Madam President, Commissioner, may I begin by reiterating my thanks to my honourable colleague Markus Ferber on behalf of our group, because he sought compromises within the committee and he found them. You know how difficult this issue is; it is laden with ideological overtones, sometimes from both sides. We therefore owe him our thanks for rallying a large majority behind a sound compromise. Our group agrees with the Commissioner and with the Lisbon meeting of the European Council, though not that of Nice, that further steps need to be taken to open the market in postal services. Competition in the postal sector, as it has done elsewhere, will ensure that we have a more effective and an affordable service for consumers. However, my group also takes the view that we as a Community and as Member States must naturally ensure that conditions are created for the provision of a universal service too. But, Mr Savary, the purpose of the universal service is to offer the postal services that people typically require and to offer them at affordable prices throughout the territory of the Member States. The purpose of the universal service is not to act as a citizens' advice bureau or to organise psychological counselling. The fact is that, in order to make a universal service possible, we are reserving a domain in which monopolies can operate. In other words, in this exceptional case we are deliberately excluding competition. But this exclusion must only apply to postal services and not to advisory services, social services or anything else. We cannot find any legal grounds for excluding competition from these other domains. So, if a Member State wants to have a nation-wide citizens' advice network, it should pay for it. When I buy a postage stamp, I should not be helping to finance a citizens' advice service in France or in any other countries. That would truly make a mockery of the universal service. Yes, we do want to guarantee a universal service, and, in order to do so, we must exclude competition from a certain area of the postal services. The great bone of contention in our committee and in the House as a whole is this: how large an area do we have to keep free of competition so that a decent universal postal service can be provided? I believe the compromise ceiling of 150 grammes that we have proposed, along with the application of the other criteria, constitute suitable next steps. For this reason, a majority of my group will be supporting this compromise too. The situation on the ground, of course, varies widely. Let me give you an example. The Belgian Post Office cannot claim to serve a country of vast dimensions, nor can it claim to serve a remote country on the periphery of Europe. Yet its postal services are disastrous, even though it has a reserved right to provide them. This is why we are giving the green light for the next step. May I also point out, Commissioner – and this is the second of the motions we have tabled – that we should like to have a report by 31 December on this next step that we are about to take, so that Parliament and the Council can jointly decide on further steps towards more open markets, and I also hope that you will be able to present a clear evaluation report in the year 2003, on the basis of which we can then initiate the next moves.

Political group: PPE-DE