Despite government pressure the Bordeaux wine merchants were unwilling to shift their exports away from Dutch carriers, or do without Dutch prefinancing of their operations.

In the field of agriculture, a critical view is taken of the prefinancing of exports, which represents free financing, and, with regard to the Structural Funds, underutilisation, which is the result of the Member States’ overestimations in their calculations is criticised.

In the longer term renewables will pay for themselves, but at this stage we need to prefinance them, and I therefore think that our biggest problem is not the technology itself - of course we want better and better plants, that goes without saying - but prefinancing.