Heidi Hautala (Verts/ALE). – Mr President, I would like to draw the Commissioner’s attention to one concern that my Group and I have. We saw last week a paper, probably leaked, that the Commission is planning to combine 12 external instruments into one.

My question to the Commissioner is: do you have a proper impact assessment on what this means for attaining, for instance, development effectiveness goals? What does it mean for defending such wonderful, very focused, rather small instruments as the European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights? What does it mean for the goals that we want to achieve through the instrument contributing to stability and peace?

My concern is that this new idea, which I think to some extent seems to be a response to the need for flexibility, will be a big mistake. I understand that flexibility is needed, but I don’t think it should be done like this. I also believe that the European Parliament will lose a lot of its scrutiny rights if you do that.