Mr President, Mr Lemierre, ladies and gentlemen, I wish to begin by welcoming Mr Lemierre and his colleagues to the European Parliament, and take this opportunity to express my warm thanks to you and the Bank's staff for the extraordinarily positive cooperation which we were able to establish during the preparation of this report. The EBRD responded to me with great openness and willingness to cooperate, thus making my work on this report both interesting and informative. I was able to hold numerous discussions with representatives of the Bank as well as with project agencies from various countries, which gave me a detailed picture of the Bank's operations, its problems and successes, but also, and to a minor extent, its failures. The EBRD is unique among development banks in having a political mandate. According to this mandate, its purpose is to foster the transition towards open market–oriented economies and to promote private and entrepreneurial initiative in the Central and Eastern European countries and CIS states committed to the principles of multiparty democracy, pluralism and market economics. It is also part of the Bank's political mandate to promote, across the full range of its activities, environmentally sound and sustainable development. In my view, political guidelines governing the activities of other development banks would be desirable as well. Having scrutinised its operations, we can attest that the EBRD performs well in fulfilling its current mandate. In selecting the projects to be funded, the EBRD prefers to be involved in small and medium-sized projects rather than promoting large-scale prestige projects. It shows great willingness to take risks through its commitment to projects which other banks deem too risky, but it does not systematically seek the security of state guarantees. A key focus of its activities is developing small and medium-sized businesses. The EBRD's micro-financing projects deserve particular mention in this context. Yet its high willingness to take risks does not take place at the expense of sound business management, as is borne out by the fact that it has always received the highest rating (triple A) from international rating agencies. In my capacity as rapporteur, I would like to make a number of recommendations to the Bank, notwithstanding the positive assessment of its work overall. Although its activities focus primarily on the transitional promotion of private and public enterprise, its operations undoubtedly have macroeconomic effects. For this reason, an analysis of its operations should include economic data, which has not been the case to date. I am thinking especially of factors such as trends in employment, wages and salaries, productivity, company turnover, and so on. This will allow comparisons to be drawn between regions where the EBRD operates and regions where it does not operate, so that the influence of EBRD activities on macroeconomic development can be assessed. In this context, it should also be a stated aim of the EBRD's operations to achieve synergy effects. Pursuing an integrated approach designed to help entire value–added chains in a region can contribute to promoting regional economic and social flows, thus facilitating sustainable development, which – as already mentioned – is one of the tasks defined in the Bank's mandate. It is also, in my view, important to encourage the Bank to tailor its policies to local circumstances. Each country in which it operates has taken different decisions on its economic structures throughout the transformation process, especially as regards the division between the public and private sectors. The Bank therefore should not attempt to operate in the same way in every country. It would be a misinterpretation of the Bank's political mandate, were it to set itself up as the herald of ultra-liberalism and set itself the sole goal of promoting privatisation and uncontrolled liberalisation. It does not do so, but I want to point out that this risk must be controlled from the outset. My report is a first for the European Parliament, since it is the first time that the operations of the EBRD have been subject to scrutiny and assessment by this House. This closes a gap which marked the EBRD out from other banks, such as the EIB, which has been subject to assessment by the EP for years. In future, a report on the EBRD will be presented to the European Parliament every two years. I think that with this own-initiative report, the foundation stone has been laid for positive and continuous cooperation between the Bank and the European Parliament.

Political group: GUE-NGL