Costas Botopoulos, on behalf of the PSE Group. – Mr President, I am one of those curious constitutional animals who think that the Rules of Procedure mirror our own work here in our own Parliament. So I think this is an important piece of work by Richard Corbett, who is the eminent specialist in this field. To his credit I must say that this is the second modification of the Rules of Procedure. There are things that have changed very recently and that we are changing again, because we have seen that the practice of our Parliament demands that those changes be made.

I have one general remark and three specific ones to put before you tonight. The general remark is that I think it is also very important to talk about the second aspect of Mr Corbett’s report: the impact of the Lisbon Treaty upon our Rules of Procedure. It is very important to talk about that too, because a change to the Rules of Procedure without that second part would be imperfect.

My three specific remarks: the first one concerns a modification in which I played a small part myself. It is the fact that we are trying to put into the Rules of Procedure this idea of an agora, of the possibility for citizens, too, to address the European Parliament and to participate in discussions before the European Parliament. I think this is a symbolically important initiative that we took together with my friend and colleague Gérard Onesta, and I think it would be a good thing if that were to be enshrined in the Rules of Procedure.

The second thing that is, I think, of importance is the change we have made to the own-initiative reports: the fact that, having seen how the own-initiative reports have been in practice, we are reintroducing the possibility for amendments, albeit by one 10th of parliamentarians. The third aspect is this blue card procedure. I am in favour of everything that will enliven our parliamentary discussions here, so this possibility for parliamentarians to interrupt one another in a civilised way and to speak like that is a good idea.