That also applies to pre-accession programmes.

They include all the partnership countries, not just those included in the neighbourhood and pre-accession programmes, but all partnership countries.

That is why we also disagree with pre-accession programmes designed to bring the rural economy of the applicant countries into line with the CAP.

It is fortunate that the pre-accession programmes are now at last being better implemented, and this of course means that we need the means to pay for them.

Next year, although the candidate countries will be Member States, they will still be getting help with their pre-accession programmes, as these will still be in progress.

First, the new regulation will enable the Foundation to operate in all the EU's partner countries, including those outside the framework of the Neighbourhood Policy and the pre-accession programmes.

In addition, payments from the pre-accession programmes will also continue to flow into the accession countries next year, so that overall we guarantee that all of the new Member States are net beneficiaries, as was of course intended at the beginning of the negotiations.

Does it even make sense to spend, as it were, four months organising pre-accession programmes, leaving them to run their course, and - whether it be in agriculture, structural policy or internal policy - treat the new members as such only after eight months have elapsed?

Either the countries desirous of joining are - to put it in plain language - too stupid to collect money they have been given, or the Commission is not in a position to devise pre-accession programmes that are, at the end of the day, capable of being implemented!

I wish, therefore, to state my unequivocal support for establishing, in the short term, an exceptional budget line to deal with this type of disaster, redirecting Structural Funds that have already been allocated, bearing the new situation in mind, and for freeing up credits granted under the pre-accession programmes.

It has also been our experience that the Sapard programme has proven to be the most difficult of all pre-accession programmes, because it makes the greatest demands of the new Members and because, of all the systems, it is the most complicated and carries the most obligations.