Mr President, we are debating a report of around 200 pages which contains an exhaustive analysis of the structural operation of the Commission’s departments, and yet we have had only 48 hours in which to read it and give it our consideration. I think that, given the seriousness of the subject, it would have been preferable if the President of the Commission had made a statement on the document which we are expecting from Mr Kinnock, on institutional reform, and to wait for a report compiled by the competent body of this House, and then formulate Parliament’s position on the future functioning of the Commission. We could then have done this without the conditions which have led to the rushed inclusion of this report in the plenary part-session before we have even voted on the investiture of the Commission which will have to propose and apply the reform. Indeed, Mr President, in the great haste which seems to hold sway over us, the competent committee for the fund has been decided on even before we know what it contains. It is a great source of satisfaction for me – and I would like to make this known – to have heard the current Commissioner Manuel Marín refer today to the Commission’s future with the same honesty he displayed throughout his terms in office, and the same dignity with which he took on the problems of the previous College of Commissioners. I must also point out that it is the outgoing Commission which is presenting this document, bringing into the debate a Member of both Colleges, but we are not altogether sure in which of his two roles he is addressing us. The reasons we have found ourselves in this situation, a situation the Chairman of my group has been warning of since June, are to do with the fact that we have not been able to impose the limit for institutional responsibility on those groups who thought that the report’s contents could influence the investiture of the new Commission and who, for this reason, have insisted that it be debated now. They have underestimated this Parliament’s ability to implement independently the competences conferred on it by the Treaties, and this has brought about the present situation: the public has the impression that we are unable to comment on the future Commission since this report, as important as it is, and as knowledgeable as its authors may be, does not really determine our political standpoint. As spokesperson for the Socialist Group on the Committee on Development and Cooperation, I would like to make a few observations regarding the idea put forward in this report on the future functioning of the Commission. One of the mitigating circumstances in the Commission’s shortcomings, which is clear throughout the report, is the lack of resources that the Commission’s departments have in order to carry out the policies which we MEPs agree on in the area of cooperation in development and humanitarian aid, both of which fly the flag for Community action abroad. We cannot expect the Commission to have a growing, skilled, visible and efficient presence in the developing world if we do not provide it with the necessary means to achieve it. Some of the problems which afflicted the last Commission in this area of cooperation for development were sometimes due more to the imbalance between resources and aims than to poor administration. This is why I advocate – I believe with the consensus of the majority in this Parliament – that, in the future, together with our parliamentary requirements for efficiency, our generosity should also be realistic. We can start, as the budgetary authority, with the budget for the year 2000, which we have recently been debating in the Committee on Development and Cooperation. Mr President, I hope that this report will prove to be a useful contribution to the reform of the Commission’s functioning. Therefore, the Socialist Group is prepared to contribute – given the institutional responsibility that Parliament must hold – to an improved functioning of the Community institutions, both of Parliament and of the Commission, and to demand this of the Council.

Political group: PSE