Mr President, Mr President of the Commission, ladies and gentlemen, I wish to take up a position on this issue and propose to do so in seven stages. Firstly, I wish to congratulate the rapporteur and thank him for this report and for his gesture of commitment to various committees and institutions, in order to resume progress towards realisation of a common objective. This instance has provided an answer to the question as to what sex an angel is; here the parliamentary angel was a male one in the person of Karl von Wogau. Secondly, I would like to thank him, again, today for the excellent work he has done for the Community on the Committee for Economic and Monetary Affairs, which he has left after many decades and to which – as to all the other committees he sits on, as this report shows – he has brought massive experience and economic knowledge. Thank you, Karl. My second point – and this is probably beyond doubt – is that we must speed up the Lisbon process, and – not only for that reason, but certainly for that reason – we must create an internal market for securities as rapidly as possible. My third point is that whoever wants to do that must take all necessary steps to enhance the efficiency of the decision-making procedure and accelerate the legislative process. That, after all, is the reason for this report and for the Lamfalussy report too. There is just one contradiction I wish to clear up. There is no contradiction between speeding up the procedure and Parliament having greater efficiency and more codecision. There is a contradiction between Article 202 and Parliament's codecision procedure; that is why it needs to be amended. So I do not only expect codecision, information and transparency to be adhered to, as this is so formulated in most of the translations of the Commission's reports; rather, I expect us to make every effort to help bring to fruition something that is a fundamental Parliamentary right and a precondition for transparency and information. This report is an important step towards making this possible. In this connection, I would like to direct your attention to item 5 of the report – I do not need to explain it at the moment – and to two events that show why we are so sceptical. I recall that the Commission presented a report in October 2000 on occupational pension schemes, which Parliament adopted in July by 460 votes, yet the Council has not, to date, adopted a Common Position on it. I recall the European Company, on which we are in agreement on matters of content but not at all as regards form, because we act on the basis of Article 95 and, in Nice, the Council pulled the legal basis for codecision from under our feet. That is why we are so sceptical. Now for my last point. Mr President of the Commission, I wish to refer in this context to the sentence in your statement in which you said that it is the introduction of the euro that makes this report so important, and that, by this report, we are contributing to a strong and solid capital market. I therefore do not at all understand how a member of your Commission can, in a German newspaper, criticise your decision to send a notice of poor performance to the Federal Republic of Germany and actually dissociate himself from the thinking behind it. I would like a statement on that as well, as the Stability Pact and adherence to it are issues affecting the credibility of the euro and a precondition for public confidence in it. I consider the letter necessary because we must not differentiate between States, but must do our utmost to ensure that the Stability Pact is applied to everyone equally and with its full weight. Anyone who dissociates himself from that is endangering the credibility of the Stability Pact and, thereby, confidence in the euro. (Applause)

Political group: PPE-DE