Anne Laperrouze, on behalf of the ALDE Group. – (FR) Mr President, I must explain that I am speaking on behalf of Mrs Fourtou, who has been dealing with this matter for our group but has been prevented from attending by other commitments. Mrs Fourtou wishes to express her special thanks to Mr Hasse Ferreira for his work as well as to her honourable colleagues from the other political groups. She found it agreeable to work in an atmosphere where everyone was prepared to listen and to operate in complete transparency. She took part in the various trialogues and fully supports the rapporteur's approach.

She regrets, however, that a Council amendment removes the obligation on Member States to draw up correlation tables. In fact, since the conclusion of the interinstitutional agreement in 2003, the three institutions have been committed to better legislation and have acknowledged the importance of these tables. The Council, apparently, no longer wishes to honour that commitment. Be that as it may, Mrs Fourtou thanks the rapporteur and the Finnish Presidency and notes that both of them tried to defend the correlation tables. Not wishing to block the procedure, she persuaded our group to vote in favour of the compromise amendments and of the report.