GwendalTsang/DEFT09-parquet huggingface dataset:
Madam President, the European Parliament is at last about to vote on the report, which has taken a great deal of time to prepare, on the drafting of the European Union’s Charter of Fundamental Rights, and I hope that the patient work of the rapporteurs will be rewarded in this Chamber. What I mean to say is that I hope that the damaging amendments made by those who see in the drafting of the Charter of Fundamental Rights an attack on democracy, no less, will be rejected. And yet most of these rights already exist in the European Union as they are present in the Treaties, in the European Convention on Human Rights, in the institutional traditions common to the Member States and in the international conventions to which they all subscribe. What is there to fear in a Charter of Fundamental Rights? This is only the formal ratification, the coherent expression of those sacrosanct individual rights, without which democracy would be reduced to a kingdom where the force of numerical strength reigns and the authorities may do as they please. The European Union means the peaceful, supportive coexistence of different peoples and cultures, based on its tradition of respect for the rights of individuals. The Charter will become a catalogue of shared principles which define Europe’s identity before the world, an identity which is not based on blood ties, ethnic origin or national allegiance, but, indeed, on common values. In the careful recognition of common rights, there will have to be acknowledgement of those fundamental social rights which are intrinsically no different from the other, more obvious rights, such as the right of freedom to join a trade union, the right to fundamental health and safety in the workplace and training rights, which have never been so essential for growth, employment and competitiveness in the global market as they are now. There will have to be acknowledgement of the political rights of citizens and the human rights of every individual person. Fundamental rights will have to be defined in the face of fresh hazards. A catalogue of fundamental rights which are recognised as binding by the European institutions also sets out the duty of the citizens to respect them. The European Union is a civil, legal area of freedom, which is not just economic freedom but also freedom of security and justice, in a huge territory which, in the past, has been the site of repeated bloodshed. The site of clashes between opposing armies throughout the whole of the first half of the century, Europe is now on the way to becoming a guarantee of peace and freedom from fear and want. This is how we must see the Charter of Fundamental Rights. There is no reason for anyone to be afraid when the prevalence of rights over force is enshrined in the law.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, I have suggested that the groups do not take the floor. I believe this suggestion makes sense. We can reflect and work on it later on. This is the worst terrorist attack in the European Union to date. We have plenty of time. Today we are simply making a suggestion and a gesture which I believe to be appropriate. Please let us vote on the amendment and let us not turn something which was a gesture into an absurd and out-of-place discussion. (Applause)

Political group: PSE
Producing homogenised statistics for the whole of the Union could prove to be a useful exercise, and that is why we voted in favour of the report. It is common knowledge, however, that governments distort and manipulate statistics in all sorts of ways, even those in an area as straightforward as unemployment. The fundamental disparity between employees’ salaries and those of their employers is all the more reason for us to obtain reliable statistics on income. Employers know, to the nearest penny, how much their workers earn, but do the latter have any idea as to their employers’ income? The total amount of capital income and, more generally speaking, information on how capital income works, are kept under wraps by virtue of the infamous ‘trade secrets act’, which exists to hide all instances of waste, speculation and corruption. Because of a lack of transparency, European Union statistics on the income of the rich will always be unreliable, whether they are homogenised or not. Khanbhai report (A5-0137/2002)

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, again on behalf of my British Conservative colleagues – my colleague Lord Inglewood, who worked on this, has spoken already – and my Group, I certainly welcome very much the excellent work of Mr Manders over a long period and also through conciliation. I am bound to remark, as a member of the Committee on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market, that the decision that our committee should undertake this work, much contested by colleagues in other committees, has been more than amply borne out in the practical and pragmatic response that we have had, and I think we have a workable proposal. However, as a number of colleagues have said – and this is a time for looking forward rather than backwards, because we have the agreement on the table – there is a lot of work to do to establish the clear responsibilities with organisations and to ensure through the so-called competent authorities in Member States that companies' operating processes and anyone involved in potentially environmentally damaging activities are fully aware of their potential responsibilities under this directive. I want to encourage the Commissioner – who, I hope, will leave something in place as part of her legacy as five years as Commissioner – to start to encourage Member States to exchange practice, firstly, about how they are going to establish their competent authorities or, indeed, how they are going to allocate responsibilities to existing environmental agencies that many of them have already established; and to establish the sort of networks of sharing of best practice that we are seeing in a number of other pan-European regulatory environments, such as energy and communications. There seems to me no reason why that process should not start at once, and also why communications to affected organisations should not also start. This directive, as a number of colleagues have said, has a very slow-burning fuse to it. Member States have quite a generous three-year timescale. There are also long timescales before review. However, if, as we all believe, prevention is what we are after – rather than clearing up damage afterwards – we need to start action straight away and there is no excuse for delaying on that. So I welcome the agreement. However, this is only the start and I am sure – and hope – that the Commissioner will leave that structure in place for us to follow through.

Political group: PPE-DE
The plague of undeclared work is spreading through all the Member States of the Union at an alarming rate, especially in the less developed regions. This grim form of exploitation is afflicting ever larger social groups as the result of poverty, which is spreading like wildfire, and also as the result of the increasingly indifferent laws of the market and the unaccountability of big business, which provokes and exacerbates it. The anti-labour economic and social policy pursued by the European Union is a determining factor in the rise in undeclared work, which is growing much faster than the mainstream economy. The hidden economy is becoming more and more important in the Member States, allowing companies which evade tax and national insurance payments to rake in huge profits. The constant harping on at summits and in other Union institutions about the need to reduce the famous “non-wage labour costs” is encouraging companies to implement this reactionary approach on their own initiative, by generalising undeclared work and extending it to a surprisingly large number of workers. Intense efforts to make the market and terms of employment more flexible, the barrel of the gun of unemployment and poverty pointed at workers’ heads, the huge influx of immigrant workers to whose illegal status the system turns a blind eye and which are the booty of exploitive capitalist mechanisms which plunder their labour in sweat shops in order to boost their profits, create the 'unhealthy' social conditions which force workers to take employment with no social cover, exiled from any trade union activity or government protection. Health and safety conditions, terms of employment and working relations are dictated solely by employers, who take grossly unfair advantage of workers’ needs and minimal negotiating skills and make a tidy profit from their long working hours. Immediate measures are needed in order to wipe out this plague – measures which include the strictest punishment for employers and companies using this form of employment and which do not put the sacrificer and the sacrificed on an equal footing. We need agencies and institutions to keep a close eye on companies. Special protection must be given to the groups which are easy prey to unaccountable employers: the young, women and, more importantly, immigrants. Undeclared work only has a positive impact on employers, or rather their profits; it has multiple negative repercussions for both workers and society as a whole. Less employment, lower national insurance revenues, lower tax revenues and, at the same time, increased social and public-sector spending. Unfortunately, the European Parliament report under discussion goes in completely the wrong direction; it basically backs employers and calls for even more neo-liberal measures on the job market, ostensibly in order to wipe out undeclared work. It basically advocates legalising and generalising undeclared work, and hence completely upsetting employment relations, at the expense of all workers, which is why we are voting against it. - Resolution on racism (B5-0766/2000)

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, numerous environmental disasters such as the latest one concerning the Prestige oil tanker, which was shipwrecked on the Spanish coast, have sped up the progress of environmental liability legislation in the EU. In my own country, Finland, furthermore, people are worried when they see the dreadful condition of some of the oil transporting vessels that sail along our coasts. People’s health is inseparably linked to the environment around them. Questions of environmental liability are thus naturally close to the hearts of our citizens and therefore also constitute key areas of focus in our policies. A third of the petitions that arrived at the European Parliament last year, around 1 700, concerned these very problems relating to the environment. The Commission’s proposal for a directive aims to ensure that the polluter will pay the costs of remedying future environmental damage. This to be a harmonised framework across the European Union, allowing us to avoid a situation whereby a company chooses to establish its registered office wherever the most favourable legislation applies. In order to avoid distortion of competition in the internal market, it is important that the directive is implemented in as uniform a manner as possible in the EU Member States. It is also important to retain the legal basis relating to the internal market, that is to say Article 95, after a five-year transition period. We discussed the Commission proposal on the Committee on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market, and we are proposing numerous necessary amendments to it. Our amendments are generally aimed at clarifying the legal interpretation of the directive and striking a balance between the interests of industry and of environmental players. To avoid any legal uncertainty we proposed that the field of nuclear safety, which is already regulated by means of international agreements, should be excluded from the directive. The international conventions on nuclear safety are at present being revised, and comparable environmental liability regulations are to be included in them. It would be unwise of the EU to undermine the importance of the international agreements right now, as they are being revised and will be expanded to apply also to the new Member States.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President-in-Office of the Council, I would like to thank you once again for your detailed reply. It appears that there are difficulties, because there are agreements which have been under negotiation for a long time, and that they have come to an end. My supplementary question, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, is: what are these difficulties? Are they economic difficulties? In other words, is the European Union's contribution sufficient for those countries? I imagine that the main difficulty lies in the current lack of available means both to deal with the immigrants received and to repatriate them. What does the Council believe can be done with regard to resources to ease and alleviate this great burden we are currently enduring in the European Union as a result of these imbalances, and in particular in order to facilitate repatriation of immigrants who arrive illegally?

Political group: PSE
Mr President, where air traffic too is concerned, the Group of the European People’s Party and supports the initiative of the European Commission and of the responsible Vice-President, Mrs Palacio, to reconcile causing as little damage as possible to the environment with citizens’ and companies’ interest in being able to travel. The Committee too has made a decision along the same lines, although we ought in all honesty to say that we had completely to re-write Mrs Lucas’ report, since it was based upon totally unrealistic premisses. However, we finally reached a majority agreement. The summer has again shown how important air travel is for people heading for their holiday destinations. Particularly where families with children are concerned, air travel offers the quickest means of getting away to the sun, and the one which puts least strain on the nerves. At the same time, it provides the basis for jobs and businesses in many parts of the European Union. Business travel and freight forwarding on international air routes are also vital to trade and commerce. On the other hand, air travel has an obvious detrimental effect upon the environment due to exhaust emissions and noise pollution. We must make sure that we limit these forms of damage to the environment, at the same time, however, as distinguishing between the damage caused to health around airports and the ways in which people’s ordinary well-being is prejudiced. I fear that, if we were to adopt the WHO’s regulations, none of us here this evening would be allowed to go on working, since more than ten hours spent in this Chamber is scarcely compatible with these regulations. So let us be realistic, please. The Group of the European People’s Party and in any case calls for a significant reduction in permitted levels of noise pollution – which, in view of the international character of air travel, ought more sensibly to be regulated within the framework of the ICAO – and for noisier aircraft to be excluded from using European airports following brief transitionary periods. We hope, and are campaigning for, a situation in which the Member States of the European Commission will provide a clear mandate. If, however, we were not to obtain success at ICAO level, then we should have to take action ourselves, for Europe is densely populated and we do not have the luxury of the large distances between population centres that are to be found in America or Africa. We have to protect our citizens from unnecessary noise. (Applause)

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, every day, people are executed and, every day, people are condemned to death. It is incredible and horrific that this should still be happening in the year 2000. As has also been said by other MEPs in this Chamber – most of whom have been Italian, though I do not believe that that is really significant, given the disgust we all feel – it is an unworthy punishment: a punishment unworthy of a civilised society, which always involves a risk of innocent people being convicted. China tops the list when it comes to the death penalty, and I and other Members of this Chamber have often made a point of condemning China. Today, I thought, however, of concentrating on the United States. There is a presidential election in the United States in two weeks’ time, and the next president may be George Bush, a person who has signed 145 people’s execution warrants. There have been legal doubts concerning a number of the cases, and there have also been a number of cases concerning children. In at least one of these cases, the child concerned was mentally handicapped. It is abominable and shameful, and it seriously damages the United States’s reputation as a democracy. With the presidential election in mind, it is incredibly important that we should express our disgust in this Chamber. I wish vigorously to support the proposal of my fellow MEP, Mr Rutelli, for a European day of opposition to the death penalty during our Presidency.

Political group: ELDR
I would like to add my voice to those condemning the acts of violence against one of my constituents, James Mawdsley from Ormskirk in Lancashire. I welcome the vote by this Parliament deploring the flagrant violations of James' rights under UN international law. Mark Rowland of Jubilee Campaign will be absolutely delighted that the European Parliament has joined the UN in condemning his treatment. We must continue to condemn human rights abuses in Burma. We, as elected Members, are outraged that 51 democratically elected members of the NLD are in prison, victims like James, of inhuman and cruel abuse. James' only crime was to speak up for and campaign for human rights and democracy in Burma. He should be commended for his efforts, which have caused him and his family such torment. We must urge the ASEM countries in this resolution to pressurise the military regime in Burma to restore democracy.

Political group: PSE
Madam President, allow me also to pay my regards and express my thanks to the Irish Presidency. The new Europe of 25 has an important future ahead of it: dealing with what is happening around it. The scenario is very demanding: in fact, the outer borders will adjoin highly problematic countries, such as Ukraine and Belarus, the latter controlled by a government so authoritarian that it warranted the suspension of all official relations with it; and then there is Russia, a major military power which is having trouble adopting a more democratic institutional shape and above all pacifying Chechnya, agreeing without delay to work on the peace plan proposed by Mr Maskhadov, to which Parliament gave its full backing; and then in the south we have Turkey, now on the eve of negotiations which could see it accede; and there is the Middle East, the Gulf and Maghreb and Mashreq countries. In order to address this aspect, Europe must assume credible political characteristics and a coherent strategy: at institutional level, only the Constitution can guarantee progress in this direction; at political level, in the report on the future of enlarged Europe adopted last November, Parliament stressed the need for political dialogue with all its neighbours, warning us against fragmentary, economic actions based exclusively on liberalising markets. Political dialogue, establishing common rules, sharing the same values and rights, vision and respect for the point of view of other countries when tackling complex issues, such as immigration: this is the right way forward to avoid the risk of a rift between the Union and its neighbours. We must prevent the walls which we have demolished within the Union now being constructed at our new borders.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, Commissioner Solbes Mira, ladies and gentlemen, in 2002, I travelled at Easter to Ukraine as one of the European Parliament’s election observers. I noticed with concern how remarkably fearful and uneasy people were, and particularly young candidates, about freely expressing their political opinions. Within the framework of the Commission’s programme for a wider Europe, I have worked to bring about a situation in which, as in fact has happened, the European Parliament might come down in favour of Ukraine’s adopting a European perspective and, having at one time been a European nation, becoming a member of the EU. At the same time, I wish to call attention to the fact that Ukraine is a very old nation. In terms of statehood, it is, however, young, having been subject to Russian and Soviet control. Against this background, it is all the more unfortunate that so many in the media and journalism are getting into trouble, that Radio Liberty is being closed down, that the biggest opposition newspaper, Silsky Visty has been brought before the courts, that the privately owned radio station, Radio Dovira, has been silenced and that journalists are not only being exposed to threats but have, in some cases, in fact been murdered. The deaths of the journalists Georgi Gongadze and Jurij Tjetjiks have in actual fact still not been explained. Many here in the European Parliament have warm feelings towards Ukraine. We are therefore all the more distressed about the developments, especially in the media, in a country that is one of the most dangerous countries of all in which to work as a journalist. In June 2003, the Canadian Senate adopted a resolution addressing the genocide and mass starvation under Stalin in which seven million Ukrainians died. Let us remember these events. Every year, the fourth Sunday in November is a day for commemorating this genocide and this mass starvation.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I wish to start by congratulating Mrs Gröner on this work intended to ensure parity. Despite the overall extension of the protection of the fundamental rights of women in recent years, the integration of the principle of equal opportunities is still not satisfactory in all areas, particularly in the political and administrative fields. The balanced and active participation of women and men in political life is a crucial instrument for consolidating a more just and democratic society. Given that Parliament is the institution closest to the citizens and that its commitment to protecting equal opportunities has enabled many policies in this field to be developed, it is its duty to set an example by increasing the integration of women into parliamentary activities and into the institution’s internal structures. We therefore need to promote women’s full participation in order to attain a more balanced situation. In the prospect of enlargement and of the 2004 European elections, information campaigns must be undertaken to prepare women who wish to enter the European institutions. This will enable us to prevent the percentage of women Members in the European Parliament slipping even further. I wish to emphasise, without attempting to make a judgement on my own work, that the work undertaken by the Committee on Women’s Rights and Equal Opportunities has proved to be of crucial importance in raising the awareness of other committees, through the speeches and opinions it has delivered. With regard to Parliament’s administration, I fully support the measures for increasing awareness, information and vocational training, and on squaring the needs of professional and private life, specifically through flexible working hours and making childcare infrastructures available. I do not think, however, that systematically implementing the principle of preference for women candidates for positions of leadership is a suitable alternative, as long as this imbalance persists. I therefore support the amendment tabled by Mr Gargani, who does not agree with such a rigid and mechanical approach, preferring the possibility of adopting positive measures to encourage the under-represented in recruitment, career development and other professional activities.

Political group: PPE-DE