Mr President, I believe that we all agree that in 2000, obviously, the Community already enjoys numerous and fundamental competencies in the external field. The Maastricht reform reflects the aspiration, so often expressed in this House, that Europe should speak with one voice in the international arena. With the CFSP, the Union’s external activity takes on a new dimension, definitively going beyond the economic field in order to participate actively in external policy. However, the European Union repeatedly has cause to regret – we have been seeing this recently – that it cannot meet the requirements of external action. Having said this, I wish to begin by saying that the objective of this report is not to seek a further increase in the competencies of the Union in the external field. Those who wish to do that have other debates, in the field of institutional reform, in which to find expression for their aspirations. All that we are proposing is to implement measures which will rationalise and improve the way in which the enormous external action of the Community institutions is carried out. We propose basically to make decisive progress in three areas. Firstly, by improving the training of Community officials intended to be involved in carrying out external actions. The numerous officials in the Commission who deal with external relations, taking on competencies of prime importance, are technical specialists but in general they lack the prior diplomatic training, which is necessary to fulfil their duties. We therefore believe we need to create a Community diplomatic college, which will provide Community officials intended for external action with a good diplomatic and international training. To the same end, we believe it is necessary to provide an opportunity to link the national diplomatic corps, whose experience and long tradition are of great value, to our external action, and we therefore propose to implement a ‘bridging’ system between national external services and the Community external service. Secondly, we wish to clarify and develop the legal status of the Commission’s current external delegations, their role and their relationship with the various Community institutions. The Commission delegations have seen a dramatic quantitative and qualitative expansion over recent years. Nevertheless, they do not function in the same way and their relationship with other institutions is unclear, since it is not regulated. We therefore propose that the Commission delegations become Community delegations so that their relations with the Council may be closer, through the High Representative of the CFSP, as well as their relations with the European Parliament and its members, thereby guaranteeing greater efficiency and political control of their activities. Thirdly and lastly, we intend to improve the coordination between the delegations and the external services of the Member States. We need to promote this type of coordination, in order to prevent confusion and inconsistency, not to mention other deficiencies, which were plain to see at the informal General Affairs Council in Evian last weekend. To this end we propose various mechanisms and, amongst other things, we envisage the possibility of joining together the missions of those Member States that agree to do so with the current Commission delegations, at the appropriate time. Furthermore, this would represent a considerable reduction in costs. Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr President, none of the proposals that have been put forward represent institutional reforms, and even less the ceding of Member States’ sovereignty. We are simply proposing a more effective use of the competencies which have already been granted. We are not setting out to propose conflicting models of Europeanism, but simply to be more efficient. Therefore, the rapporteur cannot support those amendments which would represent profound structural changes to the institutional architecture of the Union. In particular, I would like to express my gratitude for the other contributions which, in committee and with tomorrow’s vote in Parliament, greatly enrich the initial proposal. I would ask the various groups to vote in favour of this report and the European Commission to reflect the feelings of this House. IN THE CHAIR: MR PUERTAVice-President

Political group: PPE-DE