Mr President, I am very pleased to be able to respond to this strategic document on behalf of my group. Broadly speaking, we can welcome it as evidenced by the fact that we have not tabled any amendments. We seem to be moving on with the internal market, hopefully to a position where we will get an internal market that functions properly and fairly for all our citizens and businesses. I would like to highlight two challenges to the perfection of the internal market. The first is striking a proper balance between a quest for harmonisation and respect for the subsidiarity principle. I wish to draw attention to this in relation to the ultra-peripheral regions of the Union whose status has now been specifically recognised by Article 299 of the Treaty. Our group will seek to support an inclusion of an amendment to the motion endorsing this. The second and perhaps bigger challenge is that of the new technologies, the advent of e-commerce. We have the biggest opportunity ever to make the single market a reality to many sole traders and SMEs in our Member States who may not previously have thought of selling outside their own immediate locality. However, this commercial revolution in the way we do business will also require a revolution in our legal thinking. As a lawyer I know that my profession is not particularly known for being revolutionary. The systems of commercial and civil law that exist across our Member States were largely constructed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a response to industrial and commercial changes in those centuries. We need our own new responses for the 21st century. I have raised, as have other colleagues, our fears about the combined contents of the Framework E-Commerce Directive and the revision to the Brussels and Lugano Conventions. There are fears that e-commerce may be strangled at birth by regulations which potentially expose traders to 15 different European legal jurisdictions whilst at the same time the very same regulations could fail to really give our citizens easy or affordable access to justice. The old conventions and legal approaches need to be subject to some new and imaginative thinking if we are really to unleash the potential of e-commerce. Some have suggested a new lex mercatoria. Maybe it should be e-lex. It is equally true, given the question tabled by Mrs Palacio Vallelersundi, that Parliament needs to be fully involved in this process. With new legislative proposals, we should not be pushed to provide opinions and reports at breakneck speed which allow us little time for thought and consultation with interest groups and citizens. Whether it be regulation by that way or by means of so-called new soft-law methods, again Parliament needs to be fully and properly engaged in the process. There is no room for fudge or lack of clarity. The new commerce will need a framework that provides certainty both for consumer and trader alike. We have challenging times ahead. Give this House the time and mechanisms which will allow us to respond in a way that meets not only the expectations of Europe’s citizens but also of those in the global marketplace who are waiting for us to take a lead.

Political group: ELDR