Heide Rühle, on behalf of the Verts/ALE Group. – (DE) Madam President, Commissioner, I, too, should like to thank the rapporteur, on behalf of the shadow rapporteur for my group, who unfortunately cannot be here today, for his constructive cooperation. I believe that the cooperation enjoyed with Mr Manders really was constructive and produced sound results of which we can be proud.

Our extension of the scope to holiday clubs – a major problem – and also cruise ships, houseboats and caravans, is particularly important. In so doing, we have closed numerous loopholes that unfortunately existed in the old directive. Our establishment of greater transparency, by means of both pre-contractual information and the information sheets, the standardised information already mentioned by several of the previous speakers, is also very important.

I also think it important, and wish to emphasise, that we have introduced an extension to 14 days for the right of withdrawal in the event of misuse of information, and also that the consumer can take advantage of an extended period of three months and, in the event of criminal neglect of the information obligation, of as much as one year. This creates more transparency and more legal certainty, and this is in the interests of not just consumers but also industry which, of course, has every interest in distancing itself from disreputable providers in this field.

Together with industry, Member States and consumer organisations, we can now make this sector respectable once and for all. For this reason, I believe this will enjoy the wholehearted support of our group. We have not achieved everything we wanted to, but this represents a major step forward.