GwendalTsang/DEFT09-parquet huggingface dataset:
Mr President, we have not in fact added our signatures to this resolution, and I want to tell you why. Not in any way do we dispute the description of the misery in Zimbabwe, and we can endorse the rigorous condemnation of the Mugabe regime, but we have problems with pointing the finger at the surrounding countries and saying that it is they who have to remove Mugabe from power. We certainly want to see Mugabe out of office. We know that there is a well-organised and courageous opposition, but we are demanding things of the countries of Southern Africa that we ourselves are unable to do. What are our own sanctions actually achieving? Nothing so far – and I have to tell you that the surrounding countries are particularly susceptible to pressure. It is the case that the violence is threatening to spread to South Africa, it is true that there is talk of land reform and that people who have nothing but weapons are now marching on the white-owned farms to take the law into their own hands – not only in Zimbabwe, but also in South Africa. The land reform in Zimbabwe is a disgrace. It has done nothing to put an end to people’s misery; far from it, it has made a few rich people even richer. We are perfectly well aware of that but, rather than pointing the finger at one side only, we must look for effective measures. Even the elephants are fleeing Zimbabwe in the knowledge that the national parks are being plundered, that the wild animals living in them are bereft of any protection and are being slaughtered, not only by poachers but also by people who hunt these animals out of their own desperation. As people flee Zimbabwe, they are arriving in the neighbouring countries. I therefore urge that we resume dialogue with vigour and examine ways in which we can help the well-intentioned regimes in Southern Africa. IN THE CHAIR: MR ONESTAVice-President

Political group: Verts-ALE
Mr President, the accusations against Mr Tsiakourmas are groundless to the point that they must surely be thrown out even by the kangaroo court in which he is being tried. The question, of course, is where the illegal occupying regime in northern Cyprus finds the nerve to take such action, especially in an area under British sovereignty. Obviously, if the so-called international community wished to put an end to the occupying regime, it would have the means to do so. This comment applies even more so to the European Union, given that Turkey is a candidate country and Cyprus is already engaged in accession negotiations. The European Union has the means to exert pressure and could use them. At the same time, however, the European Union has huge economic, political and military interests in Turkey and it is obviously these interests that dictate its conduct. Furthermore, it would appear that the very procedure to integrate Cyprus into the European Union is probably complicating the Cyprus question, rather than helping to resolve it. In all events, we call on the European Union and on the Government of the United Kingdom to, at least this once, let Turkey feel the sharp edge of its tongue and ensure that Mr Tsiakourmas is released unconditionally.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Commissioner, the Commission will have to present the European Council in Feira with a report on the development of a statute for the outermost regions, in accordance with Article 299(2) of the Treaty of Amsterdam. In the Commission report of 14 March this year, (COM(2000) 147), the Commission refers specifically to the development of some kind of cooperation system between the outermost regions and the ACP countries. Specifically, the Spanish and Portuguese outermost regions of the Canaries, the Azores and Madeira are close to the archipelago of Cape Verde, and they all belong to the same geographical area, Macaronesia. My question to Commissioner Nielson is whether the report or the Commission’s proposals to the European Council at Feira consider the possibility of implementing some kind of programme which integrates the action of the outermost regions in relation to this region of Cape Verde, by means of Interreg III for example.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, Commissioner, Mr Rocard, first I would like to thank Messrs Marinos, Pronk and Menrad, and last but not least, Mr Ettl, very sincerely for their support in getting my amendments accepted and in changing the objectives of this report. Financing statutory health care and pension schemes is at the heart of the social and budgetary debate in Europe. Both have similar causes, with demographic change in the one case and specialist and technical progress in medicine in the other. Both are based on a three-pillar model with state, company and private provision. We all know that these systems have been built up and interlinked in different ways and that they provide different cover from one Member State to another. Both sectors also have national requirements that act as an obstacle to mobility and flexibility for employees in Europe and increase employers' costs. So I am glad that the rapporteur has been willing to move from his categorical demand for a directive to an in-depth analysis in the form of a Green Paper. And I am pleased that we have abandoned the idea of applying the French model to Europe in its entirety, which would not be possible here. We need to define what we mean by the concept of supplementary insurance. For me, supplementary insurance means a voluntary system which is either a private or company system, supplementing basic state provision ... (The President cut the speaker off)

Political group: PPE-DE
Following the expiry of an earlier so-called third generation agreement, the European Union has kept an interregional framework agreement in place with the Mercosur countries since late 1995. This framework agreement should by now have been replaced by a global agreement on interregional political and economic association, freeing up exchange, and encompassing Chile as well. This is what the Heads of State and Government of both parties called for at the summit held in Rio at the end of June 1999. This new treaty of association has been delayed due to endless partial negotiations held up in turn by our insistence on prior agreement within the WTO framework. On the other hand, there are those who wish the new agreement to be merely an instrument allowing free exchange between both groups of states. I agree that the economic and commercial association sought by Mercosur and the European Union is very important. However, I also feel that the cultural, social and political aspects which must permeate the new association agreement are more valuable. This agreement should currently have top priority in the Union’s foreign policy. We must not forget the history of Latin America nor the links established over the centuries between the various European countries who discovered what was then known as the ‘New World’. As a result, that part of the globe has inherited the same values concerning culture, religion and identity as the Europe we are currently building. It even shares with us that great collection of values and customs classified as ‘Western’. We must therefore strengthen bipartite dialogue at all levels. We should do so on an institutional, economic, social and civic, parliamentary, intergovernmental and executive plane in the expectation that the new full association agreements with Mercosur and Chile will be finalised at the earliest possible opportunity. - Salafranca Sánchez-Neyra report (A5-0050/2001)

Political group: Verts-ALE
Mr President, Commissioner, the fisheries agreements play a very important role in the fisheries sector. The agreements with third countries have very great significance for the European Union and especially for those regions with large fishing harbours. I am thinking here of employment in the sector. I am thinking also of the many subsidiary businesses and service trades which are wholly or partially dependent upon fisheries. By means of the fisheries agreements, the European Union is able to engage in fishing operations and exchange fishing rights with third countries. Those of us in the Group of the European Liberal, Democrat and Reform Party therefore support the fact that the EU’s fisheries policy embraces these many agreements with third countries. The negotiations concerning a new agreement between the EU and Morocco have made slow progress. They have been under way since the agreement expired on 30 November 1999, and the European Union has paid compensation to the Spanish and Portuguese ship owners and fishermen. Commissioner Fischler has stated that this monologue cannot continue. I very much agree with the Commissioner about this. The fishermen in particular cannot be blamed for not understanding the situation and for being very disappointed about the fact that the negotiations concerning the Morocco agreement have dragged on. Those of us in the Group of the European Liberal, Democrat and Reform Party are in favour of as big an effort as possible now being made to bring the long-winded negotiation procedure to a conclusion. We therefore support the wording of the motion for a Resolution from the Committee on Fisheries. We nonetheless propose an amendment to the paragraph concerning the arrangements designed to mitigate the effects of a failure to renew the fisheries agreement with Morocco. We propose adding the words: ‘which are to be co-financed to an appropriate degree by the EU’.

Political group: ELDR
Madam President, we abstained from this vote. I would still like to give some kind of explanation though because illness prevented me from taking part in the previous round of discussions in Strasbourg. We did not vote in favour because we feel that all too often the development cooperation within the Commission is still regarded as a stopgap measure. When I read in the Commission documents that integration into the globalised world is the name of the game for poor countries, then I am afraid we overlook the fact that we, i.e. the western economies, are the ones pushing globalisation, and that we are therefore not actually seriously doing anything about what we regard as our number one priority, i.e. fighting poverty, because we often cause the very poverty we then seek to fight. I did not vote against this report because it embraces a number of worthwhile issues and because I want a robust line to be taken. I advocate maintaining Community development cooperation at EU level but I am afraid that if the reforms do not go well, it will add grist to the mill of those who actually want to renationalise all the aid programmes. As far as I am concerned, Parliament has missed its chance to make a serious contribution to the analysis of the errors, and we should also have spent more time on a clear analysis of the remedies proposed by the Commission. I regret this and that is why we abstained from the vote as a group, because we feel that the NGOs have done badly out of it. I would like to close with a procedural motion. I have now heard all the judgments on the voting of my fellow Members on all kinds of subjects imaginable and that is why I have taken the liberty of ignoring your rap on the knuckles to some extent, because I thought it is going a little over the top to stay here especially to have your say on everything once again, even though we all have our thoughts on these things of course.

Political group: Verts-ALE
While appreciating what Olivier Duhamel has achieved, I abstained from the final vote because I think the debate on a European Constitution is premature. While desirable in itself, a constitution of this kind could only be adopted as the crowning touch to far-reaching institutional reform. A constitution would be meaningful only if it formed the democratic framework for a genuine European federation, a United States of Europe. So long as the EU remains no more than a sum of nation states that practise only a limited form of solidarity, limited in budgetary terms to a ceiling of 1.27% of Europe’s gross domestic product, any attempt to “constitutionalise” the existing Treaties is nothing more than a headlong rush into politically dodgy territory.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, Commissioner, I am taking the floor once again on behalf of my fellow Member, Mr Dominique Souchet, who was the other draftsman in the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development and who worked on the fiscal aspects. I shall not return to the political argument but, as you know, market forces dictate that, for two major reasons, biofuels cannot currently be developed spontaneously in the European Union. The first reason is that the price of fossil fuels does not include external costs generated, firstly, by the use of a non-renewable resource – namely, oil – and secondly, by very high greenhouse gas emissions. The second reason is that oil companies benefit from the advantage of having a century’s worth of industrial experience, which has enabled them to optimise industrial costs on an enormous scale. It is therefore perfectly legitimate for Member States to use differentiated taxation – a formula which we believe to be much fairer than considering cuts in excise duty – taxation that would encourage the competitiveness of fuels of plant origin, which are renewable and do not contribute to the greenhouse effect. It would therefore be a matter of transforming excise duty on car fuels into a type of eco-tax that would be higher for fossil fuels than for renewable fuels due to the punitive external costs of fossil fuels. The Commission’s tax proposal should help to enable the European Union to meet the objective set out in the Green Paper on the security of energy supply, namely of achieving 20% use of substitute fuels in road transport by the year 2020. The amendments adopted in the Committee on Agriculture seek to make this Directive more effective, by emphasising that the by-products of biofuels produced in the European Union provide materials that are rich in plant protein which can be used in animal feed; by abolishing the totally arbitrary limit of 50% of the tax differential; by abolishing the time limit of 31 December 2010, since the external costs in the oil sector are permanent; by applying complete tax exemption to fuels used in biofuel production, which is already the case in the manufacture of oil products; by pointing out that cuts in excise duty can only apply to biofuels produced in the European Union, otherwise the European Union would not benefit from either reduced greenhouse gas emissions or from protein fodder crops that are produced as a by-product.

Political group: Verts-ALE
Mr President, I would like to say how pleased I am to give this last explanation of vote of 1999 on the Savary report, which I voted for. I am very much in favour of this European Community initiative which aims to grant practical aid to the most deserving regions, such as Tajikistan. I would like, as Mr Blokland said in his statement, to say to Commissioner Wallström – who is disturbing the sleep of Italian, Greek and Spanish pensioners because of superannuated cars which have to be quickly taken off the roads – that I would appreciate verification as to how the aid is distributed once it has been granted to Tajikistan and other States. I would be pleased if it was given to people who need it, such as pensioners.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, the United States’ refusal to ratify the International Criminal Court is indicative of its pride, but also of the ridiculous, hypocritical nature of the Court. It is supposed to give substance to the concept of international, immanent justice which can punish, if not prevent, genocide and crimes against humanity. Even with one International Criminal Court conducting an investigation into a few crooks who bear a large part of the responsibility for the massacres in the former Yugoslavia and another conducting an investigation into the genocide in Rwanda, however, there is absolutely nothing to suggest that all those guilty of offences which are just as serious will be prosecuted. How likely is it that the politicians and economic profiteers of the former colonial Belgian power, who consciously set the Tutsis and the Hutus against each other, will be prosecuted? Will the French leaders be prosecuted, those leaders whose troops in Rwanda were present, holding their fire at the massacres unleashed by the government in office, when they did not make matters worse by supplying weapons to either side? Will the United Kingdom be prosecuted for its part in the political manœuvres which played such a major role in the ethnic massacres in Sierra Leone? How likely is it that George Bush, who is preparing, openly and publicly, to bombard tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians with the excuse that he is punishing their dictator, will be prosecuted before the Court for crimes against humanity? How likely is it that the industrial groups which, thanks to the gung-ho activities of politicians, are free to derive considerable profits from the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction, will be prosecuted? Well then, the only effect of the International Criminal Court will be to add a touch of hypocrisy to an imperialist world where the strongest have the last word.

Political group: GUE-NGL
I want to thank the Council for its answer. I was pleased to see that the issue of information technology and its link to growth and employment were so high on the agenda in Lisbon. What happens in the future is important. The political task is not, of course, to set up IT companies but to build an infrastructure which stimulates development in this area. We do, of course, have shortcomings within the EU. Moreover, there are major differences between the EU’s Member States and also between different regions within the EU. Different population groups have varying opportunities and knowledge when it comes to exploiting this technology, and this may lead to great inequality in the future. I would therefore ask the question: how are we successfully to devise a form of coordination which enables information technology also to be used out in the peripheral areas so that we create greater equality between different regions and between different population groups? Is there not a need for a joint authority to coordinate this work?

Political group: PSE
I welcome this report which calls for a consolidation of existing European food hygiene and animal health inspections. Food hygiene is something which affects European citizens' daily lives and a topic in which many people have great interest. It is important, therefore, that all legislation relating to this question should be as clear and accessible as possible. The call for all food businesses to be registered is also apt. At present, no such system exists and it is time that food producers became solely liable for food safety. If this is to become the case, when food safety issues arise, consumers will have less bureaucracy to deal with and a better idea of who is culpable. Lastly, the call for all meats to be treated equally under the new rules is also welcome. There is no compelling justification to treat game differently from other meats, as is the case at present. Indeed, if a European citizen has problems with food safety only to find that there is an exemption for the particular meat in question, it could render this whole package of measures meaningless. - Report Kindermann (A5-0452/2001)

Political group: PSE
Mr President, Mr Kronberger already knows my opinion on this report as I have expressed it quite strongly in the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy. However, I should perhaps be more moderate in my views tonight. He may be quite passionate in his opinions but frankly they are misjudged. He might be quite earnest in the conclusions he arrives at but frankly they are erroneous. He must now face the reality that if he wants to regulate emissions of this kind from the industrial installations we are talking about, setting emission values just does not work. The impact on those installations of trying to impose such standards would be unbearable. Nevertheless, I have one or two kind things to say about his report. Like the curate's egg in English parlance, it is good in parts. If you look at mercury and arsenic, for example, there may be a case for trying to set emission values in this sector, but certainly not in others. Take for example nickel. Nickel is one of the most important elements used in the production of stainless steel. The most common type of stainless steel contains 18% of nickel, but it can contain up to 30%. The nonsense of this proposal is that it assumes the measures used to control gaseous emissions of nickel can be applied to the situation in steel plants where nickel is emitted as a fine dust during the production process. In reality, the vast amounts of dust in the production area contain only a very small amount of nickel and the emissions from steel plants are relatively small. To try nevertheless to reach emission values in such a situation would be impossible. Again in the case of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, the kind of measure proposed by Mr Kronberger will inevitably lead to the closure or end of use of coal-fired power stations, to the end of coal burning being used, to a loss of jobs and, across the whole of Europe, to an even greater reliance on imported gas and other supplies. However well-meaning, these proposals are unrealistic, ill-considered and would undermine Europe's reputation for taking a responsible approach. I would urge him to think again.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, the wreck of the oil tanker Prestige off the coast of Galicia is a great misfortune the like of which should never again have happened in the Union after the Erika accident. Member States have committed to the practice whereby loading ports are obliged to assess the condition of vessels and, if necessary, stop the ship from leaving without repairs being done if the risk is considered to be too great. Unfortunately, this practice still does not apply to the applicant countries, and this ship had picked up its cargo at a port in the Baltic Sea. The risk is especially great in the Baltic, where there is heavy regular traffic and consignments often consist of materials and substances that the Baltic ecology simply would not be able to withstand if harmed by them. As someone who lives on the Baltic coast I now wish to express my deep sorrow for the residents of Galicia and all those whose livelihood is now in great peril. Obviously, making ports responsible for the condition of vessels to be loaded is not enough. The owners of freight must also be made accountable, as they also have an interest in ensuring that their consignments are organised responsibly and safely. Secondly, the practices of insurance companies and the terms and conditions they offer will have to be changed if necessary by means of Community legislation so that the cheapest option for a shipowner is not sinking his ship when it is in distress. Insurance law must be based on the notion that rescuing the ship must be possible and the cheapest option for the policyholder. We have to switch to these practices swiftly and without making any exceptions. It is regrettable that the legislators should become wise and energetic only after an accident has happened. When, however, the accident has faded in people’s memories no wise or urgent measures are taken to avoid accidents in the future. On the contrary, everyone frantically starts looking after their own interests and the struggle to lengthen the periods of transition commences, as people want to dodge the regulations in the hope of getting off lightly. We need a Prestige package as an extension to the Erika package, which the Commission should start drafting right away with a view to producing something quickly.

Political group: PPE-DE