Enrico Letta (ALDE), rapporteur. – (IT) Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I should like to thank the Commission and Commissioner Almunia for his speech and for the valuable work done by the two institutions during the preparatory phase leading up to this debate.

Beyond its seemingly technical character, this directive is very important, and our aim in drafting it is to regulate two types of data on foreign affiliates, namely inward statistics, which relate to all the businesses and sectors that are under foreign control, and outward statistics, which relate to foreign enterprises that are controlled by a company located in the European Union.

As Commissioner Almunia said, the Commission proposes to establish a mandatory reference framework for the compilation of Community statistics on the structure and activity of foreign affiliates.

The Commission proposal includes two different modules for collecting inward and outward data. The module for inward FATS is based on the Structural Business Statistics Regulation, while the one for outward FATS is the same as that used for foreign direct investment in the Regulation for Balance of Payments Statistics. Whereas the provisions for inward FATS would be for the most part mandatory, the provisions for outward FATS include a voluntary experimental phase based on pilot studies aimed at assessing the feasibility and costs of collecting data.

The critical element for this directive is the fact that, as Commissioner Almunia just pointed out, the United States and Japan have already had this kind of information available to them for over 20 years, in even greater detail than what is provided for in the directive.

The Commission proposal includes pilot studies and comitology procedures with long transition periods. That is liable to leave European political officials without adequate data for a long time yet, while their US and Japanese counterparts can now already access better information on the economic strategies and trends of their own enterprises and transnational companies, including in the area of outward FATS.

For all these reasons, we believe that the Commission proposal must be supported, but with a few requirements taken into consideration. Firstly, the provisions of this regulation must not represent an excessive bureaucratic and financial burden for the companies involved. Secondly, it must not take too long to implement the regulation and therefore to make the data available, so that the policy makers in Europe can be on an equal footing with their US and Japanese counterparts as quickly as possible.

The comitology procedure, which has been widely debated within our committee as an alternative to the legislative procedure for the implementation of outward FATS, must be assessed very carefully and in the knowledge that every effort will be needed to fulfil the objective of making uniform data available in the short term.

Lastly, the European Central Bank and other institutions that are particularly in need of adequate statistical information should be involved in the development of common standards.

Our preparatory talks before today’s debate saw a divergence open up between Parliament, the Commission and the Council. We have always tried to reach a compromise that would lead as quickly as possible to the directive being approved at first reading. However, our impression that the Council did not want this text to be approved at first reading prompts us to regard the discussions held in committee on the subject of comitology as an issue that Parliament must bear in mind, particularly when the amendments on comitology are put to the vote.

For all these reasons, we believe that it is useful and important to recommend that this Chamber vote in favour of the directive. This is an important vote because it will succeed in making our European international trade system focus more carefully on data relating to competitiveness. From the start, our aim has been to have this directive approved at first reading. Beyond its seemingly technical character, this directive has a highly important content that prompts me to suggest to this Chamber that it vote in favour of it as soon as possible.