Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I recall how, in my last report on sport, in 1996, I called for the designation of a Year of Sport. Now we have one, but it took until Viviane Reding's appointment as a Commissioner for us to get it. That is a fine thing all the same, and I am grateful, but when I consider the title we have given this year, everything in me tenses up – it really is nonsense! Why do we have to tie ourselves in knots when talking about sport? I wanted a Year of Sport, and now we have a Year of Education through Sport. We all know why we are going around in circles; it is because sport should not actually be an issue, although it is one, not only as regards football but everywhere! At every hour of every day, everyone is talking about sport. It is only in the European Union that it is not meant to have a part to play. Why do we have to engage in such contortions? Sport has always crossed national boundaries. Here in Europe, it is by means of a common agency that we are combating the reprehensible practice of doping in sport. So there is sport in Europe. With the TV directive, we are also concerning ourselves with sports rights. So there is sport in Europe. It actually surpasses my understanding why the EU governments are still balking at it, and that is why I hope that, the next time you assemble together, you will have learned something from the Year of Education through Sport and will make of it a real European-level task which will not, of course, be proceeded with outside the bounds of subsidiarity. We adopted this Commission proposal with a very great deal of goodwill. Indeed, we had hardly any problems with it, but Parliament does, of course, table amendments. We went along with the proposal as regards finance. I told myself, of course, that I had done the decent thing by not asking for more money, and then the Council went and said it was still too much! I will bear that in mind for the next time, when I will again make demands, and then perhaps we will even get more than what you have proposed. Thus we have been very successful in some programmes. I actually wanted it to be an overnight success, but – alas – that was not the case. Things seem to have settled down in the meantime, though. We have not done as the Commission said in every respect. In one area, we stated that we would under no circumstances be willing to spend more money this year on research and investigations. We stated that all the money allocated for this year must also be spent on tangible schemes either in this year or as an interim payment. We made an exception to this for evaluation. There is bound to be one after a year of this sort, but this one is not in the part we want to try and delete. We hope, of course, that the Commission will support us in this. We tabled amendments to enhance and promote the contribution made by unpaid work to informal education, to promote the spread of ‘best practice’ and to create an on-line database. We want to support networks to spread the education role of sport, and we have shed light on the major problem of the many competitive sportsmen and sportswomen who are unable to gain educational qualifications, because they reached the peak of their performance during their schooldays and then, to some extent, neglected their performance at school. This European Year is an important one, happening across Europe in the year of the Summer Olympic Games in Athens, and measures will be implemented at Community and national level to promote long-term cooperation between education providers and sports associations and to better integrate sporting practice and sporting values into teaching. As the whole business struck me as a bit too dry, I took the liberty of devising a climax for this sporting year, and my fellow members of the committee went along with me. Let us, I said, have an athletics competition between school teams right across Europe in 2003, at the end of which the competition's winners will be invited to Olympia in 2004, where the Olympic flame is lit. I thought this was a brilliant idea. Our world lives on images, great images, and these images also depict actions. I must say that I would actually have liked our dear Commissioner to be a bit more supportive in putting this to the Council. The Council is against it. Now, all I want to say is that it does not cost much more, and there will, indeed, probably be no additional expense whatever, as we still have money in reserve. Of course, we do not always have to tell the Council that, but we do have money. We can do it, and we should be able to afford it. I really cannot understand why they do not want us to! We will certainly succeed in carrying off the vote for first reading without difficulty. I wish the Council would get a move on, as we had to, and get its common position out by 31 May. I can include my colleagues on the committee in promising that we are willing to take it into committee as quickly as possible, and, if necessary, to use a trilogue to ensure that we do not have to resort to a conciliation procedure. I think though that the Council still has to take a few steps in our direction on that point. I would be very grateful if the Commission could help them in that direction. Again, many thanks for presenting this, Mrs Reding. We are grateful that it has at last arrived! IN THE CHAIR: MR ONESTAVice-President

Political group: PPE-DE