Rafał Trzaskowski, rapporteur. − Mr President, first of all I want to thank all my colleagues in the Committee on Constitutional Affairs who worked on preparing our position on the interinstitutional agreement. We welcome the completion of the negotiations on the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF). Everyone in Europe has been working for that result to be put in place and for the money to start trickling down to the economies which need it.

Our job was to pronounce our view on how it was done in institutional terms, and after long deliberations we came to the conclusion that we could say ‘yes’ to the interinstitutional agreement.

However, it has to be said that we are not fully satisfied with the way the negotiations were conducted. There were some who did not really recognise the nature of the reform we introduced with the Lisbon Treaty. So, while saying ‘yes’ in this context, we also want to look to the future and to take the greatest care that Parliament’s prerogatives will be taken into account in a much more serious way when we look at the budget in 2016 and carry out the review, and especially when we start working on the next MFF.

When it comes to these future negotiations, Parliament’s prerogatives must be taken much more seriously, especially with regard to agenda setting and decision making. We all know, especially if we look outside the Committee on Constitutional Affairs, that in some cases too many things were pre-cooked and that our prerogatives, as written into the Treaty, were not observed in full.

However, as I said at the beginning, the time is ripe for a decision and it has been ripe for a number of months. That is why the Committee on Constitutional Affairs has pronounced its views in an unequivocal way, saying ‘yes’, we think that we can go ahead.