Madam President of the Commission, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to start by expressing my thanks to the Commission for having done as it promised to do last year and synchronised the debates on the coming year's policy strategy and Budget; I see today as an important occasion and one that bids us shoulder together this great shared responsibility for Europe and its inhabitants. The questions with which we are faced are of course important ones, and, right now, I want to say one thing in very clear terms: Commissioner, it would be a very great help to us if we did not have to concern ourselves solely with questions that will become relevant after your term of office has expired, such as how we are to proceed after 2006, and what we can expect to face then. What we have to deal with, quite specifically, is how the Financial Perspective is to be adjusted to take account of enlargement. I would have been glad if the Commission could have taken a line more openly sympathetic to Parliament in order to secure Parliament's rights, and hence the public interest in the transparency and openness of this process. We could certainly have done with more explicit statements in this area. Let me just say now, in very clear terms, that we will have to consider whether we will be in a position, a month from now, to deal with the applications for accession in this House, or whether we perhaps ought first to resolve the institutional question of how Parliament is to be involved in dealing with this important issue. What I actually wanted to do now was to say something to the Group of the , who are now conspicuous by their absence and do not think it necessary to send someone to represent them in this debate – and that itself speaks volumes! Now that we are discussing enlargement and preparing to welcome to our Parliament observers from the candidate states in only a few weeks' time, we should certainly be giving thought to other options for cooperation – Mr Dover made that point very impressively, and I am very grateful to him for doing so – in order to grow together in a more organised way in our day-to-day work and daily life. I think it is a pitiable thing for the to table amendments aimed at deleting these passages from Mrs Gill's report. That is the very opposite of what we need if we want to accommodate over a hundred new Members in this House. So now, Commissioner, here comes my request that we should now be concentrating on the matters in hand! I have mentioned the subject of the Financial Perspective, so let me remind you of the Andreasen case. I have here an internal memorandum from the Commission, which reaches an assessment different from that which you set out in the Committee on Budgetary Control. Now, at long last, we have to sort out the problem with the accounting systems. One of this Commission's great promises was that this parliamentary term would see things getting moved forward. When we have worked through all these things properly, then we will be able to talk about the prospects for the EU finances after 2006, but right now there are other things on the agenda, and they have to be sorted out as a matter of urgency if all the things promised since the day the Prodi Commission took office are to be finished by the time its term of office comes to an end. If we manage that, we will have achieved much for Europe.

Political group: PPE-DE