GwendalTsang/DEFT09-parquet huggingface dataset:
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, in view of the Lisbon objective of becoming the most competitive, dynamic and knowledge-based society by 2010, this is not just a question of economic and industrial policy but above all a question of education and training. Another area is the operation of the labour market and how it is changing as a matter of necessity. At the interface between the two areas lie the efforts to promote high quality training and further training and the protection of mutual cross-border recognition of professional qualifications. I therefore welcome the Commission’s proposal. In my address today I would like to go into one aspect in particular, namely the equality, in terms of level and conditions, of the professional qualifications of service providers and for freedom of establishment. The requirements for the activity are the same, regardless of whether we are talking about a service or an establishment. The activities are no different. I cannot therefore understand why recognition of professional qualifications is provided for establishment, but no provision is made for the recognition of professional qualifications for the provision of services. I do not think this distinction is right. The present arrangement may even be contrary to Article 50 of the EC Treaty. This allows services to be provided in an EU Member State subject to the same conditions as that State prescribes for its own nationals. The conditions include equivalence of evidence of qualifications, provided such evidence is required in the host Member State. To remove this problem, I ask you to vote in favour of Amendment No 213 tabled by Mr Zappalà and myself.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, I should like to thank the Commission and, again, the rapporteur for the excellent and often very difficult task that she has undertaken. I believe that it has to be the task of this Parliament to be in favour of simpler rules and procedures and also to ensure that we have an understanding of the need for timely and effective decision-making in programming. That has to be at the heart of the whole reform process that we keep challenging and asking for. And yet, in this debate, we hear over and over again calls for us to complicate and make more difficult the procedures, programmes and issues the Commission has to deal with. In addition, as far as I am concerned, it makes absolutely no sense, when we are dealing with a technical and legal regulation, to be suggesting that it should be doing the work of country strategy papers in the countries that we work with or the work of the national indicative programmes that we work with. That, again, is a total contradiction of what a regulation that has a financial and a legal basis is meant to be doing. In my opinion, to create two separate regulations simply does not make sense and would undermine the efforts that we are making to streamline and clarify our programmes. Mr Salafranca talked about credibility, and our credibility as a Parliament is at stake here if we do not understand the issues that we are dealing with. Our strategy has to be to work well with Latin America and with Asia and apply the same principles which are at the heart of our development programme. There is no justification either for any argument in favour of transferring funds from Asia to Latin America, especially when we know about the desperate poverty of 800 million people in Asia. The Commission's communication on development policy in 2000 called for us to refocus on poverty eradication. Therefore, it is totally inappropriate for us now, in 2003, to call for a regulation which will just separate two parts which work very well together and we will duplicate, replicate and complicate our efforts to eradicate poverty. I urge Parliament to be realistic and constructive so that our essential work in both these regions can continue and can grow.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, eight years after the Rio conference, where the countries of the United Nations acknowledged that development and the environment were inextricably linked, the European Union is finally adopting regulations to ensure that the environment is integrated into the development projects of developing countries. Although we have cause to congratulate ourselves on the financial contribution agreed in the course of the conciliation – and I should like to thank the rapporteur on behalf of my group – the budget in question is still modest, given the considerable needs and still greater expectations of the populations concerned. Are we not merely salving our consciences by granting just a little more than EUR 15 million over a period of six years to developing countries in Africa, the Caribbean and South America when we are aware of the social, economic and ecological conditions in these underprivileged lands? This budget line, designed to promote the full integration of the environmental dimension in the development process, will be of no significance whatsoever if the environmental dimension is neglected in the case of other projects. I would like to remind you that sustainable development which integrates the environmental dimension fully is still, more than ever, the only model of development able to meet the requirements both of the underprivileged countries of the South and the polluted countries of the North.

Political group: Verts-ALE
Mr President, I should like to thank Mr Haarder for his reply. Unfortunately, my questions about KADEK were not answered. This was what I asked: what is your assessment of the organisation and, in the future, will KADEK also be included in the list of terrorist organisations? Mr Haarder has not said a word about this. As regards the other point, I would like to point out once again that if we are going to discuss the list of terrorist organisations, we should look at the situation from the Kurdish perspective as well. More than four thousand Kurdish villages have been completely destroyed. Who will take action here and protect the Kurdish people? Surely terrorists are at work here too? Or let's take the case of Leyla Zana. The European Parliament honoured Leyla Zana with its Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. She was sentenced to imprisonment in Turkey for supporting the PKK. According to the new list published in Turkey, Leyla Zana is a terrorist. The question is this: what terrorist act did Leyla Zana, a Member of the Turkish Parliament, commit to warrant her being classed as a terrorist?

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I wish to start by thanking the Commissioner for her words, which demonstrate the Commission’s commitment to addressing this serious public health problem together with the Member States, which have competence in the field of health. The number of breast cancer cases has increased at a terrifying rate in the European Union. By way of example, I wish to draw attention to the fact that in Portugal, breast cancer is the main cause of death amongst women over 45 years of age. 3 500 new cases are diagnosed every year in my country, and every day five women die from this disease. Both a real political will and practical measures to improve this situation do exist, however. I therefore thank the rapporteur and congratulate her on her excellent report, which alerts us to the many worrying aspects of this specific type of cancer, both in Europe and throughout the world and urges us all to act urgently and make the fight against cancer one of the fundamental priorities of health policy in the European Union. The challenge we face is drastically to reduce breast cancer mortality rates in Europe, but also to eliminate disparities between Member States where the quality of health care is concerned and, consequently, women’s chances of survival. We must therefore act at different levels: - firstly, prevention and screening. Awareness-raising campaigns must be promoted, to show that early diagnosis of the disease increases the probability that it can be cured. Member States must offer screenings at two-year intervals for women between the ages of 50 and 69 years, as recommended, in fact, in the European Guidelines for Mammography Screening; - secondly: diagnosis. All Member States must ensure that women are informed of the results of a mammography within five working days and wait no more than four weeks following diagnosis before treatment begins; - thirdly: treatment and follow-up. Women suffering from breast cancer must be treated by multidisciplinary teams that have received and continue to receive appropriate professional training. To help patients to get through the treatment phase as painlessly as possible, they must be given access to psychological support, physiotherapy and social services. After treatment, the stage of medical and emotional aftercare is crucial. Lastly, I wish to end on a hopeful note and say that we will one day be able to defeat and eradicate this disease. Let us therefore make the best use not only of the EUR 400 million provided for cancer research by the sixth framework programme of research, but also of the new action programme in the field of public health (2003-2008), to develop innovative initiatives and projects.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, may I say to the President-in-Office that he should not be deceived by the number of empty seats in the House. We have a great deal of interest in Latin America. Perhaps we are behaving like a semi-conductor. Sometimes, the more empty positions, the higher the standard. Maybe that also applies to Parliament. I should like to join with Mr Fernández Martín in asking the Commission to speed up the implementation of projects. When we parliamentarians visit Latin America, the response to our proposals is always, yes, you make excellent proposals, you decide to give us money, but the money never comes. The credibility of the European Union does not depend on a to-do list, but on whether or not we keep our promises. So my request – and I assume I speak here for the whole House – is that the projects be implemented. That the money we budget be disbursed. Thirdly, and this comment is addressed to the Latin Americans with us now, the more Latin America joins forces, the more Mercosur and the Andes countries and the whole of Latin America joins forces, the more clout they will have in negotiations with the European Union and other countries. Take a leaf – and this really is meant as well-intentioned advice – out of the European Union's book in this case. The problem for us in negotiations with Mercosur and other regions is that we have to listen to several, rather than one voice. And, whether we like it or not, it slows down the negotiating process. I personally am not involved in negotiations, but several people have told me as much. It would be better if you were to speak with one voice. I should also like to say how delighted I was with the Mercosur-Europe Business Forum which was held in parallel in Madrid. This is the third time this forum of companies, associations and politicians from Mercosur and Europe has been staged. We need economic and technical dialogue between Europe and Latin America similar to our dialogue with the United States. Perhaps the Commission could make a contribution here too. My last comment is that there are numerous problems, but there are also opportunities waiting to be exploited. In Parliament, we are currently processing several directives which will offer trading opportunities: a directive on biofuels – where we can offer them new markets – and a directive on CO2 emissions trading in the wake of the Kyoto agreement. This too offers new opportunities for collaboration, to Latin America's advantage. All this deserves to be discussed.

Political group: PSE
I am grateful for the President-in-Office of the Council's last remarks. I belong to a national movement in my own country, Scotland, which over the last 100 years has produced great constitutional change without a single drop of human blood being shed or a single act of violence occurring. There are other places, as she knows, where similar constitutional changes have taken place and are continuing. The Council and the President-in-Office of the Council are perhaps wilfully missing the point in Mr Nogueira Román's question. It is a great mistake to say that there are some ends that tend to attract terrorism and therefore to attack those ends in themselves. The truth is that a terrorist is someone who thinks that an end justifies any means. It is absurd to believe that if the end is noble any means can be justified. Those who believe that, make whatever end they seek ignoble. I wish the Council would be less selective in its attitude to such questions.

Political group: Verts-ALE
Madam President, in the Foreign Affairs Committee this week we suffered a physical intrusion into our debates which stopped our debates three times. We now know that this intrusion happened at the invitation of certain members of this Parliament. Would Madam President apologise to our guests, the Turkish Foreign Minister Mr Cem and his Ambassador Mr Akiyol, and would Madam President remonstrate strongly with those Members who deliberately arranged the demonstration today as it was a travesty of our normal Parliamentary hospitality and could have led to physical harm. (Applause)

Political group: ELDR
The British Conservatives voted against this report due to growing concerns about the effects and implementation of such agreements. Firstly, we are unconvinced by the benefits of agreements which are of huge cost to the European taxpayer and yet seem to supply limited benefits to EU fishermen as a whole. Secondly, we remain sceptical over the financial proberty of such schemes, and how such proceeds are spent. The effect on local indigenous fishermen continues to be highlighted, and yet the attitude that the EU can simply come in and take the livelihoods of such subsistence fishermen is worrying. But finally we have seen the damage the CFP has done to the fishing stocks around our own coastlines. The CFP has been an unmitigated environmental disaster. We believe that it is simply wrong to suggest that the only answer to such a dire situation in our fish stocks is simply to up anchor and go and repeat the exercise in someone else's waters. Maij-Weggen report (A5-0125/2002)

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, I would like to thank Mr Tajani, Mr van Velzen and Mr Poettering for their valuable, substantial contributions to this debate. I also welcome the mandate conferred on me by the European People’s Party to present such a major topic as the poor countries’ debt, which is stifling the economy of the world’s poorest developing countries. The scale of this issue is global, and it involves all the civilised, democratic countries which are helplessly standing by, watching the constant growth of the debt of poor countries, which now have to set aside an average of 40% of their annual budget to finance it. Every year, the debt increases by approximately 12%, and it has risen from USD 110 billion in the 80s to its present value of USD 350 billion. Parliament has attempted to deal with the issue on more than one occasion, but it has never appeared to find satisfactory solutions. This year, on account of it being a Jubilee Year, the Holy See and other quarters are calling for the substantial reduction, if not total cancellation, of the international debt in such a way as to facilitate the integration of the most indebted countries into the world production and commercial trade circuit. The UN Secretary-General also fervently appealed, on 3 April last, to the donor countries and international financial institutions to cancel all the official debts of the highly indebted poor countries from their accounts as a millennium gesture. A similar appeal was made by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, but the time for appeals has passed. It is facts that are important now. If we analyse the situation, we realise that, on the one hand, we are talking about an almost irrecoverable debt and, on the other, that in return for cancelling that debt, we can demand greater respect for human rights, greater democracy and social actions benefiting poor communities – improving conditions for children, the elderly and the disabled. In addition, we would be stemming migration flows, which, quite apart from being a problem for the migrants’ countries of origin, are, above all, a problem for the host countries. Therefore, I would ask whether the Council is aware of all the initiatives which have hitherto been adopted by each individual country of the Union to reduce or cancel the debt of highly indebted poor countries, and whether it would be possible for a résumé to be produced showing the practical actions which have been undertaken by these countries and the commitments made, to prove that these initiatives are not just mere political vote-winning manoeuvres, as they all too often appear to be. Finally, considering that there is a clear need for a common foreign policy displaying Europe as a coherent system capable of undertaking united initiatives, does the Commission not feel that it would be appropriate to create a structure to study this issue, which would work together with the local Churches, NGOs and civil society and act upon the conclusions reached? This would, I feel, be a different way of interpreting the meaning of the millennium, this time in the name of solidarity between communities.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, Mr Bolkestein, Mr Lehne, ladies and gentlemen, I should like to make a few observations. Although we have known this for a while, it has just dawned on me that Mr Bolkestein is rejecting the defensive mechanisms that are now being proposed in the amendments and that are more or less optional in each country, resulting in the creation, as he intended, of a very watered-down version of the directive. This also has some advantages for employees, for it means that, in some cases, these mechanisms will still give employees and employers themselves control over a few rights. Irrespective of that, I am in any case pleased that the new directive now contains what we have decided on in the meantime, namely new guidelines on information and consultation in a number of cases, for which praise is due, for that was one of the stumbling blocks last time. I should, however, like to add that we would actually want pro-active action to be taken in takeover bids that do not succeed – which is in about 50% of the cases. This means that consultation must precede the bid, that consultation about this bid must take place before it is made public, and so on. Mr Bolkestein, it is a matter of modern management, a matter of socially responsible management, that consultation should be further detailed in such a way as to entitle stakeholders, and not only shareholders, to consultation where necessary. We have tabled those amendments to improve matters. Although my group is divided on this, I think that the majority are behind our position. We would like those amendments to be adopted; if they are not, we want to vote against the proposal. The majority of the group are behind me on this. It has been said that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. They can stay in the bush as far as I am concerned, and another way could then be found to make consultation more detailed.

Political group: Verts-ALE
Mr President, for a few days now, attention has mainly focused on America’s refusal to agree in the UN Security Council on the deployment or enforcement of every peace-keeping force. This is used as a lever to demand that American military personnel be immune to international prosecution for war crimes. As a result, we seem to overlook the fact that the conflict started with the US threatening an EU Member State because that is where the International Criminal Court is based. As early as the beginning of June, the American Senate decided in favour of the possibility of a military invasion in the Netherlands in order to release American prisoners in The Hague. After the refusal to sign the Kyoto Climate Treaty or decommission chemical and bacteriological weapons and after the taxation on steel imports, this is the umpteenth time the US Government has flown in the face of the entire world. It demands cooperation and discipline from others in the fight against terrorism, but America itself does as it pleases. It is high time that we in Europe realised that it is impossible to make or maintain close cooperation agreements with a country or government of that kind. I have a feeling Mr Haarder underestimates this growing gap. If we go about it in this way, Europe will eventually have to give in to the US, and this is the worst possible scenario.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Madam President, my group is also, naturally, extremely shocked by the events that took place over the weekend in the Middle East. Of all the proposals that have been made, I would like to offer my support primarily for that of my colleague, Mr Wurtz, to find a suitable point in time when we can ask the Council – and possibly also the Commission – to propose a resolution. It would also suit our group if Parliament were to make its own statement regarding this issue. Everyone has certainly tried in all manner of ways to highlight the importance of this question; nevertheless, I think his proposal is this time the most valuable and the most appropriate one in this situation.

Political group: Verts-ALE
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, we all agree that this proposal is very significant for port services insofar as it affects one of the most important transport infrastructures of the European maritime regions and because of the process of liberalisation of access to the market in these services. I would like to make several points: Firstly, the philosophy of liberalisation must include making the process more flexible so that it does not lead to dangerous or inappropriate radicalism. Secondly, we must take account of the geographical reality of the seaports in the various regions of the European Union. Thirdly, the jobs of the port workers affected must be guaranteed, as well as their social protection. And on transposing this directive in the various Member States, the principle of subsidiarity must be taken into account. These are the reasons that have allowed me to support this directive with certain clarifications, and justify certain particular amendments, which are coherent amongst themselves, and which deal with the fact that certain regions of the Member States affected are of an insular or peripheral nature, where the port is paramount and, in many cases, quality services are already provided. Despite everything, I thank the rapporteur, Mr Jarzembowski.

Political group: ELDR