Mr President, in two minutes I cannot do justice to this excellent report of Mr Linkohr but I want to take up one very important point that he makes under his paragraph No 5 regarding the democracy and transparency of the dissemination of information. He makes reference to the European Union under Maastricht, and particularly Parliament, where we want transparency and democracy in all the institutions of the Union. He makes particular reference to the fact that expert committees meet in secret and decide things that parliamentarians do not have time to take a lot of cognizance of in their busy lives.

So I have some questions to put to the representatives of the Council and Commission, namely, why do the expert committees not meet in public? And why in the European Union do we not operate a comparable system of democracy as in the United States of America where such committees meet in public and have a public forum and can have a public assessment?

I was speaking recently to some relatives of mine residing in the US and they were absolutely astonished when I told them of some of the ways the institutions of the European Union operate. They said: Surely you are talking about Eastern Europe? I said that I was not and that I was talking about the European Union.

It is not acceptable now under our Maastricht rules that committees meet in secret and make important decisions and that there is no public accountability. I cannot stress this point too carefully. Mr Linkohr has referred to this and says he does not want to withhold the assent of Parliament to these research programmes. Nor do the Greens but we must insist that Parliament insists on some democratic accountability of such committees and that they meet in public.

In the USA it is standard practice that a committee meets in public. The agenda is established two weeks in advance. The minutes are published and there is a declaration of interest by the members. This is not revolutionary. It is not too much to ask that a core value of European democracy be maintained, that we have a public discussion, public agendas and public meetings and that a register is kept of Members' interests. This is crucial.

I should like to make a further point on the spread of funding to the various institutions, universities and research institutes. In the Committee on the Environment meeting last night the point was made that half the budget for the climate goes to one institution, the Joint Research Centre in Ispra. This is not democratic and we again must insist that the funding be spread over the relevant institutions.

(Applause)