Mr President, I would first of all like to thank the President of the Commission, whose appearance was requested by my group on Friday morning having seen the statements he had made to the Le Monde newspaper, for having agreed to come to the appropriate place to explain his position; the European Parliament. Since then, two important things have happened: one, that a referendum has been won in Ireland – I think we should be happy about this; and the other, that the euro is remaining stable. In other words we are not on the brink of disaster. I must say that we in my group have read the comments in Le Monde carefully and we believe that the President has made a series of observations on current issues which we largely agree with. We would have preferred him to have said these things here, instead of in a newspaper, but that is what happened. The point is that we have a Pact which is not just a Stability and Growth Pact but also a Growth Pact and we have to fulfil the Stability and Growth Pact in order not to end up in the same situation as President Bush Senior, when he lost to Clinton, when he said to him: it is the economy, stupid. This is the current situation. We have a strategy, the Lisbon Strategy, and it must be applied, and to this end our economic policy must be intelligent. The Stability and Growth Pact was created 10 years ago, last century, but it must now be applied in light of new circumstances in which we have monetary union, when ten years ago we did not have it. This is the decisive factor, and it must therefore be applied with intelligence and flexibility, as the Commissioner has quite rightly explained. I cannot defend Mr Solbes more than Mr Poettering, but at least I support him on this point. There is a question which he has not dealt with and which was raised at the EPP Congress in Lisbon. It is as follows. In the end they asked themselves: whose fault is all of this? And they concluded: the Socialists, who have led us to this situation. Well, now we have promises of fiscal reforms, as if they were a lottery for everybody, on the part of the parties of the Right in Europe, and not only in the small countries, Mr Poettering. I have heard Mr Solbes talk about France and Italy; if you think France is a small country, then you are making truly revolutionary proposals. We therefore have to bring the Stability and Growth Pact up to date by insisting on growth. We must also – and there have been proposals in this regard from the President and the Commissioner today – improve an instrument which by definition is crude, if I can use the word ‘crude’ or ‘inflexible’, rather than stupid. And the Commission must present proposals which allow Parliament to carry out its duties. I have heard the President and the Commission talk about their relations with the Council and in particular Ecofin, in its euro dimension, but it would be useful if they could tell us how they believe the European Parliament should participate in the taking of the important budgetary and economic decisions. I believe that is our obligation, and we must be there. I will end, Mr President, by saying that very specific proposals have been presented to the Convention in application of the early warning mechanism representing the euro. The broad guidelines for economic policy must also have a dimension which allows Parliament to participate. It is my understanding that in the Commission the governments are turning a deaf ear to this proposal. I believe that in this regard we must support the Commission and demand more capacity for initiative.

Political group: PSE