mr president when you look at the gallery of candidates that were there before us today i think most people across the house regardless of their politics would have said that some were good some might have been very very good some were bad and some were just pretty poor
unfortunately some of them have also not answered all the questions about their past
but as members of the european parliament we are unable to vote on the individual commissioners so we had a choice whether to vote for all of them en bloc or to reject them
that is very sad and to be regretted and for that reason i abstained
we heard mr barroso talk about a europe that responds to a crisis
if we really want to respond to a crisis let us make sure we are not piling on more and more inappropriate regulation
let us make sure that we have proper impact assessments on any directive or regulations
take as a case in point the directive on alternative investment fund managers which will reduce the amount of money available to entrepreneurs in europe which will drive creators of wealth out of the european union and which will reduce investment in developing countries
if only we were able to reduce the amount of regulation going through this place
