GwendalTsang/DEFT09-parquet huggingface dataset:
Opening up the European Union to new members will increase stability and wellbeing on the continent we share. It is therefore very positive that accession negotiations with all applicant countries have made progress. The applicant countries must be able to join the European Union according to the headway they have made. In the talks, therefore, the principle of differentiation must be applied. Bunching the applicant countries geographically and staggering their accession dates according to regional criteria are unacceptable. Enlargement will also benefit the present members of the European Union. Its political and macro-economic benefits will be greater than the additional costs the Member States will incur. The EU already benefits from the growing surplus in trade with the applicant countries. It is to be hoped that the governments of the applicant countries will continue strengthening their administrative capacity so that the EU’s acquis communautaire can be implemented in these countries prior to accession. Estonia’s rapid progress in preparing for membership is especially positive for Finland. Our neighbouring country has struggled with determination over the last decade to meet the criteria of membership. With respect to the question of Estonia’s minorities, the important language law, which was passed in June 2000, is in accordance with all international norms. Furthermore, the economic transition process has been a positive one. A speedy solution to the questions that remain is to be hoped for from the point of view of all parties. The government of Estonia should pay added attention to the fight against corruption and drug trafficking.

Political group: PPE-DE
I congratulate Mrs Kratsa-Tsagaropoulou on her excellent report on the proposal for a decision of the European Parliament and of the Council establishing a Community action programme to promote organisations active at European level in the field of equality between men and women, which I fully support, in particular as regards the need for this programme to ensure that the various women’s organisations undertake high-quality actions that are extended for as long as it takes for them to achieve their aim. I also wish to emphasise that implementing this programme must not lead to cuts in other programmes or funds that implement annual priority issues set by the Union in this field, such as wage equality, participation in decision-making and reconciling working life with family life.

Political group: PPE-DE
Unfortunately, although the Commission accepted many of the European Parliament's amendments, the Council did not. Parliament needs to reinstate and re-table most of the amendments on the size of the warning, the list of ingredients and the protection of consumers, especially the young. Of course, the European Parliament must avoid the extremes contained in certain amendments, which are not convincing, do not have a qualified majority and undermine the efficacy of its intervention as a whole. Of course, if we want to be consistent in our approach, we should put similar warnings on products which are equally harmful to consumers, such as animal fats. Finally, basic integrity requires that we immediately start putting warnings on cigarettes exported from the European Union – in the language of the importing country.

Political group: GUE-NGL
The Moderates are choosing today to abstain from voting in the final vote on the financing of European political parties. Political parties should be built upon their membership and manage without public funding. Public funds should not, on principle, be used to finance political parties. We are voting, for the aforementioned reasons, in favour of Amendment No 41, calling for the rejection of the Commission’s proposal in its entirety.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, while of course the liberalising thrust of the Lisbon process in the Barcelona Summit is welcomed, I would like to bring to your attention two warnings. Firstly, what we do not do, and what we refrain from doing, is as important as what we are positively trying to do. We should learn in the name of competitiveness to refrain from burdening and cluttering the European Union from excessive regulation or initiatives which are not strictly necessary. In that perspective, I hope the Barcelona Summit will turn its attention to the crucial issue of regulatory impact assessment. Too often, initiatives are launched without the full impact on business, on the environment, but also on consumers and administrations, first being fully examined. Let us all turn our attention to tightening up the hurdles which we need to leap over before we actually launch initiatives. The second warning is this. The Lisbon process – and no doubt this will be picked up at the Barcelona Summit – is now groaning under a whole series of targets. Targets are fine, but they can quickly undermine the credibility of the process if the targets are either not met or are simply met by Member States through a statistical sleight of hand. I would appeal to the Council and the Commission to be wary about implementing and establishing too many targets if those targets are clearly not always going to be met.

Political group: ELDR
Mr President, as Chairman of the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development, I am delivering this opinion for Mrs Auroi, who drafted it for the committee. The majority of the committee adopted amendments to the opinion, amendments to which Mrs Auroi did not wish to subscribe. That is why it now falls to me to deliver the opinion, and I want to make the House clearly aware of this conflict of views. The problem we have been considering is that of minimum and maximum values and the issue of dilution. You know that, during the BSE crisis, Parliament constantly called for these stricter directives and regulations for animal feed, and we also insisted that there must be no dilution, because maximum values, of course, always mean that something is in the feed and that we are making animals or people the final repositories of such substances, however minimal their volume. At that time we said that, if we accept maximum values, there must also be a dilution ban. Our rapporteur had proposed that basic substances, components, which were not authorised for human consumption should not be used in animal feed either and would therefore have to be diluted with other substances until their content fell below the maximum permitted value. She also examined the other side of the coin. There are areas where farmers grow basic substances which exceed these maximum values. What about the people who produce these substances? Mrs Auroi said that they were helpless to prevent the excessively high values. At the same time, those who obtain these feed products cannot help the fact that the farmers are unable to alter the nature of their produce! That was the essence of the conflict. I can understand why the rapporteur dissociated herself from the amended opinion. Let me make a suggestion to the Commission as to how this problem could be tackled. If this type of dilution is permitted, there must at least be a requirement to notify the monitoring bodies, and the fact that such dilution occurs must be made public, because the public also need to be aware of this problem and discuss it. (Applause)

Political group: Verts-ALE
Mr President, during an earlier debate on Aceh, on 5 June, I pointed out that the borders in the developing world are largely a product of European colonial administration. In this case, we are now seeing the result of the conquest of Aceh by the Netherlands a century or more ago. Peoples that have been assigned to large, powerful neighbours run the risk of becoming second- or third-class citizens for good, without access to leading positions, without the possibility of active political participation and without having their natural resources at their disposal. These peoples can only be protected by a large degree of self-government or by secession. The more armies are deployed to prevent such a possible secession by means of terror, the more hated they make themselves, and the more difficult reconciliation between the ruling and the other peoples becomes. This is how the breeding ground for those secession movements grows. In Indonesia, the failing government is striving for popularity among the Javanese by showing that it is dealing with other population groups firmly and giving the army free rein. That is comparable with the situation in Sri Lanka we discussed in an earlier agenda item. The President needs this war to keep herself in power. Negotiations are alternated with forceful military intervention. Refugees from Aceh have told me how hopeless the situation has become. Anyone who was present at the peace talks in Japan can no longer safely enter Indonesia. In East Timor, we saw the devastating consequences of this kind of policy on the part of a previous president. Europe must not resign itself to the current hopeless situation, and it must not put trade relations with Indonesia, particularly the supplies of arms that were resumed in 2001, above human rights. This is an alarming situation, and must lead to our ensuring that the autonomy and emancipation of the peoples of Indonesia have their place, and that there is no military victory, oppression or uprooting of these peoples. (Applause)

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, I want to highlight a number of disturbing aspects of this summit, which we, by contrast, Commissioner Vitorino, feel really has been a talking shop which was completely closed to the voice of civil society and silent, not least for reasons of diplomatic good form, on the genuinely important issues. We have already said on many occasions that, for Europe genuinely to be able to play an important role in Latin America, it must say something different from the United States. However, here too, the only clear deadline set at Madrid was the implementation of the Doha agenda and the negotiation of new free trade agreements. Therefore, free trade is the only prospect we can give Latin America. However, as we all know, this too is very often pure rhetoric. The European Union is not able to provide access to the markets that Latin America would like it to. In any case, even if we achieve a project with the FTAA which we might call the FTAEU, we really do not feel that it will be possible to avoid very large demonstrations such as those which took place in Madrid. One hundred thousand people came to Madrid to demonstrate during the summit – we really cannot say that is insignificant! I would briefly mention some other issues. With regard to Argentina, for example, the declaration reads: ‘We welcome and support the present efforts of the Argentinean authorities to complete a sound and comprehensive economic programme, which shall enable successful negotiations with the International Monetary Fund ...’ Now, no one can deny that the International Monetary Fund has been one of the main causes of the crisis in Argentina. What do you think the Argentinians protesting in the streets will say when they read those words? They will feel deceived and think that the Europeans are cynics as well as the Americans. Nothing was said about Venezuela and this is clearly a problem. Mrs Malmström has already mentioned Cuba. In other words, we feel that the summit declaration is a list of missing items and missed opportunities. I am becoming increasingly convinced, however, that the real problem is the type of vehicle we are using – the summits – and that we will not achieve much through these megasummits. In my opinion, we should rather take up the proposal made by the Commission for a genuine foreign policy and equip ourselves with the tools and resources to give Latin America an alternative to the United States too.

Political group: Verts-ALE
Mr President, I would also like to join in the congratulations to Mr Désir, the rapporteur. This report strikes us as an excellent piece of forward-thinking, a blueprint for the WTO of tomorrow. It comprehensively rejects those who claim that the WTO is beyond redemption; that it cannot be reformed; that it is inherently biased against the poor or the dispossessed; and that it is just an agent for the rule of the jungle, rather than the rule of law. It also rejects the contrary view: the idea that free trade should prevail at all costs; that the WTO should be an agent for the dismantling of outstanding trade barriers, and should do so to the exclusion of all other political and public policy considerations. Instead, it represents almost a synthesis of those two views, because it shows how and when and why the WTO should, and must, be reformed. It shows how the WTO must become more transparent and legitimate. I should add that all the emphasis that we, as Europeans, place on the need for increased legitimacy and transparency in the WTO will come to nothing if we do not reform the way in which we conduct our own trade policy in the European Union. I was delighted to hear the presidency today say that it has supported in the past, and will support in the future, Parliament's demands for more transparent and legitimate trade policy-making in the European Council and the European Union. The report also – and this is perhaps its greatest contribution to the debate – shows the way in which the WTO has to be placed increasingly in a context of other public policy priorities and other multilateral organisations and agreements. It cannot rely on a role as primus inter pares on the international scene. Instead it should learn to interact with other priorities and other multilateral agreements. Our role is, therefore, to flank the WTO with other supporting agreements in other fields, notably the environmental field.

Political group: ELDR
Commissioner, thank you for that response. As I am sure you know, this is an issue of great concern to a lot of people across the European Union, and they will want to know that we are tackling it with a great degree of urgency. I would like to bring to your attention Council Directive 98/58/EC – the general farm animal welfare directive – which states that 'no animal shall be provided with food or liquid in a manner (...) which may cause unnecessary suffering or injury'. Given that the mechanical force-feeding of ducks and geese does exactly that, will the Commission please state whether it is satisfied with the application of Directive 98/58/EC in France and Belgium in particular? Directive 98/58/EC also allows for Community measures to ensure the uniform application of Council of Europe recommendations. Given that Germany and Denmark, together with Poland, have already prohibited force-feeding, will the Commission now come forward and propose an outright ban on foie gras so as to harmonise EU legislation in this area?

Political group: Verts-ALE
Mr President, we have to face the facts regarding the USA, the ICC and the European Union. The facts are: the total rejection by Washington of the Rome Statute on the International Criminal Court; the postponement by the United Nations Security Council, under United States pressure, of any prosecution by the ICC, first until 1 July 2003, and then until 2004 or maybe 2005; and the bilateral agreement on immunity pursued by the United States with some foreign governments, among them two European governments namely Great Britain and Italy, seeking for a law to protect American forces abroad – a law that would authorise military action anywhere, even in the Netherlands, to liberate any American personnel detained by the ICC. Do we need any other proof of the intention of the Bush administration to torpedo the ICC? Nowadays there are American troops in 140 countries throughout the world, in more than half of these countries with permanent bases. So we are confronted with a superpower which does not allow any other law but its own, on its military forces or its civilian personnel. As Commissioner Patten has just stated, grumbling against the United States is no substitute for a European foreign policy. I entirely agree with him. I hope he will agree with me that lamenting, whining and giving in through endless useless transatlantic dialogue on an issue of such gravity is no foreign policy either.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Since 1972, when the UNESCO General Conference adopted the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, which has already been signed by 158 countries, including the 15 Member States of the European Union, 630 sites have been added to the world heritage list, 30% of which are in European Union countries (188), and of those 10 are in Portugal. It is obvious, however, that classifying sites as world heritage sites is not enough. Every measure must be taken to support their conservation, including financial measures, as we have done with the proposals that we have tabled for the Community budget. As the rapporteur highlighted, there is an imbalance between European countries and the rest of the world with regard to recognised natural and cultural sites, and therefore third countries must be supported and encouraged, in a wide-ranging approach, to add to the list of natural and cultural heritage, so that they can be afforded protection. It is also important for Member States to comply with existing directives, and in particular the environmental impact assessment directive on assessing the impact of specific public and private projects on cultural and natural heritage, as the report states.

Political group: GUE-NGL
I too was fortunate to be able to listen to Commissioner Verheugen first, so that I can now concur with both speakers, both the speaker on behalf of the presidency and the speaker on behalf of the Commission. Their statements dovetail perfectly with what the Group of the European People’s Party and would like to see. We also fully share their views on the significance of the Court. If we talk about the need for reconciliation, then it is true that justice is to be done first, and the Criminal Court that has been set up for this purpose is therefore an extremely important instrument for ensuring the international rule of law, particularly in its preventive effect on people with dubious criminal backgrounds who have acquired high political positions, as we have witnessed in Yugoslavia and near the Great Lakes in Africa. It is of the utmost importance for impunity to be no longer acceptable and for this now also to be universally known. The resolutions submitted by Parliament contain a few important points. First of all, we as groups mutually agreed during the negotiations to urge the President and the Congress of the United States to review their position on taking part in the International Criminal Court. We have such high regard for the US that we need to make this appeal in a proper manner. This is why I also deem the amendment in this connection, which concerns an old document from the negotiations, to be wholly inappropriate. It makes no sense to try to convince the Americans by using tough words. Instead, we should prevent the irritation, which is already in evidence among the Americans in respect of Europe, from escalating any further and try to discuss these matters in a friendly manner. Another point is the need for the provisions of the Geneva Convention with regard to prisoners of war to be updated, so that we can take account of the status of the people currently held in Guatanamo. We, as a group, set great store by providing a definition in this connection. In addition, we hope that the Spanish Presidency will succeed in setting up this International Criminal Court under its own presidency.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, Commissioner, the Commission has tabled a proposal for a common organisation of the market in sugar which must be seen as an extension to the requirement under the GATT agreements that the EU gradually reduces its export support for agricultural products, especially sugar, under guarantee of production quotas. This system of quotas expires at the end of the production year on 30 June 2001, and the Commission proposes that the current system be continued for a period of two years, with certain changes of limited scope. The Commission omits to say how the period 2003-2006 is to be funded. The Commission proposes that the price be kept at the same level but that the quotas be reduced by 115 000 tons. Moreover, the compensation system for storage costs is to be abolished, together with the requirement to maintain minimum stocks. The aforesaid reduction in the production quota will mean that the market for sugar from the world’s poorest countries can be opened in accordance with the ‘everything but arms’ principle. That is something we are able to support. As I mentioned before, however, what is then missing is information from the Commission to the sugar industry and the sugar producers about funding during the period 2003-2006. We therefore support the Committee on Budgets’ amendments in relation to the financial perspectives in Agenda 2000, and we wish to extend the organisation of the market to 2005/2006. At the same time, however, we demand that the reform of the organisation of the market be in place no later than in 2003.

Political group: ELDR
Mr President, the treatment of animals is a question of civilisation. Pets are cherished, but cattle is often still treated abominably. Intensive cattle farming has elevated animal abuse to a methodology. The policy is unilaterally focused on cheap production. Animals have degenerated massively into commodities you eat or which earn you money, instead of living creatures with an intrinsic value. It is high time that animals were no longer adapted to suit their environment, but the environment to suit the animals. Drastic improvements are required in terms of their accommodation. For example, pigs and calves must be kept in groups and must be given plenty of straw. The castration of pigs, bobtailing and the cutting of teeth must be banned. Laying hens must be kept exclusively in spacious, free-range bird houses. The artificial, fast-track breeding of chicks and turkeys must be discontinued. Cows must regularly be led to pasture again and geese must from now on be spared torture for the sake of their tastefully prepared livers. It is sheer madness that pigs are dragged across Europe for the sake of being able to label them ‘Parma’. Long hauls with live cattle must be abolished. In my view, four hours, or 250 km, are the maximum. The inspection of cattle transports must be tightened considerably. International trade should be conducted in meat and not in live animals. Proper slaughterhouses must be set up everywhere, so as to restrict transport. Cattle markets must be abolished. The recent disasters may well be the salvation of future animals, but only if we gain the awareness that animals are more than mere production factors. Until such time, animals will suffer, and people will suffer from a lack of civilisation.

Political group: ELDR