GwendalTsang/DEFT09-parquet huggingface dataset:
Mr President, the attacks in New York and in Washington also claimed many of our own citizens. That means, therefore, that there is more than simply a display of solidarity on our part. We are united in our fate. It is therefore logical that Article 5 of the NATO Treaty has been invoked, which means that we are involved in NATO responses every step of the way. We carry full responsibility, and we must therefore be aware of the reactions that are heading our way. All the terrorists wanted to attain was chaos and unreasoning revenge. The response to that must be measured and specifically targeted at the people and organisations responsible. The security instruments must be comprehensively reinforced. That is why I agree that Europol and Eurojust should clearly be given more scope and be integrated into a constitutional state structure. The European arrest warrant, the common definition of terrorism and organised crime, more flexible extradition: these are all vital instruments. Member State Ministers who tire themselves out producing objections will undoubtedly be considered ‘useful idiots’ – to use a term from the cold war era. What more is needed to enable us to safeguard our common internal security, whereby the sovereignty of Member States is used to benefit the citizens in a way that does not conflict with their interests? Every Member State should realise that if they offer sanctuary to criminals who seek the necessary peace and quiet to plan their crimes, they themselves can become targets. The improvement of international relations also strengthens international security. That is why we need to make good use of the structures in place, such as the Mediterranean dialogue and the United Nations. Contact with certain sections of the Afghan population is necessary, particularly in the interests of providing relief to those in need. The resolution which came about under the competent guidance of Mr Collins receives our full support. We would only like to adopt one single amendment from the old, resolution, and replace Article 26 on Gibraltar with our own wording. Apart from that, we give our wholehearted approval to the joint outcome.

Political group: PPE-DE
Madam President, we would like to keep the compromise amendment.

Political group: PPE-DE
It has been noted that the situation of young farmers is a serious problem in the European Union and they do not have any real prospects despite the support provided by the Union and the Member States. This is why I consider this report to be so important and why I am delighted that we have voted in favour of it. The economic situation is unfavourable and sometimes extremely serious, particularly for young people. There is a real lack of prospects for young farmers, as well as a significant decrease in the numbers of farmers in general, with an increase in the age of those remaining. What can the European Union do? The Committee on Culture, Youth, Education, the Media and Sport, having been asked to give its opinion on this subject, did not wish to focus on aspects which fell within the remits of other committees. We therefore chose to highlight the issues associated with education, training and information policies and the social and cultural life of young farmers. We note that young farmers experience problems resulting from education and training that is often poorly suited to their needs. Even Agenda 2000 neglects these fundamentally important aspects. The European Union must encourage, through its Socrates and Leonardo Programmes, measures to strengthen education and training facilities for young farmers in order to raise their skills to the required level. IT training must be set up. Internet access must become a reality, and young farmers must be able to become acquainted with integrated production and marketing management systems so as to manage their holdings effectively. Depopulation may be combated, in particular by maintaining public services in rural areas (schools, post offices, transport services), and social facilities may be maintained by pooling the resources of several communes, for example, or by resorting to the use of mobile services. If the right conditions for revitalising farming are fulfilled, then young urban dwellers enthusiastic about nature and keen to improve their quality of life will be able to settle in the country and rural youth will no longer abandon the farms passed on to them by their parents.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, I also add my thanks to the rapporteur, Mr Piecyk, for his excellent work. I am very pleased that he has actually ensured that the final piece of the TENs jigsaw has been put in its rightful place. Particularly given the fact that most world trade is by sea, it was always a great omission that the TENs ports were never part of the TENs decision. That is now being put right. It is even more pleasurable because the maritime sector is probably the most environmentally sustainable part of the TENs network. It is a pity it has taken so long. The lesson for Parliament, the Commission and the Council on transport matters is that in future we should be doing less, but doing it better. I hope that is the message we can endorse here tonight. It will be a welcome boost for ports across the European Union. In my region, for example, the port of Dover will be encouraged to switch more goods from roads to railways. Ports such as Newhaven will be given the welcome boost that they so badly need to try and secure a role in the future. We will all benefit from this decision but we must look to the future. Very soon we will be faced with the proposal to revise the TENs network in its entirety. I hope that we can ensure that those TENs revisions properly incorporate the ports, ensure that there are fewer studies, more rail projects, more maritime projects and fewer roads. I conclude by again thanking the rapporteur. I hope that we can now ensure that these projects are implemented across the EU and play their part in ensuring the maritime sector reaches its full potential.

Political group: PSE
I should like to thank Commissioner Nielson for his answer and for the efforts being made on behalf of all refugees specifically in the Molucca Islands where the largest group is de facto Christian. We are concerned here with a total of 300 000 refugees out of a population of 10 million people. It is as if all the residents of Sweden’s third largest city, Malmö, were to be expelled as refugees. I also want to highlight the gravity of the situation for the Christian minority in Indonesia. On Christmas Eve, a large number of coordinated bomb attacks against churches – including the cathedral in the capital, Jakarta – took place at a variety of locations in the Indonesian archipelago. Indonesia is the world’s fourth largest country in terms of population, as well as being the most heavily populated Muslim country. I assume you are following developments there very closely. My specific question is this: are there links with Caritas, the Lutheran World Federation and the World Council of Churches with a view to providing aid to the expelled Christian minority, above all in the Molucca Islands?

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, I should like to make a few short remarks in connection to what Mrs Lambert said. The fact that Commissioner Vitorino is here rather than Commissioner Diamantopoulou is due to the fact that Commissioner Diamantopoulou is attending a meeting of the Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs Council. That is a good thing, too, as we are voting today, and it is very good to hear that the things which we have already decided in the Committee, and which we hope to have adopted today and here I back the appeal by Mr Hughes to the Group of the European People’s Party are being discussed there so that we can reach further decisions. I should like to call for a number of things. First of all, I think that the general mainstreaming we are calling for is very important, and that this could in fact be extended still further, because I think that the whole equality arm, as it appeared previously in the European Employment Strategy, should still be formulated as a kind of objective. I would also call for the development of two action plans. The first is an action plan against unemployment. Everyone knows what the problem is: unemployment is on the increase, and the recession is growing rapidly and is also set to last a long time – and something must be done about this. There is no balance between the long-term strategy of increasing employment participation, for example, and the short-term strategy in a number of other spheres. The second action plan is an action plan for improving quality at work and increasing productivity. Modernisation of work organisation, in particular, is urgently required. By way of conclusion, I think that it is important that we take the local and regional approaches and the involvement of national parliaments very seriously.

Political group: Verts-ALE
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I should first like to thank Mrs Ayuso González for her hard work as rapporteur for this directive. A directive on increasing the use of biofuels is something that I can only welcome, but I do regret the fact that the current situation falls well short of my expectations. It is precisely by increasing the use of biomass that we can contribute both to securing farmers' income and creating new jobs in the current and enlarged Europe as well as to enhancing the multifunctional role of the countryside. In addition, such an initiative meets the requirement of sustainability, which is so important from the point of view of protecting the environment. In the light of all this, the compromise proposals on the table are rather disappointing and reflect a definite dilution of the original demands, because all that is left of the original obligation to blend – as we might have expected – are reference values. It would actually have been very pleasing if the Austrian model, which makes it mandatory for more biomass to be used, could have served as a model for Europe as a whole. Finally, I have to note that unfortunately the final paper contains too few incentives for a more efficient use of biofuels. Once again the discrepancies between the interests of the fossil fuel industry and farming are clear for all to see. Given the finite nature of oil deposits and bearing in mind the Kyoto targets, we can only hope for the future that this is not a closed book, that further efforts will be made to push up the use of biofuels and that this really is just the first step in the right direction, if all of us really do feel a credible and serious responsibility for providing future generations with a secure foundation on which to live.

Political group: PPE-DE
Like my colleagues, the Belgian Socialists, I abstained during the final vote on the resolution on the floods in Europe for two reasons. First of all, solidarity can have no borders. As Mrs Zrihen said, in the open sitting, the European Parliament is wrongly trying to compile a list of Member States whose regions have suffered torrential flooding. Italy had to be added, as it did not appear in the current list, and the final text does not mention, in particular, the floods in Switzerland. Secondly, if we want to better protect the territory of the Union against floods – and this is undoubtedly the desire of the European Parliament – we must take into account river basins, which ignore borders mapped out by history. It is regrettable that, in our haste, we did not include this essential clarification in the text.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, the European Union prides itself on its record of defending human rights. Unfortunately, individual Member States refuse to criticise China's human rights record for fear that it will damage their trading relationships. This political card weakens the moral authority of the EU to speak on the abuse of human rights elsewhere in the world. I am the rapporteur for Hong Kong in this Parliament and I am concerned at the number of incidents which have happened in that part of the world which, once again, show abuse of human rights. The removal of Cheung Man-Yee as the broadcasting director of radio and television in Hong Kong was a direct attack on the freedom of the press and the decision of Hong Kong's SAR government to ask for reinterpretation of a recent unpopular high court ruling strikes at the heart of the rule of law when the decision of the final court of appeal should have been accepted. The treatment of Falun Gong practitioners and the refusal to allow LEGCO legislators to travel to mainland China are all indicative of the problems that remain in that part of the world and are issues which I will address in my report. It is vitally important that the EU, both as an institution and through its Member States, criticises, where appropriate, human rights abuses by China.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, do you sometimes get the feeling that this Parliament suffers from collective dementia, by any chance? We had the self-same debate exactly a year ago, on 17 February. I would not find this disconcerting, were it not for the fact that we also discussed this topic back on 27 October 1999, and I could mention a few other occasions. Ladies and gentlemen, what is it that Europe needs? It was agreed last year in Lisbon that we want to become the most competitive knowledge-based economy in the world, and Parliament has thrown its weight behind this objective, in a spirit of generosity and with a large majority. That is why, on Thursday next, we will hold a debate on a European research area, and the need to invest in research, technological development, innovation and education. In addition, it is more important than ever for businesses to exploit their competitive potential to the full, because an uncompetitive business costs jobs. Seen from this perspective, it is sometimes unavoidable that businesses have to undergo reorganisation and occasionally take painful measures such as transferring or replacing workers, or making them redundant if the worst comes to the worst. Needless to say, the rights of workers as laid down in the various European directives must be upheld in the process. You will understand that the cannot endorse the question raised by Mr Rocard or the resolution tabled by the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs as it stands, for it provides renewed evidence of the fact that Parliament has a very selective memory. After all, only the Nice social agenda is discussed in the joint resolution, whilst Lisbon is forgotten for the sake of convenience. We will therefore table a number of amendments in the spirit of the Lisbon objectives. Mr Rocard thinks that not responding immediately to an e-mail signifies automatic acceptance; he is wrong on that score. But we will withdraw our resolution.

Political group: ELDR
Mr President, for the railways the status quo is really not an option. They either have to change or die. Railways in Europe are in terminal decline, not least in the rail freight sector. New freight goes by road in Europe, not by rail. That must change, and I believe it will. That is why I broadly support the Council position which represents a small but important step towards railway liberalisation. The alternative to this modest step is no step at all. That is why tonight, regretfully I cannot agree with the tactics suggested by Mr Jarzembowski because it is a recipe for going nowhere at all, very quickly. We have to take into account national differences and indeed, social and employment concerns. Broadly, the Council position has struck the right balance on the charging, licensing, access and separation issues. They have struck a right balance between both extremes and I would advocate – to use Mr Swoboda's term – that 'third way' should be applied to the railways in Europe. Labour MEPs have two particular concerns which I know are shared by many other Members: one is the issue of derogations. We believe that Greece, Ireland and Northern Ireland should have a limited derogation of five years because of their unique geographical and geopolitical circumstances. Secondly, we hope that the deletion of Article 12, led by the Liberals in committee, which could deprive citizens and consumers of network benefits and deprive disabled people of access, can be reinserted into the text. Those basic safeguards must be restored. The prize for us tonight is that for the first time in history we can achieve liberalisation of the international freight network. That is an achievable goal. Let us not throw it away.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I wish to congratulate Mr von Boetticher on his work on the two reports that he has just presented to us. I should like to focus on the second report that deals with the Schengen system, which has come before Parliament not for reasons of clear political will, but because the Council has not been able to achieve unanimity on maintaining the system of intergovernmental funding, whilst a source of Community funding is also necessary. These are the peculiarities of our work in the European institutions: many things happen for strange reasons and as a result of stopgap solutions. I should like to say that this proposal to develop a new generation Schengen Information System, SIS II, can only be accepted as the first, preparatory, stage in the system’s development. Community funding will not solve the problems that divide us in our analyses of the functioning of the SIS. It is crucial, as I argued here last September, when I presented my report on Schengen, that in addition to Community funding, the Schengen Information System cannot continue to be managed in secret and on a purely intergovernmental basis. It must instead be managed at European Union level by a separate agency. At the same time, a single Community information system must be set up consisting of a computer network system that contains data received under the three conventions, Schengen, Europol and Customs, bearing in mind the need to keep the data held under these conventions separate. This is the only way in which we will be able to guarantee an adequate level of protection for personal data, which is fair and identical for all citizens, complying with the level of protection stipulated by the Charter of Fundamental Rights. Lastly, we know that the SIS is reaching saturation point with eighteen States participating, which means that it will not be able to survive beyond the forthcoming enlargement of the European Union, which also means that we must rapidly adapt the system. I hope that the five years we have ahead of us will be long enough to present a proposal that is balanced and which meets the demands of the European Parliament.

Political group: PPE-DE
This report was voted on under Rule 110a of the Rules of Procedure, which allows for no debate and no amendments to the report. The British Delegation of the Group has previously sought to amend reports which it did not support. The new rule, however, leaves no option but to vote against certain reports. Although Conservative MEPs wish to combat corruption, we believe that this matter should not be legislated on at a European level but should be dealt with internally by Member States. We are willing to cooperate with other Member States' authorities, but we will not go down the path of harmonised maximum penalties.

Political group: PPE-DE
draftsman of the opinion of the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development. – Mr President, I thank Mrs Keppelhoff-Wiechert for her report and also for listening to the ideas that I put forward in the opinion from the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development. We all recognise the need for feed to be safe. If animal feed is safe, then consumers feel safe when eating animal products. While we recognise the need to be able to identify and isolate all those producers and feed businesses involved in the food production chain, I believe this should be done without adding another tier of registration. We recognise the need for a complete identification of all feed business operators, including farms, by adapting existing regulation systems in order to enable the competent authorities to inspect operators. However, national regulation systems which are already in place and functioning for other purposes should be utilised wherever possible to avoid unnecessary duplication and regulation. Currently, the majority of farms can be identified through their participation in these schemes. I welcome the Commission's proposals whereby feed businesses, except those involved solely in primary production, will be required to adopt the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points principles. HACCP is a method of identifying potential hazards and ensuring that proper control strategies are in place, and I welcome that. As Mrs Keppelhoff-Wiechert mentioned, the area of most serious concern in the Commission's proposals is the use of financial guarantees. All feed businesses, including farms, would need to fulfil a new requirement of having financial guarantees in place to cover the cost of withdrawn products in the event of a feed safety incident. This would be restricted to the withdrawal, treatment and possible destruction of products. Having consulted with the farming industry, feed manufacturers and the insurance sector, we find that the consequences of introducing financial guarantees have not been sufficiently analysed. The feasibility of financial guarantees or insurance policies has not been properly developed with the industry and it is unclear whether such guarantees would be available from the insurance sector. The cost implications for feed manufacturers and farmers from such a guarantee scheme are also unclear. Therefore, we would like the Commission to look at this in more detail before bringing this in. Finally, we are very concerned that feed coming in from outside the European Union also meets these very strict criteria.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, the introduction of the port package has clearly given European port policy a new lease of life. The report on market access to port services has caused a great stir in the European Parliament, not least because the European Commission proposal predominantly deals with competition within ports. The wish from the EP, dating back to 1997, to reach a Regulation on competition among ports has been completely overlooked. In this connection, a request has been made for clear rules on financial transparency and State aid in the port sector. The Dutch People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) within the Group wants to guarantee more transparency for government funding and has asked the European Commission to present a proposal to this effect prior to the entry into force of the present directive. Otherwise, we would start to question the directive’s added value for European ports and their users. Opinions in my group are divided as to which services should fall within the scope of the directive and which should not. The VVD backs the rapporteur where he wants to limit the directive to the technical-nautical services. However, in our view, pilotage services should be included in the directive. Cargo handling services are by their very nature land-based and do not belong in this directive. Furthermore, port authorities and users are required to make relatively sizeable investments in infrastructure and superstructure. The tendering of the cargo handling aspect will mainly lead to red tape. This administrative burden is not proportionate to the result and creates uncertainty within investing authorities. It also creates an obstruction for urban planning authorities of the local councils, to which most ports in the Netherlands still belong. The VVD is against including the cargo handling services in this directive.

Political group: ELDR