GwendalTsang/DEFT09-parquet huggingface dataset:
Mr President, I have already received many reactions from within the SME world to the text that we will be adopting tomorrow and, partly on behalf of all these SMEs, I would like to congratulate the rapporteur on the work. I hope that Mr Linkohr will pass on these congratulations to Mr Murphy. I would also like to thank the Commission for its cooperation, which has been as constructive as ever. We should be proud of the common text which we will be adopting tomorrow and which we were able to adopt in the Conciliation Committee. It is regulating what should be regulated. Nothing more, nothing less. It is also regulating matters to the extent that they need to be regulated at European level. Again, nothing more, nothing less. And it is regulating matters in a legally well-organised way. We can defend it perfectly from all angles, both with regard to transactions between traders and transactions between traders and the government. Mr President, as early as in 1993 – at the very outset of the internal market – we, together with Parliament, asked the Commission to submit a proposal to regulate late payments. Initially, the Commission’s reaction was low-key, in the form of a recommendation. It subsequently took a tougher line with a proposal for binding rules. It took all of us two years to make the political choices and to formulate them in a technically correct manner. We have now provided the framework; all that is left now is the transposition. The Member States have been given two years to do this in. Let us hope, together with the thousands of SMEs in whose interest it is for the Member States to respect the transposition period, that our Member States act more swiftly. In fact, let us encourage them to do so. As far as I am concerned, a European Cup should go to the Member State which manages to finish its homework first. I have another question for the Commission. I should like to have known whether it plans to formulate proposals on conditions for setting up debt-collecting agencies, which is one of the issues which we discussed for a long time in the course of the preliminary work but which we left out of this directive for a good reason. My question is whether the Commission is planning to make proposals in this respect at a later stage and, if so, when?

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the Social Policy Agenda is a dynamic programme and, therefore, likely to be adjusted. Hence the importance of the annual assessment panel, enabling the European Parliament to monitor and control the implementation of the Social Agenda, analysing the past and programming the future. The rapporteur, Mrs Smet, has presented a magnificent price of work, which criticises the Commission communication and lays bare its weak points, as well as making clear and lucid contributions to the future implementation of the Agenda. Employment is the European Union’s number one priority. In 2000, the employment rate reached 63.2%. Despite the creation of around 3 million new jobs, it is still 7% below the Lisbon Summit objective for 2010 and the number of unemployed still persists, at 14.5 million European citizens. The low employment rates of older workers, the disparities between men and women, both in terms of the employment rate and of remuneration (18% and 14% respectively) the high levels of unemployment – around of 8% of the workforce – and regional differences in employment constitute structural weaknesses that require attention and active measures. The committed involvement of the social partners is crucial. Poverty and social exclusion are other issues that deserve increased attention. More than 60 million people are living at risk of poverty. This phenomenon varies, as is known, between Member States, but we are not mistaken in considering the fight against poverty and exclusion and their eradication to be the greatest challenge facing us. Therefore, the Commission must speed up the works that are underway in the aim of understanding and assessing the phenomenon, paying particular attention to women. With regard to promoting equal treatment between men and women, this Commission assessment panel still lacks an overall strategic approach. Consequently, the Commission must propose measures to improve the situation of women and, in parallel, to adopt initiatives to promote their full participation in decision-making in the workplace.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Mrs Paulsen’s report on undesirable substances and products in animal nutrition deals with an important subject, which, like all important subjects, is highly controversial. Irrespective of whether we eventually reach agreement, let me take this opportunity to thank all of the honourable Members whose constructive preparatory work has brought us to the present point in this discussion. Speaking for my group today as the draftsperson of the dissenting opinion in the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development, I should like to make five points. Firstly, the new proposal which was introduced by the Commission in December 1999 and which forms the basis of Mrs Paulsen's report seeks to change the system completely less than a year after the introduction of the existing directive in April 1999. The report abandons the distinction between feedstuffs, feed materials and feed additives. The new directive that will be put to the vote today does not materially alter the quality of animal feed in any way, since the proposed limit values applicable to the final feed product are the same as those in the present directive. The same is true of dioxin. What we are discussing so fastidiously is not going to be changed here. Moreover, in my eyes a crime is a crime! Secondly, for farmers, who are, of course, the producers of primary feed materials, there will in fact be a change, because in future they will have to destroy considerably higher percentages of their feed materials. What we want is a comprehensive, prudent and practicable arrangement for all concerned. The question whether the text we are now being asked to adopt is appropriate, especially from a food safety or macroeconomic point of view, is extremely debatable. I believe it is not. From my own conversations, however, I know that I am not speaking for a majority of the House on this particular point. That being the case, it is important at the present juncture to make emphatically clear that compensation for these additional losses and shortfalls suffered by farmers, to which Mrs Paulsen rightly referred, is essential, that we must create directives to regulate this and that we must reflect on how we should deal with these things at the WTO negotiations and how we should regard imported products which contain such undesirable substances. (Applause)

Political group: PPE-DE
As we sit here, hundreds of thousands of people are in enormous peril from the floods in Mozambique. This has not just happened. The flooding has been going for weeks, and yet only now it seems there is an assessment of need. The level of practical assistance from the Community and from the Member States has been pathetic. For a long time, many of us have sounded a warning that the European Union was spending too much time on its potentially damaging and essentially political project of establishing military decision-making structures, when instead it should have been concentrating its efforts on the improvement of its civil instruments, particularly for humanitarian intervention. I acknowledge Mr Patten’s efforts in this direction, but what a pity that the governments of the Member States had not devoted as much time to sorting out their capacity for disaster relief and humanitarian assistance as they have in the dangerous business of creating military structures that will ultimately duplicate and undermine those of NATO. Of course, there is a relationship between military resources and humanitarian assistance, and there are serious military deficiencies in the armed forces of many European countries. These are of long standing, but are being addressed already within NATO. I have not yet heard a convincing security-policy explanation of why the European Union needs to establish autonomous, decision-making capabilities for the use of military forces outside of the NATO structures unless it is to create bodies which will rival NATO. After all, the EU Member States are either full members of NATO or sit around the Euro Atlantic Partnership Council table. NATO is largely European. Finally, Mr Solana, I would just like to ask you what point there is in having the much heralded policy planning and early warning cell in the Council Secretariat if still we are taken by surprise by yet another humanitarian catastrophe.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, Commissioner, Mr President-in-Office, I must say that I can see an astonishing transformation. Whereas we have, over and over again, invented new and grand names for the enlargement of the European Union –‘Europe's achievement of the century’ and ‘peace project for the continent’ spring to mind – recent weeks have seen the addition of a new name for it: the ‘enlargement savings bank’. This ‘achievement of the century’ is saving the fifteen EU finance ministers a cool EUR 18 billion over against the financial decisions reached in Berlin! This is not to say that the financial decisions reached in Berlin were set rather too high through being wrongly estimated. On the contrary, criticisms were voiced at the time that it would probably not be enough for enlargement. It was said, though, out of fear of the net contributors, that we still had the reserves, and that we could call on them if it came to that. The opposite, though, is the case; the Commission has for weeks been repeating the slogan that enlargement must not cost anything. This strikes me as playing at a topsy-turvy world, as a peace project costs a fair bit. There cannot be a two-class Europe, as that would produce social tensions, migration and under-development. We therefore call for the financial forecasts to be re-examined. It is not true that rural areas and the Structural Fund are getting more. It is precisely at these points that conspicuous cuts are being made over against what was estimated in Berlin. It would, basically, be necessary to use for enlargement the EUR 15 billion that are to be given straight back to the finance ministers of the fifteen EU States in 2002 and 2003. I also believe that transitional periods are possible until 2007 at the latest. The attempt to delay phasing-in even further, until 2007, is a pusillanimous proposal and evidence of the Commission's incapacity, as it would mean that the agricultural policy would not be reformed, and that they want to adjourn the mid-term review that makes the European Union do its homework. We are not going along with that. We need an agricultural policy under which aid is linked in with ecological and social criteria and projects are funded only if they are compatible with the reform. The candidate countries, though, must participate in this reform on an equal footing. The Commission continues to reject one important proposal by Parliament, namely that the agricultural reform should be introduced now in the candidate countries in order to strengthen rural areas, and that this should be done with the citizens who live there. The Commission, I believe, must stop acting in a feeble manner, and must have the courage to reform, and the courage to tell us that enlargement will cost money if it is to be a success. (Applause)

Political group: Verts-ALE
The recent very alarming incident in which a train carrying radioactive nuclear fuels flasks, owned by BNFL, derailed at Torness power station near Dunbar, East Lothian, UK, shows the constant risk that transporting nuclear material involves. Radioactivity poses grave dangers to health and the environment. Ionising radiation transfers energy at levels that can induce changes in any matter it penetrates and even cause irreversible damage to human cells. The danger is linked to duration of exposure and intensity and type of radiation with a dose equal to or exceeding 10 000mSv (millisieverts) death occurs almost instantaneously (such high doses have only been reached in nuclear weapons explosions or serious accidents in nuclear power stations). Radiation can also have delayed effects, as determined in particular after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in the form of cancers or hereditary damage. Persons exposed to radiation levels of 200mSv or more are subject to an increased risk of cancer. This means that inhaling a few micrograms of plutonium can cause lung or tongue cancer. Similarly, dispersal of 1200g of powdered plutonium would deliver lethal doses of radiation by inhalation with a radius of more than 2 km. The risk of nuclear proliferation is greater during transportation than at any other stage in the fuel cycle. Convoys are not immune to terrorist attack aimed at stealing the packages containing highly radioactive substances. Only a few kilograms of separated plutonium are needed to build a crude nuclear explosive device.

Political group: Verts-ALE
The most important task of the approaching Intergovernmental Conference is to reform the EU before the accession of the new Member States. We therefore, of course, support the European Parliament’s now giving the formal go-ahead to the Intergovernmental Conference. We nonetheless consider that the agenda for the Intergovernmental Conference should be limited to questions which have to be resolved if it is to be possible for enlargement to take place. We also argued this in November 1999, and we would therefore refer to our explanation of vote of 18 November 1999.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, just two specific queries. Firstly, can you give some kind of guarantee – one can of course never give an absolute one – that the humanitarian aid is actually reaching the Chechen refugees, or are you relying completely on the Russian authorities for that? My second question is this: as camps have now been set up in Ingushetia and masses of people deported, do you know where those people have gone?

Political group: PPE-DE
Madam President, I want to raise an issue on the floor of the House which I am sure will be welcomed. I do so as the Labour Party spokesperson on Northern Ireland. The House would surely like to welcome the news on the peace process in Northern Ireland and the decommissioning of weapons. It serves as an example of what can be achieved through peaceful negotiation. Tribute must be given to those involved in the difficult times of the peace process and the ongoing negotiations. Mention must be made at the determination of those involved, including David Trimble, and not least a Member of this House, John Hume, who has fought for peace for over three decades. (Applause)

Political group: PSE
Mr President, on behalf of the and EFA Group, I would like to welcome the results of today's vote on GMOs. We have made quite a bit of progress here in that we have voted against the unauthorised GMOs, in other words, the kind of accidental contamination of GMOs. This is good because it was just going to leave the door open for multinational companies to use this as a way out. The threshold has been lowered to 0.5% which is very good. The report also points out that if lower thresholds are technically possible then they should be achieved. The licensing procedure will now be for one year. The licence will last for one year and then be up for renewal, and this will give people time to consider whether the license should be granted a second time. One of the most disappointing aspects of today's vote was the fact that milk or meat products that have been derived from animals which have been fed on GMO products will not be labelled. The public have a right to know if the milk that they are drinking comes from animals that have been fed on GMO feed, or whether the meat that they are eating has been derived from animals which have been fed on GMO feed. There is definitely a clear link here between what people eat and what the animals have been fed. We can see this clearly with the whole issue of BSE. It is quite clear that what the animals were being fed had a very serious and negative consequence on the consumer. The consumer, therefore, has a right to know and a right to choose and it was disappointing that this point was not voted through in the report today. It is, however, a very substantial move forward. Europe is showing the United States in particular that we really put consumers first, multinationals do not have the right to dictate to consumers what they should or should not have, and consumers have the right to obtain information and to know clearly what they are purchasing and what they are consuming.

Political group: Verts-ALE
Madam President, on Monday evening, after your statement about the Berlusconi business in Spain, I asked whether you could possibly let us have all the documents you had received from the Spanish political and judicial authorities. You replied that yes, of course, you would see to it immediately. It is now Wednesday morning and I have still not received these documents.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, Mr Verhofstadt, at the end of your Presidency, the situation is now very different from one year ago: the atmosphere has changed completely. We can roll up our sleeves, and you have indeed put three men in charge. I am interested to see how many members the delegation of the European Parliament will have in the Convention. We will count them when the time has come. You have tabled the questions, a great many questions and the right ones, in my view. Maybe we could add the odd question here and there. Why not? In my opinion, the Convention should have that flexibility. You outlined a dream a moment ago. In my view, it was a very fitting account, a very attractive prospect of what we ought to do, not only we Western Europeans, the Fifteen, but also Eastern Europe and the rest of the world. However, I would like to ask one more thing, Mr President-in-Office. You have now held the Council Presidency for six months. We now face seven years in which the Belgian Government will not be President again. I would ask you to convince all your Ministers of the fact that, during those seven years, European work is of extreme importance, that the government should not only occupy itself with European issues during the Presidency but also mainly outside of that time, for that period is longer and, most of all, certainly as important.

Political group: ELDR
Mr President, we are reminded daily of the need to achieve results speedily in the area of maritime safety. Only this week there was another accident involving a cement freighter in the so-called Kadetrenden channel in the Baltic Sea between Denmark and Germany. The delicate-sounding names of the ships, like Erika or Ievoli Sun, should not blind us to the fact that in European waters there are all too many unseaworthy rust-buckets plying about. As someone who lives on the German coast all I can say is: enough is enough! The present proposal, which is now before us for its second reading, is a part of the so-called ERIKA-1-package named after the first, very competent proposals of the Commission in response to the accident involving the tanker Erika off the coast of Brittany. When we concluded the first reading, we were full of optimism, inspired by the Commission’s new-found élan, and we believed that our amendments would be – must be – approved by the Council too, because speedy implementation was supposed to follow. But then things do not usually happen quite as one expects them to. Today, unfortunately, we are not much further on. And yet the recommendations of Parliament were entirely reasonable and this was reflected in the common position. Unfortunately, it was not then possible to reach a positive outcome early in the context of the three-way discussion. I say early, I mean of course in logical sequence! I very much regret this because avoiding a conciliation procedure would have speeded up the entry into force of the regulations. Can anyone possibly understand the Council’s blockade any more? There is no doubt that we need a practicable and fair solution to the issue of the liability of classification societies, and one that is also appropriate in terms of competition. We need to have ceilings for financial liability and the amounts need to be insurable. I therefore welcome the proposals relating to this. We must not forget that the issue of liability is not a question of one-sided apportioning of blame. All players involved must bear their recoverable share of the responsibility. This, of course, is expressed in the form of a greater duty of care – from the shipbuilder to the ship-owner – than has hitherto been the case, and also in concrete sums of money. I say we ought at long last to take a step forwards in the interests of safety. I call upon the Council to support the Commission and us and make its own contribution actively and visibly in the interests of safety.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, it was agreed when the Lisbon strategy was being decided that the EU could not become the world’s most competitive knowledge-based economy unless there was sufficient investment in human resources. That is why the decision to place skills and innovation in the frontline of the strategy at the Spring Summit is a welcome one indeed. The Commission communication is urging Member States to increase investment in skills and innovation over the next twelve months. This is a good start, but there has to be long-term investment in training. A solid skills base will not be built in a year. Public expenditure for training and education has remained virtually unchanged in all Member States in recent years. With an ageing population and as the need for labour grows we must view training and education, not just as a necessary evil, but as an investment in the future. Societies which try to make use of the whole nation’s resources, based on a policy of equality, achieve great things. Public services alone are not enough in making use of resources: the public sector must also do its share, especially by offering its employees the opportunity to receive training alongside their work. Training is the most important factor when it comes to employing people. The share of the population that works has increased in the last ten years. Since 1996, for example, 12 million jobs have been created. Most of these have been in sectors that require further or higher education. Education and training policy is the responsibility of the Member States, but we can enhance it though cooperation at EU level. The ministers for education have agreed on some common targets for education and training systems. By 2010 the number of those who leave school early should be halved and the proportion of those receiving vocational education and training among 25-64 year olds should be increased to 80%. The imbalance between men and women in the areas of mathematics, technology and science must be corrected.

Political group: PSE