This is a first step. I think it's really important that parliamentarians are focusing on this initiative, because it is such a vast umbrella, and there are interconnections. This seems to be the committee that's best able to look at those interconnections in their entirety.
We haven't talked at all about the whole security dimension—the implications for civil liberties, the implications for harmonization of immigration policies and visa policies, and what that means, and how it plays out in this initiative. As business leaders often repeat, these two issues are indivisible.
So it's really important that you continue to monitor. Just leaving it at a couple of days' hearings is not sufficient. I think you have to be calling bureaucrats who are involved in these working groups.
We have an overall framework, a regulatory harmonization negotiation going on that is scheduled to be completed this year. What's the status of that negotiation? What are the main criteria that are being discussed to overarch things? Where does the precautionary principle as a basic regulatory principle of primacy of protection fit into the agreement? How does it relate to competitiveness and cost considerations? And I mentioned some of the regulatory issues on pharmaceuticals or biologicals. What does it mean for our research, our testing capacity?
All of these questions are extremely important, and it's important that you continue to hold these hearings and that you bring civil society into the process, so that there is sufficient input that at least we can have a debate about key elements of this process.
I haven't suggested that there's not a lot of stuff going on that's useful and important, but that there may be stuff also going on that's not so beneficial and that privileges private interests over the public interest. Your responsibility as parliamentarians is to ensure that the public interest is being advanced.