Mr President, the rapporteur, Mrs Ghilardotti has already indicated how difficult it has been to present this issue for second reading. My group’s first priority, therefore, is to bring this issue to an end at long last and to have it published in the Official Journal. We thus hope that agreement with the Council will be reached in the near future. This is also evident from the stance adopted by our group, as Mrs Ghilardotti stated. We dropped a huge number of amendments from first reading and concentrated in the committee on a number of compromise texts, on which it must be possible to reach agreement, in our view. For example, we deleted the precious point on Tendenzschutz, which we would have liked to have seen scrapped. Neither will we be backing the Group of the and the Group on this matter in the framework of reaching a compromise. However, we hope that the will continue to support the compromise proposals we reached in committee. The differences of opinion with the Council mainly revolve around two key points: the provisions on sanctions and the unnecessarily long transitional periods. I should like to note that these are not points which we have added but, rather, points which the Council has added to the Commission position. Parliament is not asking for points to be added. In this case, it is the Council which is departing from the Commission proposal. I will briefly comment on those two points. With regard to the sanction provisions, Mr Menrad has also already communicated their importance in order for the directive to be taken really seriously. In this connection, I would like to refer to the experience in my own country. In the Netherlands, this kind of sanction exists in legislation pertaining to works councils. Precisely those provisions have an extremely preventative effect. It is not often that legal steps are required, but the very fact that it is possible to take these steps means that very intense consultations are often held. With regard to closures and transfers which need to take place, a very broad support structure is created and sound consultations are held. That is very important for industrial relations, in my opinion. The second point concerns transitional periods. I already stated last week, at a meeting which Mr Bushill-Matthews had organised with an English association of people who, in fact, propagate the idea of employee participation, that it strikes me as bizarre that they call for a much longer transitional period. If one considers – as they did – that information and consultation are very important, not only to employees but also to employers and to the company’s performance, then one must ensure that this measure is introduced very promptly. One should not ask for longer transitional periods, for that gives British industry entirely the wrong signal. I would therefore ask you to reconsider this and to support these conventional transitional periods, as proposed by the Commission, after all. Come what may, based on the experience which we have gathered in the Netherlands with an act that has been in force for more than 50 years, it appears that industrial relations have improved as a result.

Political group: PSE