Mr President, at a time when the candidate countries in Central and Eastern Europe have been subject to quite a great deal of criticism from EU Heads of Governments, and from European Commissioners and others, for making their views on the Iraq crisis known, the Group strongly welcomes the statement from the European Commission that the central priority must and will remain enlargement. It is in our view absurd that so many criticisms have been made of candidate countries; they have been reprimanded in a condescending manner when the divisions that have opened up within the European Union in the current crisis are almost entirely of the making of the existing Member States. It is of course true that the European Union is not a supermarket, but equally it is not a temple in which people who speak a little too loudly are asked to remain quiet. The reasons why divisions have opened up are largely to do with insistence by existing Member States on a slavish allegiance to Washington, or an equally stubborn hostility to everything that emanates from the United States. The candidate countries are innocent bystanders in that debate and should not be penalised for having being pressured into making their views known. That is why we strongly welcome your emphasis, President Prodi, on making sure that these current problems do not in any way derail or slow down the enlargement process and hope that you will do everything possible to see the enlargement process through to its logical conclusion next year. The second point I would like to make is on the issue of governance. This document is a useful step forward in the improvement of EU governance and to that extent we welcome it warmly. It is crucial that governance is improved at an institutional level. There is no point in one institution or another raising its game if the other institutions do not reciprocate. That is why the Group is especially keen that the somewhat stalled talks in the interinstitutional working group, which is looking at the way in which we all collectively improve our law-making capacity, should conclude as quickly as possible. Deadlines have slipped; the group should have concluded its work at the end of last year and the new deadline for the spring summit also now seems unrealistic. It is essential that we all pull our weight in the three institutions concerned to make this institutional approach a reality. Let me give you an example. You cite at length in your document the very laudable attempts in the European Commission to apply impact assessments of a number of key legislative proposals. I think you are proposing to do that on 31 proposals in 2004. There would be no point in those impact assessments if MEPs in the European Parliament or Ministers in the Council of Ministers were then to ignore your assessment and simply revise the legislation without any regard for the impact. That is why many of us in the interinstitutional working group have been urging you in the European Commission to think about how you could extrapolate your excellent work in the impact assessment field and urge all institutions to sign up to similar practices. We would certainly urge you to redouble those efforts in the weeks ahead.

Political group: ELDR