Mr. Roland Freudenstein:

Thank you, Chairman. I will start with the right of nomination for the European elections. I accept the point. I think we are going to stick to the system we have, which is that every party and every country decides for itself. I do not see a concrete possibility of the eurozone parties formally getting that right because they would have to get it from their member parties and the member parties are not going to give it to them. What I am giving to the committee is the Brussels debate but I am completely in agreement that to have the presidents of the eurozone parties assign the national candidate lists for the European Parliament will not happen any time soon. I know that.

As to whether the next election will be a referendum on the governments in power, yes, it will be more so than ever. That is thanks to the euro crisis. The euro crisis has, strategically speaking, a totally paradoxical effect. On the one hand it has highlighted the differences between member states. The Greek-German relationship is tarnished - to put it mildly - for many years to come. When a Greek and a German talk in Brussels, there is an elephant in the room. One can choose to address it or not but it is still there. There is one effect, that not only the populist parties but public media in the member states are suddenly highlighting national differences. At the same time, not only will the next European election become much more of a referendum on the ways national governments and European institutions have dealt with the euro crisis, but even national elections are becoming European elections. Let us look at the last ten national parliamentary elections. They all had, to varying degrees, very strong European components, for example, Italy and France. In that sense, the European Peoples Party, EPP, still holds a plurality of member state governments. It used to be a majority. At the highest point something like 17 out of 27 governments were controlled by the EPP political family but now it is down to 12. Counting those governments where national EPP member party is part of a coalition, it is still by far the biggest political force in the European Council.

The elections will be a referendum on the combination of reform and fiscal consolidation that has been the strategy for the past couple of years. I do not believe that this is a lost cause per se. It cannot be explained to voters that one cannot print money; that one can only spend money either that one has or where one is able to say how and when one will pay it back. These are the simple things at play. The fact is that we have to reform and promote innovation. There are member states in which it is easier to explain that to voters and there are some in which it is harder. Generally speaking, it is probably harder in the south. I am afraid that is the mission of the EPP political family in these elections.

As to the extent to which campaigning will change or still reflect national debates in the European elections, that depends very much on which member state one is talking about.

In general, as I just said, we will see a "Europeanisation" of the next European Parliament election campaign. Ultimately, the strategies are made by the member parties. The member parties in the different member states determine their election campaign strategy for the European election. There will be varying degrees of national elements in that and punishing, or not punishing, the government in power for what they did in the euro crisis, but the euro crisis will be a very important factor in that.

On Deputy Durkan's question on large and small countries, and several other members addressed this question, I fully understand the concerns of small member states. It has been part and parcel of the European integration process that there is a systemic over-representation of small countries, whether we talk about the voting shares in the European Council or the numbers of MEPs different countries delegate to Brussels and Strasbourg. I also know that in many member states, and the German Bundesrat was mentioned earlier, there is a very strong over-representation of the smallLänders vis-à-visthe big ones, yet in the pronouncement of the German constitutional court some years ago, the legitimacy of the European Parliament was relativised because it is far from one man, one person, one vote. All I am saying is that it has to be taken into account. In any future European democracy we will have an element of over-representation of the small constituents but we should be aware that, to an extent, that is at the cost of democratic legitimacy, at least in the eyes of the citizens and political forces in the big member states. We need to balance this out, one against the other, sit down and rationally discuss it.

Are the sacrifices of the countries undergoing the harshest reform programmes and consolidation processes not seen in the countries that are doing comparatively well? How could they? Unless we bring 82 million Germans here to the island, which is something I do not wish for the members, how could they possibly experience the hardships through which this country is going? I agree they can try to explain that. In Chancellor Merkel's speeches in recent years there is an element, when she talks to her German constituents, that solidarity is not just a Kumbaya thing. It is in our self-interest that the eurozone survives and, therefore, the European Union survives. Germans cannot pretend they are just footing the bill for everyone else because that is not the case. It is not that simple. She is saying that, and she may not be a master communicator, especially when it comes to television or huge gatherings, but she has made that try. Certainly, there are improvements to be made to that communications strategy, both within Germany and outside Germany. I will come to that later.

Do the political parties have a tendency to run before the populists? I am not so sure. In many cases centre or centre right parties have completely shied away from even addressing certain questions. I am talking especially about immigration and integration in the Netherlands, for example. Part of the huge crisis the Christian Democratic Appeal, CDA, party is going through in the Netherlands is that for several decades it had completely lost touch. Even addressing the question of integration of large Muslim populations in city centres was considered too "Geert Wilders", and that is not the case. That only increases the voting share of the dangerous populist.

My answer to that, and this refers to the euro crisis also, is that the issues that bother the people must be addressed. The solutions proposed must be different, but in terms of not mentioning a subject or not addressing fears that objectively exist among the voters for fear of seeming to be running with the populists, I am not sure that is the right strategy. As is the case in the countries undergoing painful processes, the political parties must understand and reflect the pain of their electorates vis-à-visthe other member states and the Brussels institutions. The same is true for the other member states where people have the impression that they are signing cheques all the time, which is not the case but at least the issue has to be addressed by the leading politicians.

On the national interest versus the EU interest, I tried to address that. There is a complex relationship. Let us call things by their names. Is Germany nationalistic? Is Germany egoistic? It is a good question. Germany is finding itself in a role for which it is utterly unprepared. To be the dominant power of Europe not only economically but politically is something no one in Germany would have dreamed of or had nightmares about five years ago. Germany has been thrown into cold water, so to speak. There is no open, down to earth national discourse on what is our interest in Germany. Consequently, there is too little of what other Europeans now expect from Germany in terms of leadership. The Polish foreign minister, Radek Sikorski, in probably one of the most remarkable speeches of the past 12 years, in Berlin stated that he is less afraid of German power than he is of German passivity. That stung people in Berlin, but we still have not developed an answer to that.

There is no-----