Mr President, I would like to congratulate our rapporteurs, Mr Wynn and Mr Dankert, who have consistently worked hard in difficult circumstances. I am sure that the House is grateful to them. Their work has been made more difficult because we are developing a European culture which is increasingly at variance with the European rhetoric. A culture of sleaze, of fraud and blackmail is trying to coexist with a rhetoric of idealism. President Delors addressed himself to that yesterday when, in launching the book "In search of Europe", he is reported as saying, and I quote: "We cannot continue with our work of constructing Europe without the serious involvement of our minds and our ideals."

I very much agree with that statement but very much regret that the reality in our Community falls far short of that serious involvement of either our minds or our ideals. In saying that, Mr President, I am not criticizing the first reading proposals of the rapporteur but I am criticizing the cynicism of approach to the budget by governments individually, by Council collectively, as well as by the Commission and some parts of this Parliament.

The unwholesome background to our budget begins at the Edinburgh Summit. Three aspects of that summit were: the increase in seats following German unification, the seat of Parliament and the increase in own resources. The European Parliament, having rejected what purported to be an agreement on the seat of Parliament, became the victim of blackmail used as a political weapon. Parliament eventually submitted to that blackmail. Blackmail was rewarded and Parliament broke Community law to reward it.

Having seen the success of blackmail once, having seen it practised, having seen it succeed, having seen it rewarded, it soon happened again. Community milk quotas were agreed and applied. In 1992 the Commission decided to impose a heavy fine on Italy for non-application of milk quotas. The Commission, the guardian of our Treaties, presided over by Jacques Delors who, as I say, wants to see this serious involvement of our minds and our ideals, buckled to political pressure, increased milk quotas retrospectively, overruled its financial controller and the Union was then subjected to another round of blackmail. Italy this time would not increase the own resources that had been agreed at Edinburgh unless the fines that had been imposed on it were cancelled.

Here, Mr President, I just cannot agree with the representative of the German presidency when he says that the ECOFIN Council was positive. Last week the ECOFIN Council was the culmination of another submission to blackmail. It was called a triumphant negotiation but in reality it was another bout of payola financed by the public purse.

Part of that process was to buy off governments like the United Kingdom Government who are supposed to be supporting the rule of law in the Community. And how were they bought off? They were bought off by Budget line B1-300, fancifully called refunds on cereals exported in the form of certain spirituous beverages, i.e. a direct bribe to the British Government to stop their insistence on the rule of law in order to have a ECU 45m payoff to the Scotch whisky industry.

That is a culture of sleaze in our budget which has to be unacceptable to us all. It is a word much in vogue in the United Kingdom and we need to follow the Delors appeal to our mind and our ideals to stop sleaze becoming a way of budgetary life in the European Community.

From that sort of stricture Parliament itself is not exempt. I hope that when we have passed this budget we will start looking much more thoroughly at our budgetary practices to make sure that the sort of deals that seem to have become an inevitable part of our budgetary life cease forthwith. Next time around at the IGC we should not refer to Maastricht as an aberration of public opinion but have actually done something to create a climate of public opinion which makes it much more positive about a new treaty arising from intergovernmental conferences.