2. Brazil: extradition of Cesare Battisti
President
The next item is the debate on six motions for resolutions on Brazil: extradition of Cesare Battisti.
Mara Bizzotto
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, in international law, a political refugee is a person who, owing to a fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality.
Cesare Battisti is not a political refugee. Regardless of the cover offered by France for many years, we are talking about a mass-murderer, who carried out or ordered four murders, and who hid behind the pretext of political struggle to evade a life sentence. It is disgraceful that a great country such as Brazil can deny the extradition of an unpunished criminal by granting him political refugee status. The Italian authorities and, above all, the relations of the victims, insist that this criminal is brought to justice.
Faced with the arrogance of President Lula in denying extradition, the EU cannot leave the Italian Government by itself. Europe has, and must use, all the diplomatic instruments at its disposal to ensure that Mr Battisti is delivered to Italy, even at a cost of threatening to suspend cooperation agreements with Brazil.
Anneli Jäätteenmäki
Mr President, respect for the independence of judicial powers and the legality of their decisions is one of the prerequisites for the rule of law and democratic society. Each person deserves the right to a fair trial and the judgment of an independent court of law should be respected.
In this case, the Brazilian Supreme Court decided to allow Battisti's extradition. The decisions taken in Italy to request extradition were all taken in the proper legal order. The European Court of Human Rights did not consider the appeal. In other words, this case is disposed of.
Now, the Brazilian authorities must act to ensure that the law is applied and extradite Battisti. My group hopes that the European External Action Service will do its utmost to ensure that the judicial system and rule of law prevail.
Raül Romeva i Rueda
Mr President, the truth is that I have made no attempt to conceal my discomfort with the issue and the situation, as I do genuinely believe that we are faced with an important issue. However, it is an issue that affects both Italy and Brazil and there are many forums in which I believe we must tackle the issue. However, I am not convinced that this forum, which is for discussing resolutions on violations of human rights throughout the world, is the right one.
I say this with the utmost respect, and from the outset, I offer my complete solidarity with all victims of terrorism in all corners of the world, not least this one. I say it in order to encourage general reflection on how these types of issue end up being discussed on a Thursday afternoon session, when, and I stress this point, in this context, we have a sub judice situation with a resolution already in place.
It is difficult for our group to support this situation and it is for this reason that we feel obliged to abstain. We intend to abstain, and I stress this, not because the content or issue do not merit reflection, only that we feel that this is not the time or the place to do it.
Roberta Angelilli
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, through this resolution, we are appealing to the European institutions to play a role in affirming the rights of justice and legality as they carry out their diplomatic functions.
Today, the European Parliament is asking loud and clear that the Charter of Fundamental Rights not be regarded as just a collection of papers, and that citizens not be seen as mere consumers of the common market, but as holders of inalienable and non-negotiable fundamental rights. The relations of the victims of Cesare Battisti - who killed four decent, hard-working people in a senseless bloodbath in front of their families and children - came here yesterday in this spirit of trust.
Commissioner, with passion and the force of the law behind us, we are relying on everyone to do their part and, in these last few seconds, I should like to ask my fellow Members to dedicate a minute of reflection to the memory of the victims.
David-Maria Sassoli
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, we are here today in this Chamber to remember that the European Parliament and democratic institutions must protect and support the relatives of the victims of terrorism and provide the sense of justice that European public opinion demands.
In the resolution we have tabled and are shortly to vote upon, we point out that relations between Brazil and the European Union are based on mutual recognition and respect of the rule of law and of fundamental rights. There are therefore no question marks over our friendly relationship with Brazil.
I should like to point out that, in Italy, the defendant, Cesare Battisti, has been found guilty of four murders. Although a fugitive, Mr Battisti had the legal assurances in his trials - which were all conducted in the presence of his defence lawyer - that the Italian justice system had run its course, with all levels of justice exhausted, and that they sentenced him to two life sentences.
Mr President, even France - where Cesare Battisti had previously fled - decided back in 2004 to accept Italy's extradition request, recognising his crimes and the corresponding sentences, because Cesare Battisti is a criminal who must be brought to justice. Brazil's contradictory behaviour is difficult to understand, not least because the Brazilian authorities have not officially recognised him as a political refugee, which is one of the reasons to suspend the bilateral agreement between Italy and Brazil regarding extradition.
This is why the decision of the Supreme Court seemed incomprehensible to the victims' families and the wider public. Mr President, we are representing a Europe of rights and of rights for all. The victims have the right to know that those guilty of such heinous crimes will serve their sentence in the prisons of their own countries.
Ryszard Czarnecki
Mr President, I am not Italian, I am not Brazilian, I am a citizen of a Member State of the European Union, and I do not want the Union to be a Union which has lost its sense of proportion - a Union in which a criminal enjoys the same rights as the victims of crimes and their families. This is not acceptable. It is a question of certain elementary standards - I would even say human standards - and not European ones. Speaking as someone who is not very emotionally involved and who, I suppose, can look at the situation coldly and objectively, it seems to me I can say on this matter that a certain loss of balance has, in fact, occurred here, which is inconceivable to our taxpayers and our voters. I think the decision of the Brazilian Supreme Court is incomprehensible and will be incomprehensible to everyone who looks into it.
Mario Mauro
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, Mr Romeva i Rueda, yesterday in a touching press conference held in Parliament, the relatives of the victims of the indiscriminate murders of Cesare Battisti spoke fairly and with dignity to once again present the issue at the heart of this tragic affair.
It is not a matter of revenge, but justice must be done. Therefore, because justice must be done, Cesare Battisti must be extradited, and because Mr Battisti must be extradited, we hope that through this resolution, Parliament can authoritatively and credibly amplify this same cry: it is not a matter of revenge, but justice must be done.
The European Union is a political project in which we have combined our values and our ideals to definitively defeat the power of ideologies, totalitarian ideologies, arbitrary violence and the limitless evil of terrorism. In order to realise this project, today, we forcefully ask once again: let us not seek revenge, but let us ensure that justice is done.
Gianluca Susta
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, it happens all too often that intellectuals or high-powered institutions in some countries refuse to understand the phenomenon of Italian terrorism, raising doubts about the trustworthiness of our judicial system.
Since this is the legal basis for the refusal to extradite Cesare Battisti, we cannot but reject it. Cesare Battisti, an individual with something of an ambiguous past, is the product of a time in which thousands of young people - many of whom were desperately lonely - chose armed struggle as a means of political struggle and ended up turning the alienating utopian dream they believed in into a crime. Other countries have experienced similar tragedies but none have so far offered the protagonists of these any chances to reform, unlike Italy, which, in fighting terrorism, really cemented its sense of national unity.
Taking up the appeal of the victims' relatives, we therefore ask for Cesare Battisti to be brought before the Italian judicial system, which will know how to show - as it has done in hundreds of other cases of former terrorists who are now reintegrated into social and civil life - that to be punished is also to make amends, as the Italian, Cesare Beccaria, taught Western legal civilisation, and not just intimidation or brutalisation, as the Brazilian authorities fear.
Ilda Figueiredo
Mr President, we are dealing with a matter that is not truly urgent, but there is no lack of topics concerning truly urgent matters, such as the imprisonment and assassination of trade unionists in Colombia, repression and death in Honduras, or the tragic situation in the Israeli-occupied territories of Palestine.
If you want to talk about Brazil, then it would be a matter of true urgency to demonstrate our solidarity with the people affected by the storms that recently lashed the state of Rio de Janeiro, in particular, the cities of Nova Friburgo, Petrópolis and Teresópolis, which killed more than 700 people, left more than 13 000 people homeless, and caused incalculable damage.
It is lamentable that the European Parliament has not commented on this tragedy and has not asked the European Commission to express its active solidarity to the President of Brazil and its availability to provide any aid necessary. Therefore, from these seats, we congratulate the new President of Brazil, Dilma Roussef, on her recent election. We send our feelings of solidarity and deep regret for the tragic consequences of the storms, feelings that extend to the Brazilian Congress, the families that are the victims of this tragedy and all the people of Brazil.
With regard to the resolution presented here, we insist on the need to respect the decisions of the legitimate authorities of Brazil, where Cesare Battisti is being held, and to await the decisions of the legitimate authorities of Brazil, without pressure from this Parliament. Therefore, I propose that the proposal be withdrawn in order to avoid a deplorable decision.
(The speaker agreed to take two blue card questions under Rule 149(8))
Francesco Enrico Speroni
(IT) Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I should like to reply to the fellow Member who said that there are many other urgent issues to be dealt with and so on, simply by stating the fact that, in contrast to many other issues which are quite clearly worthy of our interest, this is an urgent issue that involves not only a country outside the European Union, but one within it, and we are also referring to citizens who have been killed or disabled and who are European citizens.
Ilda Figueiredo
(PT) Mr President, I have already said, and now repeat, that this is not a truly urgent matter. We know that the legitimate authorities in Brazil have this case in hand and that the Italian citizen is being held in Brazil. Therefore, what we are saying is that this Parliament must not put pressure on the legitimate authorities in Brazil. We have to await the decisions that they will make in due course. With regard to urgent matters, we have a whole host of issues here, including, in Brazil, solidarity with the victims of the storms, which have left more than 700 people dead.
Roberta Angelilli
(IT) Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I just have a simple question for Mrs Figueiredo. Do you not think that 30 years - because many years have passed since these people were killed - are not enough to ask urgently for justice, at last?
Ilda Figueiredo
(PT) Mr President, as we have already said and now repeat, Mr President, it is a matter of how we are discussing this matter. We are discussing it at a time when we should be discussing urgent issues. Even from the statements that Mrs Angelilli has made, it is clear that it could have been debated at other times and that it still can be debated at some other time, but not now as a matter of urgency. What was urgent was solidarity for the 700 people who died in the last few days in Brazil as the result of the storms.
Fiorello Provera
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Cesare Battisti is not a romantic hero as some have depicted him, but a savage murderer with a history of robbery who has been found guilty of killing four people with shots to the back of the neck.
He benefited unjustly from Mr Mitterrand's doctrine of political asylum and has been protected and idealised by some left-wing French intellectuals. Having fled to Brazil to avoid repatriation and prison, Mr Battisti was saved by President Lula due to an erroneous decision that was probably made for political reasons, with no regard for the suffering of the victims and their relatives.
Mrs Figueiredo, Parliament's request to the Brazilian authorities and to the Commission does not only ask for the respect of legal rules and bilateral agreements, but also aims to affirm the principle that no ideological reason can justify the actions of a murderer and no country may guarantee him impunity.
We must never forget that there is ethical value in the moral compensation of victims by serving a punishment. This is at the foundation of the social contract that props up all communities that are civilised, or that aim to be.
Salvatore Iacolino
(IT) Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, 31 years after the blood spilled by the victims of the barbaric murders carried out by Cesare Battisti and his gang, it has still not been forgotten.
The pain of the victims' relatives, whom we heard from yesterday in a press conference in Strasbourg, is genuine proof of this. Indeed, it was Mr Mastella - then Minister for Justice in the Italian Government - who made major efforts through institutional actions to give final justice to the Battisti case.
Today, together with the relatives of the victims, the citizens of Italy and the whole country, it is the European Parliament - showing its extraordinary unity with a joint motion for a resolution - that is forcefully asking another country, which is a friend of Europe and a friend of Italy, for the immediate extradition of Cesare Battisti, who is a criminal and a terrorist and who has been convicted with definitive judgments, so as to finally bring to an end this difficult and painful episode that has been dragging on for too long.
Carlo Fidanza
(IT) Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, 'By himself, he was a petty crook or a minor felon, but he was bright and like me, he also believed he could become a politician. The people most emotionally and physically wounded by the crimes of his gang have never asked for revenge but, most civilly, even now, they ask for truth and justice. Not because it is a life sentence, but because the judgment has been made and so that the punishment decided upon according to the rules of our legal system may be respected and carried out'. Those are the words of Arrigo Cavallina, who recruited Cesare Battisti in prison when he was serving a sentence for robbery, talking about Mr Battisti, his crimes and the families of the victims.
This is the very essence of the entire affair: he was a common criminal, who reinvented himself as a terrorist and who has been sentenced to life in prison for carrying out or ordering the murders of four defenceless people, having sheltered first in Mexico, then France, and now in Brazil, protected by a network of international support as if he were a romantic revolutionary and not a ruthless murderer.
This is why the extradition of Cesare Battisti to Italy is not just the latest act in a long history of presumed political persecution, as some armchair intellectuals would still have us believe, but the legitimate claim of a Member - not to mention founding - State of the European Union to have the international treaties and its own judicial system respected.
(Applause)
Charles Tannock
Mr President, I challenge your decision to allocate catch-the-eye simply on the basis of who had not spoken in the Pakistan debate. This is an entirely different debate on a different issue. So far, it has been a debate between Lusophones and Italophones. That is great, but perhaps other countries might want to have an opinion on this well, as well as other delegations from other political groups.
President
I fully agree that this is a completely different debate but we have an allocated time of two minutes, so I am free to give time to two people. If you were in my shoes, how would you do it? I want to give a fair go to everybody who did not speak in the previous item, a fair go to the representatives of each political group. It is very much the situation that mainly our Italian colleagues spoke, so I will take care of that and give the floor mainly to non-Italian Members.
Eija-Riitta Korhola
(FI) Mr President, to some extent, I understand the frustration felt by some of my fellow Members concerning the urgency of a resolution on Cesare Battisti.
At the end of December, after President Lula da Silva issued a decision not to allow extradition, Berlusconi announced that he would recall his ambassador to Brazil and continue to fight to get Battisti extradited back to Italy. This is doubtless part of that same struggle.
It does not, however, reduce the seriousness of Battisti's crimes. He has evaded the Italian judiciary for 30 years now and so far, therefore, he has escaped a life sentence for murder. Relations between the EU and Brazil are based on trust, inasmuch as there is a respect for democracy, the rule of law, and human rights. Raising criminals to the status of political refugee cannot be accepted.
Corina Creţu
(RO) Mr President, I consider that respect for judicial independence - a fundamental standard shared by the European Union and Brazil - should take precedence over all other considerations. I firmly believe that the excellent relations between the two sides at both an economic and political level will be backed up by equally good cooperation on judicial matters, so that Cesare Battisti, who was sentenced to life imprisonment for four murders and other crimes, will serve his sentence under the law which governs him.
There is a bilateral extradition treaty between Brazil and Italy. As such, we must address an appeal to Brazil to respect this agreement. As the controversy has a high-level political aspect, I believe that dialogue should be initiated at this level with the new Brazilian head of state.
Marie-Christine Vergiat
(FR) Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I am slightly surprised by the number of Members here in the Chamber for a Thursday afternoon. As someone who attends every Thursday afternoon, I find the sudden interest in human rights issues quite extraordinary.
I would have welcomed this, had I not noticed that those attending are mostly Italian Members, who do not usually take an interest in human rights and who are, for that matter, often the first to ...
(Protests)
My dear fellow Member, would you like to make yourself clear? Then please speak into the microphone and I will answer you. That is what you would call a personal accusation. You are Italian, I am French, I respect you as an Italian. Anyone can see that there are, after all, a majority of Italian Members in the House, which, for a Thursday afternoon, is unusual to say the least. I am here every Thursday afternoon myself, sir! Every Thursday afternoon, I am here in plenary!
(Heckling)
Let me have quiet to speak! I am not in the habit of interrupting my fellow Members and I do not tolerate being interrupted! Mr President, may I please have my allotted time?
(The President asked the speaker to continue)
I have also noticed that, generally speaking, Italian Members are the first to ask that their democracy be respected and that no one interfere in Italian affairs. That is a fact. You only have to read the European Parliament debates to realise that. We are not here to find out whether Cesare Battisti is guilty or not guilty. I know -and I am speaking to you now - that the Years of Lead are a difficult period for Italians to come to terms with. I do know that. I know that there were many victims. However, I also know that not all those guilty of terrorist attacks were tried in Italy. I repeat: not all those guilty of terrorist attacks were tried in Italy!
(Heckling)
Could you please let me speak without interrupting me? You would think that we were in a national parliament! This is not how things are done in the European Parliament! Mr President, would it be possible to speak without being interrupted?
(The President asked the speaker to conclude)
I believe we have no business, on a Thursday afternoon, interfering in relations between Brazil and Italy. We are here to ensure that the right to justice is observed, I fully agree with that, but then let us give the Brazilian Supreme Court time to issue its ruling. The matter is now before the Brazilian courts, the Supreme Court has yet to issue its ruling, this issue does not come under ...
(The President cut off the speaker)
(The speaker agreed to take a blue card question under Rule 149(8))
(FR) Mr President, it is my custom to respect my fellow Members and I am prepared to answer the question. I would very much like them to show the same tolerance towards me.
Roberta Angelilli
(IT) Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, if you respect your fellow Members, Mrs Vergiat, you absolutely should not dare to say that your Italian fellow Members are never interested in human rights.
I have been here for 16 years. You can check the record of my work in Parliament, and I certainly do not deserve to be lectured on human rights by you.
On behalf of my fellow Members, we should like to ask whether or not you are ashamed to raise doubts about these four people?
Do you know what jobs these people did? They were very humble people. One was a security guard, one was a butcher, another a trader and another an agent of the public security forces.
Yesterday, the children of these people, who were between 10 and 15 years' old at the time, told us that every single day, they remember their fathers in a pool of blood. Do you really think it is appropriate to pick fights?
Marie-Christine Vergiat
Mr President, I regard this as a question in the form of a personal accusation. No, I am not ashamed, Mrs Angelilli, because I made a point of saying that I thought that the Years of Lead were difficult years for Italy. I do think that the Years of Lead were difficult years for Italy! I know how many victims there were in Italy. I have taken a personal interest in this period.
Therefore, no, I am not ashamed. I am not questioning the victims; I am questioning the use, by Italian Members, of a Thursday afternoon sitting reserved for human rights issues to debate an issue which strictly concerns Italy and Brazil. I think - and I hope that the Commissioner will also respond in this way - that the European Union has no business interfering in affairs between Italy and Brazil; that is not its role. These sittings are reserved for human rights! What is more, Mrs Angelilli, I have not lectured you on this matter!
President
I shall accept no more blue card questions. We have had the arguments and we have had the counter-arguments. (We now move to the next speaker.)
Mario Mauro
(IT) Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I am raising a point of order which is based on the Rule in relation to the composition of the agenda. I should just like to point out that this issue is on the agenda as a result of a decision taken by the Conference of Presidents which was then ratified by a vote in plenary last Monday.
It is not on the agenda due to the wishes of the Italian Members. It is an official act requested first by the Conference of Presidents and then by all of Parliament.
(Applause)
Oreste Rossi
(IT) Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the European Union really must ensure that the treaty signed between Brazil and Italy, which aims to regulate the terms and procedures of cooperation in matters of extradition, is respected.
The Brazilian Supreme Court has granted the extradition of Cesare Battisti, who has been found guilty in some seven trials and sentenced in absentia to four life sentences for as many murders, with definitive judgments issued by the Italian judicial authorities. Incredibly, the outgoing President of Brazil has refused to deliver this criminal to Italy. Furthermore, in an act of extreme contempt for our country, a group of left-wing Brazilian members of parliament went to visit Cesare Battisti in prison and took photos of themselves celebrating with him.
The European Union, which has excellent commercial and economic relations with Brazil, cannot but intervene to enforce the law and the right of the victims' relatives to justice. Just yesterday, the victims' relatives met Members of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, who - for once - were all in agreement, irrespective of their political affiliation.
Štefan Füle
Member of the Commission. - Mr President, the Commission is fully aware of the outgoing Brazilian President's recent decision to refuse extradition of an Italian citizen, Mr Battisti, sentenced in absentia to a life sentence and several other terms of prison by the Italian court.
I have taken due note of your views on this particular case, and I share your feelings towards the victims and their families. However, the Commission considers that there is no scope for its involvement in this case. The European Union has not concluded any extradition agreement with Brazil and, even if this had been the case, it would have no right to intervene in individual extradition cases. A decision on extradition between European Union Member States, or between European Union Member States and third states, are entirely the preserve of the judiciary.
Italy's relations with Brazil on criminal cooperation are governed by a bilateral extradition treaty concluded in 1989. The Brazilian authorities have used their discretionary power within the law to refuse extradition of Mr Battisti.
I would like to add, in no uncertain terms: in the case of extradition, I have no doubts that Italian justice delivers the high standards expected of European Union Member States.
President
The debate is closed.
The vote will take place shortly.
Written statements (Rule 149)
Ana Gomes
I am against the initiative of this resolution, because I believe that the case of Cesare Battisti's extradition does not have a place in a debate in this House on urgent cases of 'Breaches of human rights, democracy and the rule of law', simply because it does not represent a breach of human rights, democracy or the rule of law in Brazil and also because it is not an urgent matter. This is a legal and political dispute between Brazil and Italy and a decision by the Supreme Federal Court of Brazil is pending. At this time, this House should be sending two other messages to Brazil: one of solidarity regarding the disaster in which more than 700 people lost their lives, and one of delight on account of the democratic election of President Dilma Rousseff. Brazil is, without doubt, a democratic country that has made significant progress in political, civil, social, economic and cultural affairs in the last decade and is a model in the fight against poverty and hunger, thanks to the government's Zero Hunger and Family Allowance programmes.
Monica Luisa Macovei
in writing. - The rule of law must be upheld. The credibility of public institutions depends on it. Brazilian President Lula was authorised by the Brazilian Supreme Court to extradite Cesare Battisti, an Italian citizen convicted of four murders, among other charges. On 31 December 2009, President Lula's last day in office, he refused to extradite Battisti to Italy. I expect the Brazilian authorities to make an apolitical unbiased final decision; a decision that upholds the rule of law. The rule of law is fundamental to Brazilian-EU relations. Our treaties are founded on the principles of human rights and fairness. I trust these principles to remain mutual.


Public-private partnerships (debate)
President
The next item is the report by Mrs Weiler, on behalf of the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection, on public-private partnerships and Community law on public procurement and concessions.
Barbara Weiler
rapporteur. - (DE) Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to start by expressing my gratitude to the representatives of the other groups - Mrs Cederschiöld, Mr Lambsdorff, Mrs Rühle - and also to the representatives of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs, who had a hand in the production of this report, for we were able to exchange views in a constructive and fair way, and managed, in any case, to achieve agreement on over 140 amendments in committee, so that there remain only 23 to be considered today or tomorrow, although it has to be said that compromises had to be reached in respect of them too.
We have tried to strike a balance between two powerful opposing parties - the business associations and the local government associations - which put forward their no doubt legitimate interests in a forceful manner.
What I have to say at the beginning of my speech I wish to address to them. What I want to say to the businessmen is that, despite all that we have heard, I want to make it clear that we in this House take it as self-evident that local authorities should engage in economic activity, and, indeed, that returning certain activities to them is reasonable and legitimate. What I would like to say to the local authorities is that invitations to tender, whether at the national or European level, do not absolutely have to be arbitrary, but offer the transparency that is needed to benefit the public and prevent corruption. I get the impression from the debate that their respective associations did not always see it that way.
I have attempted, by means of my report, to strike a balance that would secure more guaranteed competition for the private sector and would give the public sector, in the shape of the local authorities, more scope for inter-municipal cooperation.
Tomorrow, then, we will be deciding where this House stands as regards future mandates for action by the Commission, which - or so my group believes - should, wherever possible, be in the form of legislation. What this is about is the legal and political aspects of the way in which our municipalities organise services of general public interest. That they do, of course, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, which we here in this House also take very seriously; after all, many Members of this House have strong links with local authorities, having been active in municipal politics before they came here.
We are also, though, asked how we, as the convinced Europeans that we are, would shape the internal market, and there is a plethora of rulings from the European Court of Justice and from other courts at the national level. Complaints and Commission proceedings make municipalities and investors nervous about making investments at home and initiating projects, and so it is necessary for the European Union to take action.
What, for example, is the substance of European procurement law? What clarifications or additions need to be made to the institutionalised PPPs and in-house transactions? We see ourselves as having the vitally important function of considering how to proceed. My group takes the view that legislation is needed, that it is not enough for the Commission, attempting as it does so to bypass this House, to act by handing down interpretive communications or other instruments of that kind.
I therefore once more appeal today to the Members of this House, when they vote by roll-call tomorrow, to cast a vote for this House's right to govern its own affairs. We want neither a great laborious enterprise, nor an opening-up of the last procurement directive, which was not transposed in all the Member States - it was not, for example, in Germany - but what we want to see is clarifications and additions, and they must not be made without reference to Parliament.
I will be quite frank in saying that we have no solution to the problem of inter-communal cooperation, which was - as you will see from the amendments - the most controversial area. The line we take is that it cannot, as a general rule, be excluded from the scope of procurement law, but nor should it be subject to general tender. What that means is that we need an intelligent solution to this bone of contention, for intercommunal cooperation makes sense for the communities from which we come, and will certainly be useful to them in the future.
That this House is supportive of this instrument is shown not least by our willingness to use money from the Structural Funds for it; I am sure that it is not common knowledge just how much effort we have put into getting that.
Given our sympathy for European local authorities and the expertise of my fellow-Members on the Committees for the Internal Market and Consumer Protection and on Economic and Monetary Affairs, I am convinced that we will end up with a law that everyone can support and accept, and one that will be proof against rulings from the European Court of Justice.
Jacques Barrot
Mr President, Mrs Weiler, ladies and gentlemen, as you know, public-private partnerships (PPPs) have been put in place in several areas of the public sector and these partnerships are gradually developing within the European Union. At a time when public budgets are limited, there can be no doubt as to their importance for the European economy. This is particularly true in the area of infrastructure, and especially in that of transport infrastructure, with which I am very familiar.
In order to guarantee that these partnerships are totally effective and that public money is spent better, it is important to choose private partners on the basis of fair competition. Thus, the choice of private partner must be the result of a competitive and non-discriminatory procedure and must enable the partners to get all of the added value out of such a partnership in the long term. However, many interested parties believe that the regulatory framework that governs which private partners are selected to create these partnerships at Community level is incomplete or unclear.
Mrs Weiler's report presents a balanced assessment of the main challenges that we must take up. You have provided some good answers to the problems presented, Mrs Weiler, and I should like to thank you for your work as rapporteur.
Allow me to mention what are, in our opinion, two crucial aspects, which I should like to cover before tomorrow's vote. I shall begin by talking about concessions and then about mixed public-private companies, which are referred to as 'institutionalised PPPs'.
Firstly, concessions: a concession gives a company the right to use facilities that have been built or services that have been provided in return for building infrastructure or providing a service. The construction and maintenance of roads and airports and waste management are two such examples. In November 2005 - a year ago - the Commission outlined in its communication the reasons why it thinks it useful to legislate on concessions, particularly on service concessions. The aim of this initiative is to guarantee equal treatment and legal certainty in relation to the granting of service concessions - as is the case for public contracts - while making a clear distinction between public contracts and concessions. In this regard, I am sure that Parliament will confirm the opinion of the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection. It remains very clear, however, that the choice of the legislative path should not deprive the public authorities of the room for manoeuvre that they need in order to choose the best private partner and, if necessary, to adjust the concession over time, in line with the objectives targeted by the partnership for the long-term future of the PPP.
Having said that, a step by step approach is called for. To begin with, the Commission will look more closely at the costs and benefits of a binding initiative on the granting of concessions and will examine other measures that will enable us to deal with the problems at stake.
On the basis of the results of this impact study, the Commission will then - most probably next year - decide whether the cost-benefit ratio warrants such a legislative initiative. If it does, then we will prepare a legislative proposal. That is what I wanted to say about concessions.
We now come to mixed capital companies, namely institutionalised PPPs. Public bodies are increasingly choosing private partners for public service companies set up in conjunction with the public sector. This is what we call institutionalised public-private partnerships. This type of partnership raises some specific questions: should the Community non-discrimination principles be applied to the choice of private partner, as the service provider's fellow shareholder, to the choice of service provider, or indeed to both these levels?
This question has given rise to some lively debates in Parliament. The main issue is actually whether we should create a new set of rules or whether we should simply make the existing legislation clearer so that we can deal with the problems that arise. The Commission has expressed a preference: for the time being, it does not want to draft new legislation on the matter, and this is for two reasons.
Firstly, in most of the Member States, the creation of public-private entities for the purposes of providing services of general economic interest is an altogether new and very innovative opportunity. Non-binding clarifications in this area would enable us to provide the necessary guidelines, without stifling innovation.
Secondly, in 2004, after several years of intense debates, Parliament, the 15 Member States at that time and the Commission reached a compromise and adopted the current directives on public contracts. Many Member States only implemented these directives this year, and some are working towards implementing them. In order to legislate on mixed public-private partnerships, we need to review the 2004 compromise, renegotiate a new text with 27 - and no longer 15 - Member States and, in the event that a new compromise is reached, once again force the Member States to amend their national laws and their practices in relation to public contracts, even though the current rules are not yet well established. That is why we think that it is better, at this stage, to choose a non-legislative path, just as most of the interested parties are requesting.
That is the point that I wanted to make on behalf of my colleague, Mr McCreevy, but you would be right in thinking that the Commissioner for Transport is also very much affected by these provisions. I am now going to listen carefully to the various speeches made by the MEPs.
Werner Langen
draftsman of the opinion of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs. - (DE) Mr President, much as I would like one quarter of the Commissioner's speaking time to explain the position of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs, the unfortunate fact is that I am not going to get it, but I am very grateful for the clear explanations that have been given today, particularly to the rapporteur, Mrs Weiler, who has done something that is not customary in this House by accepting essential points from the proposal of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs in the course of the enhanced cooperation procedure.
We all agree on the line we take, although we do have our differences about such things as paragraph 5, which Mrs Weiler has reinserted by way of Amendment 20. In the event of a legislative declaration, we will handle it by way of the codecision procedure, as provided for by Article 251. This was a typical case for the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs, in which we found the exact wording only after a vote during which we had sought out a compromise. We should do things the other way round, and then there will be no differences after the vote either.
In accordance with the position that the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs has adopted, I would opt for Mrs Weiler's Amendment 21, and my personal view is that we should incorporate this amendment, which envisages the possibility of these criteria being incorporated into Community law, and is therefore preferable to Amendment 20.
I believe that we would be doing the right thing by sticking to our line according to which there would be no new areas excluded from the tendering procedure, with the alternative route of supra-regional communal undertakings being cut off, and no extension being permitted to in-house businesses. We would, however, like the Commission to clarify the issues thrown up by the ruling in the case of the City of Halle, among other rulings from the ECJ.
What we want, then, Commissioner, is not only a proposal for concessions, but also clarification of the outstanding legal issues relating to institutionalised public-private partnerships. You, Commissioner, have told us where you stand. That was clear - laudably so by the standards of a Commission that has again and again avoided taking a decision in recent years - and so we will find an agreed solution that will enable us to move on.
As I finish, I would like once more to thank Mrs Weiler for having done everything she could to achieve an across-the-board position, one that will enable us not only to withstand the rulings of the ECJ, but also to stand firm in the vigorous debates with the associations representing various interests.
Paolo Costa
draftsman of the opinion of the Committee on Transport and Tourism. - (IT) Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the majority of the experiences of public-private partnerships in Europe concerns the construction and management of infrastructure and transport and logistics services. In addition, public-private partnerships are perhaps the only way that private investment can be involved in creating this infrastructure.
For this reason I would like to raise just two points. Firstly, as stated in the report, we need a legislative initiative on concessions, including concessions for construction and management. There is a real need for legal certainty and for defining relations between public concessionary authorities and private concessionaires. On the one hand, private concessionaires need to have the guarantee that contracts will be respected for as long as they are in force, and, on the other hand, the concessionary authorities must be able to rely on having fixed- or limited-term contracts, which can then be adapted to production conditions over time and put to the test of competition. These are the two pivotal points on which I hope that the proposed legislation in question will be based.
Secondly, there is a need to encourage new forms of innovative financial engineering, such as the guarantee funds already provided for by the regulation on the funding of trans-European transport networks, so that they can be used as leverage and ensure that many more public-private partnerships also prove to be efficient and effective funding instruments for infrastructure which we all need and with which I am sure you are very familiar, Commissioner.
Grażyna Staniszewska
draftsman of the opinion of the Committee on Regional Development. - (PL) Mr President, we are always complaining about the Member States' refusal to countenance even the slightest increase in their contribution to the Community's budget, and we are always saying that there is not enough money available to even out the regional differences in development and that Europe is developing too slowly. We ought, therefore, to support the use of private money and know-how to promote development, instead of creating obstacles and difficulties. The European Union should give absolute priority to the widespread dissemination of good practice in the area of public-private partnerships. That is the bare minimum. At the very least, the Union should invest in an Internet site, in the 20 official Community languages, which would be accessible to the general public. Such a site would contain a description of the PPP system and its effects. It would also provide examples of model PPP projects, enabling every municipality in Europe to have easy access to accounts of successful experiences. This would allow municipalities to learn from the past and to make use of that knowledge as they plan their own way forward. I call on the European Commission to request such publicly accessible information from the European Investment Bank. The EIB is currently preparing a purely internal, intergovernmental information system on PPPs that would not be accessible to the public in the Member States. This is unacceptable.
Charlotte Cederschiöld
on behalf of the PPE-DE Group. - (SV) Mr President, Commissioner, we are concerned here with a response to the Commission Green Paper on public-private partnerships, designed to investigate points that remain unclear, especially in what is known as the in-house area. We are, however, all agreed that, as the Commissioner so wisely said, there is no need to tear up existing legislation on public procurement. Public-private cooperation must favour competition and, above all, contribute to new thinking and increased efficiency within the public sector.
The Commission must now solve the problem - that being the aim - without legislating more than is necessary. We do not, however, have closed minds on this point and, just as Mr Langen said, we thus support Amendment 21 by Mrs Weiler.
We have made a request for legislation on concessions, and the Commission has responded positively and quickly to this. We are agreed about respecting the threshold values and about the need for normal legal principles to apply beneath those values where public procurement is not a requirement. We do not wish to reduce the scope for public procurement. Moreover, we unambiguously call on the Commission to propose solutions to the problems that exist in Germany, France and other countries when it comes to cooperation between local authorities, but not to forget less wealthy local authorities that wish to cooperate in sparsely populated areas in Member States such as Finland and Sweden.
If the Commission were not to carry out this task, it could no doubt expect heavy pressure to be placed on it by Parliament. I am convinced that the Commission will do an excellent job of fulfilling this task, and we wish to give it time to consider our views on the Green Paper and to come up with proposals. All the parties concerned should be involved in the continued process. The committee can certainly be of help in increasing the level of knowledge in this difficult area.
Paragraphs 45 to 47 already guarantee more legal certainty and show that local authorities can cooperate. In the future, we shall also have a clearer and more detailed view of how things are to work.
In conclusion, I wish sincerely to say a big thank you to Mrs Weiler for the splendid work she has done, as well as to the great many other people who have been involved. Thank you very much. We are obtaining a more competitive Europe with greater legal certainty.
Gilles Savary
on behalf of the PSE Group. - (FR) Mr President, allow me first of all to thank all of my fellow Members, and in particular Mrs Weiler and Mr Langen, with whom we have done an outstanding piece of work. Let us hope that the text will be adopted tomorrow. It is quite simply a question of protecting the exercise of subsidiarity for PPPs, instruments that are very familiar to our local authorities, and have been for a great many years.
I welcome the fact that the Commission plans to legislate on concessions, which have been mixed up for too long with public contracts. However, I shall state in this Chamber that I believe that legislation is also required for institutional public-private partnerships. It is wrong to say that these are recent entities: semi-public companies have been around since 1955 in France and the Stadtwerke have been around for a very long time in Germany.
The fact is that subjecting them to two forms of competition today means putting an end to them. What private partner would agree to work with a local authority that makes it compete twice over? Furthermore, I would draw the Commissioner's attention to the risk run by inter-communal structures, which are in danger of being mixed up with private structures even though they are an entirely public means of organisation for local authorities that aspire to be large enough to be able to fulfil increasingly demanding obligations and public-service missions.
Alexander Lambsdorff
on behalf of the ALDE Group. - (DE) Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, public procurement is of crucial importance in terms of budget and competition policy - on that we all agree.
Competitive tendering is a fit and proper way of determining the most economic way of providing public services, and, over and above that, mandatory Europe-wide tendering does something essential in terms of opening up the internal market to competition.
As rapporteur, Mrs Weiler has done a fine job of steering us, together, through the public procurement dossier - which is a difficult one - in an exemplary way. It is thanks to her that we in the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection have already managed to come up with plenty of workable compromises, so it is only right that we should take this opportunity to express our gratitude and particular appreciation to her, and both I and the other Members involved are certainly willing to do that.
I have advised my group to hold fast to what has emerged from this vote, and wish only to say something about the few contentious points. In so doing, let me start with institutionalised public/private partnerships, which are a relatively recent phenomenon, the development of which should not be unduly restricted by legal regulation, and it became clear from the public consultation that people do not want it to be.
I therefore recommend that we go no further than an interpretative communication and guidelines that are comprehensible not only by lawyers but also by those who take decisions at the municipal level, which will not only afford greater flexibility than does legislation, but also - and above all - hold out the prospect of a rapid resolution to the legal uncertainties that are very definitely still there. This is where the Commission needs to act as promptly as possible.
Moving on to inter-municipal cooperation, the second contentious point, I believe it to be self-evident that the municipalities should not in any way be hampered in their management of their own affairs, but equally self-evident, too, that this cannot mean that public/private partnerships should be generally exempted from the obligation to put work out to tender.
Although public authorities are not obliged to hand over to third parties the performance of functions for which a market exists, should they decide to entrust third parties with the performance of a service, they must be bound by a public tendering process, as is indeed clear from Article 295 of the European Communities Treaty, which requires neutrality in the application of internal market rules to public and private undertakings. That, by the same token, makes cooperation between municipalities possible in principle, albeit subject to the restrictions that are so well stated in what is now paragraph 45 of the Weiler report, namely when cooperation between municipalities is for the purpose of administrative restructuring or where real in-house monitoring is provided for.
Perhaps I might be permitted to add something as I close, namely that people in Europe have had very varying experiences of public/private partnerships, and so I am certainly very glad to see that a start is to be made on an exchange of good practice, which will bring in its train more good examples of working PPPs.
I might also add that I believe we should be conducting this debate in Brussels rather than in Strasbourg.
Heide Rühle
on behalf of the Verts/ALE Group. - (DE) Mr President, I, too, wish to thank the rapporteur for her efforts, even though our group is rather less than satisfied with the final result that emerged from the committee, as a result of which I would like, this evening, to appeal to you all to rethink your position, even if only in part.
It is intercommunal cooperation, in the shape of intercommunal undertakings, that we see as the most important point, and I would like once more to make it clear - not least in response to those who have already spoken - that they have nothing whatever to do with the devolution of functions to third parties, but have to do rather with the municipalities deciding to perform services for the community. It is lack of funds in public coffers and an ageing and numerically declining population - particularly in rural boroughs - not to mention greater critical awareness of the issues and the costs involved on the part of the public, that makes this form of cooperation the best for many local authorities in Europe, and often the only way available to them of modernising the services they provide. So it is, then, that administrative services, water supply and drainage, playschools, schools and many cultural amenities are operated jointly, sometimes, indeed, across borders, examples of which can be found in the pre-school projects run together by French and German communities. Europe should not be putting this sort of thing at risk, but rather enhancing it, so let me therefore commend to the House's support our Amendment 45, which is a compromise put together by Members from various groups, and which I hope will gain majority support tomorrow.
My second point has to do with concessions. I dare say that I am more sceptical about public-private partnerships than are most of you, but I do, all the same, think it wrong to send out the message that public-private partnerships are being promoted and then demand that concessions be put out to tender in the same way as contracts, the performance of which was, of course, the basic rationale for the PPPs being set up in the first place. I do not believe it is merely fortuitous that Parliament and the Council did not explicitly include concessions for services in the directive on the award of contracts, and I hope we will come to agree that what we do not want here is a requirement that they be put out to tender in the same way as contracts. Services concessions are something different and need to be regulated in a different way.
As for 'in-house', what the European legislator really should have done about this was to clarify the conditions. I do not regard a figure of 100% as sustainable. What is needed, I think, is threshold values, and high ones at that, which must then actually be complied with. It is, though, the legislators that should define them and not the ECJ.
Zita Pleštinská
(SK) Even though there is no uniform definition of public-private partnership (PPP) that would apply throughout the Community, a large number of projects have been successfully implemented in the European Union's freight and passenger railway transport sectors, as well as in the area of public health and education.
These successful projects provide sufficient justification for Parliament to take up the topic as well, and I welcome the Commission's communication on PPPs, which includes specific proposals drawn up on the basis of public consultation. At the same time I would like to congratulate the rapporteur, Mrs Weiler, on her well balanced report highlighting the need for legal certainty in this area.
Under PPP arrangements, private enterprises transfer their know-how to the public sector. In my amendments, which have been incorporated into the report, I have therefore emphasised the need for establishing transparent mechanisms for private investors. Investors should be given guarantees that their legal and financial interests will be safeguarded for the life of a contract and also that the terms and conditions of public tenders will remain unchanged during their period of applicability.
Due to lack of experience, the new Member States in particular are apprehensive of using PPPs. Information gathered from the implementation of successful projects will help them to avoid repeating errors and procedures that have in practice ended in failure.
I am convinced that PPP projects will be able to attract the desired capital only if the interested parties within EU Member States are well informed and conform to the quality regulations and transparent rules of the Community. These regulations and rules will help them build up infrastructure, the development of which has lagged behind due to underfunding. This form of cooperation may also prove instrumental in helping bridge regional disparities and ensuring the sustainable development of Europe's poorer regions.
Evelyne Gebhardt
(DE) Mr President, I regard institutionalised public/private partnerships as a very important tool. The legal uncertainty resulting from the ruling of the European Court of Justice on the case of the city of Halle shows just how necessary it is that legislators should do something about them, and it is surely not acceptable that the Commission should act without reference to anyone else in giving guidance as to the manner in which this problem should be addressed. On the contrary, it is for the co-legislators, namely the European Parliament, the Council, and the Commission together, to reach a joint decision as to how we in Europe are to deal with these issues.
The second point I would like to address briefly is inter-municipal cooperation, and this is where I have to disagree with Mr Lambsdorff, for it has been going on for a very long time; there is a very long tradition of it, not least in the Federal Republic of Germany, and it is something we should maintain. Cross-border inter-municipal cooperation is at present a delicate shoot, and one that we must not destroy by declaring that these things should be left to the free market. If they are, we can pack it all in on the spot, for we will have no further need of municipalities, and that is surely not the sort of Europe that we want to see.
Ieke van den Burg
(NL) Mr President, I was particularly involved in this report in the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs, where Mr Langen was rapporteur, and I would congratulate both rapporteurs on the final result, although it is true that a certain amount is left to be desired.
There is, as I see it, a clear correlation with the discussion we had about the services of general economic interest, on which we took a decision in the previous plenary part-session. In both cases, it was about the way in which decentralised authorities, service providers and citizens can be given more legal certainty, which can sometimes create conflict between the internal market rules, on the one hand, and the general interest which authorities need to serve on behalf of their citizens, on the other.
It is often the case that the Court of Justice has to be called upon or that the Commission gives interpretations of its own. The important message in both those files has been that we, via the codecision procedure, really want to take political decisions in this area, and that it is also important that we ask the Commission, and really insist on this, to present legislative initiatives on which we can decide in codecision with this House and with the Member States and their parliaments. That is the principal message I should once again like to take to the Commission in connection with this report.
Donata Gottardi
(IT) Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the subject of public-private partnerships has for some time been part of the new boundaries of welfare state systems within the European Union. Its significance should be seen from a new perspective, through the interconnections with all the initiatives on which our services rely.
The common objective, which has been reaffirmed many times, including today, is to create a complete and clear legal framework within which local public authorities can make their own choices, aware of opportunities and constraints, principles to be respected and possible areas of freedom and innovation.
In the text on which we are voting, overlapping is apparent with the current regulations in the field of contracts, concessions and joint enterprises, and with the European Court of Justice guidelines. However, the added value lies in the cross-cutting focus on the various ways in which alliances between the public and private sectors are built in the extremely sensitive field of services involving citizenship rights.
Two firm principles are needed. Cut-backs on spending cannot come before or relax the requirements of service quality and safeguards for the rights of service providers. The search for efficiency and innovation must be tied to guarantees of accessibility, transparency and non-discrimination. This year has seen many initiatives in the field of services. The hope is that, working on elements of various scales, we will be able to build a coherent scheme.
Bernadette Vergnaud
(FR) Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, Mrs Weiler's report provides the clarity and transparency that we needed in relation to public-private partnerships, and thus allows us to change the wayward paths taken by the European courts and to improve the legal clarification for all of the actors concerned. Concessions are all too often mixed up with public contracts: the latter concern the purchase of goods consumed by local authorities, while concessions offer public authorities the opportunity to delegate the completion of part of their tasks to a third party. Therefore, we should have a law on these concessions and not a mere interpretative communication.
The same is true of institutionalised PPPs. Their creation is currently being threatened by the rigours of case-law, which tends towards having two calls for competition when allocating work, something that is likely to seal the fate of semi-public companies. I am therefore grateful to our rapporteur for having requested a legislative initiative on this subject.
Finally, in the Commission versus Spain judgment, the inter-communal structure has become a private partner for the Court of Justice. Authorities should therefore make inter-communal structures to which they delegate the provision of services compete with each other. Mrs Weiler is re-establishing the law and offering us the best parliamentary contribution on this subject, and for that I thank her.
Jacques Barrot
Mr President, I should like once again to thank Mrs Weiler, as well as the draftsmen of the opinion of various committees: Mr Langen, Mr Costa and Mrs Staniszewska.
I am going to try to respond to some of the questions asked, without claiming to respond to them all. I shall first respond to Mrs Cederschiöld, to Mr Lambsdorff and to Mrs Rühle. When a local authority grants certain services to another public body in return for payment, these are in principle services that have been the subject of a public contract. The public body benefiting from the contract is competing with private companies and possibly with other public bodies offering the same service. A general exclusion of all forms of public-public cooperation from the scope of the Community rules on public contracts and of the rules on concessions would therefore be unacceptable. The Court of Justice case-law is very clear in this regard. Conversely, not all forms of public-public cooperation are covered by Community law. The Commission recognises that clarification is required in order to determine the extent to which Community law applies to the delegation of tasks to public bodies and which forms of cooperation remain outside the scope of the provisions on the internal market. We are working closely with all the parties concerned in order to provide this clarification.
Next, I shall respond to Mrs Rühle and to Mrs Gebhardt on the issue of public-private partnerships and on the 'in-house' concept. The 'in-house' concept excludes the application of the rules governing public contracts when a public body grants a contract or a concession to a third party over which it exercises some control. The Court has outlined the circumstances in which this derogation may be applied. You will understand that the Commission wants this exception to the rules on granting contracts to continue being monitored. In particular, it seems extremely doubtful that a public contract or a concession would be granted in a discriminatory way to a company that represents certain private interests, while other private companies concerned are pushed aside. That is why we think it necessary at this stage to keep to the current definition of the conditions for application of the 'in-house' system: where authorities exercise the same control over the service provider as they do over their own services, and where service providers carry out the bulk of their activities with the authority concerned. For these reasons and also so as not to have to start from scratch with the new public contract rules, which are scarcely at the transposition stage in the Member States, we think it appropriate to legislate on mixed public-private companies and on the 'in-house' concept. An interpretative communication is the most suitable means of explaining the way in which the rules regulating public contracts apply to the selection of private partners for these partnerships.
In response to Mr Savary, who raised the question about the two calls for competition, I would say that we are aware of this problem and, as you pointed out, I referred to this in my speech. I should like to make myself very clear: we do not require two calls for competition simply because we believe that that is unnecessary. We explained this in the 2004 Green Paper on PPPs and we plan to clarify our position in the texts that we are due to present in 2007.
Mr President, I am well aware that I have not responded to all of the questions asked, but I should like now to conclude.
On the subject of concessions and of a possible legislative initiative, it is important not to rush things. To begin with, the Commission must look more closely at the costs and benefits of a binding initiative on the granting of concessions, and at other measures suitable for dealing with the problems at stake. On the basis of the results of this impact study, the Commission will then - most probably next year - decide whether the cost-benefit ratio warrants such a legislative initiative and will, if necessary, prepare a legislative proposal.
Furthermore, the message from all those who work in the area of PPP start-ups is clear: they are calling for practical guidelines on the way in which to apply the rules on public contracts to the creation of these partnerships. The Commission intends to provide these guidelines in non-legislative form for the reasons that I indicated in my introduction.
There can be no doubt as to the importance of PPPs for the European economy. I hope that Parliament's report will help clarify the Community rules on public contracts and concessions so as to offer partners transparent and fair conditions of competition. It has become quite clear to us, in this debate, that Parliament's emphasis was on legal certainty, but you, for your part, will have also understood the Commission's preoccupation, in an area as vital as this for European investment, with retaining some room for manoeuvre, such as to enable it, while guaranteeing legal certainty, to invest more money where it is really needed. Moreover, several of you rightly stressed that these are absolutely vital tools.
Mr President, those are the answers that I wanted to give, and I thank Parliament once again for the quality of this debate.
President
The debate is closed.
The vote will take place on Thursday at 11.30 a.m.