Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, there will again be elections to Parliament in 2004. European citizens, every one of them, will be wondering which piece of the cake they have got, and whether that cake had been fairly shared out. I take the view, as a representative of the Group of the , that the cake that is being shared out is a big one, for the bigger the cake, the more fairly it can be shared out. When theorising about how the cake should be shared out, we should, then, always consider the way we support and promote those who bake it. As a matter of course, most of Europe's bakers of cakes are small and medium-sized enterprises, which produce the cake by the sweat of their brows. I believe that our most important future concern must be with those people who work in these enterprises, and, let me underline this, two thirds of workers are employed by these firms with fewer than 250 on the payroll. What is of the utmost importance to us in the political world, they produce 80% of taxes. I believe, then, that we must get started where we have the best chance of future success. We have all set ourselves the goal of becoming, in eight years' time, the highest-performing and most competitive region in the world. All I can say to that is that we urgently need to step on the gas if we are actually to achieve this objective, for our citizens' sake. We have had a few crises in recent years, such as, for example, the support given to the former Yugoslavia, the BSE crisis, and Afghanistan. Now a package arrives in this House that gives me a lot to think about; I mean the provisions of Basle II. In essence, the provisions of Basle II are quite right. We have to see to it that firms have sufficient equity and venture capital. If these conditions are incapable of being fulfilled, regulations cannot be enforced. If we want these provisions to be capable of being complied with – as we all do – then we need a Green Paper and a plan of action in good time, so that our small and medium-sized enterprises will again be able to pay their wages in 2005. In the event of Basle II entering into force without our having either a Green Paper or an action plan, then, in 2005, when it enters into force, there will be mass lay-offs and mass bankruptcies. We do not have much time left to us, and action is urgently needed. This applies especially to firms in the countries that want to join the EU; mention equity capital there, and you find that most firms do not have any at all, and that there, the borrowing of capital from outside sources, along with bank credit, prevail to the exclusion of all else. If a liquidity squeeze means that small and medium-sized banks are unable to make cash and its equivalent available, then big problems are coming our way. That we still have matters outstanding as regards a secure future was shown to us by 11 September. We must see to it that we press on with security of energy supply by means of the Synergy, Energy, and Altener programmes. We must look to research to make resources available for the post-2003 era. Training and continuing education will demand enormous effort of us with ‘e-learning’ and ‘e-business’. The Trans-European Networks, too, are waiting to be made reality. We must also see to it that the European Union becomes more active in the WTO. We must ensure that its Parliamentary Assembly takes on a monitoring role as soon as possible, and we need financial resources for those parliamentary delegates from the least developed countries, who at present cannot even afford to travel to its meetings. We must engage in training and continuing education there, for these are people we must integrate. We have to show them how they too can make the cake as large as it can be. (Applause)

Political group: PPE-DE