Thank you, President-in-Office. First of all I must thank the President for her efforts. She is a brave lady and we sense some sympathy from her personally with the point of view that we are expressing. But of course she is not here expressing personal sympathies or giving us personal assurances, she is here speaking on behalf of the Council.

I would like her to address the policy of the Council as they have expressed it elsewhere. Every now and again, we get a solemn declaration about the need for openess and transparency and yet we continue to get secrecy from the Council. We get continuous secrecy from the Council and the assurances that we hear expressed today are not ones that are expressed elsewhere.

Take for instance the code of conduct that has been described by the President-in-Office. The provisions in the code of conduct to allow secrecy of Council documents are much, much wider than she has listed to us here tonight and I really think she should be honest about that and tell us when they are going to start to reduce that list of exclusions of secret documents. In addition when the Council goes to court to argue, can you please tell us if you do not agree with some of the arguments that you give in court at court cases. For example, that what in fact is at stake for the Council when we discuss this issue is the basis on which you operate and what in fact you accept is that there is no provision in Community law that guarantees a fundamental legal principle providing a general right of access to documents for the public, the people of Europe. Is that not so, President-in-Office?