Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, ‘and yet it does move’ – European air transport policy, I mean. There are obviously so many pressing problems that Spain and Great Britain have given up their decades-old blockade in the Council. That is a great step forward for Europe. The Single Sky project has a significance in terms of European airspace comparable to that of the introduction of the euro for the European economic and monetary area. I only hope that there is just as much awareness of the problems involved and willingness to resolve them, as the devil is well known to dwell in the details. We can already see quite divergent national interests girding their loins to jeopardise the ambitious objective of making this project a reality by 2004. The reports by Mr Fava and Mrs Sanders-ten Holte show the necessary will to resolve the problems, and I hope that the House does as well. I would also like to say something about a number of core issues that have had a part to play in the discussion and which seem to be important. I still find it hard to understand why the sharing of responsibilities between the Community and Eurocontrol has not been resolved in a truly definitive way. Things still need to be done in that area. My second point is that the Commission was quite right to refer to cooperation between civilian and military authorities, but this does not, in my view, go far enough, since, in the final analysis, there is still an intrinsic need for their air traffic control services to be fully integrated. This area calls for more than what the Commission has proposed. I am aware that this would of course require an ongoing discussion in the institutions, one that would encompass the Common Foreign and Security Policy and not relate solely to transport policy. Thirdly, the provision of air traffic control services calls for independent national supervisory authorities, which would, in the final analysis, need to be institutionally separate from the service providers. As my colleague has pointed out, we would prefer it if we already had a European supervisory authority, but the time for that does not yet seem to have arrived. Fourthly, we need clear procedures for authorisation and appointments and transparent rules on charges. I would ask you, at the present time, not to let yourselves be tangled up in a discussion as to whether air traffic control requires State or private-sector service providers, or else the whole project risks being brought to a standstill, as we have seen happen with public transport. That would be harmful. It is safety that is in the foreground and has priority, along with the facilitation of integrated air traffic control services appropriate to the functional blocks of airspace. My fifth point, which is at the heart of the whole structure, follows from that. We need the creation of functional blocks of airspace. The Commission's description of how we get there is, however, incorrect and inadequate. Here, the need to rid the skies of the small-state mentality means that there is still a need for improvement. We have 26 subsystems, 58 monitoring systems, and different equipment. That is superfluous and, as has already been said, increases the likelihood of error. Safety must be the highest priority. Mrs Maes, your report is one that I cannot but fully support. There are scarcely any objections to it on the part of our group. (Applause)

Political group: PSE