Mr President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, Mr Poettering, 'inshallah'. We are on the eve of an important historical event: the reunification of Europe, rather than the conclusion of a new stage in enlargement, of which this is the fifth. I believe we must wish the Danish Presidency luck in its task since this is a very important moment. Vice-President Titley and other colleagues from my group will deal with all aspects of this issue. I will restrict myself to thanking the President-in-Office of the Council, Mr Haarder, for his reference to my question from the previous plenary session, specifically in relation to the institutional aspects and their relevance to the European Parliament. I must say that I consider the behaviour over recent weeks of the Commission and the Council in relation to issues which are not only subject to negotiation with the enlargement countries, but which affect our daily life and the essence of Parliament, to be entirely unacceptable. I still maintain that criticism. I have listened carefully to President-in-Office Haarder and President Prodi. I am grateful and pleased that you are coming on the 10 December to Parliament’s Committee on Constitutional Affairs, but I maintain my criticism for the following reasons: firstly, it has been proposed to modify the mandate of the Commission; I have always thought, and we have therefore always advocated, that the Commission should be chosen, that from the day of the European elections the Commission should be operational. It was said that its mandate would last until January and now it turns out that the date for the end of the Commission’s operations is being brought forward. It is never made to coincide with the elections, which worries me very much. Secondly, the General Affairs Council of 18 November took a series of decisions which affect many areas, specifically, the parliamentary timetable for 2004, and which make this Parliament during the next legislature a concertina Parliament. We will have Members who are here for just a month, and then we will have the incorporation of other Members from the candidate countries who will have joined the Union. Then, if the negotiations with Rumania and Bulgaria are concluded at the same time, there will be another modification; if it is not at the same time, there will be two modifications. In other words, we will not know what the absolute majority in this Parliament is nor what its membership will be over the next legislature. This has not therefore been done well and it causes many problems. Furthermore, I do not believe it makes any sense to have Commissioners spending several months with nothing to do in the Commission. I believe that Parliament must defend its right to hold hearings and to appoint a Commission on the basis of a joint programme and that is our duty to the electors. I hoped that in the ‘trialogue’, as President Prodi said, there would be progress on this issue. But, Mr President, since there has been no information from you, I very much fear that there has been no progress in last week’s ‘trialogue’; if I am mistaken, please tell me now. And I would ask you please, and we are awaiting the meeting of the Committee on Constitutional Affairs of 10 December, to raise these issues seriously at the European Council in Copenhagen, because this is not the way to act. And finally, and I will end here, I still have hope because, as Alfonso X the Wise, a philosopher king, said, ‘if God had consulted me on the day of the Creation, I would have given him some useful advice’. Neither the Council nor the Commission are God, and neither are we the Devil.

Political group: PSE