Karas (PPE-DE). – (DE) Mr President, Commissioner Byrne, ladies and gentlemen, my point concerns the Wuermeling report, the consumer credit directive. I would like to expressly thank the rapporteur for his excellent work and the good cooperation between the committees. He had a hard task because the Commission’s draft was, to put it mildly, a bad one. The Commission’s proposal starts from false assumptions. It plays the interests of consumers against those of the banks and in many cases it actually incites the one against the other, despite the fact that Europe needs more cooperation not recrimination, more seriousness instead of populist superficiality.

We say a clear yes to consumer protection, yes to greater transparency, yes to reciprocal information, yes to lower and upper limits for the applicability of the directive. We say a clear no to more red tape for retail loans, no to making retail loans more expensive and no to the inclusion of overdrafts in this directive.

I hope that the draft Parliament has produced, based on the rapporteur’s proposals, does justice to the real intentions of this directive, which are to improve consumer protection while cutting bureaucracy, to provide greater transparency and to make for greater trust and mutual consideration, and that it will thereby promote consumer interests and cross-border borrowing.

I ask you all to vote in favour of the amendments tabled by Parliament and the rapporteur, because that is the only way to increase cooperation rather than conflict.