This is actually rather a sad moment. It will perhaps be after midnight, and one of the most important subjects, affecting hundreds of millions of jobs, is therefore being moved into the night by the Presidency of this Parliament. I hope that this is not symbolic, Mr President, for the future of the spring European Council that is to take place shortly. I must, however, say something about the re-use and the commercial exploitation of public information and, in the first place, it is worth stressing once again that the sole purpose of this directive is to bring about minimum harmonisation. Minimum harmonisation because otherwise nothing will come of any pan-European content services in the public information field. We know from research, in the United States for example, that there is great potential in, as it were, marketing existing public information. This is especially true for the very small businesses, the SMEs, which as a result can create a significant number of jobs, and that is precisely what we want. In the United States we have already seen that this can be done exceptionally well by stimulating re-use, by making this information available at marginal cost. And the first political question of course is why are we not doing the same in Europe? We all know that the so-called 3G sector, third generation mobile communication, is in serious difficulty and that we have seldom been in a position to transfer so much money from the private sector to the public sector. You must therefore at this point in particular try to give this 3G sector every possible chance. So I think it is extraordinarily wasteful if we make this information available again at a high price because it will mean that these content services will be unable to get off the ground. I strongly appeal to all our fellow MEPs not only to devote fine words to Lisbon but also actually to take action where they can, and this is a good example. There was a lot of discussion as to whether or not cultural institutions, universities, research institutions, etc, should be excluded under this directive. Originally I wanted them included, but in the end we found a compromise to remove them from it and therefore I do not understand why Amendment No 33 is still necessary. I make an urgent appeal to our friends to withdraw Amendment No 33 because it was originally a compromise amendment but is no longer necessary because I have made the concession. Mr President, there are still Member States that are trying to build in an extra filter to ensure that everyone has to apply for licences again, etc. This puts an extra barrier in your way, an extra step that you have to take and, for the very small businesses in particular, that is extraordinarily wasteful, so I would say that this must not happen either. In the report we make a distinction between other information and basic information. This basic information is information that every citizen needs to be able to function in a normal constitutional state. You really must be able to make this information available to the citizen free of charge so that this citizen can exercise his normal rights as a citizen. This additional information must, moreover, be made available at marginal cost. Only then will we be acting progressively. Why should not this Parliament occasionally be the driving force behind a new development in the field of the information society? I therefore also make an urgent appeal to our fellow MEPs to follow me in this direction. I am now going to take off my rapporteur’s hat and make some remarks as a member of the Group of the European People’s Party about Mrs Auroi’s and Mr Paasilinna’s report. First of all I want to thank both rapporteurs very much for their work, their sharing of responsibility and above all their effort in producing such an excellent report. We all know that the 3G sector is in great difficulty – I made reference to it just now – and what is at issue now of course is ensuring that we in Parliament give a signal to the forthcoming European Council so that measures are taken there that take us a step further forward. We are thinking of measures that are aimed at restoring the confidence of the citizens, but also of the investors so that people know what is going to happen in that field. I think for example that it would be useful to work towards a situation in which the Member States not only, as at the moment, permit network sharing and thanks to the Commissioner for dedicating himself so much to this but in which it is also realised that 3G is quite a different product from 2G. It is highly complex. This innovative chain that has to be developed requires a very great deal of investment that the operators cannot provide alone. So you have to promote collaboration between the operators because otherwise in the end it is the customers – you, Mr President, and I – who will be the ones to suffer. I therefore make an urgent appeal to the Commissioner to use guidelines to make collaboration between the operators and competition between the services that the operators are going to provide possible. Because if those devices, those lovely mobile handsets, cannot communicate with one another because there is no interoperability, then we will not make any progress and that is, I think, a crucial point. I also think it is important to bring the regions where 3G is already in development close together because people learn from one another. This is also a way of preventing people encountering the same pitfalls. It is very important, Mr President, that we stimulate research so that the present research in relation to 3G does not become concentrated in Japan in particular. We must not look to the US, we must look at our great setbacks in the field of competition with Japan. Finally, Mr President, Mr Paasilinna has of course rightly laid stress on the fact that we must have a very robust eEuropean plan that is good for the forthcoming European Council. I am in favour of prompt and harmonised implementation of the new regulatory framework and I am very pleased that the European Commission has today finally launched the Cyber Security Task Unit. Not before time, because we all know that security is a major concern. Bravo to the Commission that it has actually arrived. I think that we have a package that we can take back to the citizen, that we are moving the 3G sector a long way forward again and that we have a good answer as far as the knowledge economy is concerned because, in this way, we can move Lisbon another step forward.

Political group: PPE-DE