Mr President, Commissioner, Mr Lehne, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to know how many legal transactions have taken place in the European Union during the last 15 minutes, while we have been debating. Would it be a million, 10 million or even 100 million? Whatever, I believe that it must be a large figure. We are in a world of what in German we call 'Massengeschäfte' a term that is not perhaps particularly easy to translate into other languages – bread-and-butter transactions, perhaps. I am sure that only a fraction of these legal transactions will have been cross-border, and I am equally sure that these transactions, ranging from Lapland to Sicily, from Scotland to Bavaria, will have been conducted according to totally different traditions and customs. That is why we need to be clear that this is a very sensitive area and however ambitious we may be, we still need to proceed very carefully and prudently. Mrs Wallis has already referred to the reaction in the United Kingdom, for example. So I think it is reasonable for the Commission to propose in its Option II that we should initially work out some general legal principles. One expert very appositely said that the problem with legal convergence is not so much the rules as the exceptions. We have discovered precisely that through our own work, in the case of warranty periods on purchases, interest on arrears, money laundering and also the takeover directive. General principles can be agreed quickly, but in contrast it is very difficult to harmonise which groups should be given special treatment and who qualifies for special protection. That is why we also need to set reasonable priorities for our work. The cross-border aspects should be prioritised in the first place. We need to achieve compatibility between European legislation and national legislation, but national legislative provisions also need to be made compatible with each other. Courts need to cooperate more effectively and mutual legal assistance needs to be guaranteed. I believe that these are concrete, practical steps that we can implement from one day to the next, which would assist legal transactions between our citizens within the single market. I think that in considering these matters, we should also deal with the concept of working towards a European law as an option for parties entering into contracts. They could therefore choose either to opt for a legal system created in Europe or else continue to use national law. As I see it, this would be a kind of soft harmonisation, setting in train a process of convergence which, Mr MacCormick, would be better than regulations adopted as an abrupt event, as Mrs Wallis put it. Against this background I would also like to say that Mr Lehne's draft does not, of course, reiterate the demands that we made in 1989 and 1994. At that time we demanded that a European Civil Code should be drawn up, but as far as I can see, that proposal has not been incorporated in the texts adopted in committee nor in the amendments. We have adopted a good, reasonable and cautious approach here. I would like to thank both the rapporteur and all those who helped with the hearing for their assistance. (Applause)

Political group: PPE-DE