Mr President, I, like the previous speaker, wish to thank both our rapporteurs for the presentation of their budgets.

We know from their reports and from the debates so far that we have made good progress in being able to sign a budget by the end of this year, including both the question of enlargement and other matters which have come up in our budgetary process.

Speaking on behalf of the European People's Party, I wish to draw to the attention of the House that this is our first budget of a new mandate, of a new European Parliament and, shortly, of a new Commission.

We believe that now is the time for us to begin to look over the whole five-year period to make sure that we shall be getting real value for money out of our funds. The previous speaker, John Tomlinson, has clearly said there is a lot of work to be done not only in this House but elsewhere to achieve this.

Firstly, I must refer to the question of own resources. Of course, we, like other groups, are pleased that a decision has been taken - I notice the Council has now disappeared, but that is par for the course - and we know that the decision taken by the Council was not an easy one. We know perfectly well too that the funds which were put aside, or the fines which were levied on a particular government, have not actually been paid in full; but they have been paid in two-thirds - which perhaps is not a good way to show that blackmail pays - and we know perfectly well that the final result is more than the Commission had proposed and therefore it is a deal in the true sense of the term.

But when we are looking ahead, what we need to do is to make sure that, now that we have the prospect of an own-resources limit between now and 1999, the money that we have is properly spent - and, of course, it is easier once you have well-established ceilings.

We as a group have chosen half a dozen lines during this procedure on which to put funds temporarily or permanently in the reserve where we thought that policies were not being conducted properly or where we wanted to try to influence how policies could proceed. We have not been supported in this position by other groups in the Parliament, except for putting half the funds of Socrates and Leonardo into reserve, because we know that a decision has to be taken on that before our second reading.

But we firmly believe that this is a strategy which we will have to proceed with in the months and years ahead. We ask political groups, and particularly the Socialist Group, to join with us in a strategy of putting money into the reserve, which we see as a sensible way of putting pressure, at least on the Commission - or even on the Council when it comes to the comitology points - so that we can actually make our own views felt, because we cannot just simply put the blame on somebody else, the blame also lies with us if we do not take tough decisions which are necessary.

So when we look ahead to the 1996 Intergovernmental Conference, it may well be that we should be looking for a change in our Financial Regulation which does not allow us just to put funds into the reserve before the budget year starts, but actually gives us the power to be able to take the funds out during the year when we realize that there is something going wrong with a particular policy and allows us to bring before our Parliament those who are responsible for the conduct of that policy, whether it be the Council or the Commission.

Lastly, referring to the other institutions and the Parliament in particular, we in the EPP Group believe that it is sensible that the Parliament should also be getting its own house in order. We shall be supporting the need to be able to freeze the per kilometre allowances, which will give us savings of ECU 700 000, and the Socialist Group has supported the idea of abolishing taxi receipts and that we, in principle, shall be supporting as well - except, of course, for the fares between Parliament and the airport or the train station.

Two last points on the other institutions: firstly, in terms of making sure that we have funds available in our budget to ensure that there is proper cooperation between this Parliament and national parliaments in the run-up to the Intergovernmental Conference, we had wanted to put a specific sum allocated in the reserve. The rapporteur refused to support that strategy, but we wish to make sure that a proper programme is developed so that we know that there will be the right kind of relationship between this Parliament and national parliaments to get a dialogue going before the 1996 Intergovernmental Conference.

Last, but not least, on the Translation Centre: we know very well that we have some ill-thought-out proposals in front of us for a translation centre; we have a financial perspective on enlargement which gives us a thousand more staff for translation purposes. We are going to have to make sure that we take the right kind of decisions to ensure our money is well spent and, therefore, you can rely on the EPP Group to be vigilant in this respect, not only through this procedure but in the years ahead.