Mr President, I too would like to convey my heartfelt thanks to everyone who took part in the negotiations on our side, especially the rapporteur but also you yourself and Mr Rocard, as well as other members of the negotiation delegation. I would like also to extend warm thanks to the Commission, particularly for their declaration on working on Sundays. This was a major obstacle for us, mainly because the Commission had skirted this thorny issue a little too easily in the past. The declaration was therefore a great help to us. I would like to say one thing to the representatives of the Group and the . If you vote against this compromise – and I would understand if you did, because I myself find nine years for junior doctors far too long – you will then be against everything, in effect. If this line were to be taken across the board, and if Parliament were to say “no”, then we would not have a solution in nine years, or ninety years. If it were up to the British Government – we heard this quite clearly in the negotiations – it could well be 50 years and maybe longer before they resolve this issue. The first problem was that they appeared unable to train a sufficient number of doctors. If, therefore, you do not train sufficient doctors, you need to obtain them from other countries. If this plan fails too, then the whole procedure could take a very long time. If this is not something you want, then you need to approve this directive now, obviously with the reservation that it is an empty exercise – I am still convinced of this – and junior doctors should not need to be in this exemption position at all. That is the problem. I have one question for the Commission. It concerns the other matters at issue, specifically that of transport. I would like to know how the Commission intends to deal with this. It is now up to the Commission. The working time directive will not be complete until these issues have been resolved. The ball is now quite clearly in the Commission’s court. The Transport Council is behaving badly. Transport conjures up images of action and movement, but the Transport Council must be the most inactive of all councils and does absolutely nothing. I wonder if the Commission can think of a way to resolve this. Failing this, Mr President, we should seriously consider taking legal action against the Transport Council, as was done very successfully a couple of years ago before the Court. More of this later. Finally, Mr President, one of the first people to propose working time legislation was Winston Churchill. That was a key moment in history, not only in the history of Great Britain, but also in the history of Europe as a whole, because in the Netherlands too, we adopted this legislation without questioning it. That makes it all the easier to bring this directive about. We thus have the feeling that we are in a way completing Winston Churchill’s work with this directive, especially if we bear in mind that he did at least manage to bring a terrible war to a successful end in five years, while the present British Government would not even be capable of resolving the problem of junior doctors in 50 years. He – more than anyone – should be in our thoughts when dealing with this subject matter.

Political group: PPE-DE