GwendalTsang/DEFT09-parquet huggingface dataset:
Mr President, Commissioner, the compromise reached in the legislative consultation between Parliament and the Council on the development of rail transport is one of the most important results to have been achieved in the transport sector during the Finnish and French presidential terms. I would like, on behalf of my group, to thank the rapporteurs, Mr Jarzembowski and Mr Swoboda, for their reports on the railway package as well as the Conciliation Committee, for their excellent work, which can be considered to be a breakthrough in this important issue. Our group is in favour of improved competitiveness in the railways and liberalisation. The legislative consultation between Parliament and the Council resulted in a satisfactory package that meant the job of developing rail transport could be tackled with vigour. The development of rail transport will remain on the agenda in the future, as the Commission is promising a second railway package to include further liberalisation and the aspect of safety. I consider the safety aspects of railways, as with other forms of transport, to be particularly important. The utilisation of the best technology that promotes safety, and its wider application, must become a key point of focus. The development of rail transport is vital to solve the problems of traffic congestion. It will ease the problem of both road and, furthermore, air traffic congestion. At the same time, however, we have to ensure that the trans-European transport networks also extend to more sparsely populated and remote regions. As has been stated here, environmental considerations also powerfully advocate the development of the railways. In the future, we will have to carefully observe how this railways package will be implemented in practice, and there must be further liberalisation in the light of the experience we gain from that. Special attention has to be paid to the coordination of different forms of transport as well as the overall functioning of the network.

Political group: ELDR
Mr President, Mrs Lulling is the embodiment of non-populist intelligence. Nevertheless, the total harmonisation of indirect taxation has never been an objective of the European Union. An internal market can work perfectly well with fiscal competition, as long as it is fair competition. The proof of this is the American internal market, in which the fifty States of the Union continue to tax consumption through local taxes of between 0 and 10 percentage points. The coordination of VAT rates and excise duties that took place with my modest contribution, in 1991, under the Luxembourg Presidency, established the base rates, including zero rates in some areas, and the ceiling rates, allowing the Member States a degree of freedom of action for a national taxation policy. However, the Commission is still pushing for fiscal unification. Each Community acquis is fiercely defended. This is the case in the debate surrounding a possible decrease in VAT rates for some highly labour-intensive services. Normally, Mr President, people eat wherever they happen to get hungry. There are very few people who will go abroad to find a hair salon with a better rate of VAT. There are even fewer citizens who call on the European competition when they have a plumbing problem. Why does the Commission not take notice when the Member States want, for example, to promote employment in certain sectors in which the VAT rate is too high? The Commission’s proposal to abolish the VAT exemption granted to public postal services comes from this same vague desire for standardisation. The postal sector is still a service organised at national level with a national price system. Until, for example, you can put an Italian or Swedish stamp on a letter in France, there will not be an internal postal market, or a real distortion of competition between the different postal systems. The reasons why postal systems are, nevertheless, fighting for the introduction of a VAT rate are basely material. By charging even minimal VAT on standard postal services, postal operators could deduct the VAT paid on their purchases. Those who would not benefit are consumers. They would very quickly face increases in postal prices. The majority of the Socialist Group will vote against VAT on postal services. We want to defend consumers. The harmonisation of VAT on postal services sought by the Commission is in fact just an attempt to create the conditions required for a subsequent privatisation of a public service for the benefit of certain private companies that are already active in that field. We oppose the privatisation of this universal service which, even in the United States, functions as a public service.

Political group: PSE
Thank you for your answer, which I think was important and valuable. In the debate in those countries which are not participating in the third phase of EMU and which are not therefore becoming a part of the euro zone, the point has been made that ministers from these countries are losing influence, not only on issues directly affecting the euro, but also on other issues dealt with by Ecofin. A real shift in power seems, in fact, to be taking place, from the meetings of Ecofin to those of the Euro 11, despite the fact that the latter are of an informal nature. I should therefore like the Council’s representative to confirm that there is no real shift in power whatsoever from the formal, regular Ecofin meetings to those of the Euro 11. I should like the Council’s representative genuinely to confirm that it is not the case that ministers from, for example, Denmark or Great Britain, are losing the power to influence other issues dealt with by Ecofin because these countries are not members of the Euro 11.

Political group: Verts-ALE
Mr President, I am not absolutely convinced that the developed world needs free trade with the rest of the world in order to make economic progress. The bigger EU States like France, Germany and the United Kingdom traded about 30% of GDP in the 1960s as against 60% today, but they enjoyed much faster economic growth at that time than they do now. From 1950 to 1970 world economic growth and the expansion of world trade ran roughly in tandem, but since then economic growth has been increasing at only half the pace of world exports: so again there is no evidence there that increased trade leads automatically to further economic growth. It is quite obvious, of course, that small countries like Ireland, Belgium and Luxembourg need free trade, but a European Union with a single market or a North American single market is an entirely different proposition. Nevertheless I believe in free trade. Because of the way the world is changing, globalisation is unstoppable unless, of course, we erect iron curtains or bamboo curtains, and those too would be blown away by the winds of change. Globalisation is happening and while there are risks it presents us with immense opportunities. The first opportunity is to create a partnership for cooperation and the management of the increased trading activities. Decision making in this way is not to by-pass democracy, it is to extend democracy. It is a new means by which to organise the activities of mankind. Behind our trade barriers there is the risk that we will cultivate the seeds of more international conflict. The rich could dig in behind their barriers, they could buy some essential things from the poorer countries but we would be back to the seventeenth century with the strong exploiting the weak. Those who are concerned about human rights, animal welfare and the environment have a much better prospect of securing improvements in those areas within a legal framework and a World Trade Organisation than they have in a free-for-all, law of the jungle. I want to congratulate Mr Schwaiger on putting together what I regard as a decent framework within which to move forward. There will be risks, but we have to explain to our people why we cannot do other than proceed.

Political group: PPE-DE
Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, I have a comment about the Minutes. In the Annex to the Minutes, in the Texts Adopted, on the Méndes de Vigo report – I am just looking for my papers and of course cannot find anything now – it states at one point that a European constitution should be drafted. This goes back to a proposal for an amendment by Mr Brok. When I checked with Mr Brok, he confirmed that he did not choose this phrase in his proposal for an amendment. I would therefore request that the proposals for amendments be used to check again whether this theme has now been included correctly in the final Méndes De Vigo document in all the languages, as we obviously want to avoid any misinterpretations here.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, I welcome this directive and Mr Nisticò's elegant improvement of its direction. We have had our arguments – indeed, we have had some today – but not about this. Herbal remedies are bought and trusted by millions and by many of us here. Their use goes back over millennia. This directive allows the basic registration of traditional remedies. It should be generous in its interpretation of how and where this traditional use established the safety requirements that are necessary. Equally, the use of these products in combination with others, including drugs, requires scrupulous attention to the possible side-effects where they may occur. This basic safety requirement is a modest proposal indeed. Professional herbal practice associations and consumer groups support it across Europe. All it requires is that we know about quality and content. The better the product, the more the maker should welcome this directive. What is in it? What will it do for me? These are questions asked by consumers, which you would indeed ask of anything you took – even a wine gum. The fact is that we are here now facing a very simple process and yet there are petitions, paranoid talk of plots and industrial lobbies mimicking consumer concerns. What do they fear? The European Medical Control Agency has estimated that in the UK, for example, out of 207 notified substances, all but 2 or 3 would sail through the process of registration without the expensive proof required for chemicals. I would ask this industrial lobby, which has embarrassed many herbalists, are your own products so safe and legal? Or could they too be adulterated, irradiated or substituted? How many tests have been conducted on side-effects? How many off-the-shelf shops offer expert advice? When the Consumers' Association in Britain tested this out on a random sample of 30, only 5 were able to offer knowledge in terms of the recommendations they made. This is an opportunity to blend tradition and the modern rediscovery of ancient skills. It gives the consumer a wider choice and offers expansion for the quality producer. Let us welcome it.

Political group: PSE
This resolution takes it for granted not only that industrial restructuring is necessary but that such restructuring necessarily entails layoffs, and that we must mitigate the effects of these. Since we are not in favour of the market economy, competition and competitiveness, we shall not enter into a discussion of whether competitiveness does or does not necessitate restructuring. The question we ask is why should it be the workers that have to pay the price of competitiveness? Instead of cutting costs by reducing the wage bill, why not deduct a similar amount from the revenue due to company owners and shareholders? The resolution takes it for granted that shareholder revenue should be protected rather than safeguarding workers’ wages. Therefore, despite a few token expressions intended to convince us of the author’s good intentions on social matters, we voted against the resolution.

Political group: GUE-NGL
The rapporteur acknowledges that the privatisation of state-owned enterprises and of public services in poor countries – privatisation desired and imposed by big Western investors and by the states that defend their interests – has helped increase poverty in the developing countries. Now that the European Commission, which is among the guarantors of the interests of big European investors, seems to be advocating more diversified forms of privatisation in these poor countries, to their disadvantage, the rapporteur openly backs its recommendations. Well, we, on the other hand, do not. We are, on principle, opposed to the open or creeping privatisation of public services, for it leads, always and everywhere, to a deterioration in the populations’ living conditions. In poor countries, this drastic impairment of peoples’ conditions of life, and even of survival, is all the more appalling in that, as the rapporteur acknowledges, it is aimed at depriving what are already some of the most destitute peoples on the planet of the very little that they have, a process that is to the sole benefit of the Western multinationals which, for their part, make more profit than they can cope with. We have therefore voted against this report.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Thank you for your answer. As the President-in-Office of the Council must certainly have suspected, I am thinking of EU documents received by Member States. The EU has now adopted new rules, a Regulation on the basis of Article 355, which means that there is a more secure legal basis. The Regulation talks about loyalty to the EU’s rules and also about having to request guidance in cases that are unclear. If, on the basis of this Regulation, the Commission and the EU’s Court of Justice find that a country cannot make documents available at national level that are classified at EU level, Community legislation may be contrary to Sweden’s principle of public access to official records. Does the President-in-Office of the Council believe that such a scenario is out of the question and, if so, why?

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, we must be clear about what we are voting on. I believe that the text you have says ‘the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia’. If that is the case, then we need a split vote to remove the ‘Former Yugoslav Republic’.

Political group: PSE
Madam President, I should briefly like to pay tribute to the work done by our fellow Member, Mr Savary, who has once again shown himself to be a staunch defender of the railways and of public services. Next I should like to tell the people who voted in favour of this report that I, of course, agreed with saying that it is no longer possible to accept the share of rail transport increasingly losing out to road transport, and that nor is it possible to accept the technical, and even regulatory, obstacles from a bygone age that stand in the way of the much-needed freedom of movement throughout the whole of Europe? All the same, for future reference, I wish to state today that making this observation and supporting this determination to make progress must not lead to untrammelled liberalisation and privatisation, as this puts our safety at risk, and we can see many examples of this today in some countries of Europe, and it is destructive as far as our public service is concerned. This is not the purpose of today’s report but, in view of debates we will have in future, I wished to state this publicly.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of my group, I wish to thank the rapporteur for some very thorough work with regard to this important issue. The purpose of the trans-European networks is to link up different regions of the EU, so that the common market may function effectively. The rapporteur, however, has viewed the matter mainly from the angle of large ports. The number of tonnes given for freight are important, but they do not always tell the whole truth. The kind of freight also has a decisive impact on volume. In the peripheral regions ports are particularly important, although the volume of freight and number of passengers are smaller than in central areas. For example, the proposal to raise the volume in tonnes of freight to 1.5 million in respect of seaports and to change the classification of ports will not, in the opinion of our group, serve the development of the trans-European networks. This would mean that the ports in the TENs would be concentrated on the densely populated central areas, and many sparsely populated peripheral regions would accordingly remain outside the TENs. The other travesty here is that only international traffic is included in passenger numbers for TEN ports. For example, ferry traffic between Scotland and Northern Ireland accounts for 1.8 million passengers a year, but these ports would remain outside the TEN if just international traffic were to be included. This service is not just important as a link between Scotland and Northern Ireland, but it is also important for the Irish Republic. Smaller, important ports and the Union’s internal passenger traffic must also be taken better account of. For that reason, our group opposes Amendments Nos 3, 4, 5, 9 and 10, among others. In this respect the Council’s position would serve the development of trans-European networks more effectively.

Political group: ELDR
Mr President, could we please check before the vote that enough members are present in the Chamber to give us the 314 votes needed or if the other two reports should perhaps go first, because there has been some confusion as to how long this break is supposed to last. In all events, we must be careful not to upset the compromise which we have now reached simply because some members are unaware of the fact that we are about to vote. On the subject itself, I have just one brief technical comment. This is a complicated subject. We must back medical progress and, at the same time, ensure that subjects are protected during trials. The committee accepted the report unanimously. Nonetheless, a number of proposed amendments have been tabled, as the Commissioner rightly says. They are compromise amendments designed to bring about agreement with the Council. The Council has asked us to accept the spirit of the report but to change the wording here and there. Hence these proposed amendments, these so-called compromise amendments from three groups. I think they reflect the views not just of these three groups but of other groups which have refrained from putting their name to them for technical reasons. I therefore call on the House to accept these compromise amendments and to reject the new proposals which have now been tabled by other groups so as to avoid jeopardising the compromise with the Council. Not because I am opposed to the proposals in principle but because I want to safeguard the compromise with the Council and avoid risking a complicated and tricky conciliation procedure for the sake of an amendment. In order to make full use of this compromise, I should like to ask the presidency to vote on proposed Amendment No 22, which is scheduled right at the beginning of the vote, after Amendment No 43, because Amendment No 43 reflects the compromise with the Council, while Amendment No 22 reflects the committee's original position and should only be adopted if the compromise does not win a majority here in the House. Before the vote on Amendment No 22:

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, I believe that overall the German Presidency was a very positive period. In particular I should like to thank them on behalf of the Committee on Regional Policy, and indeed the Socialist Members, for the very good work that was done throughout that period on the reform of the structural fund process. We believe that we have a fair and just deal for Member States. In particular I would like to thank the Germans for not only pushing ahead for progress in peace concerning Kosovo, but peace on the issues concerning Northern Ireland. This House will know that we have entered yet again a critical phase in the peace process in Northern Ireland. Successive Presidencies have backed that peace process. What I should like to say today at this inaugural session is that we hope to be able to count on our new Commission President, on the Finnish President-in-Office of the Council and indeed on Madam Fontaine to continue that good work in supporting the peace process and making a priority of peace in her visits to Northern Ireland.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, as coordinator of the Group of the European People’s Party and on behalf of my group, I would like to express our full support for the oral question and the resolution presented by Mr Stevenson on behalf of the Committee on Fisheries, in which, as he has just said, it has been approved practically unanimously. Fishing is an economic activity. Sometimes we worry more about fish than about fishermen and we have to deal with both. It is true that it is an economic activity that involves a natural resource which must be protected. But this protection should be carried out through reasonable long-term measures, with expert scientific support – one of the European Union’s outstanding tasks – and with the support of the sector in question. And when these measures are taken in this way, the sector itself will accept them better. Furthermore, we must lay down accompanying socio-economic measures in order to alleviate their possible consequences. The motion for a resolution being presented today to the plenum in the name of the Committee on Fisheries has been entirely accepted and moves in the direction which we have discussed in the Committee on Fisheries not only for cod and for these white species, but for all species in general. Today we are talking about cod and all the white species, but tomorrow we may talk about others and I believe that the solidarity with the people affected is laudable – in this case with the Nordic fishermen and essentially with the countries mentioned here, as well as Scotland, and all the Members have worked together on this. I have been pleased by the words of the Commissioner in support of these measures proposed in the committee and I would like, Mr President, on a personal basis and as a Galician, to say that, just as this House showed solidarity with Galicia in the case of the failure to reach an agreement with Morocco or following the Prestige accident, it is now the turn of the Nordic countries and the Scots and we will stand together and show mutual solidarity.

Political group: PPE-DE