Monica Frassoni, rapporteur. − (IT) Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to thank my fellow Members, the Commissioner and the Presidency for their participation in this discussion which, as Commissioner Verheugen said, does not end here.

Just a few points quickly. I would like to comment on the issue of defining priorities, which Commissioner Verheugen spoke about. I believe this could actually be a risky exercise. However, it has never really been done until now. I have always been rather sceptical about the possibility of really defining priorities. Anyway, if you really want to go along this route, take the risk of being transparent, and why not even debate these priorities? Otherwise the suspicion could take root that the priorities have been chosen because you want to get rid of the inconvenient infringements. I do not think this would be a good thing.

The second comment is that despite the fact that the Commission denies that it needs more resources, particularly human resources, to deal with infringements, the reality is that in almost all the meetings I have had with your fellow Commissioners, everyone has told me that they do not have sufficient resources, sufficient people, to deal with this matter.

In the debate the question came up of the number of infringements in the new Member States, and what the Commissioner and the Presidency said is probably true. However, we should also know that, for example, on environmental matters, there are only two or perhaps three officials dealing with all ten of the new Member States, so obviously there is certainly a human resources problem.

Lastly, the issue of Parliament’s role. We are discussing internally various ways of making our role as co-legislators more effective, by following up the application of the directives we approve. I believe there are two things we absolutely must do: the first is decisively, through a political decision, to strengthen the role of the Committee on Petitions, which as Mrs Wallis said, is our window on the world; the second is that we should systematically organise application sessions, which do, however, require the open cooperation of the Commission. Because if we organise sessions where we discuss the application of directives and the Commission official who attends remains silent or tells us things that are of little interest – perhaps because he cannot say what we really want to know – then the whole exercise becomes pointless.

Anyway, thank you and we will undoubtedly speak about this again.