Mr President, the Socialist Group and Parliament as a whole endorse the aims and objectives of the SOCRATES programme and we look forward to its implementation. Clearly, the education programmes of the Community which have been developed over the last nine or ten years with much encouragement from this Parliament have done so in a piecemeal and ad hoc manner. Nine or ten years on is a good time to review them, to restructure them and to achieve all the advantages of efficiency and financial economy which can be achieved by this restructuring.

However, I must make the point that I feel it is a matter of some regret that the Commission's approach has perpetuated the division between the so-called academic area of learning and study and the area of vocational training. Personally - and I think some colleagues agree with me - I should have liked to see all these programmes, vocational training and the so-called academic area, integrated into an all-embracing set of programmes that covered all aspects of the learning process. I believe that in many of our countries now it is increasingly recognized that this arbitrary division between so-called vocational education and mainstream academic study is a harmful process and one that should be changed.

However, let me go on to say that I am very pleased that this report and this new programme are being dealt with under the co-decision process, because that has enabled Parliament to make a much more in-depth contribution. I welcome the discussions we have had in the trialogue with the Council and the Commission. That has been most helpful. It was pleasing that the Council's common position published during the recess and subsequent trialogue reflected a favourable inclination towards certain of Parliament's amendments. In particular, I am pleased to say that the amendments that seem to have found favour are the ones in which we stressed the importance of the intercultural dimension in education in order to ensure, or try to ensure to the best of our ability, equal participation in the Community programmes by young people from disadvantaged groups of all kinds, those with disabilities, those from ethnic minority and migrant groups or from social groups in our communities which have traditionally not been ful

ly represented in higher education. At some stage we have to get to grips with the fact that young people from certain socio-economic groupings have been very much under-represented in higher education, and under-represented to an extent which does not in any way match their potential to benefit from it. I hope we will try to tackle that serious problem. We will have to do so if we are to maximise the educational and training potential of our young people in a situation where for demographic reasons there will be a very substantial decline in the total numbers of young people entering higher education over the next 20 to 30 years.

Thirdly, the other area where I welcome a positive response from Council is in respect of extending participation in these programmes to students from countries outside the present Union, to the EEA and EFTA countries which already participate to quite an extent, to applicant countries such as Malta and Cyprus and to the countries of Eastern Europe, though we will need to look at the funding aspect and perhaps transfer some funding from the PHARE programme in order to ensure that this succeeds.

Concerning the amendments which have been submitted - and my group endorses all the committee's amendments - I must stress that we need to look critically at the way certain of these programmes are administered. They have much to commend them, but one also hears stories about inadequate administration and unsatisfactory processes of selection of participants in these programmes. I think this needs to be looked at and I hope the Commission will examine very critically the way in which the programmes are operating in each Member State and ensure that they operate as efficiently and as fairly as possible.

We still have three principal areas of disagreement with the Council. Parliament would like to see the retention of a 10% target in the number of students who can study in an institution of higher education in a country other than their own. 10% is of course only a minimum target but it is the target the Commission itself originally set in the ERASMUS programme and it is one which we need to retain. We need a goal to work towards and if we could only improve from the present 5 or 6% to 10% over the five-year period of SOCRATES, that would be a great step forward.

Secondly, we disagree with the approach of the Council on the question of budgetary funding. We do not believe we should be incorporating a global figure into this programme at this stage, and most certainly not the reduced figure which the Council favours. We do not think that is adequate for the programme. The earlier Commission figure, which is some 25% higher, is more realistic, but we believe that the funding for each year of this programme should be part of the normal budgetary process in which Parliament plays an important part.

Thirdly, we had some disagreements about the makeup of the Commission's advisory committee We believe there should be a much greater commitment to close consultation with the European Parliament on all this committee's activities and the amendments tabled by our committee stress this point.

Finally, we must look forward in the future to two important new developments and I hope the Commission will give favourable consideration to them. One is to encourage total free movement of students and portability of grants. I would like to see a situation where a student eligible for admission to a higher education institution is accepted in any Member State, is able to go there and to take whatever grants his own Member State provides to that institution. To its credit this is already being done by Denmark and, to a lesser extent, by one or two other countries. We need to spread that throughout the Community. We must also look at the progressive harmonization of financial support for students and at their accommodation. I commend this report with the committee's amendments.