 I've always had as chairman of the Commission for European Affairs excellent relations with the Irish Parliament and we've had very, very strong relations. So it's very, very something, I'm very, very pleased to be here. And I'll try to be short in my speech because I would like to answer questions and ask questions. What is the situation before the European elections we have? I guess that Europe, it was very easy to explain Europe, I would say up to 15 years ago, Europe was symbol of peace. And everybody agreed on that and it was in France, of course the reconciliation with the Germans, it was a sort of magnificent project of reconciliating countries which had done the war once, one against the other. And then it was the symbol of the reunification of Europe. It was the symbol of the fall of the communism, the fall of the wall. And so that all the people understood, all the people agreed. But I would say that when you speak now to the young generation, they haven't lived the war, they haven't, the fall of the communism is something which is behind them. And so it's more difficult to explain Europe, it's more difficult to explain the interest of Europe. And there's a sort of, in the population, there's a sort of reaction towards Europe. If there is unemployment, it's the fault of Europe. If there is difficulties, if there are difficulties in the everyday life, it's the fault of Europe, which is not, of course, because Europe is not really directly concerned by unemployment. It's, of course, the policies of the countries which have to be studied. But, and there's also this reflex of the government, and I would say it can be the right, centre-right government as well as the socialist government, to accuse Brussels. So easy to accuse Brussels, because you don't know who is Brussels. And actually, even now, every day I see ministers who come in the French Parliament and who accuse Brussels, whereas actually they were at the Council of Ministers, they approved the decision at the Council of Ministers, and once they are in the Parliament, they accuse Brussels, they accuse themselves, I mean. And this is now, and this was true also under our governments. And so we've created the reflex against Brussels, against the technocracy, against the, whereas it's not, it's not Brussels who decided of the measures. It was, it was the ministers, the Council of Ministers. And when there's a good news coming from Europe, then you forget to say it's Europe who helped us. I remember Jacques Chirac, my President of the Republic, when we got this fantastic future project of Haïter, in the south of France, he said it's the victory of France. And he completely forgot to say it was the victory of Europe too, because Europe was very, Europe decided to support France in this project. And actually, if you remember, Spain wanted this project to be in Spain, and they decided that they would accept that it would be in France. And so there was a big support of Europe. And then when we have good news, we forget to say it's, because of Europe we have this good news. So the mood in France, it was the case 10 years ago. The mood in France is not as it was when the European Parliament was created. And it's a sort of, I wouldn't say aggressivity, but sort of indifference, which is not good, of course. And UMP, my party, is going to make a very, very active campaign, because we've got to show all the people that Europe is absolutely essential for us. I'm going to try and be objective, although it's not easy when you are in the opposition. But I would say I'm very concerned. I'm going to give you my feeling. I'm very concerned about the Franco-German relation during this year and a half. To say the truth, when Sarkozy was in power, the Franco-German relation was not easy every day. But there was a good relation. I mean, there was discussion, but there was a good relation. When François Hollande arrived in power, I would say his first reaction was to do the contrary of Sarkozy, and so to have a sort of conflict position with Germany. When he said it on the French TV, I have a tension, a friendly tension with the chancellor, which in diplomatic terms means I have a real conflict relation. And after that, it was horrible sentences pronounced by ministers, by the president of the National Assembly saying Mrs. Merkel is Bismarck, she wants to train over Europe. And in fact, what happened is that the economic situation of Germany was so much better as the economic situation of France that, in fact, it is difficult to have a good relation when the situation is so different. There was about 180 billion of surplus Germany, and there was 80 million deficit in France, to say that, but all the employment is 5% in Germany, it is 10.9% in France. And so France was weakened first by its economic situation. And the position of Hollande was to have a sort of confrontation with Mrs. Merkel. And so he tried to have relations with Spain, relations with Italy, insisted on growth, and I know this position was appreciated in Ireland, of course, but the problem is that he didn't have the strength of maintaining his position and that, in fact, he accepted what Mrs. Merkel wanted Europe to do. You remember his position during the campaign, he said, I'll never ratify the treaty, which had been negotiated by Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel while he ratified it. He decided to ask his parliament to ratify it. He said he would like Euro bonds to be created. He decided to leave this project. And during the budget discussion, he wanted the budget to be more important. And actually there was a sort of coalition between Angela Merkel and Cameron, which we had never seen before. And actually the budget was diminished, and it was diminished. We hadn't seen that since the beginning of the European construction. Such a diminishing of the budget. We are going to have a double challenge for UMP. I'm talking about my position. We are going to have, of course, to criticize the government. It's the main task of the opposition. But we'll have to criticize also the extremes. The extreme right, the extreme left. You don't have this problem here in Ireland, because you are reasonable people. All the parties are in the center. I would like to have that in France. We have two parties at the extreme left and the extreme right, which are going to make a lot of positions very populist, very nationalist. They propose to get out of Europe, get out of Europe, have frontiers around France, and going back to the 18th century, actually. Malthusianism. And this, of course, is not appreciated by the French people. And we're going to attack them on that, because the Front National has no proposal. Nothing in its program. I've read the program. I've tried to read the program. But there's no proposal in their program. The only proposal, which they do, is getting out of the Europe, getting out of Europe, and establish frontiers around France, so that all the products of other countries can't come to France and France can't export. I mean, it's completely foolish. So we are going to attack that as we are going to attack the French government, but we are going to attack, of course, the position of the extremes. And the extreme right and the extreme left, it's funny, but it's really evident, have the same program on Europe. It's exactly the same program on Europe. As I think Europe is at a crossroad, we've got to go much further on European issues. We've created the common policy on agriculture, and I think we've got to go much further. We've got to do a common policy on energy. We've got to do a common policy on industry. We've got to do a common policy on immigration. And we've got to have a cooperation on defense and foreign affairs. So we think it is very important that without the creation of new treaties, we can do it without treaties to develop those common policies which have to be developed and which have to be done. And we've got, of course, to have a more competitive Europe and flexible so that we have growth and employment. We have to, of course, control the companies which practice the social dumping in the UE. We've got to also defend Europe against companies or products which come from China, which come from India, which come from the States also. And they have a position on giving privilege to their national companies, helping their companies in public markets, but I don't see why Europe would not do the same if it was the case, so that these countries respect us. We've got to have a bi-European act, as the Americans have there, a small business act. And we've got to have Europe of culture. I'm here in a country where culture is very, very important, and I know we share the same interest in culture, and this is to be done with, of course, the youth, the young people with the Erasmus, et cetera. We've got to have a clear definition of what we want in Europe. We've decided to make Europe with more and more countries, but this situation makes it more and more difficult to, to dirige, dirige, to lead. It's more and more difficult to lead. The more and more we were around the table, the more and more it is difficult. When you discuss with ministers who go to the Council of Ministers, they say it's more and more difficult to work because you have the Minister of Malta, who speaks for half an hour, and then you have 28 countries discussing like this. How do you want to work? And the, the function, the functioning of the Commission is not at all the functioning one, what it was in the beginning, because you know that in the Commission normally there's a Commissioner who presents his report, and then the Commission is not a Council of Ministers. The Commission is, has to vote on the report. And each Commissioner is important in this vote. But when you get more and more numerous, when you get 28, then there's not this discussion within the Commission. So the Commissioner comes with his report, and it is most frequently adopted without any thinking of each of the Commissioners. And so the Commission has not the same role it had when it was the law, when the President was the law. And so we've got to define the future of Europe. We can't go on saying we're going to make Ukraine get into Europe, we're going to make Moldavia get into Europe. The people, I'm telling you about France, but they need to know what is the Europe we want to come to build. And there I think we've got to be very, very clear. And to say that the Balkans is all, are of course European countries. But after the Balkans, we stop it. We've got to be very clear, because if we go on integrating other countries, what I said in the beginning, to build a political Europe, we won't be able to do it, because if we are very, very numerous, the political Europe is not a possibility we can reach. And we have a very clear position on Turkey. We think Turkey is not, has not to be integrated in Europe. We think it has to have a partonaria privilégie, privileged relation, partonaria with Europe but not be in Europe, because it would change completely the possibility of building this European, of political building this political Europe. I haven't spoken about changing the institutions, because I think we've done it with Lisbon. The only thing I propose is to have, which is a proposal of Hollande and Mrs. Merkel, to have a stable president of the eurozone. Because you know, I think it's very important that we have a stable president. For the moment it changes regularly. And the eurozone is very important and we have to have a stable president. And we have to have, and that's a thing I tried during my presidency of the Commission, to have very strong relations with the European Parliament. The national parliament have to have very strong relations with the European Parliament. And I had very, very important relations with the European Parliament. We even had meetings of my commission, with the commission of the European Parliament and this was very, very important. Because in a country like ours, we have 72 European parliaments. We are elected, the European members of parliament are elected in regions. There's one region which begins from Clermont-Ferrand, Lyon, up to Corsica. How do you want 10 members of parliament to be only well-known in this region? It's so enormous. And so that's what I think I convinced my party. It's very important that the national members of parliament get into the campaign. Because they have their constituencies. The constituencies are 100,000 people. And even, I think that the national parliament in France must be much more concerned in European affairs. And so, I don't know if it has been brief. I don't know how long I took. It should finish. Yeah, more or less. Thank you very much. What I want to tell you is that I'm really convinced that Europe is very, very important for our citizens, for your citizens. It's a main issue. But we are going to have difficult elections in France. And instead of continuing, I will ask you to ask questions about the elections. And I will answer you.