GwendalTsang/DEFT09-parquet huggingface dataset:
The fact of the matter is that yesterday evening, in accordance with the Rules of Procedure, I withdrew this explanatory statement. I asked the secretariat of the Committee on Budgetary Control to draft a letter to that effect. Because we were sitting in the evening, that was no longer possible. I assume that if I go to my office now, I will find the letter there and can sign it so that we can proceed accordingly.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the European Parliament has already, on several previous occasions, adopted positions on the human rights situation in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, in 1991 and 1997 in particular. At that time, Parliament requested the unconditional release of prisoners of conscience but this request was ignored and since then at least one of them, Mr Tchongsouk Saysangkhi, has died in prison. After 25 years of Communist rule, the people of Laos are today hoping that their country will follow the path of transition to democracy and are calling for free elections. The Laotian Government, however, continues to stamp out any peaceful demonstrations, such as the one held on 26 October 1999 and, more recently, on 17 November 2000. The organisers of the earlier demonstration were arrested and are still in prison. The leader of the second demonstration, Mr Phommachaul Phannolath, was also arrested along with other demonstrators. The resolution before the House denounces these human rights violations and reminds the Lao People’s Democratic Republic that, as a partner of the European Union through a Cooperation Agreement signed in April 1997, it undertook to promote and protect all human rights. The Lao PDR also showed its commitment to this by signing two United Nations conventions on human rights in December 2000. This commitment must henceforth be backed up with real action. Furthermore, the Lao PDR is taking on the role of coordinator of relations between the European Union and the Association of South East Asian Nations until 2002. This role gives it further responsibilities in promoting the concepts and values on which the partnership is based. I hope that Parliament will give its support to the European Union’s strategy on the region as well as to all the people of Laos who are working towards democracy and for national harmony within the country. The compromise resolution is well-balanced, clear and specific. On behalf of my group, I would urge you to support it so that the European Parliament can make its voice heard in this troubled area of the world. (Applause)

Political group: PPE-DE
The Danish Social Democrats in the European Parliament have, today, voted in favour of this report. We agree that the EU and Europol should combat international crime and are therefore satisfied with the report as a whole. We are nonetheless alert to the fact that certain amendments call upon legal cooperation and police cooperation to fall within the Community’s competence and that this is incompatible with Denmark’s reservation, cf. the protocol concerning Denmark’s position. We do not support these amendments.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, I welcome the Cercas report and congratulate the rapporteur on a very balanced approach. In the UK, 4 million people – or 16% of the workforce – currently work more than 40 hours per week. At the beginning of the 1990s the figure was 3.3 million people, or 15% of the workforce. It beggars belief that more people voluntarily want to work in excess of 40 hours a week now than was the case at the time of the introduction of this directive. This calls into question the use of the individual opt-out and whether genuine free choice of workers, as laid out in the directive, is being respected. Long hours damage workers' health through stress and burnout; they affect the productivity of industry and harm family life. No one should be forced to work more than 40 hours. I support flexibility, but there must be genuine free choice, and I am not convinced that free choice currently exists.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, I want to put my voice mainly on the side of what Mr Harbour, Commissioner Bolkestein and others have said about the need to develop and improve the single market, particularly in the context of services and patents and other matters which have been discussed. We must, however, bear in mind that the confidence of our fellow citizens in this process also depends on proper observation of what you might call boundary conditions. For example, the single market could clearly be pursued in a way which ignored environmental side constraints. That is not happening, but it is vital that this situation be sustained. The same applies for certain social conditions and constraints. In relation to services, there is a nervousness among our citizens about public services and services of general interest. To what extent are these fully exposed to the single market conditions and to what extent are they properly kept aside? I was looking today at Commission document COM(2002) 208 and just reflecting on what we mean by services of general interest. I note the following definition, at 3.1.5: 'services of general interest are defined in the Commission Communication on ‘services of general interest in Europe’ as being services which the public authorities class as being of general interest and subject to specific public service obligations'. I do not think I have ever come across such a fine exercise in tautology in a public document. A service is a service of general interest if the public authorities say that it is in the general interest, and that is how they define it. Now, what that suggests is a certain conceptual lack of clarity. We have a notion that there is an area here which is subject to different conditions and constraints from that aspect of the market in services which lies fully in the private sector. If we do not get that right, we will definitely lose the confidence of our citizens. I have a large mailbag dealing with the fears people are now expressing about the way in which the general agreement on trade and services might be likely to go and the effect that could have on public services in Europe. As well as being clear about the need to extend and improve the single market and what the limiting conditions are, let us try to get out of the realm of tautology and into clear thought.

Political group: Verts-ALE
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the ‘telecom package’, the main parts of which are now being put to the vote in Parliament, is an ambitious venture which, in principle, deserves our support. It makes perfect sense to want to simplify and organise the current legal framework of no less than 28 different legal texts more clearly. That a horizontal approach has been chosen is logical and to be welcomed. The Committee on Culture, Youth, Education, the Media and Sport has called unanimously in its opinions on the various reports for care to be taken in all regulations on electronic communications networks and services so as to ensure that no conditions are attached to access which might, in the final analysis, have an adverse effect on the broad range of content. In other words, we must ensure that networks and services of general interest are adequately disseminated. The Committee on Culture, Youth, Education, the Media and Sport also sees a need for harmonisation measures within the internal market, but in a wider sense than the Commission, which wants to consolidate its powers here. The institutions have agreed, after years of arduous discussion, that different legal rules are needed for infrastructure and content. They have likewise agreed that there are links between the routes and the content disseminated via them and that these links must be duly acknowledged and taken into account in the interests of cultural variety and democratic opinion-forming within society. The market can do a great deal, but it cannot do everything. In plain text this means, for example, that in order to safeguard pluralism and a variety of opinions, the widespread dissemination of a range of content to a wide public must be guaranteed under a ‘must carry’ obligation, with the Member States alone responsible for putting the flesh on the bones of such a regulation. We must make it clear that Europe has no business interfering in national and regional radio sovereignty. From this point of view, the principle of coordination before harmonisation applies.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, thank you for allowing me to put a supplementary question on behalf of my colleague, Mr MacCormick, who is accompanying the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland on an official visit here to Parliament today. Mr President-in-Office, do you accept that this is a new and profoundly oppressive instance of the subordination of women and their seclusion into private life? For many years women in Afghanistan enjoyed a fully public existence, participating in the professions and in the world of work and dressing appropriately. Sometimes it is said that appeals to human rights involve imposing western values on non-western cultures. That is false, and this particular case in Afghanistan shows it to be so. Does the Council agree that what is needed is a restitution of women's human rights and of the fundamental respect that they are due? Surely more is needed than has been offered in the statement today.

Political group: Verts-ALE
Mr President, Commissioner, I will get straight to the point and enter directly into the debate on the location clause, which is the main focus of this debate in this House. I perfectly understand the Commission’s objective in proposing the removal of this clause. The Commission believes that the removal of this clause would increase competition between dealers and that would lead to a reduction in prices. Nothing could be more laudable for the Group of the European Peoples’ Party than the defence of freedom and consumers. The proposal as presented by the Commissioner, however, raises certain questions which should be cleared up before accepting a drastic solution. It seems clear that the current level between brands is sufficient. If the location clause is removed suddenly, do we not run the risk of reducing manufacturers’ capacity to organise their distribution network? Is there not a risk of the larger manufacturers swallowing up the smaller ones, thereby reducing competition? Secondly, the Commission’s proposals, many of which are interesting, contain sufficient elements to promote competition within a single brand. Would it not be prudent to see how it works before we use a sledgehammer to crack a nut? Thirdly, is it not clear that investments made by dealers are in danger, and the smaller the dealer the greater the danger is, which would increase the market share for the large dealers, thereby working against the objectives of the Commission? Therefore, Commissioner, since there have been no clear replies, I believe that the rapporteur’s proposal is a prudent one, there are times for valour and there are times for prudence and, in this case, it is clearly necessary to wait and see how the new elements to promote competition introduced by the proposal work before going ahead with the removal of the location clause.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, Commissioner, I found out today that France has banned rugby. That is fine by me. However, my question is this: do you think that boxing is really a sport which should be encouraged, and do you think that boxing is especially conducive to the morals and ethical values of young people?

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, I simply wish to inform you that the students reading for the Masters degree in political science of the Spanish Government’s external and Latin American foundation are present in the guest’s gallery. They are a distinguished group of young politicians – local councillors, members of parliament, high-level officials of public administrations – from various Latin American countries who are visiting us and who have spent a fruitful working stay in Brussels this week. They are a good illustration, Mr President, of the increasingly close ties between Europe and Latin America.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, President-in-Office of the Council, Commissioner, first of all, I wish to express my and my group’s sympathy for everyone hit by the disaster. The disastrous floods in Central Europe have been, and remain, appalling. Something has happened to the climate. Imbalances in the frequency of drought and rainfall are becoming more and more common, and winds are becoming more and more violent. In Johannesburg, an attempt was made to find global solutions. The country which causes the most pollution per head of population – the United States – does not wish to participate. The way the world is at present, it is the EU which must now assume the leading role in bringing about a sound environmental policy. The President-in-Office of the Council, Mr Haarder, stated that this will affect our processes and decisions. I believe that that is the case. Major issues have arisen within the EU which have required common solutions and have welded countries and peoples together. That has applied in the cases of the Coal and Steel Union, agricultural policy, the internal market and Economic and Monetary Union. I am convinced that we must pull ourselves together in order successfully to cope with the world’s future environmental problems. The next major project for the European Union should be to create a common environmental policy that is both tough and directly binding upon countries and individuals. In that way, it might be possible to raise the standard without anyone’s being able to lower it again, and the EU would be given the opportunity to play a leading role when it came to improving the global environment. That is the most important issue for humanity and the EU combined.

Political group: ELDR
Mr President, in relation to yesterday's Minutes, under item 2 in the errata section there is a comment about Amendment No 742 on the budget. The general rapporteur and I would disagree with what is printed here, but I am not too sure what the correction should be. Before we agree that as a Minute, can we have an investigation into what exactly the vote was on so as to clarify the situation?

Political group: PSE
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the regulation creating a European Aviation Safety Agency was welcomed by all groups in committee. Basically, this regulation needs to take account of three points. First, and this has always been the most important point, once there is a liberalised air traffic market, which will give rise to new competitive pressures and the risk of using competition to cut costs, cost cuts must not be made at the expense of safety. That is why I say, loud and clear, that this regulation is a sign that we want to guarantee a uniformly high standard of safety in the EU Member States in future and ensure that it is identical in every state. The second point is also, I think, an important aspect to bear in mind, despite the fact that it often receives short shift in policy. There are also economic policy aspects to this regulation because, in it, we are creating an authority or, more accurately, an agency which brings all the licences and permits needed for the air travel industry under one uniform licensing procedure. That means that, in future, individual Member States will not need to repeat the entire procedure and everything will be taken care of by this standard agency in the European Union.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, I should like to thank the Presidency for its answer to my question. The fact is that, in those countries which are to decide whether or not to join the common currency, such as Sweden and Denmark, there are discussions taking place about the significance of Euro-11. I think it is important that the Presidency should again state that Euro-11 has no formal right of decision-making whatsoever. The question, however, is that of whether any individual questions in the informal Euro-11 discussions can be pointed to which have subsequently led to formal decisions in ECOFIN. I wonder if the Council of Ministers can provide examples of any such concrete questions from the discussion in Euro-11 which have led to a new policy’s having been created.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, rail transport is very important in terms of citizens’ mobility, the development of trade within Europe and in terms of the environment and regional planning. The European Parliament has already paved the way for the liberalisation of international freight transport at its first reading, by granting authorised applicants track access rights. This rail package was the subject of a Council compromise in December. The Council suggests that the choice of authorised applicants should be left to Member States’ discretion, that the freight rail networks be opened up using a specific network called the “Trans-European Rail Freight Network” and, lastly, that the division into separate entities only take place progressively. I note, without any satisfaction, that the Council’s position also takes account of the various national situations and grants each State the right to determine their own choices and for example, to pursue cooperation commitments. However, we are faced with an ultraliberal proposition at this second reading. The amendments tabled sanction the overall fragmentation of the rail system, which would mark the end of subsidiarity for the authorised applicants in 5 years’ time and mean that the separation of entities would not be achieved progressively. It would also mean the complete opening up of international and national freight transport and, by 2010, of passenger transport. Just a few moments ago we were speaking about electricity and on Thursday we shall address the issue of the single European sky. Throughout the public sector the same refrain is heard: liberalise, it’s magic! In my view, rail transport would be left with an enormous bill. Rail companies would be forced into the role of service provider, which would create unfair competition. While the service providers benefit from the largest part of the commercial margin and are free to choose the most profitable sectors, the rail companies on the other hand are left to bear the high equipment and personnel costs. In opposition to the argument advanced regarding the increase in traffic, this system might cause the isolation and disastrous creaming off of the more profitable sectors. This same dogma is aimed solely at gaining profits through liberalisation, and users and employees do not get a say. No proper preliminary study was undertaken and what is more, I think that we should take time to study the impact of the decisions taken by the Council. It would also be useful to compare – in relation to the freight paths – the private and the public sector. If the proposals from this second reading are adopted, they would be considered as a real provocation by all involved in the sector. I can neither endorse them, nor the amendments tabled by the Socialist Group that suggest a need for further opening up on the path to liberalisation.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, we had an agreement with the rapporteur. His intention was to submit an oral amendment, whereupon we would withdraw our own amendment. I ask that Mr Brok should be given the floor.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, the Greek Government's invitation to NATO to assume responsibility for the security of the Olympic Games provoked acute reaction from a very broad political spectrum in Greece. This is not just an insult to the Olympic spirit of peace, given that ΝΑΤΟ is a terrorist warmongering organisation par excellence, it is also an insult to the pacifist, anti-NATO feelings of the Greek people, as expressed on a daily basis in Greece. This turns Greece, as numerous sides have denounced, into a magnet for terrorist counterattacks. Clearly, both the measures to suppress and repress democratic freedoms and rights and the deep penetration of NATO into public and private life in Greece will not stop when the Olympic Games end, but will continue and become a permanent feature. That is how, on the pretext of security and combating terrorism, the Olympic ideals are being profaned and a nation is basically being bound hand and foot. That is how the immense hypocrisy of the pronouncements about the Olympic truce is uncovered. Interpreting the pacifist and anti-imperialist feelings of the Greek people, we condemn this situation and call on all those in the House who continue to take even a rudimentary interest in democracy to call for NATO not to interfere in the Olympic Games. IN THE CHAIR: MRS CEDERSCHIÖLDVice-President

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, Commissioner, at this point in the debate I am not going to enter into a discussion of the Dary report, nor discuss its fundamental points, but I do wish to say that the official position of the Group is in support of the entire Dary report. That is the official position. Commissioner, your proposal does not accord with the objectives nor resolve the problems being suffered by the banana industry and politically it is not worthy of our producers. Mr Schwaiger recognised this a moment ago. Nor does the Commission’s proposal comply with our international commitments. However, the most serious problem is that, immersed in difficult negotiations with the World Trade Organisation, we are showing publicly, in black and white, where our weak points lie. Therefore, Commissioner, I ask you to listen to this Parliament – not simply to hear us – and to take note of the directions indicated in the Dary report and the opinions of the two competent committees. This Parliament is sending you a very clear political message, unanimously from the committee responsible in this area, and I hope that this House will support it by a majority. Judging by the great political sensitivity which you have always shown, I am sure that you will understand that message. Furthermore, I am sure that you will find a viable route in the direction indicated. Therefore, Commissioner, act politically, find a solution and listen to this Parliament. This is not the time to fail to take account of this House.

Political group: PPE-DE