufacturers have the choice between the requirements in new Annex 2, together with the detail of the instrument-specific annexes M1 to M10, or by applying the relevant European harmonised standard, or by compliance with the relevant parts of the normative documents adopted by the OIML and approved by the new measuring instruments advisory committee and published in the Official Journal. This advisory committee also has an important regulatory role which is why new Compromise Amendment No 30 is so crucial in requiring proper consultations with representatives of interested parties i.e. the industry and practitioners. Perhaps the most important improvement to the common position lies in Compromise Amendment No 32: the joint declaration of the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission regarding conformity assessment procedures. It has been a matter of much concern to your rapporteur that there is inconsistency between the conformity assessment modules in Council Decision 93/465/EEC and Annexes A to H1 of the common position. After much discussion, the compromise position has yielded a commitment to review both texts and bring forward a full set of coherent conformity assessments very soon, which I believe will make industry much more content. In which context I thank the presidency for its measured but constructive approach and I thank the Commission for being instrumental in finding the compromise text. One matter remains before this long process reaches conclusion. That concerns our desire to distinguish between manufacturers and traders in the definition of terms in this proposal. If the Commissioner is willing to give an undertaking that he will include a review of the definitions in the overall review of the conformity modules I am mandated by the committee to withdraw Amendments Nos 3 and 11. We naturally expect the Council to respect the spirit of cooperation and compromise involved so as to shorten the procedure. I shall close by thanking my shadow rapporteur, Mr Glante, other colleagues, and the staff of the committee for their helpful and constructive work on this proposal.

Political group: PPE-DE