Erna Hennicot-Schoepges, (PPE-DE). – (FR) Mr President, I should like to congratulate our rapporteur, who has addressed the key points and who spoke, in her speech, of an improved climate. I believe that the climate of creativity goes even beyond the climate of innovation.

Mr Verheugen has banked on the inventiveness of the Finnish Presidency, and rightly so: there are grounds for examining the Finnish education system, and, in doing so, one would see that this country has dared to go beyond ‘employability', that monstrous term that European bureaucrats have coined in order to promote entrepreneurship, and this from as early an age as possible.

Next, Commissioner, I believe that the Lisbon Strategy is a fine example of the European Council's way of behaving like the Sandman. In 2000, the Council launched a prestigious idea, and, five years later, it has to be said that nothing has come of it and that the budgets have not taken account of the will of the Heads of State or Government to increase the research appropriations.

So, above all, let us do our work. I am grateful to the rapporteur for having mentioned the European Council’s annual report calling for monitoring of these appropriations, which we are promised year after year but which do not materialise: it is time that the national budgets were adapted so that we might finally succeed in creating synergies in research. I should like to launch a new appeal in this connection. It has come to my attention that the new European Research Council, which is due to be created by the Seventh Framework Programme, was going to give rise to a huge amount of bureaucracy.

Mr President, Commissioner, I believe, if such is the case, that that would be going beyond what both the Council and Parliament wanted.