Guy Verhofstadt, on behalf of the ALDE Group. – Mr President, first of all, I want to say to Donald Tusk, the President of the Council, that for the European Parliament, even now with the withdrawal agreement now, things are not over. We still need to have the citizens’ rights completed, because certainly after the Windrush scandal in Britain, we want to be sure that the same is not happening to our European citizens and that there will be no bureaucratic nightmare for them.

So on 24 April next week we will organise a special session on these rights between the Home Office and five of our committees involved in this. And if there are changes needed, we will communicate to the negotiator, David Davis and to Michel Barnier what modifications are needed to avoid real problems for our EU citizens.

My second point is on the coming Council. As Manfred Weber has said, there are three points needed on your agenda. First of all, a breakthrough in the migration package. Sorry, but the European Parliament has a position; we are ready to negotiate this migration package. It is absolutely needed. The proposals of the Commission are very clear. And so my request to you is: when is the Council going to have a position so that we can drastically reform the migration policy of the Union? This is absolutely needed.

The second is breakthrough in eurozone reform; we also need this. The four presidents’ report, the five presidents’ report, the recommendations of Mario Draghi; when will the Council tackle this problem? It is almost nine years after the outbreak of the financial crisis, and we are still not capable of concluding on this.

My third suggestion, Mr Tusk, would be that you put the cases of Hungary and Poland on the agenda of the Council. I have here the report of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) about the elections in Hungary. You have read it, I hope? It’s incredible – we can say that – that access to information as well as the freedoms of the media and association have been restricted in Hungary. They are saying there was intimidating xenophobic rhetoric during the election. There was media bias, there was opaque campaign financing.

I think it’s time that you put this on the agenda of the European Council. Can you go forward – can we go forward – with the Member States with such a report of the OSCE after their elections? And the same is happening for Poland. My fear – and I hope that I am wrong – is that there will be only cosmetic changes, and secondary legislation in Poland, and that the main problem which is the independence of the Constitutional Court is still not solved.

I hope it is time to act, Mr Tusk, and to put these three points on the agenda of the Council in June.