I wish to refer to two further inter-related areas that concern the lack of communication with the elected or appointed members at national level. If we do not have open channels of communication, it makes the national parliament's work impossible and our work extremely difficult. One of the imminent issues we are dealing with is the Intergovernmental Conference on the constitutional treaty. After I became a Member of the European Parliament in 1999, our group was given an initial presentation on the charter of fundamental rights by Mr. Aznar, the Spanish leader. He advised us that since the ongoing ramifications of a charter would be far reaching and deep, we should make it a politically endorsed rather than a legally binding document. We simply did not have enough time to explore it sufficiently. That was the first time I or members of my group heard the charter mentioned. The advice made sense because if one does not know where something is going, one should be extremely cautious.