Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I should first of all like to thank Mr Harbour on his sterling report, but also Mr Caudron on his excellent contribution on behalf of the Committee on Industry, External Trade, Research and Energy. Madam President, this is a report of extreme significance, for it regulates the rights of citizens in relation to the duties of companies. Certainly at a time when everything develops so fast, it is of crucial importance to have such a report. Allow me to make five observations. First of all, it is essential to have a level playing field. That is why, of course, Article 13 is of major importance. It stipulates quite emphatically how alternative funding can be found for universal services if they were to create an additional burden for operators. I believe that to be of crucial importance, certainly in cases where operators are in dire financial straits, as many currently are. Secondly, Article 16 is important and, on that score, I am completely dumbfounded at the fact that the Socialist Group should table an amendment to confine the whole issue of number portability to the fixed network. If there is one thing which has promoted, and has to promote, competition among operators, it is, of course, the possibility of number portability, and I would make an urgent appeal to our fellow MEPs not to adopt that amendment under any circumstances. That would seem wrong to me. I wholeheartedly agree that interventions in the market or in the price structure, such as we carried out with regard to international roaming, must form an exception. But if you, the citizen, have to pay over the odds and are not given any information about prices for international roaming, which allows payment to be made between one country and another, then the only option available is legislation. And it is precisely because we have threatened legislation that operators are now prepared to drop their prices, and that is, I believe, what this is ultimately all about. A third fundamental point is caller location information where 112, our European emergency number, is concerned. That is important, but I should urge you to mainly use this location information for relevant cases. The protection of privacy is of crucial importance, and I am pleased, therefore, that that has been provided for in Article 22. You may be surprised to find someone from the Committee on Industry, External Trade, Research and Energy raising the following point, namely that, from the point of view of cultural policy, Article 26, with its ‘must carry’ obligations, is of major importance. But once again, I am astounded that our Socialist group would like to extend that ‘must carry’ obligation to cover commercial broadcasters. In my view, that is a complete misunderstanding, and I truly hope that they are prepared to retract that amendment, for we must reserve the ‘must carry’ obligation for public broadcasters only. Finally, Madam President, you and I enjoy watching all kinds of programmes, also using set top boxes, and if we then fall victim to, let us say, one large consortium, then it is no longer possible to do that. Set top boxes must be compatible with each other. A common interface is required for that purpose. This is legislated for excellently in Annex 6. We must pledge our support for this.

Political group: PPE-DE