Mr President, I have some difficulty here for two reasons. Firstly, I find myself in complete agreement with Mr McMillan-Scott, and this creates problems for me in my own constituency and also as regards making full use of my three minutes, because I broadly endorse the line he has taken. We congratulate Mr Willockx on his report on what has been an extremely difficult issue to address. Our primary objectives are clearly set out in his report. Firstly, we have to have the common foreign security policy operating within the budget of the Community so that we can have proper scrutiny and accountability. In addition, by having a budget, we get away from the position that we found ourselves in in the past of robbing Peter to pay Paul as a way of funding actions under the common foreign security policy.

We are also aware of the need to bear in mind that the common foreign and security policy has not been working for 12 months yet. We do not know exactly what shape it will take, and we do not know what the future holds.

In those respects we feel that Mr Willockx has approached this matter with great sensitivity and great care. But as Mr McMillan-Scott says, the Foreign Affairs Committee would have preferred to approach this slightly differently. We would have preferred to see section B7 set out as external action of the European Union. We could then have distinguished the different elements of the Union's external policy - foreign and security policy, development policy, trade policy and those policies which are associated with external actions relating to human rights. The Committee on Budgets, in going for this separate section, has slightly weakened the position of Parliament because by definition it is recognizing the intergovernmental nature of the common foreign and security policy, setting it to one side away from the principal actions within the mainstream of the European Community budget. This strengthens the position of the Council in the lead-up to the intergovernmental conference because we are recognizing the f

oreign and security policy as something completely separate. If we brought it into B7, as Mr McMillan-Scott has said, we would give recognition to the synergy which exists between the different elements of our external policy and have better prepared the case for the foreign and security policy to become part of the main pillar of the European Union rather than the second pillar. In splitting up the expenditure into separate headings - and again I agree with Mr McMillan-Scott - we are in danger of being too rigid. We do not know how the foreign and security policy will operate in the future. We therefore have to be very flexible. By separating out these headings, we are in danger of not being flexible and undermining our case for overseeing the evolution of the common foreign and security policy. Broadly speaking, we accept the work of Mr Willockx, but we feel the Committee on Budgets has been unnecessarily rigid in its approach to the common foreign and security policy.