GwendalTsang/DEFT09-parquet huggingface dataset:
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, it is only right that the Convention’s draft should come to the conclusion that we have too little Europe rather than too much. That is why we need coordination not only of economic and financial policy, but also of social and employment policy as well. I believe that the initiative for growth and investment, which we are discussing, makes clear how feeble are our conceptions of how growth and employment are to be organised. That is why I would like to call on the Council and its President to speak in far more definite terms about the approaches we want to take. It is, I think, a good thing that we are going back to the infrastructure modernisation measures and thinking about energy and the environment rather than just transport. I think it right that we should give some thought to research and development, but we must, above all, get a skills offensive started in all Member States simultaneously, as we will not be able to increase growth without skilled people, nor will we be able to become a knowledge-based society in which everyone is able to participate. That is why everything possible has to be done to give us functioning social services, which should, in particular, help to reconcile work and family life, for women are indispensable if we are to achieve the higher employment rate that we need. Sweden, Denmark and Finland have shown the ways in which we can do this. The European Union has no lack of sources of funds, and I am not thinking only of the EIB or of the other options available. I cannot but consider the way in which, in this European Union, payment of VAT is evaded to the tune of an estimated EUR 100 billion a year, quite apart from other taxes. That would be more than these EUR 220 billion for ten years, and would enable us to get something really up and running. That is why it really is time for us not to do as your own country does and put our faith in tax amnesties, but to at last get round to coordinating mutual assistance by tax authorities as a means of dealing with the scandalous cross-border criminal activity involving fraudulent invoicing, the motor and mobile phone trades, and the use of VAT evasion as a means of funding other underhand activities; all of these things we must put the brakes on, halt them and put an end to them once and for all. (Applause)

Political group: PSE
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, this report is very important not only in terms of its content but also because it represents an initial step towards the establishment of better relations in judicial cooperation. This clearly only applies to relations at national level as nothing is mentioned about the much-discussed European citizenship. On one hand judicial measures fall outside the Community dimension yet on the other we have the free movement of people from which criminals are also benefiting. Pursuant to Article 29 of the EU Treaty, the Union’s objective is ‘to provide citizens with a high level of safety within an area of freedom, security and justice by developing common action among the Member States in the fields of police and judicial cooperation in criminal matters and by preventing and combating racism and xenophobia’. The creation of Europol represents one step towards achieving this objective. However, we must take the next step, which is to reinforce judicial cooperation in criminal matters in order to gradually establish a genuine European judicial area consistent with the objective of creating an area of freedom, security and justice. This draft convention therefore aims to complete and facilitate the application, at Member State level, of pre-existing conventions on other legal areas. The intention is to improve judicial cooperation in criminal matters through rapid and effective legal assistance while still fully respecting the fundamental rights of the defence and the general principles of human rights enshrined in the national law of the Member States and in the European Convention on Human Rights. It is this concern for basic rights, freedoms and guarantees which has led us to support the deletion from the text of the phone tapping proposals. We recommend that the Council prepare a separate legal instrument to resolve this issue. As for videoconferencing, more precise regulations must be established so that the rights of the defence and guarantees of fair trials are safeguarded. The procedural aspect of the legal system must be respected by defending the rights... (The President cut the speaker off)

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, we have voted against the report on immigration, integration and employment by Mr Moraes, despite the fact that it is an excellent piece of work. This is due to the intransigence of certain Members from the Parliamentary Socialist Group who I believe are less concerned about the living and working conditions of immigrants than about making political capital and taking advantage of them for party political reasons. The competent committee, Employment and Social Affairs, given the content of the Communication, ‘immigration, integration and employment’, believed it was not the time to treat the possible right to vote in local or European elections as a key issue, despite the fact that the latter is regulated in the Treaty. Furthermore, this issue is regulated in each Member State. In Spain, in Article 13(2) of the Constitution, and the reciprocity principle laid down in the friendship and cooperation treaties with Chile, Venezuela, Argentina and Uruguay. Also unacceptable is the automatic regularization proposed by the , in its Amendment No 13, for all those who lack residency authorisation. This would be equivalent, Mr President, to inviting illegal immigration, and, within a short space of time, to creating, in the receiving States, a situation just like the one the immigrants arriving in Europe are trying to escape from. If only we could receive everybody who wanted to come. Since this is not possible, we must receive as many people as we can in the spirit of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union: ‘Human dignity is inviolable. It must be respected and protected’. The Group of the European Peoples’ Party would have liked to have voted in favour of the Moraes report, because we are concerned about the living and working conditions of immigrants in the European Union: their salary, their occupational health, their work. Because we want their integration and that of their families and children, because we are concerned about the situation of immigrant women, because we are in favour of intercultural coexistence in communities, cities and work places. It is a shame that the intransigence of certain members of the Parliamentary Socialist Group and the desire to make party political capital have prevented the excellent report by Mr Moraes from receiving the vote its quality merited.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, there is a mistake in the Swedish text. It reads, “increased access for the Mediterranean countries”, when it should read ‘developing countries’. I hope that other language versions are correct.

Political group: ELDR
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to thank the rapporteurs, who have managed to produce excellent reports in just a short time. However, criticism has been voiced within my group over the timing of the preparatory work of the committee. The reports are late, and, in addition, they were very hastily discussed by the Committee on Regional Policy, Transport and Tourism. A good opportunity to discuss the results, good practices and shortcomings of the earlier programmes was therefore lost. Our group is keen to stress the importance of cross-border activity under the INTERREG programme and especially cooperation focusing on areas outside the European Union. Such important areas include the Balkans and the Adriatic region, but, in my opinion, we should not ignore cooperation with Russia either. Our group would once again like to raise the issue of the practical monitoring of funds and emphasise the importance of better coordination of the INTERREG, TACIS, ISPA and PHARE programmes. This coordination is at present lacking, and the Commission has not as yet made any precise proposals to improve it. We here in Parliament are waiting for the Commission to give the committee a more detailed explanation of the issue as soon as possible. It is of decisive importance to get local business, organisations and other players involved in the practical implementation of programmes. Experience shows that projects of cooperation need better planning and closer monitoring and need to be generally more successful. Projects have often remained half-finished, and their efficiency has been drained by administration and bureaucracy. We also have to demand that our partners in cooperation be committed to projects and fulfil their share of the agreement. Our group is reviewing a few amendments that were rejected by the committee. I would like to mention here again the URBAN report, in which the rapporteur, in the explanatory statements, has dealt admirably with the issue of the minimum sum of EUR 500 per inhabitant as per the Commission’s guidelines. It will not work as an automatic target, but must be applied in the target area according to prevailing conditions. This is such an important matter for consideration that firm conclusions have to drawn.

Political group: ELDR
Mr President, the Constitution is said to reflect the will of both the people and states. We know how the will of states is measured: it is decided by parliaments. That is not necessarily the same thing as the will of the people. If the Constitution is to be decided upon nationally, the large majority of our group think the will of the people should be measured by means of a referendum in all Member States. Those countries which adopt the Constitution will establish a new Union. The intention is to continue the work of the old Union. Under the Constitution the present Union will be suspended. This must be a unanimous decision under the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties between States. If a country is in disagreement, that is its legal right. If the Union that many countries joined after a referendum is suspended, a referendum will also have to be organised regarding accession to the new Union in as many Member States as possible. The Constitution has been virtually finalised at an intergovernmental conference. The articles on military matters, among which there is a new model for structural cooperation, were agreed at Naples. These are not just about defence: a special additional protocol in it also provides for any demanding military operations that may be referred to as ‘peacemaking’, and which therefore also include invasion. In fact the EU is not now preparing for defence, but attack. Our group does not think this kind of militarisation of the EU is necessary. Neither should the involvement of NATO be written into the Constitution as has now been done. What still needs to be written into the Constitution is the rule that EU crisis management must be based on a mandate from the UN. Our group is prepared to participate in structural work in a social Europe. The draft Constitution, however, is not satisfactory in this area. We want to make changes to it to safeguard the provision of services to all EU citizens. We need social security and not European militarism. Our group thus wants a social Europe but there have not been any satisfactory decisions taken by the Convention or the IGC in that area as far as we are concerned. We do not think it appropriate that the Constitution was drafted in conjunction with talks on the EU’s new financial perspective. Member States cannot be forced to accept a constitution which their citizens cannot agree to. We need referenda. Ninety-six members of the Convention called for a referendum. They represented both the yes and the no vote in future referenda. Referenda are people’s democracy.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, as we can deduce from the speeches by the rapporteurs, and at this stage it is hardly necessary to repeat it, the Mediterranean region must be one of the European Union’s highest priorities, because the problems of the southern Mediterranean – the political upheavals, the economic stagnation, the population growth – affect us, directly or indirectly, as Europeans. Examples of this are the migration flows in our direction, the deterioration of our environment and the dangers presented to our society by radical fundamentalism. In summary, balance on our southern border is essential to our stability. It is therefore important that we share the view that the Union’s natural desire for enlargement towards Central and Eastern Europe must not lead to a deterioration of its policy towards the Mediterranean. Therefore, while in 1995 my group supported and strongly promoted the open process in Barcelona which, at last, after almost 40 years, drew up a global strategy for the Community countries in relation to the Mediterranean countries, it now supports the objective contained in the reports which we are debating today to strengthen the Barcelona Process. In particular, in relation to Mr Naïr’s report, we have tried to improve it in committee by means of various contributions and I would like to thank the rapporteur for being receptive towards them. We have insisted on the importance of strengthening interparliamentary dialogue, which must be consolidated as one of the key elements in boosting the Barcelona Process. We would like to point out that we should promote the liberalisation of the economic systems of our Mediterranean partners and carry out the structural changes necessary to compete in more open markets. We have proposed the creation of a monitoring centre for migration flows, responsible amongst other things for creating mechanisms to combat, in a coordinated fashion, the mafias which profit from illegal immigration. We would like to point out that relations between the European Union and the Mediterranean countries are based on a global strategy, one of the elements of which is undoubtedly fishing, and therefore we trust that the Moroccan Government will adopt an attitude which reflects the current urgency in the negotiations which are taking place. Finally we would like to point out to the Commission that, within the framework of the reforms taking place in its external service, the human resources dedicated to the Mediterranean association need to be reinforced, a specific structure needs to be established in the Commission, and progress needs to be made on the devolution and decentralisation of aid. In summary, my group is in favour of the European Union playing a broader role in the Mediterranean and we hope that human and material resources are provided that are a match for the challenges facing us.

Political group: PPE-DE
Thank you, Mr President. A lot of what was said in the previous debate is of great relevance to this directive too. These two documents form the basis for the acidification strategy that we adopted three years ago. When measurements were taken last Monday in my own home district, the level of acidity was higher than it had been for a very long time. Acidification is still a problem to which we cannot avoid drawing attention. I want to begin by thanking Mrs Myller, who has done a magnificent job, as well as my fellow MEPs in the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy, who have contributed to our now having a proposal which is looking really good. The problem, however, is that the path between the committee and the plenary sitting of this Parliament is at times fraught with obstacles. The closer we get to the day of decision, the more afraid some of us seem to become. Once again, we see the conflict between industry, employment and the environment rear its head. Many who have previously been environmental campaigners are transformed into preservers of the status quo in their own countries and regions and embrace the old coal-fired power stations in their home districts. The long-term view and acceptance of responsibility are suddenly things of the past when the issue arises of how we are to obtain a sound environment for life in the future too. At Parliament’s first reading, we supported those emission ceilings proposed by the Commission. In this connection, it must also be pointed out that the ceilings and figures presented by the Commission were based upon countries’ own reporting to the Commission. These were not invented figures, plucked out of the air. Certain people appear now to be denying these figures. The figures were not over-optimistic and, just as Mrs Myller said earlier, the economic calculations were, in actual fact, a good reflection of the reality. When, now, the Council contributes its own points of view, it will come as no surprise if, this time too, a much more meagre result is arrived at, a result very close to the figures in the Gothenburg Protocol. In this connection, I would also remind you that – to begin with, at least – the Commission refused to sign the Gothenburg Protocol because it thought it was so inadequate and not ambitious enough. I really do hope that the Commission will now show that it supports what Parliament has said, above all in the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy. If we opt for the Council’s line, we in actual fact choose poorer health for our citizens in a situation in which children and asthmatics are among the most vulnerable. We also choose to exceed the critical loads and levels over a further several hundred thousand hectares of land. The list could extend much further. I hope that, tomorrow, we shall have the courage to approve the proposal tabled by the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, the question at issue is the income from the Swedish alcohol monopoly and when the Swedish Government says that it must cover health costs, then this is proof of a distortion of competition because other countries must cover their health costs themselves, with no alcohol monopoly at their disposal. My question refers to whether you too know of studies which state that a moderate intake of good quality alcohol such as Franconian wine or Bavarian beer is good for you and would therefore also be good for the Swedish budget.

Political group: PPE-DE
Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, Mrs Jackson has compiled a good report on the problems concerning compliance with environmental legislation. My group gives its full support to this report. But at the end of the day the European Union must work towards setting up an independent environment inspectorate. At the present time, those countries that fail to comply with environmental legislation have to supervise themselves, which, of course, is not working. This report aims, by realistic political means, to kick-start this stalled process and get it moving again, an aim which merits praise. But more needs to be done in the long-term. Where cartel formation and competition law are concerned, European officials, together with national investigators, drop into companies unannounced and are able to confront the company administration. Our proposed environmental inspectorate has a very long way to go before it reaches this stage. But if we regard the economy and the environment as being of equal importance then we should also conduct unannounced environmental inspections coordinated at European level.

Political group: Verts-ALE
Mr President, that is correct, and I am grateful to him. From the interpretation I heard only ‘and’, ‘29 and 32’. As I understand it, 30 and 31 are redundant too, as they deal with exactly the same subject area. Perhaps that was an error in interpretation. I think that Mr Blak and I can agree that his group’s actions have now in fact lapsed. (Parliament adopted the resolution) After the vote:

Political group: PSE
Mr President, it has fallen to my country’s government to drink of this bitter cup. These are difficult times, but we have ability and experience on our side; the experience of previous Greek presidencies and of the administration of the late Andreas Papandreou, who was firmly in favour of peace and the autonomy of Europe. We can maintain our alliances, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, including with the USA, but – to quote an historic precedent – it was not America’s friends who told them to drop napalm on Vietnam; America’s friends told them to stop the war. We can fight for the unity of the European Union – which has become a laughing stock, with United Kingdom officials running around Cameroon, Angola and Guinea in a bid to drag them into the war – by supporting the principles of the Treaties of the European Union on peace, the founding Charter of the UN and boxing Blair’s and Aznar’s ears. We can forge a massive alliance with the people of Europe. No presidency has been in the privileged position of having the people of Europe take to the streets and standing united. They need a common reference point, not just Mr Schroeder or Mr Chirac; they also need Mr Simitis, the head of the Greek Presidency. These are hard times and, like Belgium, we are a small country. Your heart is in the right place, but we want results.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, no one can deny that what has been achieved in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia over the last eight years is nothing short of a miracle; not only has this tiny country managed to keep out of the armed conflicts in the region, it has also made serious efforts to modernise its economy and society, set up democratic institutions and respect human rights and the rights of minorities. Without doubt, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia is helping enormously to promote peace and security in the region and we trust that the last problem in its relations with Greece will shortly be resolved in a way which respects the dignity of both countries. I welcome with the utmost satisfaction the new law on higher education, which will create the conditions needed for the Albanian-speaking community to set up a private university. I am convinced that this tiny country in the Balkans deserves the undivided support of the European Union and I trust that an association and stability agreement will be signed before the end of the French Presidency.

Political group: PSE
We broadly agree with the criticism made of the proposal for a European Parliament recommendation on SIS II as to its effects on safeguards for citizens’ fundamental rights (protection of data and privacy) and to the growing use of the SIS as a tool for police cooperation, in an increasingly supranational context without any proper checks. Our main reasons for rejecting this proposal are: - the extension of SIS II to encompass new areas and functions, allowing undefined users – possibly even private operators; - a confused and obscure jumble, out of which emerges an exaggerated and accelerated (ultra)federalist approach: for example, the prospect of creating a single and centralised ‘EU information system’ – a real ‘Big Brother’; - a dangerous approach to cooperation with third countries, particularly with the USA and its ‘war on terrorism’; - inadequate and poorly-defined data protection. What is more crucial for the moment is keeping the system strictly within the limits for which it was created, not providing third countries access to information, ensuring that national bodies protect their data, in line with the national regulations that apply in each State, and opening a debate on the system, by introducing a moratorium.

Political group: GUE-NGL