How can we manage our qualitative requirements in a Community market that is increasingly opening up to imports from third countries and in the absence of international agreements on these matters?

It will be up to your successor, Hans-Gert, how to deal with that opposition, but I hope he will live up to the value of tolerance which this Chamber keeps claiming to espouse.

We all wait with interest as to how you will coordinate this policy, going forward in the new Commission and with your unique role wearing two hats.

– (NL) With all due respect, Mr President, I should be glad to hear from you why it is that members of your own group and people who manifestly represent a line of thinking closer to your own are given much more extra speaking time and are not so readily cut off, whereas people you clearly do not agree with are cut short after only ten seconds. You are applying a double standard here, and it is not acceptable.

Your draftsman believes that the conclusion of the Agreement between the European Community and Ukraine on the facilitation of issuance of short-stay visas, in parallel to the readmission agreement, demonstrates a considerable step forward in implementing the ENP Action Plan endorsed by the EU-Ukraine Co-operation Council on 21 February 2005 as well as in fulfilling the objectives of facilitating mobility, managing migration and promoting people-to-people exchanges as outlined in the communication of the European Commission on strengthening the European Neighbourhood Policy (COM(2006)726).

I agree with him absolutely that Quebec knows much better how to administer that money than the federal government.