Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, further to what Mrs Sanders-ten Holte has said, it can be seen that there are two sides to every question. A majority of members of visual artists’ associations and representative bodies, with whom I have spoken during the last few years, now want to see European resale rights. Even the majority of those in the art trade want to see common resale rights. Politicians have been trying for years to negotiate a compromise acceptable to everyone. Admittedly, the Council has not really striven for harmonisation but, rather, put together a framework with a number of ingenious loopholes. Admittedly, the Council was not particularly flexible and did not pay very much attention to the European Parliament’s proposals, but it is, at the end of the day, an acceptable compromise. I cannot speak for the Commission, but there are one or two things to indicate that the Commission, too, was not happy, or in agreement, with all the Council proposals, especially those regarding the transitional periods. In what was not so much a debate as a veto policy, the Commission, too, played its role, however, in making resale rights possible. Now we have this document, on the subject of which I would say that, although we might well protest, we ought to be saying ‘yes’ to what is, at long last, a victory. We have this paper, which can be improved upon, but it is precisely because we now have the paper that such improvements can be made. Opponents should be somewhat more careful in their criticism rather than appear, as critics, to be all of the same mind. That is because there are some people who reject resale rights on principle and others who would like to level specific and very serious criticisms which may be of vital importance to themselves or to particular players, for example to the smallest art galleries which, in fact, are instrumental in creating a pool of talent. It is they who assume the major risk. They have a great many problems with the tax differentials, administration and insurance contracts. They are scarcely allowed to take visual artists’ work on commission. For the most part, they have to buy such works. If these smallest galleries have to buy works of art and are then – as anticipated in this proposal – unable to resell them three years later, and if perhaps, only after that period, have to sell them for less than their purchase price, they are bearing a risk and are losing out on two counts, namely in terms of both the price and of the resale rights. My group will nonetheless vote in favour of this proposal, although there are still one or two improvements to be made in terms of both resale rights and of related aspects. Finally, I should not like to brush aside one further argument, for that is not something I can do, but, rather, to qualify it somewhat. It is only one specific lobby that is arguing the point about market migration. We have supply and demand, and there are certain things that are sought in Europe, and which have always been sought in Europe, and not in the United States, and vice versa. It is important that this European decision, which will hopefully be taken by a majority of us tomorrow, should exert enormous pressure in favour of representatives campaigning for resale rights in Switzerland and also in the United States. They are waiting for us to say yes, and I hope that this is what they will hear tomorrow.

Political group: Verts-ALE