Mr President, what we are debating is the proposal that Parliament and the Council should delegate substantial implementing powers to the Commission. Parliament is happy to go along with that, provided there are substantial guarantees as regards the oversight of such delegated powers. Those who sometimes worry that in seeking such guarantees Parliament is trying to modify the interinstitutional equilibrium should remember that this substantial delegation of powers is itself a modification of the interinstitutional equilibrium as it exists and that in those circumstances it is quite legitimate for Parliament to seek to obtain certain guarantees. After many months of discussion, talks and negotiations with the Commission, the result has now been put forward to us in the form of the statement just made by Mr Prodi. I must say that it contains a number of significant steps forward. First, the Commission recognises that Article 202 of the Treaty should be changed at the next revision of the Treaty – it supports Parliament's position on that. But, in the meantime, the Commission recognises that Parliament has the right to examine and take a position on the implementing measures that it puts forward to the specialist committees that will be set up to work with the Commission. Parliament will have three months instead of just one month, as it has under existing procedures, to examine and take a position on such implementing measures. The text of the Commission does not limit Parliament's right to examining whether the Commission has gone beyond what has been delegated to it, something which we could anyway solve by means of a legal case, if ever it came to a conflict. It gives us the right to object, if need be, on the substance. That is also very important. But what happens if Parliament objects and then the Commission does not accept its objection to an implementing measure? There the text is a little ambiguous: it speaks of equivalence without saying equivalence with whom. Mrs Berès has already made the point: equivalence with the Economic and Social Committee, equivalence with the press? No, it is obvious for us insiders that it means equivalence with the Council. That is what we have been talking about for months, and Mr Prodi's introductory remarks made it clear that the Commission too accepts that it means equivalence with the Council. That is how we interpret it and I think there can be no other interpretation. We have a third step forward and that is a guarantee in case all this does not work. We have the sunset clause: after four years the delegated powers will revert to Parliament and the Council, unless we agree to renew them. That is a guarantee to us and it will concentrate the minds of the Commission in between times, making it aware that it must exercise these implementing powers in a way that Parliament finds satisfactory if it wishes to have any hope of their renewal. Fourthly, we have some important guarantees as regards openness and transparency, and we have acceptance of Parliament's idea that a market participants' committee should be set up alongside the other committees. So, all in all, we can be satisfied with the progress that has been made, even if the drafting on the points I made earlier could have been a little better. Nonetheless, I would ask whether the full text of the Commission's statement and Mr Prodi's statement today could be incorporated not just in the Verbatim Report of Proceedings but also in the Minutes, because it was a very significant statement and should be recorded in our Minutes, so that we have a proper record of what the Commission has undertaken to do.

Political group: PSE