The real origin of all these failures in the financial systems – the excess of liquidity, the excess of risks adopted by the actors, the low risk aversion that we have seen in the past – the cupidité, in the words of Mr Jouyet – has been created by these global imbalances that the global institutions have not been able to solve so far, and we need to act, as Europeans united, to convince the other partners in the global arena that, if we are not able to adjust these global imbalances in an orderly way, they will create new problems in the future, and we need to coordinate ourselves within the EU in a more clear and efficient way.

In the field of education, the gross enrolment rate in secondary schools increased to 89% in 2004 and matriculation pass rates improved from 49.3% in 1998 to 73.3% in 2003 and 70.7% in 2004.

Lisbon sets its own test for survival: unanimous ratification.

It was not a piece of legislation – that will come – but, by failing to support the 2012 date backed by the European Commission, I think that the ALDE Group and the PPE-DE Group in this House failed the first test on climate change and the people out there will be looking at what happened here today and wondering whether we really are serious about the commitments we made back in March to reduce CO2.

I would like my colleague from Lévis—Bellechasse to tell us about what is happening in the regions, and also about the fact that the federal government missed an opportunity, with this bill, to decentralize and take part in this more realistic vision of regional development where decentralization enables regional leaders to take control of their region's development.

45. Calls on the Commission, given the experiences in the United States, to draw up a report on the effects on the stability and integrity of the financial services sector of the fact that there is insufficient competition both between auditing firms which audit major EU companies and between rating agencies;