Mr President-in-Office, this House will vote tomorrow on an amendment on your National Hydrological Plan, so we hope you enjoy your glass of water today. If the European Union were drawing up an end-of-year report card on the Lisbon process, I suspect that the report would say 'must try harder'. Over the last year, we have seen some progress on this agenda, in particular the adoption of the telecoms package in Council, the agreement on the European company statute, reduction of the tax burden by three-quarters of 1% of GDP. All of these things help to promote growth and jobs, provided they are consistent with the growth and stability pact, and clearly we need to be shifting the tax burden away from things we want more, like jobs, and onto things that we want less of, like pollution. But I am afraid this report card would also show that the Union is failing in too many areas. The Commission communication to the Barcelona European Council speaks of a firm commitment to the growth and stability pact, which will help build confidence. If this is so, it was sadly lacking when the Finance Ministers fudged an early warning decision on Germany and Portugal just recently. The rejection of the take-over bids directive is a major setback to competitiveness in the Union and I challenge the other political groups and the Council to join us in speeding through the new Commission proposal under a fast-track procedure, so that we can get it onto the statute book by the end of this year. Another area where we have failed is the failure in Council to adopt a common position on the pensions directive which is essential, not just for a secure retirement for an elderly population, but also for labour market mobility. The European Parliament has done its job. We gave you our first reading opinion in July of last year and we now look to the Spanish Presidency to send us a common position by June of this year, if we are to meet the Commission's target of adoption by the end of this year. Another area where the schoolteacher would rap the Council over the knuckles is the European patent. If we want to close the innovation gap between Europe and the United States, we need easier and cheaper and faster pan-European patent protection. When it comes to behaviour in class, I am not sure that the Union would score well. I welcome the Commission's decision this afternoon to take the Council to the Court of Justice for an attempt to take away the Commission's powers over state aid. The reason we have state aid rules is to ensure a proper functioning of the single market and we need to abolish barriers to competition and to free trade to allow the Commission to be the policeman, and the Council should frankly be ashamed of challenging the Commission on that. Finally, our report card would show a pupil which is lacking ambition. If the European Union is to be a star pupil, we need progress on liberalisation of energy and gas markets, on implementation of the financial services action plan, on agreement of a public procurement framework. The process of economic reform is not an end in itself. It is about increasing prosperity of our people and preparing the European Union for enlargement. What message is it that we are sending to applicant states if we are incapable of implementing ourselves the demanding reforms that we are expecting of them? When it comes to reviewing what happens at Barcelona, we will be judging you by the report card. At the moment, the pupil has to work harder.

Political group: ELDR