GwendalTsang/DEFT09-parquet huggingface dataset:
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the Council intends to establish a border protection agency. This House has developed an alternative model, but we all know that the Council will disregard it. Above all, I would like to draw the attention of the members of the Committee on Budgets to the fact that this agency, in addition to the 27 staff working there, is also to be controlled by 27 members of the Management Board and also by an Executive Board consisting of five members. The Commission and the Council really are creating a bureaucratic monster here! I wish to ask the Committee on Budgets, before it approves the funding for this agency, to enter into a further in-depth discussion with the Council. No matter how much we support progress in this field, we simply cannot work like this in Europe. I hope the Committee on Budgets will back us on this. (Applause) (Parliament adopted the legislative resolution) *** Report (A5-0092/2004) by Regina Bastos, on behalf of the Committee on Women's Rights and Equal Opportunities, on reconciling professional, family and private lives Before the vote on Amendment No 2:

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, the fact is that it was only at the weekend that a note reached me; it dates back to last year and I am utterly astonished by it. The reason for my astonishment is that this note had not previously come to light following the many questions we had put to the Commission, particularly concerning the book-keeping and accounts, and because it is obviously not through the Commission that it has found its way to me. I do not know whether other Members have had a copy, and have not, as yet, had the chance to seek further information about this. For now, though, that is of secondary importance. What is important, though, is the fact – which I note with amazement – that the Director-General of internal audit is due to join us for the meeting scheduled for 7 p.m. today. I know nothing about this, though, and he has not even been invited. I have tried to reach him by phone in order to get some information about this note, but have not, for the moment, been able to do so, as he was in a meeting. Discharge will not, of course, be under discussion at this mini-conference – that will be dealt with in plenary in April – but this is, of course, vitally important right now. In eight days' time, the committee will have to vote on what we are going to do about giving discharge, and on what proposals we are going to put to plenary. This really does make it a matter of urgency that we should have information about this. I really do not know any more when I am meant to do this if we are to be able to deal with this properly in committee. Although we will, self-evidently, be discussing it this evening, it is already my view that we should know what is going on when such a thing lands on the table, and that we should discuss it among ourselves. (Applause) (Parliament rejected the request) President. – In view of the importance of the matter and its comparative urgency in the light of an upcoming discharge, it is very important that it be dealt with as comprehensively as possible through the Committee on Budgetary Control. Specifically, in the light of the vote today, it is important to ask the Commission, as a matter of urgency, to cooperate with that committee, and to assure full accountability in the matter. (Applause) Wednesday: The Group of the has asked that there should be motions for resolutions tabled to close the debate on the Council and Commission statements on Iraq.

Political group: PPE-DE
Firstly, I offer my congratulations to the rapporteur Michael Cashman, his co-rapporteurs, the whole of the Civil Liberties Committee and the Swedish Presidency, who have been so vital in getting us to where we are today. Let me be clear. This report does not go as far as I would like. For that matter, it does not go as far as some of the pioneers in this area, in some of the NGOs, would like, like Tony Bunyan of Statewatch. It does not go as far as I hoped, but it does go further than I expected, as Parliament and the Swedish Presidency dragged the Commission and Council far closer to our position than they ever expected to be. To accept what is offered here is to take a window of opportunity that is not guaranteed to remain open indefinitely. We recognise that some documents should and must remain confidential and classified, but what must not happen is that legitimate reasons of security, public safety and public protection are used to hide the merely embarrassing and misjudged. We welcome in particular the annual report that will detail the number of documents not listed from each institution, which will hopefully stop institutional creep from taking place, as year after year they add further and further categories of documents that will remain secret. We welcome the assumption of access and hope it proves just that. These processes will increase transparency, improve accountability and give citizens rights to access documents. It does not give us freedom of information, but merely freer information. The latter, however, is a goal well worth achieving. The annual reports and the promised follow-up report in January 2004 may well prove that this report, this agreement, is not the beginning of the end but the end of the beginning. As my friend Hans-Peter Martin said, it took decades for the Freedom of Information Act to become law. Nevertheless, it is a political pleasure to be here.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, my Group chairman has tipped me the wink and I am able to say on behalf of our group, the , that we fully support and welcome the Commission’s explanations in reply to the oral question, as regards both what was said and the timetable and legal evaluation. Secondly: I am also delighted that we are again stepping up the political debate on the party statute, the pressure of time in the run up to the final stage of the intergovernmental conference notwithstanding. This is not just a question of money. This is also a question of political self-awareness, a question of political identity, a question of the role of national and European parties in the unification process. We want a stronger European Parliament and that means reducing unanimity and increasing the co-decision powers of the European Parliament. But a stronger European Parliament depends on strong groups in Parliament which have the authority to act. We want a strong Commission which drives the European integration process forward. One of the ways in which this is expressed is by lobbying for the President’s function to be strengthened and through parliament’s proposals to the intergovernmental conference. We want a statute for European political parties because our democracy is a civil and party-political parliamentary democracy. But we must not underestimate the psychological importance of this debate. At present people and national parties are elected. We want, as we have stated in the proposal to the intergovernmental conference, members on European lists to be elected because we want to raise the European political profile of members further still. The proposal was touched on at the intergovernmental conference. I readily admit that we want European lists and European members of parliament. The proposals have been made; it all depends on the European party statute. The report by the Court of Auditors containing demands on the groups was also touched on. We shall comply with these demands. My group started taking steps in this direction even before the Court of Auditors’ report in order to clarify this transparency and this division. But it cannot work against the European parties because that would represent a reduction in our European self-awareness. That is also why the party statute is one of the conditions which needs to be put in place so that we can in fact quickly do what is demanded of us and what we demand of ourselves. (Applause)

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, this report is a fine example of how this Parliament manages, on an issue as important as the interoperability of the Union’s railways, to take decisions quickly and to avoid a Conciliation Committee and a third reading. I therefore wish to congratulate Mr Savary on his openness to dialogue, on his competence and on his demonstration of how crucial the action of the European Parliament is to improving standards as important as those with a social aspect, improving the position of rail users and eastwards enlargement. This is a warning to anyone who wishes to reduce our Parliament’s ability to act for the sake of more rapid decision making. This directive, which supplements those that we adopted in the last Brussels mini-session will, I hope, enable Europe to move beyond good intentions and give rail transport a greater role than it currently enjoys. For a country such as Portugal, located at the south-western edge of Europe, the interoperability of rail transport is crucial. Any country situated at the end or at the beginning of a railway line is always dependent on other countries if it is to enjoy a high level of cross-border traffic. Connecting ports to railway lines that are interoperational is a decisive step towards improving the service that is provided, towards reducing transport costs and towards making European rail companies profitable.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, I want to concentrate on the issue of corpus juris. I would very much like to support what Mrs Morgan said on this issue. Corpus juris is something that was set up without any kind of public debate or public participation. The idea of a European Public Prosecutor on the continental inquisitorial model with overriding jurisdiction throughout EU territories would have a major impact on the traditional systems both in Ireland and the UK. The idea of a single criminal code and the European Public Prosecutor is something which Member States have a right to be informed about. Indeed when the plan was initially drawn up they said it would be restricted to cases of fraud against the EU budget. But when corpus juris was actually launched in 1977 in San Sebastian – to a very select audience of 140 jurists, with no media invited – the President of the European Parliament at the time, Mr Gil-Robles Gil-Delgado, said that he considered it embryonic and that the intention was to extend EU competence in criminal matters to all areas of criminal activity. We need a public debate on this. We need the Member States and the citizens in the Member States to be properly informed. The issue of the threat to the traditional legal system in Ireland and the UK needs to be addressed. There needs to be much more openness and transparency on this issue than there has been to date. It is unacceptable that something like this has been foisted on the Member States of the EU without any proper public debate.

Political group: Verts-ALE
draftsman of the opinion of the Committee on Industry, External Trade, Research and Energy. – Mr President, SMEs play an important role, both from an economic and a social point of view. They are therefore a key political priority. The relevance of small and micro-enterprises was recognised by the Feira European Council. This is why they should benefit from the EU financial instruments to a much greater degree than they have so far. To achieve this, the Commission urgently needs to recognise and readdress three areas. I am not entirely satisfied with the explanations we have had from the Commissioner. The Commission needs to tackle the lack of information SMEs and micro-enterprises have about these programmes. Access to information about how to get financing is an essential starting point for encouraging entrepreneurship and SMEs' activities. Therefore, the Commission and Member States need to launch campaigns to give SMEs clear and simple information on how to benefit from EU projects and programmes. Second, there is too much red tape and too many complicated financing procedures. These need to be eliminated. In Europe, SMEs have to face many more obstacles when accessing financing than is the case for SMEs in the United States. We have heard about the Joint European Venture Programme and why it has failed. We must look at the figures. One of the reasons is that one in five projects was refused by the Commission or withdrawn due to the level of administrative requirements. This needs to be investigated. Also, the Commission failed to put in place the groundwork before they launched the JEV Programme because it was not marketed in some states, there were no intermediaries, and if you look at the UK, there was only one. This meant that the programme was doomed to fail from the start. I know that in my region there are many micro-enterprises and SMEs who would have welcomed the opportunity to be involved in this programme. I hope that its successor will address some of these problems because this programme is important, especially for the candidate countries.

Political group: PSE
I have voted against the report, which was however approved by 334 votes, with 72 votes against and 42 abstentions. The report calls for ‘a general review of the own resources system’. It is hard to interpret that demand in terms other than that of Parliament’s wanting to open the way to EU taxation in the manner expressed in Mrs Haug’s report (A5-0238/2001) on the EU’s own resources, adopted by a majority of Parliament on 5 July 2001. Neither in Sweden nor in other EU countries do people hanker after another level of taxation. All historical experience shows that a new level of taxation is there to stay and leads in time to a heavier tax burden. Ultimately, what we have here are issues of principle concerning who is to be entitled to demand tax and whether the Swedish people’s ancient right to impose taxes upon itself is now to be emptied of content. The Group of the European People’s Party does not wish to introduce a fourth level of taxation in the form of an EU tax over and above that paid to the local authority, the county council and the state. Quite apart from that, hardly anyone can want to see a heavier tax burden in the Member States. In the case of Sweden, which now already has the world’s heaviest tax burden, it would be additionally onerous. - Report: Harbour, Medina Ortega (A5-0078/2004)

Political group: PPE-DE
Judging by the guidelines contained in the Färm report, it does not look as if the 2003 budget is going to be very different to preceding budgets, which means that, once again, we will have a disputed budget for the sake of the Stability Pact. Despite the fact that year after year, new priorities give rise to greater needs, the policy that has been pursued consists of redistributing Community funds from old priorities to new ones and vice versa. Consequently, we are seeking to enlarge the European Union to a further 10 countries with the same amount of money and, if possible, even making some savings, which is not acceptable. The revision of the financial perspectives is absolutely essential to safeguarding the principle of economic and social cohesion, a genuinely distributive budget and the adequate financing of development and cooperation policy. This year, the rapporteur has given priority to enlargement, but has become bogged down in administrative issues without questioning the very limited proposals presented by the Commission for financing enlargement, without guaranteeing the transfers of appropriations to prepare for accession in 2002 and 2003, insisting instead on the priority of financing the communitarisation of the third pillar – justice and home affairs – supporting an increase in appropriations for Europol, for Eurojust and for the external borders, but ignoring fundamental social areas, specifically employment and improving living conditions. The rapporteur is concerned with budgetary implementation, specifically of the structural funds, but presents no solution, such as a clear commitment to making payments at levels that ensure proper implementation. He does not mention the reform of the common fisheries policy, when 2003 will be its first year of implementation – hence the proposal that we tabled – and opens the way to the co-financing of the common agricultural policy. He is vague on the financial needs of heading 4 – external policy – when the priorities are mounting up, in areas such as the Palestinian Territories, Timor, Afghanistan, Argentina, the Balkans, the Mediterranean and humanitarian aid, without any additional resources. The rapporteur wavers between the redistribution of appropriations and their increase without ever being clear. Hence our position against the report.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Consumers’ rights to be informed about the products they buy cannot be undermined by the interests of multinationals, who want to disguise the use of GMOs in agricultural and food production. Hence the importance of reducing or even eliminating the 1% ceiling proposed by the Commission for labelling not to be required, bearing in mind that the proposed threshold will leave a considerable range of products that are processed and produced with GMOs without labelling. The report is, therefore, a step in the right direction, with the safeguards it introduces, which explains the opposition of the industry itself and of the USA. Its approval has, therefore, become of strategic importance, not only for the European Union, but also for its contribution to stopping the spread of GMOs in developing and least-developed countries. The amendments tabled by the Group of the European People’s Party are to be regretted. What we clearly need to focus on now is avoiding the worst, given that the priority is to maintain the moratorium on new authorisations in the field of GMOs, because, as everyone knows, these are hindering future options since they are a dead end, with unpredictable consequences for the environment, for the economy and for human and animal health.

Political group: GUE-NGL
As International Women’s Day rapidly approaches, I would like to reiterate my support for the action undertaken within the Institutions and the Member States with a view to promoting women’s access to positions of responsibility, particularly in politics. That is why I shall most decidedly be voting in favour of the text of this resolution which urges us to take more proactive measures to combat the residual discrimination preventing women occupying their rightful place in our society! Since 1995, promoting women in the decision-making process has been one of the priority areas of the European Union action programme for equal opportunities, and is included among the commitments reiterated both by the Union institutions and by the Member States when they discuss equality between men and women. Nonetheless, even though progress has been made in recent years thanks to strategies such as mainstreaming and complementary schemes such as positive action, they are still too few in number to be satisfactory. Under-representation of women in politics, for example, continues to be the norm. The importance of enabling greater numbers of women to become involved in politics is, however, recognised. Only women are in a position to come up with policies likely to change structures which have been developed by men for men. For, whether in politics or in the labour market, structural discrimination is the main problem facing women. It is thus up to the European political parties to make themselves more accessible to women. Moreover, Article 191 of the Treaty (ex Article 138a) stresses, political parties are, I quote, “important as a factor for integration within the Union”. This article goes on to state that “they contribute to forming a European awareness and to expressing the political will of the citizens of the Union”. A condition of this type may have no legal value, but it is nonetheless of great symbolic value. It gives political parties an important role in building a democratic Europe. This may, for example, involve implementing positive action and promoting parity within our political parties. In the 1999 European elections some parties did put forward lists with men and women equally represented. This is an example of good practice which should be applied more widely. I do not know if there is some cause-and-effect at work here, but the fact is that the proportion of female Members in the European Parliament went from 25.7% in 1994 to 29.9% in 1999. Moreover, this Parliament has had a woman president since the 1999 elections. I shall conclude by repeating the conclusions of the conference organised by the Commission in April 1999 entitled “Women and men in power”. Equality between men and women is not a problem that affects women alone, but one that affects our entire society!

Political group: PSE
Mr President, I have had the privilege of working for the past three years on the EU-Lithuania Joint Parliamentary Committee, where we have had to deal with several difficult issues which have already been mentioned, so I will not repeat them. The determination of the candidate countries to overcome these problems and work positively has resulted in incredible progress. For a small country like Wales, which I represent, it is also significant that many other small countries will be represented here in the European Parliament in their own right. The Group of the wants a Europe in which these small nations and regions play a significant role and where, at a future date, countries like Wales will have the same rights as our friends from the ten candidate countries. They must ensure that there is respect for minorities and that further steps are taken towards regionalisation. Europe is becoming more diverse, not just economically and socially but also linguistically, culturally and politically, and we welcome this. We must work towards a real Europe of the peoples, with equal rights and equal respect for everyone.

Political group: Verts-ALE
Madam President, I had announced that I wanted to make a statement on behalf of the Socialist Group with regard to the constitutional crisis in the European Union following the last meeting of the Council of Justice and Interior Ministers last week. My statement is as follows: I would like to express our concern about the grave situation which has arisen in view of the Laeken Summit, because, by supporting the report by Mrs Reding, of the , and the report by Mr Watson, a Liberal, which was widely supported by the European Parliament, this House has defined a clear approach in the fight against terrorism. Since 11 September, the European Council, on two occasions, in Brussels and in Ghent, has maintained the same approach, without reservations from any Head of State or Government. The European Parliament has dealt with the Commission’s two proposals by means of an urgency procedure, with huge support at the last part-session in Brussels. Today, Parliament is going to be consulted once again and we are in a situation where one government, the Italian government, is refusing to accept something which is clear to all the institutions of the European Union. Madam President, I would like you to express, on behalf of my group, firstly our support for the President of the European Council, Mr Verhofstadt, who will go to Rome tomorrow to try to resolve this unacceptable situation; secondly, to express our support for the Commission, which has exercised its right to initiative responsibly and with a sense of duty. Finally, I would also like you to strongly protest, on behalf of Parliament, at the unacceptable statements, delivered in coarse and rude language, made at the weekend by a former colleague of ours, now an Italian Government Minister, Mr Bossi, which would make Mr Haider green with envy. This is a very important issue, on which we are all united. If we cannot move ahead as fifteen, we will do so as fourteen, but we must combat terrorism on all fronts, and one of them is corruption and the recycling and laundering of money. (Applause from the left)

Political group: PSE