Mr President, this Brok-Wynn report has some fundamental statements in it. The first one, in the first paragraph, is our commitment to making sure that enlargement takes place on 1 May 2004. Let us be clear: that it is an objective which we all want to reach. But in achieving that objective, I for one will not see the rights of Parliament sacrificed. We have a battle going on at present between two institutions as to what Parliament's rights are and what they are not. Whether the Council respects our rights and our prerogatives remains to be seen. Paragraphs 3 and 4 spell out some pretty clear pictures. Paragraph 3 warns the Member States that if Article 32 and Annex XV are maintained in the Accession Treaty in their current form, Parliament will regard this as an infringement of its prerogatives in budgetary matters. Paragraph 4 goes on to say that the Parliament ‘considers the Member States' approach to be a breach of the principle of loyal cooperation between the institutions’ and that it ‘interprets this approach as a signal that the Council intends to abandon the Interinstitutional Agreement and the Financial Perspective included therein’. Those are not threats, but statements. I guarantee you now there will be no IAA if Annex XV goes into the treaties unamended or without any guarantees that Parliament's rights can be maintained. I now turn to Paragraphs 6 and 7 in the current text of the report. There will be an amendment from the and Groups to Paragraphs 6 and 7, to remove the figures, to delete Paragraph 7, and to put in a statement which will mention our rights again, because this is what this debate is all about. Tomorrow we will have a trialogue and, hopefully, we will try to get an agreement on a draft declaration. If we get that agreement, it would certainly be the minimum that I could accept because what we will be doing is agreeing a declaration on how to violate the Treaty. That is what we are doing. We are going to agree on how we can violate the Treaty because of Annex XV. For many years this Parliament and the Committee on Budgets have fought for the rights and the prerogatives of this institution. We are not here to sell those rights for 30 pieces of silver. Even if we can agree figures for category 3 in this declaration, do not take that as a sign of Parliament selling itself just for a small amount of money. I do not intend to be known as the Chairman of the Budgets Committee who sold out those rights for such a small amount of money. My job as Chairman is to make sure that the rights and privileges that we fought for over so many years are maintained, and I intend to do that. I make it clear now, and I said it in the Budgets Committee, that if Annex XV is maintained in its current form and if we have no guarantees about our rights I will vote against the Accession Treaty documents. I may be the only person in this room to do so but I will certainly vote against because I feel that strongly about it. If we get an agreement in the trialogue tomorrow, we can all celebrate. There will be something to be cheerful about. If we do not get an agreement, I should like to point out to the Greek Presidency that if there is another trialogue next week, it can certainly be held in Athens because two of us from that body will be there next week. We can have the trialogue in Athens and try again. If, at the end of the day, we cannot get an agreement – and this is the important point – I have no doubt that this House will not delay the vote on 9 April. The loyalty of this House, as Elmar Brok has said, is to get enlargement in place. But I will tell you one thing, colleagues: you will not have an interinstitutional agreement and war will have been declared as far as the budget goes for 2004. (Applause)

Political group: PSE