mr president let me first thank our rapporteur mrs giannakou and the commission for their excellent cooperation and for an excellent report
are we really in a process of creating a european as my honourable colleague mr hannan just told us
i do not know i am not venturing that far
i think what we want to do at this particular moment is to strengthen the nascent european public space and basically invigorate the debate on european issues
i mean the idea in this house is to bring european citizens closer to what we are discussing here and what could be simpler then basically starting to discuss european issues with them
by the way i can only speak for myself but i am no bureaucrat i am a directly elected member of this house
the debate is actually to increase the visibility of european political parties to which we all belong regardless of whether we are sitting on the left in the centre or on the right of this house
to bring them out of the shade because at the moment no one really knows what they do what is their status whether they produce any added value and we in the epp believe that they do
that is the possibility to actually have some programme presentation and in the future hopefully to fight european elections on european issues and not get bogged down in national rhetoric all the time
this report is positive on three counts
first of all it brings a certain balance between operational authority within the parliamentary groups and a clear link with what we do in this house linking funding to presence in this house in the european parliament
secondly it brings organisational convergence between european political parties and european foundations which is quite laudable and thirdly it tightens and clarifies the funding of european political parties which i think should be the goal for us all
