Mr. Aurel Ciobanu-Dordea:

I thank the Deputy for his remarks. They are very important ones. The Commission is a political body but nobody is above the rule of law. Also, in its political decisions, the Commission does not and cannot go beyond the law. I am not aware of the details of the IMF agreement with Greece but I point the Deputy to the treaty provision that says that the property regime of the member states is not interfered with by the provision of the treaties. We cannot impose one philosophy or another. We do not have a doctrine in favour or against the privatisation of the water services.

My general point is that we bring to the committee's attention for its deliberation elements of relevance to the political judgment. We do not impose any solution. We are not in favour of or against water charges. However, we point to the fact that the overwhelming majority of the continental member states of the European Union have water charges and metering in different forms and with different degrees of flexibility. This proves that the system works. The system is not overwhelming in terms of the financial burden for the consumer and the citizen who receives the water services. We are bound by the reality that any retour en arrièreor return to the status quo antewill mean the return to a system that did not function properly. I will use a comparison. In terms of secondary urban waste water treatment, Scotland is okay up to 98% of the population. In Ireland, that level is only 53.1% of the population. This is only one indicator of the challenges of the system. The committee has to make a judgment and a decision against a backdrop of these concrete elements.