Madam President, I should like to thank the rapporteur, Mr Janssen van Raay, for all his hard work, the expertise he has shown in presenting his amendments to Parliament and the conciseness and clarity with which he has just spoken.

The purpose of the directive is to amend a number of existing directives in order to ensure that financial undertakings can be properly supervised by the relavant national authorities and to prevent as far as possible financial scandals such as the BCCI, which created great suffering for small investors. In particular, Parliament has already insisted that the registered offices of such financial undertakings should coincide with the central administration, i.e. the place where most of the important decisions are taken. This ensures that the relevant supervisory bodies can have access to the premises, documents and relevant individuals if problems occur. This is a most important amendment and must be maintained by the Council of Ministers.

Common law tradition in the UK, with the case of offshore companies avoiding taxation, shows the need to put more emphasis on the idea of a central administration. I welcome the exchange of information between the relevant authorities and commend the need for the auditors to report to supervisory authorities any irregularities which are discovered. Although this undermines the principle and obligations of professional secrecy, the protection of the small investor should be the paramount consideration. I again thank Mr Janssen van Raay for his work.