Klaus-Heiner Lehne (PPE-DE). – (DE) Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, this is a really interesting, good debate – for the simple reason that, looking at the reports, we are combining two aspects that do not, at first, appear to be directly linked but which are related to ways of coping with the crisis and reviving the economy.

I was shadow rapporteur in the Committee on Legal Affairs for the Weber report, on which I should first like to congratulate Mrs Weber most warmly. The Weber report is not about crisis management in the traditional sense but about simplifying company law and helping to cut red tape and eliminate burdens on companies. This, coming at this specific point in time, at the end of the parliamentary term, clearly proves and exemplifies the European Parliament’s handling of this particular issue and its attempts to further develop company law in the interests of companies – which I very much welcome.

As this debate also presents the opportunity to say something about financial market legislation in general, it should be noted that the fact that we in Parliament are now achieving results and concluding our proceedings at first reading on the first financial market package also sends out a signal towards the end of this parliamentary term. I believe that this, too, is important.

Nevertheless, I should also like to point out that the second package – which, of course, is still being prepared by the Commission at the moment – will unfortunately be too late for this parliamentary term. There are reasons for this. As you will remember, we have indeed discussed the regulation of certain areas of financial markets in the past, namely in the committees of this House and on various occasions in plenary, but this always met with massive opposition. There was opposition from the Council. The socialist UK Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, refused to acknowledge certain realities for a long time.

There was also opposition from the Commission – which had been offering resistance on hedge funds and other sectors for a long time – and from within this House. When it came to launching legislative own-initiative reports, the Chairman of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs rejected this for a long time on account of an unnecessary dispute over competences. I am pleased that everyone has now seen the light. Commissioner McCreevy is regulating hedge funds, Mrs Berès is permitting own-initiative reports and Gordon Brown, too, has changed his mind. This is a positive development, one that my group and I very much welcome.