Marco Pannella, on behalf of the ALDE Group. – (IT) Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, I believe that to some extent we could start – given that these terms have been rather widely circulated over the last few days – what we have to do, Commissioner, with a strange kind of comparison between the man of Doha, or ex-Doha – as we hoped – and the man of Davos. I do not feel that this is an adequate distinction, clearly, but it is interesting.

We now find ourselves, as you told us Commissioner, somewhat dependent on events that are not happening in Europe: events in the United States, events in India, and Mr Ford also just reminded us of important areas such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations or South Korea. The real problem, however, is to what extent we, today, the Commission and the European Union, are capable of withstanding that outbreak of nationalism, which was mentioned a moment ago, and of autarchic ideas and new protectionist illusions, which is liable to make your work, Commissioner, and the work of our European Union too, very difficult.

I believe that, in this electoral campaign, it will be extremely important to understand how far the Socialist Group in the European Parliament, the Group of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats, and the Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe can manage, together with other participants, to find a way to develop our proposal, the proposal for which you were made spokesman, Commissioner, and to what extent we can really manage to make it a European proposal and not just a proposal, or I should say, our centre of Brussels against a series of capitals that are each already doing their own thing, as unfortunately happened many times in the last century.