Mr President, the European Parliament is one of the most open parliaments in the world. The Chamber is often packed, even though more people often attend the committee meetings. The voting and the preparatory work can be followed on the Internet, and hundreds of thousands of visitors to the locations in Strasbourg and Brussels get a sense of how the work proceeds. On quite a few occasions, I have seen sceptical seventeen year-olds put the headphones on and be fascinated by the fact that it is in actual fact possible to conduct a debate in different languages. There is a change in attitude on the part of these seventeen year-olds. I believe it would be good for the legitimacy of the EU if all school pupils were to have the opportunity to visit us. We should be proud of this openness, even if there is room for a number of improvements, which are also under way. Once people have ceased to be fascinated by Parliament’s openness, it is not however always easy to understand how we work. The voting goes on forever, with sometimes hundreds of amendments. Instead of a vigorous debate in the Chamber, with quick responses and opposition, we have a series of long monologues in which we read out our papers written in advance, as I am doing today. Sometimes, the Chamber is all but empty, in spite of the fact that interesting issues are being debated. That is partly due to the fact that we speak different languages. We can, however, do more to reform the work of Parliament. Our president is helping with this by ensuring that we table political proposals and, with Mr Corbett’s report, we are taking quite a few very significant steps forward. As my colleague, Mr Duff, said, the Group of the European Liberal, Democrat and Reform Party supports Mr Corbett’s work and his efforts to simplify and tighten up the procedures and make them more focused. These are very important changes, and I hope they may be accompanied by a desire to be more alert in making use of the Rules of Procedure than we have been previously. On certain issues, there is of course great creativity when it comes to using the Rules of Procedure. We should like to take still further steps with a view to obtaining more lively debates and disposing of more issues that come before the European Parliament. Proposals were tabled earlier for creating a type of technical committee. Perhaps we can return to that subject at a later stage. Nor are we completely satisfied with the proposal for dealing with urgent cases, and we have therefore proposed a compromise in order to highlight these issues. As Mrs Kaufmann indicated, we are carrying out important work on human rights which has resonance far beyond the walls of this Chamber. We shall certainly have the opportunity to make new changes and to take a step further, especially following enlargement when, presumably, both the Chamber and the political groups will be more heterogeneous than before. It is therefore a question of finding a balance between efficiency and democracy. The greatest changes required if the European Parliament is to operate entirely democratically, responsibly and satisfactorily depend upon treaty changes, and we are unable to do much on that score in the present situation. It is a question of introducing the right of co-decision on a greater number of issues, of getting rid of the peculiar way of dividing up the budget and of dealing with the matter of travel between Strasbourg and Brussels. These are issues we can perhaps solve in the Convention. For the time being, Mr Corbett’s work is a major step forward for us, and I really wish to congratulate him on this.

Political group: ELDR