Mr. David O'Sullivan:

People, including our Canadian colleagues, some of whom may speak to this committee later, accept that it takes time for 14 national parliaments to address something like this. Respectfully, there is a kind of general credibility issue here. If the European Union and our member states have signed up to this after a lot of debate and discussion, and that is the case, it is a bit disappointing for our trade partners to then be told that nobody feels in a hurry to formally ratify it. This is not something we want to see become a habit because it would become quite difficult to maintain credibility with our negotiating partners. That is not to say that national parliaments cannot take the time they need to give proper scrutiny and give themselves the time for debate and discussion, but the notion that the national ratification creates a third round of negotiations, for which our partners have to be prepared, would be a dangerous thing to take root and I hope we do not go down that road. Of course, at the end of the day all our national parliaments that are called upon to take this decision must do so while being fully responsible to their partners, their electorate and their national systems but we have to bear in mind that we do not operate in a vacuum and that we are dealing with trade partners who are looking at us very carefully to see how reliable a negotiating partner the European Union really is.