Mr President, thank you very much for your generosity, and thanks also to my fellow Member for his understanding and kindness. I would like to begin, not with the most important report, but by replying to the comments of Mr Kuhne which I really consider to be unfortunate. At the moment, the political groups – as you know – do not have a genuine regulation. My political group, and practically all the others, are complying with the existing regulations. Your political group has its way of organising its finances, as do all the others. Fifteen offices of this Parliament are devoted to the European Socialist Party, and a crowd of officials, who are paid from public funds, are dedicated exclusively to the work of one political party. Other political groups prefer to have their offices outside Parliament, and have their own officials and adopt totally legal financing formulae. Therefore, at a time when we are asking for a statute for the parties – because Europe needs not only European parliamentary groups, but also European political parties – at a time when there is a certain harmony amongst all the groups, I consider the references in his report to peculiar things to be unfortunate – as the chairman of our group, Mr Poettering, has correctly pointed out. Mr Kuhne, you know that that is not the case. We lack regulation. My political group, like all of them, is going to comply with the regulations and provide information when it is appropriate to do so. However, when free to do so, each group has managed its finances in the way they considered appropriate. I would like to highlight the work of Mrs Stauner in this extremely important report, but I would like to point out, briefly, that we are not trying to weaken the new Commission, on which we have placed so many hopes, as we have on the Commissioner responsible for the budget and for financial control, Mrs Schreyer. We are analysing a financial year of the last Commission, and we have asked the current Commission to diligently manage issues which were pending from the previous Commission. The proof that we are fundamentally satisfied with its work lies in the fact that we are going to propose the discharge, obviously with reserves, of the accounts for 1998. We believe that the Commission is taking its time. Logically, at the beginning it needs more time, but we hope that other decisions will be taken much more quickly. We also hope that the Interinstitutional Agreement which we have finally reached will improve our relations, so that we can provide each other with mutual support and build Europe more quickly. We also understand that you are immersed in a process of administrative reform, which in my opinion and in the opinion of other MEPs, is not ambitious enough: decisions are lacking and there are matters which it is not dealing with. It is not your direct responsibility, but you already know that we believe that a lot of funds are wasted as a result of this passive attitude, the lack of motivation amongst officials and the failure to take responsibility, because people are too concerned with controlling errors or seeking their own promotion. To end, I would like to say that we agree with the discharge of the accounts which the three reports refer to. (Applause) IN THE CHAIR: GERHARD SCHMIDVice-President

Political group: PPE-DE