GwendalTsang/DEFT09-parquet huggingface dataset:
Mr President, Commissioner, we have here today a proposal to amend the directive on the implementation of the principle of equal treatment for men and women as regards access to employment, vocational training and promotion and working conditions. The modifications are presented taking into account the Treaty of Amsterdam and the rulings of the Court of Justice in recent years. The basic idea is to adapt the directive to social reality and to take up the demands of women to solve the problems of different treatment in the workplace. For the first time it is considered that sexual harassment in the workplace is discrimination on the grounds of sex. We request preventive measures and measures to help women whose working lives and professional careers are damaged due to sexual harassment. It should be highlighted that the amendments introduced give support to women regarding pregnancy and maternity, guaranteeing that they can return to their jobs and benefit from any improvements that may have taken place during their absence. The positive action measures to balance out their representation in the different employment sectors will also be effective. Women, especially younger women, now have a high level of professional qualifications, but this is not reflected throughout their working lives, as in general they are in lower-qualified posts that do not enable them to fully achieve their professional expectations. The directive will help solve these problems, but it is the Member States, through their national legislation, which ultimately need to ensure that women can work full-time without their personal or family lives being badly affected as a result. Those of us who think that we need to support the family know that it is essential to start by supporting women in order to enable them to reconcile family and working life as a principle of Community legislation. I have to say that it has genuinely been difficult working on this proposal, but we have made an effort to highlight the points of agreement and the objectives of the directive over and above the logical differences between different political groups.

Political group: PPE-DE
Madam President, I wish to begin by welcoming Commissioner Patten’s statement, which sets out the truth about our European assistance. Once again, we see the scenes on our TV screens of starving children in Ethiopia and we remember the horrors of the last famine in the Horn of Africa. Once again, we have pop stars and celebrities criticising the institutions of Europe and national governments for doing too little too late. It is amazing how quickly some people become experts when a situation like this arises and they can see some publicity, without knowing more of the background to the overall position. Somalia is war-torn into small fiefdoms, which makes it extremely difficult for anyone – institutions or NGOs – to deliver food aid to the starving people. Who does one negotiate with in such a situation? Ethiopia is engaged in a border dispute with Eritrea, which means most of the manpower is tied up on a war front and much-needed food is being diverted in both countries to feed soldiers rather than starving children. Of course we must do everything in our power to alleviate famine. However, where countries are at war, all our aid must be humanitarian and channelled through NGO organisations to ensure that aid goes to the starving people and not to the war front. We must watch the situation in Eritrea and balance humanitarian aid there, if required. We desperately want these two countries to sign a peace agreement through the efforts of the OAU so that we can resume full development aid to both countries. I recently spent a week in both Ethiopia and Eritrea. I visited refugee camps in both countries and saw for myself the hardship and the poverty people are suffering. It is not true to say that Ethiopia has not been crying for help for food aid over the past two years, but the war situation has blurred the vision of many looking on. When I was there they were pleading for help. I saw children with serious malnutrition and in need of health care, as well as food and proper shelter. I saw families living in caves, the walls running with water, and listened to the hacking coughs of children racked with fever. It looks bad on TV; it is a hundred times worse when you stand amongst it, when people are in such dire situations. However, I saw food aid being delivered in Eritrea by German NGOs to a camp of 16 000 people, spread over 7 kilometres in case of bombing raids. I watched two strong men lifting 50-kg bags on to women’s backs and saw them stagger off to their plastic shelters kilometres away. I saw children aged eight walking eight kilometres out and eight kilometres back to get water. They were the lucky ones: they were the ones with food. We never seem to learn a lesson from the past. It should not be TV cameras and pop stars who alert us to starvation and drought: there should be a proper monitoring system in the sensitive areas of the African continent. Perhaps this could be built into Commissioner Patten’s rapid reaction unit we heard of yesterday. We must have action and we must have action decisively and urgently.

Political group: PPE-DE
Thank you, Commissioner. I understand the point you are making in terms of preparatory action, but I wondered whether you could comment on whether actual budgetary provision will be covered under the action taken in the 2005 budgets. Pilot schemes, as you say, are being carried out and I was interested not so much in assessments but in whether proper provision within the budgets for preparatory action will be included.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, Mr President of the Court of Auditors, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I should like to welcome this report by the Court of Auditors, in particular for the innovations it makes and for the wealth of its content, and to pay special tribute to the President, Mr Fabra Vallés. I would also like to thank the Commissioner for her kind words to me and I wish to offer her my particular thanks for the cooperation I have received from the Commission services in this discharge process. The framework of budgetary implementation in 2001 outlined by this report is characterised by a very strong implementation of the budget, which in particular affects appropriations for the pre-accession and Structural Fund programmes, due to ongoing shortcomings in Community accounting procedures, which need to be reformed as a matter of urgency, and also due to the persistence of long-standing problems, such as the lack of transparency in the Commission’s handling of the system of protection for the European sugar industry. Amongst the shortcomings of the budgetary implementation it is particularly shocking to see that the stated concern at the lack of preparation of the candidate countries appears to have varied in a way that is inversely proportional to the Funds that have actually been made available to the final beneficiaries, especially to the farmers of these countries. It sometimes appears that the myriad consulting companies that hover around the European institutions, often composed of former officials or of officials on temporary leave, are more important than the citizens. The rules are also taking on an absurd and increasing complexity, which is out of step with reality. In the much needed revision of the accounting system everything – and I mean ‘everything’ – that is considered necessary to ensure that the EU’s accounting systems adhere to international best practices and public accounting standards must be done. The modernisation of accounting and payment procedures, with clear, accessible and exhaustive codification of all expenditure, with the systematic notification of final beneficiaries and with clear and consistent terminology, are projects that we would like to see implemented. The transparency of relations between the European institutions and the outside world is a recurring concern. The Court’s account of the case that led to the sugar system not being reformed demonstrates how one of the most anachronistic farming systems in the Community has been able to hold out for almost four decades without making any significant changes. In a complex high level intermediation system it is sometimes easy to forget the citizens in favour of the pressure groups, overlooking those in greatest need in favour of those who are able to exert the most and the most effective pressure. It is therefore crucial to make the fight for transparency and fairness part of our daily work.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, I would like to put a question. As it is the case that various questions are submitted for question times, what method is used to determine the order in which the questions are taken? I would be interested to know how it is done.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, I would ask you to hear me out, right to the end of the 60 seconds available to me for this explanation of vote before you form an opinion. This morning, I took part in an important meeting organised by Mr Pronk on pensions in France. The French director of the French Caisse des retraites explained to us how the Caisse des retraites works – or rather, does not work. Pensioners in France, and in Europe as well, will have to tighten their belts. They will have to work for 45 years and, throughout Europe, will have to wait until they are 70 before they can retire. There will probably be a law saying that they can only eat once a day. This is why I voted for the document on sugar: because it is very useful for sweetening the pill for the pensioners who, throughout Europe, are going to need a lot of sugar for energy.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, on that last vote, I would just like to inform the House that the Commission issued a press release yesterday and Commissioner Reding spoke last night to the effect that, as regards the report we have just passed and agreed on mobility for teachers, students, academics, others involved in education, and helping them to move around Europe to study, to work and everything else related to the education field, the Commission will not accept the amendments which ask them to do something to enforce these arrangements. We have exchanged all the happy words and have asked Member States to take action but the Commission, because of restrictions on its budget and reasons that it has given before, is now indicating that is not prepared to follow through to see how the measures are being implemented in the different countries, which to my mind rather neuters the whole report that Parliament spent a long time putting together. This is also very sad for thousands of students and others involved in education across Europe. (Applause)

Political group: PSE
UN resolution 56/168 lays down equal opportunities in order to provide a binding framework for the protection and dignity of the disabled. That is why it is important: - for there to be an effective monitoring mechanism, as with the other six conventions on human rights in the USA, - for the convention to be based on promoting the various rights of the disabled, as stated in the Lynne report, - for provision to be made for the participation of the disabled themselves and the organisations that represent them in setting up national and international bodies, always bearing in mind, of course, that bureaucratic distortions need to be addressed, - for discrimination to be abolished, - for there to be an urgent timetable for a Community directive.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Madam President, I am not now referring to the Minutes, but I would like to turn all my colleagues’ attention to a certain tragic event that took place yesterday in Yerevan, Armenia. I would ask you to consider whether we could hold a minute’s silence as that country’s President of the Parliament and Prime Minister was killed in an armed attack. In addition, sixty people were injured in the attack, which was targeted at a democratic parliament. I would ask you to consider holding a moment’s silence as a result of this incident, which we, as Members of Parliament, can in no way endorse. On the contrary, we must do all we can to restore parliamentary peace there. (Applause)

Political group: Verts-ALE
Mr President, Commissioner, the vast majority of my group does not support this initiative of a motion of censure on the Commission. We think it is inappropriate, because voting for the resignation of the Commission every time that bad management problems are discovered and recognised is quite excessive. As well as individual disciplinary measures, what we need to do is to increase the independence, powers and resources of OLAF and give the Commission as a whole the human and financial resources to fulfil its tasks. The reforms undertaken by the Commission aim to do this, as the Commissioner has just said, and the European Parliament has made specific recommendations in several resolutions, which we are waiting to see implemented. In the historic period that is beginning of a Union of twenty-five, in which we need to succeed with enlargement, our group thinks that we need a competent European executive and civil service which is subject to permanent democratic monitoring by Parliament.

Political group: Verts-ALE
A heartfelt thank you to the rapporteurs for their work. More and more, we need to follow our words with actions. Disrespect for human rights, racism, xenophobia and antisemitism are not confined to other continents, but are also present here, within ourselves, our lives and our institutions. Even in this Parliament, fascist and xenophobic opinions are expressed. We must start with ourselves if we want to build a world where everyone helps each other. We will be able to intervene more effectively in countries which deny the existence of human and social rights – whether these are the rights of Kurds, Palestinians, Chechens or the rights of Afghan women – if we avoid hypocrisy. Europe is full of Haiders. We are Haiders when, to give the minor example of an incident which took place in Rome last week, Bosnian Roma refugees are deported with the approval of the mayor and sent back without aid to places of conflict; children and mothers, brothers and sisters separated, without even the time to gather together any belongings to take with them; children born in Italy snatched away from their schools where they have become integrated and made good friends with the other pupils. We are Haiders when, in Rome, parties of the right-wing opposition and the new centre incite the people to hatred and prevent the authorities from accommodating the Roma safely in places with running water and electricity. And this does not mean that I do not condemn the unlawful behaviour of many Roma and other immigrants. I would like to be able to share with everyone my conviction that, in our countries, no one is a stranger. For this reason I give my full support to the proposals contained in the resolutions which promote and lend support to all those elements which contribute to a culture of peaceful coexistence and all-embracing citizenship.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, as has been pointed out previously, we European citizens have witnessed, in astonishment and live on TV, a crime against humanity, as the president of my group pointed out, and an attempt to destroy our freedom and democracy. The first thing we must do is to share in the pain of the American people. Please allow me to say that we Spaniards fully understand the suffering of the victims. But in the immediate aftermath we must react determinedly in order to defend our freedom and to do justice to the victims, showing the terrorists and their accomplices that their objectives have failed. As in other eras of our history, it is essential that we reaffirm our democratic values in order to destroy the totalitarian course which terrorism takes us along. The European Parliament has demonstrated its unequivocal commitment to combating terrorism, and the Watson report is a clear example of this. But, now in particular, we must continue to put our political weight and impetus behind the concrete initiatives presented to us by the European Commission. The President of my Group has presented certain budgetary initiatives aimed at strengthening the role of Europol. Let us hope that the Committee on Citizens’ Freedoms and Rights, Justice and Home Affairs – and I appeal to its Chairman – may, for its part, set an agenda allowing it to present to Parliament a proposal this year, which will allow the Belgian and Spanish Presidencies to finish their work in the coming months. The European institutions have an inescapable responsibility to speed up procedures in order to provide the justice system with Community instruments which will make their work against terrorism and organised crime more effective. The European Commission, and in particular Commissioner Vitorino, must be aware that it can count on the support of Parliament in order to guarantee concerted cooperation and action in tracking down these criminals, because this is the way to put an end to terror.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, the purpose of my speech was not to express my opposition. I just wanted to say that I found that the amendments tabled by Mrs Maes were in the right direction but that, nonetheless, the debate we had did not fully correspond to the text we have to vote on. So, personally, I will not be taking part in this vote because I believe that the dimension of the responsibility of Western countries, especially France, in relation to Chad was not adequately developed in the text. I accept the amendments tabled by Mrs Maes, but personally I will not be taking part in the vote on Chad because I think it does not go far enough.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the European Union sets great store by equal rights for men and women and also by development cooperation policy. We are all familiar with the poignant examples: the Nigerian woman, Amina Lawal, who was going to be stoned while her lover got off scot-free; women who, simply because they are women, have no access to loans to set up small businesses; girls who continue to be denied education because as women, they will not need it anyway and they can meanwhile help out in the home. A great deal remains left to be done. We incorporate it in every regulation, but ‘paper is patient’ and it is difficult to implement it. Especially in the delegations, expertise is required in this area. I think it is somewhat disappointing that the Commission, during the review of the regulation – which lapses at the end of 2003 – presented a proposal that seeks only to act as a catalyst. From reports of the results of previous actions, it transpired, in fact, that these were not very impressive, while moreover, the planned budget is only partly being used. I do not want to go into the reasons for this, but I hope that this new approach, which the Commission supports, will be more effective. Commissioner, the budget for this regulation is small, too small according to my committee, even if the Commission wants the objectives to be achieved by synergy and other actions and programmes. I would therefore underline the fact that it is essential to have experts on the ground. That costs money. Surely, we should be able to find the money? This requires training and refresher training, as I heard from Peru’s delegation only last week. However, constant requests are being made for the more effective regulation of these matters elsewhere too. Three years is not long, but it would be good if we could say: ‘Look, progress is being made, more women have a prospect of a say in the political, social and economic spheres; more girls are allowed schooling and women are also entitled to good health.’ Commissioner, I am making an urgent appeal to you.

Political group: ELDR
Mr President, I should like to begin by congratulating both the rapporteur from the Committee on Women’s Rights and Equal Opportunities and the rapporteur from the Committee on Development and Cooperation for the work they have done in connection with this report. I think that the 20 or 21 amendments tabled at first reading show very well the cooperation there has been between these two committees. They have been an inspiration to each other. The Commission has adopted 20 out of 21 proposals, which is to be welcomed. I naturally find it annoying that we have not been able to increase the budget from EUR 9 million to EUR 11 million but, in line with other rapporteurs, I accepted that, if we wanted to conclude matters now, we should have to conclude with a figure of EUR 9 million for the appropriation for the next three years. It was the only opportunity we had to complete things and get matters under way. In common with others, I attached greater importance to this than to having the budget increased, partly because the previous funds have not been used. That being said, I think, in a way, that EUR 9 million is too small an amount when we consider what it really is we are up against. We often talk about the EU being an economic superpower in the world, which is what it in fact is, but it can safely be said that we are positively prehistoric in the area of development. Overall, we are clearly the world’s biggest provider of aid, and it is therefore important, of course, that we debate the basic principles upon which development work is based. Gender equality is one of the areas concerned, and a very important area too. It is a sine qua non that if we too do not combat female poverty, we shall simply not succeed in getting development under way. There is reason for hoping that what we have before us may be a stimulus to such development. In itself, it is not of course enough, but it can hopefully act as a catalyst, in the way described.

Political group: ELDR
draftsman of the opinion of the Committee on Women's Rights and Equal Opportunities. – Mr President, I would like to welcome the Commission's action plan on skills and mobility and Mrs Bastos' report. Whilst it is the lack of jobs rather than the lack of mobility which is the main problem for the unemployed in Europe, the issues identified by the Commission taskforce are very important. I would like to make a few specific points that were highlighted by the Women's Rights and Equal Opportunities Committee: First, gender mainstreaming is a requirement for all Commission documents, but an annex to this action plan explaining how it was done in this case would not only help ensure that the measures are adhered to, but would also demonstrate how mainstreaming was achieved in a practical way. This would be a good example for other policy areas. Second, regional initiatives are proposed to support training for women in occupations where they are not equally represented. The revised Equal Treatment Directive allows Member States to provide such additional vocational training in areas such as the scientific sector and this should be built on in the action plan. Third, the action plan proposes the formation of industrial, educational and other advisory bodies. Whilst I know that membership of these bodies is not always within the Commission's jurisdiction, a clause requiring the Commission to ensure equal representation when possible sends everyone involved a very clear message that this is desirable and expected. Geographical mobility means more, of course, than simply getting a job in a different place. There are other issues to be taken into account, particularly for workers with children: access to housing, social services, good quality education and childcare. The report makes several points which I welcome and which are important to women, such as qualifying periods for supplementary pension rights – as mentioned by the Commissioner – and the use of best practice to encourage more young women to take an interest in mathematics, science and technology. I hope Parliament will support the report.

Political group: Verts-ALE