Madam President, Mr Prodi, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, I am very grateful for today's report. We are moving ever closer and our views have more and more in common, but there is still a way to go, and there is one particular point on which I believe that we still differ. Firstly, you have today clearly declared your faith in a form of parliamentary democracy that of course has important consequences for our work as a whole, and in particular for the role of ‘civil society’. That is another of those rather nebulous concepts rather like ‘governance’, but ‘governance’ is used in contexts where there are no parliamentary democracies or cannot be, as in the case of ‘global governance’. In the case of civil society, and I think you were very clear about this, we need to stress that although it has a consultative role and a supporting function, it is the European Parliament and of course also national parliaments that are at the heart of democracy as we know it. As you said yourself, they are an expression of the will of the people, and we must insist on that point. The key point on which there are still differences between us is the issue of alternative forms of regulation. We are not so presumptuous as to think that only Parliament can regulate and that only Parliament can create appropriate regulations, including detailed regulations. However, the difficult thing is to decide on the framework, details, a political objective and technical implementation. So I must insist that this Parliament is always consulted on this issue and that it is not the Commission that decides, but that there should be a joint decision, a kind of Interinstitutional Agreement between the Council, Parliament and the Commission. This applies in particular to the issue of call back that we have also been discussing today. Let me make this crystal clear: we need both things. We need a Parliament call-back procedure in connection with alternative forms of regulation, and we need to reform comitology. We have nothing against the reform of comitology proposed in the White Paper, but it is not enough. It is necessary if the decision-making process at parliamentary level is to become more democratic, but it is by no means enough. Mr President, I hope I have understood you correctly in understanding that you will not present anything to the Laeken European Council unless it has been discussed with this Parliament beforehand and the views of this House have been sought. You said this in general terms, and I welcome that, and I can see from your nodding that that is indeed your intention. That represents a great step forward compared with the last time, and I would like to thank you very much indeed for that. By way of conclusion, I would like to make one more thing clear. This is not about Parliament getting involved in the Commission's executive powers. However, we very much reject any attempts on the part of the Commission – and they have been made – to get involved in the legislative process and to arrogate legislative powers to itself. This emerges from many sentences and passages in the White Paper, and we must reject this. The Commission has executive powers, but legislative competence is a matter for the Parliament and the Council and we absolutely insist on that!

Political group: PSE