GwendalTsang/DEFT09-parquet huggingface dataset:
Mr President, I am deputising for the draftsman, Mr Wynn, who has unfortunately been delayed. If the Statute for Members is to be implemented, an agreement as to the rules applicable between Parliament and the Council is not enough. What is also required, of course, is for the budgetary authority to make the necessary financial resources available. Those of us in the Committee on Budgets have therefore gone through the proposal for a new Statute and tried to analyse the budgetary consequences. Unlike at present, the draft budget would mean future expenditure having to be taken out of the EU budget. In view of this, we have now also created a budgetary structure for this purpose, a new Chapter l02 (’Reserve for the Statute for Members’). Parliament has until now kept its expenditure within the self-imposed ceiling of 20% of heading 5 ('Administrative expenditure') of the financial perspective. We have also said, however, that, if more is required in order to cover expenditure related to the Statute, enlargement or other important objectives, we do not necessarily need to respect this 20% ceiling for ever. It now remains for us to see how high the costs of enlargement, buildings policy etc. will be. Until now, of course, the idea has been already to begin entering the appropriations for the Statute in the 2004 budget in order at least to cover expenditure for a second half-year. That still applies inasmuch as the rapporteur’s idea is not taken up of postponing adoption of the budget until we are able to accept the Constitution. If the idea were, in fact, taken up, appropriations in the 2004 budget would not of course be appropriate. All that has really caused us concern up until now is the point concerning everyone’s right to direct interpretation which, strictly construed, could have entailed unreasonable costs. I appreciate, however, that a compromise with the rapporteur is on the way, meaning that the proposal is now in accordance with the estimates for the European Parliament’s budget. The conclusion of the Committee on Budgets is therefore that the possible consequences of the aforementioned decision for the budget are compatible with the ceiling of heading 5 ('Administrative expenditure') of the financial perspective, without this needing to entail any restrictions on other contributions to the policy under heading 5.

Political group: PSE
In 1992, the Earth Summit took place in Rio to address the issue of sustainable development. Numerous conferences have taken place since then. Johannesburg should have been the opportunity to turn all the good intentions expressed over the last ten years into a concrete, courageous and ambitious plan of action. Today, I am disappointed by the poor results achieved. There is no point in repeating the list of shortcomings in the action plan adopted. I simply wish to stress that research policy was given far too little attention during the debates on sustainable development. While the main role of science is to monitor the state of the environment and to make this known to decision-makers and the public, it should be expected to formulate solutions to environmental problems. Europe, which has put in place its European area of research, an area which is open to the world, must be in a position to share its scientific knowledge and to share the benefits of its experience with the developing countries. These countries are faced with a difficult equation to resolve; that of reconciling the need for strong and rapid growth with all the harm that this may imply in social and environmental terms!

Political group: GUE-NGL
This time I am not speaking to raise an interpretation or translation issue, but simply to say that the text 'in accordance with the relevant resolutions of the United Nations Security Council' has mysteriously disappeared from the Spanish version. We must therefore include this reference in this version, since it is important. Mr President, I will take this opportunity to say that, perhaps in the same mysterious way, my voting card disappeared at the beginning of the vote and I have not been able to participate in the first three nominal votes. This is not going to alter the outcome of the vote, but since I was present in the Chamber, I will communicate this information to the services of the House.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, today I want to talk about the lessons the Union must learn from its impotence throughout this entire Iraqi crisis, something that you yourselves have quite rightly lamented. On 10 April, by a majority of three-quarters, Parliament adopted a resolution on the new European security and defence architecture, desirable at the end of this war. This very broad consensus does not come as a surprise as even the latest Eurobarometer polls indicate that 71% of EU citizens are currently in favour of the development of a common policy in this area. Moreover, this request is also coming from outside the Union, from the many parties who wish the European Union to play its part in managing the affairs of a world whose future must no longer rest solely on the shoulders of the President of the United States of America. It must be said that this long-awaited Europe does not yet exist, and it will not exist until the institutional reforms which are vital for its operation have been implemented. That is the inspiration behind Parliament’s proposals, although we are well aware of the limits to their scope. We are quite aware that it will ultimately be up to the Convention to recommend whether they be adopted. If three quarters of the Members of Parliament were prepared to take up such a clear and, in certain cases, courageous stance on this issue in a roll-call vote last month, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, it is because, thanks to the Iraqi crisis, they understood that it was essential to give their unreserved support to our colleagues currently working in the working groups on defence, chaired by Commissioner Barnier, and on foreign policy, chaired by Mr Dehaene. Having learned the lessons of the Iraqi crisis and appalled by the cacophony that prevailed within the Union during the crisis, all those in favour of building a common house agree that tomorrow’s Europe of 25 members will take its rightful place in the international arena, which it has been unable to retain as a Europe of Fifteen. The main goal must be to enable Europe to speak with a single voice at last. If the Convention succeeds in this, it will be because it has been able to learn from the recent divisions, which I, like you, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, am convinced are more illusory than real.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, the risk of terrorism is omnipresent now. The dull and brooding presence of sudden, unanticipated and violent death hangs over military and civilians alike in all our nations. Links have been found recently between the Al Qaeda network and pro-Saddam forces fighting the free Kurdish people in northern Iraq. However, a much better established and older terrorist organisation has been working inside Iraq since 1986: the MKO, or MEK as they are known inside the USA. The MKO have thousands of members inside Iraq and thousands outside, financed, equipped, armed and trained by the Iraqi army and fully engaged, militarily at least, since 1986 in all of Saddam's many wars. The USA froze MEK assets in 1994, declaring the group under its many aliases to be an international terrorist organisation. The EU followed the US example as late as 2001, yet last week the New York Times published a full-page advertisement for the MEK, using the names and photographs of members of the US Congress and claiming their support. Our recent debates on Iraq have been attended by known members of MKO. These people are a threat to world security. Their organisation strikes silently but with lethal impact. This is Saddam's private international terrorist army, working against us all. Whatever our differences on the future treatment of Iraq, for the sake of our citizens and global safety, I urge that far greater security attention be paid to the MKO. For war or no war, with or without a war, the criminals who make up the MKO continually kill and destroy the innocent among us. (Applause)

Political group: ELDR
Madam President-in-Office of the Council, thank you very much for your reply, which I believe offers hope in an area in which there are serious difficulties. I would like to ask the Council whether it would be in favour of carrying out monitoring, even of agreeing a timetable on the progress made in relation to the situation of women in terms of laws, because the Council is aware, like us, that if these improvements are not introduced into laws, they will not be consolidated. I therefore believe that the Council is working very seriously and in agreement with the European Parliament in this area, but does the Council not believe that at some point it would be good to agree a timetable for introducing this progress and these improvements into laws since that is the only way to consolidate them?

Political group: PSE
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, Zimbabwe is one of our recurring worries. Although I endorse the resolution we have submitted, I do have concerns, which are based on our manifest powerlessness. So far, none of our punitive resolutions have achieved anything. Mr Mugabe is a figure who has survived the loss of two elections , the moral victor being the opposition. He is a sad figure who tries to have complete control over the law. Furthermore, I am actually proposing we start selecting the means that befit the tone of voice we adopt. If we do not want war, if we do not have the means to wage war, then we should not sound a warlike note. This is what I should like to ask of our British MEPs. I should like to start by putting Mr Mugabe out of action in the Congo, where he is stealing raw materials and deploying his army. He must leave the Congo in accordance with the international agreements in Lusaka. We are aware that his support for the young Kabila's regime is of great importance. If we want peace restored in the Congo, he must leave that country. No longer having any resources, he will have to take his troops home with him; these troops have to get paid and he does not have the resources to do this. I would recommend actions of this type, and I should also like to stop making all these fine appeals to the neighbouring countries, because they get nothing done. In my view, we ought to start telling these neighbouring countries that it is no longer acceptable to support Mr Mugabe's policies, or that they, on the one hand, pay lip service to such things as good governance, and yet continue to display their loyalty to Mr Mugabe. We should put pressure on them too. I would ask the Commission to completely overhaul its way of behaving vis-à-vis Zimbabwe, because we were unable to apply even the few sanctions that there are. Mr Mugabe is leaving for a trip abroad with his entourage, and you are well aware of it.

Political group: Verts-ALE
Mr President, Commissioner, you have just heard that the rapporteur, Mr Olle Schmidt from the Group of the European Liberal, Democrat and Reform Party, and I are not going to give up. In the run-up to the elections, we face opposition from populists, among others, to our efforts to get this House to say loud and clear what proposals it has to make in respect of the Commission’s proposal for VAT on services in the postal sector. It is for that reason that we have resubmitted our amendments to the Commission proposal. Simply rejecting this proposal out of hand, which is what Mr Goebbels, and others who speak for the Group of the , have been trying to do for almost a year now, is too primitive an approach. To be sure, it plays well with the public to proclaim your opposition to VAT on postage stamps, but we are well aware that, as various postal services have been liberalised, there will, in the long term, be no getting away from the need to treat postal services and private service providers equally in order to avoid competition in this sector being distorted. So it makes more sense to us to tell the Council of Ministers, and the Commission too, what we want done to prevent postage stamps going up in price. This is what our amendments are aiming at. In the first place, we want to defer the entry into force of this directive until 2007, in order to give the postal services enough time to implement it without difficulty. Apart from that, we would like to allow those Member States that have a greatly reduced VAT rate – Luxembourg has been one since January 2003; ours is 3% – to apply it to postal services too. That is a tangible and positive policy; simply saying ‘no’ or adopting some similarly populist approach does no service either to the postal service or to those who use it. I therefore hope that the majority in this House will vote to approve the sensible proposal that I, on behalf of my group, have joined with the rapporteur in bringing forward.

Political group: PPE-DE
Madam President, I believe we must take good note of the fact that a representative of Euskal Herritarrok has expressed his regret at the murder of an honourable local councillor in the Basque Country. All that remains in this case is for him to also condemn political methods such as shooting people in the back or in the back of the neck, because, Madam President, the Spanish Basque Country, which has the greatest degree of self-government of any Autonomous Region in the European Union, is unfortunately the only place in the European Union where this barbaric and condemnable political method still persists. (Applause)

Political group: PSE
The British Conservatives voted strongly in favour of the framework decision on terrorism in order to underline our continued ongoing support for the war against terrorism, and to confirm our determination to ensure that the European Union presents a united front against those who seek to undermine our values and our way of life. However, we were obliged to vote against the proposal in relation to the European Arrest Warrant. As now proposed, the procedures go much further than is either necessary to deal with the terrorist threat, or desirable in terms of both safeguarding human rights or respecting due legal process, as is currently satisfied by the extradition agreement processes. Nonetheless, let no one be in doubt of our determination not to waver in the long war against terrorism, but we do not believe that the European Arrest Warrant as currently proposed will achieve the ends to which we are all striving.

Political group: PPE-DE
I should like to congratulate Commissioner Verheugen and his staff for the consistent concern and attention they have shown with regard to this important issue. Is the Commissioner aware that 93% of Romanian people are against inter-country adoption as a solution for abandoned children in Romania, as is the Romanian Government, and that the Romanian Orthodox Church to which 89% of Romanian citizens belong, wholly opposes such a practice? Is he further aware that the payments made by these Spanish families have gone to Romanian foster families over a period of time, and thus these children are not officially abandoned according to international conventions, particularly the UN Convention, which has been ratified by the governments of all the Member States, including Spain and therefore forms a part of the acquis communautaire?

Political group: ELDR
Mr President, Mr Bourlanges should be congratulated on having drafted a good report on an extraordinarily complex set of questions. It is a report which will be of great interest to the Convention, which is itself studying these questions. The primary achievements are: firstly, to make a clearer distinction between legislative and executive acts; secondly, to rationalise the choice of the instruments available so that force will more clearly follow form and, thirdly, to bring in a clearer class of subordinate legislation which should contribute not only to the quality of primary legislation but also to the parliamentary scrutiny of what is passed. My main amendment on behalf of my group seeks to insist upon a separate amendment procedure for the second part of the Constitutional Treaty. It is essential that the policy chapters are susceptible to a softer form of revision than the existing unanimity, plus national ratification in all Member States. If we fail to bring in such a softer procedure, it may never be possible to alter the political chapters. If the Union insists on the same procedure for the first and second parts, what is the point of splitting the Treaty in the first place? The Groups used to support the lighter procedure and I trust that their spokesmen will be able to enlighten us as to why they now seem to have changed their minds. IN THE CHAIR: MR DIMITRAKOPOULOSVice-President

Political group: ELDR
Mr President, I reiterate what my colleague, Mr McCartin, has just said. He is speaking on behalf of the Committee on Budgets. There is money there to support the proposals that were passed by the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development, for a EUR 30 fixed rate premium and a EUR 9 supplement premium. There is money there. I appeal to colleagues to support the views of the Agriculture Committee. I fear tonight's vote – on a Thursday night – may be unrepresentative of the large majority decision at the Agriculture Committee on this particular issue. The Community average income of sheep and goat producers is generally amongst the lowest of all sectors, especially in northern Europe where lambs are reared in meat production systems. I quote the words of the Commission: 'Unlike beef and other commodities, the Community is deficient in sheepmeat and, under the present regimes, there is a major exodus from sheep production, especially in northern Europe. The beef regime unwittingly also supports this exodus from sheep production as ewes are counted for extensification payment under this regime but are not paid for, thereby encouraging farmers who have the option to decrease their sheep and increase their cattle on a holding to draw down more extensification payments.' The most cost-effective solution from a common agricultural policy point of view is to ensure that the sheep and goat regimes, together with the impact of the beef regime, encourage as much land as possible to be kept in Europe in sheep production. It is at least four times as expensive to support a livestock unit of beef, compared to that of sheepmeat. While beef producers need all the support they are getting, given their present difficulties, it is not in their interest either to have competition generated between dry stock sectors by imbalance in the respective regimes. The main proposal for a fixed, single annual premium I fully support, at EUR 30. I fully support it, in place of the unfair, uncertain and – from a WTO perspective – unacceptable present deficiency payment system. We support the flexibility amendments to send a message to the Commission that there is room for different treatment in some Member States in relation to this regime, providing that it does not come from the flat rate payment. We cannot support the identification and traceability amendments because this is a matter for DG V, not because we do not support the principle but because it is for another DG, and for that reason solely.

Political group: PPE-DE
I would like to ask the Commissioner whether he agrees with the President of the United States of America that perhaps Europe's position on trade in genetically modified crops is having an effect on our trade with the southern African countries in agricultural products, thereby affecting their ability to feed themselves?

Political group: PPE-DE
The Commission is proposing a revision of the European Investment Bank's external lending mandate, under which loans are guaranteed from the EU budget, so as to take account of the new Neighbourhood Policy against the background of the enlarged European Union, as part of its proposals for the 2007-2013 policy and financial framework. If the overall ceiling for credits opened, equivalent to EUR 20 260, is taken into account, it will soon be seen that the report accompanying this legislative proposal does little to further the geopolitical considerations and objectives which it is supposed to be inspired by, and in particular the creation of a pan-European-Mediterranean free trade area, in which the European Union has great political, economic and military influence at regional level. The Neighbourhood Policy gives particular priority to Russia, for which the rapporteur proposes an increase of EUR 500 million in the provisional allocation, and to the Mediterranean shore countries. These loans would obviously serve the European Union's policy of regional influence, interest and interference – an objective that we reject. But more worrying still is the fact that this Neighbourhood Policy appears to be to the detriment of the European Union's cooperation and development policy, especially in relation to the ACP (Africa, Caribbean and Pacific) countries, Latin America and Asia.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, the report by Mr Galeote identifies certain shortcomings, which the Commission has already recognised in its communication relating to the reform necessary to improve the Community’s external service and furthermore it puts forward a number of proposals aimed at achieving the best possible operation of that external service. The importance of his work is accentuated by two factors which have arisen simultaneously in recent times. On the one hand, the role, which is increasingly recognised and accepted by the Union, which we have to play on the globalised international stage, and, on the other hand, the cooperation which we must promote in pursuit of a North-South rebalance and which finds its most obvious embodiment within the framework of the new Cotonou Agreement. As a member of the Committee on Development and Cooperation, I would like to support what Karin Junker said in her opinion, highlighting the essential fact that our external service contributes to the success of those countries which, through development, are seeking freedom and prosperity. Through the amendments approved by the Committee on Development and Cooperation we ask that the rationalisation of the external service should not mean the closure of delegations in the developing countries. The reform must take place with a view to increasing the efficiency of action rather than according to exclusively financial criteria. To this end, the Commission must be present on the ground, the officials must have direct contact with the reality of under-development, with the development agents and the local authorities, and very much increasing support for, and support from, both local and European NGOs. The creation of delegations with a regional scope is not an acceptable alternative to the closure of delegations in countries such as Cape Verde or Costa Rica. We also ask that the multi-annual programmes for delegations, announced by the Commission, take account of the development objectives, that local staff be employed, that the officials have specific training and that greater coordination between the Commission delegations and the representations of the Member States be sought. I believe it would be very positive to open a delegation in a country such as Cuba, which is a pre-candidate to the signing of the Cotonou Agreement and which has been accepted for membership by our partners in the ACP Community.

Political group: PSE