Mr President, I would particularly like to support what Mrs Theato said in her speech. I too regard it as an enormous problem that the Council is not present for this debate. When you look at the Council's report on the discharge, you really get the impression that in many areas the Council does not know what it is talking about. For instance, when it comes to the Development Funds, you get the impression that the Council has simply dusted off the same opinions it delivered years ago, instead of really coming to grips with the subject. I think this is particularly scandalous given that the Council is partly responsible for the fact that there are problems in this area in the first place. There are still unresolved conflicts of responsibility between the Member States and the Commission here. So I expect the Council to display a rather greater sense of responsibility and to accept more responsibility. Parliament is making an effort in the case of this discharge to strike a very careful balance between the urgently required verification work needed, on the one hand, and on the other hand, and this is just as important, the issue of a further loss of confidence in the European institutions. So as rapporteur for the Development Funds I have given considerable thought to whether I can really call for postponement of the discharge. But this is a clear decision, and I have the full support of the Committee on Budgetary Control. However, I would like to emphasise once again that we are not refusing to grant discharge, as it said in one newspaper today, but rather that we are postponing the discharge. The reason we wish to postpone the discharge in this way is that we believe the Commission is most definitely heading in the right direction, but that it still needs some pressure if it is to go all the way. So this is not a question of a lack of confidence in the relevant Commissioner, but rather an attempt to make it clear that the action plan he produced in conjunction with Parliament during the 1998 discharge one year ago is precisely the right answer to the problems before us, so that we as the Committee responsible and as Parliament wish to incorporate the first results from this action plan in our discharge procedure. As the first results are due in April or May, we wish to postpone the discharge until then. Another reason why we believe that this is undoubtedly necessary is that many improvements still have to be made regarding the Development Funds, or rather the management of the Development Funds, in terms of auditing and cooperation with the Member States. In this context I would like to express my thanks once again for the excellent cooperation we have had with the European Court of Auditors, which was very helpful in its assessment of the management of the Development Funds. I wish to point out that the positive DAS contained in the Court of Auditors' report has to be seen in relative terms, because the Court of Auditors has responded to oral and written questions by commenting that it naturally has some problems here, and that it cannot audit 77 countries and 205 projects itself, so that it is dependent in this area on cooperation with the countries in receipt of aid, and that a great deal of work still remains to be done in this field. On the one hand, the local delegations have to be strengthened, and on the other administrative structures in these countries also have to be reinforced, and there must be joint projects through which those in positions of responsibility in those countries can obtain the information they need from the EU, that is from the Court of Auditors, and also exchange projects with the Court of Auditors for administrators in positions of authority in the ACP countries. We urgently need to improve administrative structures so as to deal properly with the work required in the area of development aid. But I must stress that I am also calling for postponement of the discharge because there has been a singular lack of transparency in my field. The Commissioner responsible for my area seemed to be far too tentative and anxious, and in my capacity as rapporteur I received information late, after the deadline or not at all. I also think that his staff's reference to the framework agreement with Parliament is not very helpful as a means of creating confidence on the part of the rapporteur and as a means of ensuring that we work together constructively on this. The Commission must in future act in a more transparent and impressive way, and display greater confidence in its dealings with Parliament, so that we can jointly bring the discharge procedure to a satisfactory conclusion. I would also like to stress once again that many things need to be improved in relation to the Development Funds. The Commissioner has some difficult tasks before him. There is a backlog of commitments that he has inherited from the old Commission. The administrative structures are inappropriate and understaffed. In the recipient countries themselves there are problems with wars and other crises, and we have taken all this into account. We are certainly willing to admit that in this area control needs to be handled more carefully. The control process in a developing country must take as its starting point the notion that there is always corruption with development aid and consideration needs to be given to what sort of action to take in a given country. That means that we are certainly willing to meet the Commission half way and recognise the major problems that exist. But we would also like to stress again that if the EU and the Commission want to win the confidence of the public in the important field of development aid, they will, of course, also have to make appropriate adjustments to their management structure to reflect the regulations. And it has to be said that the backlog of payment appropriations has certainly reached a worrying level now. (Applause)

Political group: Verts-ALE