Desama (PSE). – (FR) Mr President-in-Office of the Council, do you know how Archimedes expounded his theory of the lever? He would say, ‘Give me a fulcrum and I will lift the world.’ In Lisbon you will clearly be trying to lift the world or, in any case, our world, the world of Europe. As for the lever, you have described all the appropriate mechanisms in your exhilarating proposal, which is exciting in so many respects. That simply leaves the fulcrum.

The fulcrum is provided by resources. You find yourself before a House some of whose Members can still remember what I will refer to as the ‘White Paper’ syndrome, which is to say the remarkable initiative instigated by Jacques Delors that was torn to shreds by the ‘accountants’ at ECOFIN. We would not want the same misfortune to befall you now, as the programme that you have presented to us is so exhilarating that it could energise Europe and provide it with the future alluded to by Mr Goebbels. Nevertheless, you will have to have the means at your disposal, means which, I fear, you are somewhat lacking at present. It is thus up to you to create them. The straitjacket of Agenda 2000 will not provide you with the requisite means. You will thus have to encourage your colleagues to see to it that the proposals you make to us are going to be financed.

Just one example – and it is one of the mechanisms central to your proposals – is that of the information and knowledge society. It is clear – and you explained this very well – that the social divide is a fundamental problem that we must eradicate. There is no need to add to this what I will call the digital divide. Indeed, to whom will you offer this information and knowledge society? To an increasingly aged or ageing population, to a population which, despite everything, is still poor, and to a population which is becoming, alas, less and less well educated. You will thus have to adopt a bottom-up approach if you do not want this knowledge society to amount to little more than the pursuit of profits by a number of successful and necessary new firms. This is not your objective.

Unfortunately, there is one component missing from the mechanism that you have envisaged. I refer to the public services. The public services have played a key role throughout the entire existence of our European social model. It is true that the era of monopolies is past and that the Commission has initiated a process of liberalisation, of introducing competition into some public sectors in order to modernise them and improve their efficiency. But we cannot stop there. We must now define more clearly, within the context of competition and the information society, the principal public service roles of tomorrow as applicable to public undertakings and to private companies in this sector. What is needed, in this regard, are stronger measures, which do not yet feature in the Commission’s work programme, but to which you could give some impetus. This, it seems to me, would send out an extremely important signal.

Lastly, this knowledge society hinges on research and development and I would like to applaud, at this juncture, the Commission initiative that aims to create a European research area. Mr President, the Commission and Parliament will nevertheless have need of the Council in order to secure the requisite resources to create this European research area. The framework programme will not suffice, it will have to be boosted, and its broad guidelines modified. This is a major task, but we are relying on you to see it through.