GwendalTsang/DEFT09-parquet huggingface dataset:
Mr President, this directive deals with the comparatively small but growing problem of abandoned cars and the question of a more structured disposal of all cars at the end of their life. To that extent, it might be thought desirable, even if it is not a matter of urgent necessity. The key questions now are who pays the EUR 262 per car for the 9 million cars that are disposed of each year? Who pays for the collection, the dismantling, the disposal and so on? And should the directive be retrospective to cover every car that has ever been made? The proposal from the Council, the common position, is that manufacturers should pay the lot. That would mean billions of pounds or euros for each of the major companies in each of the countries of the European Union. That cost would inevitably be passed on to the price and hence to the buyers of new cars. Because European car manufactures have been operating here for many, many more decades than companies from Japan, Korea and elsewhere, that would be a much greater burden on the older European companies and a competitive gift to their competitors from elsewhere. I commend Mr Florenz, Mr Lange and others who have sought from both sides of the party divide a compromise based on shared costs. I also commend to you the amendment standing in my name and colleagues from Germany, Italy, Ireland, Spain, Sweden and Britain, to remove the retrospective nature of this measure. Retrospective law is bad law, it is unfair law and often it is unworkable law. Most democratic parliaments in the free world reject it on principle unless there is overwhelming public interest, which clearly there is not in this case. That is why I have called for a roll-call vote on this. We can see who is prepared to vote for a retrospection which is of doubtful legality, which would be a costly burden to every future car buyer and a devastating blow for the European car industry.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, I accept the Commissioner's very balanced arguments about Kyoto and the economic repercussions thereof but we are talking here about particular problems in peripheral and remote areas. If the Commission has no instruments to influence levels of excise taxes in Member States, and if favouring certain industries is not allowed under the competition rules, surely where a region suffers special disadvantages because of peripherality and remoteness, it would only be a case of equalising matters, not of giving any special preference if there was some differential in excise taxes permitted in those special and particular circumstances?

Political group: PPE-DE
President Prodi, I agree with what Mrs Maij-Weggen said just now. The communication you have presented to us is extremely interesting and is broadly compatible with the positions of the European Parliament. However, there is no clear proposal on one fundamental point, namely the integration of the Charter of Fundamental Rights – its integration, not the inclusion of a reference to it – for there is no modern Constitution which does not enshrine human rights. I hope that the Commission will not go against the development of modern constitutional practice and take the line that Europe should have a short Constitution with human rights hidden away in an Annex. I welcome the proposal to generalise the Community method, codecision and majority voting. I welcome the idea of a single spokesman for foreign policy, who is part of the Commission but is personally accountable to the Council too. There are many other points which need to be clarified and discussed but we agree that we should not create new, unnecessary institutions and that the decision-making power of the Eurogroup and the Union’s financial system should be strengthened. Lastly, we welcome the fact that a proper distinction is made between those who make laws and those who implement them: Montesquieu has come to the European Union at last. I hope that the Union’s future Constitution will be that of a supranational democracy, as called for by the European Parliament, the Commission and the majority of the citizens, and that a way will be found to avoid a few eurosceptics preventing the countries that wish to move forward from doing so. (Applause)

Political group: PSE
Mr President, will the President-in-Office join me in expressing regret at the killings on 9 July 2000 of two of the young men of the Atlantis Ecological Group: Tristan James, grandson of the founder of the group, Jenny James, who lives in Colombia, and Javier Nova, the boyfriend of one of Jenny’s young daughters, who were brutally murdered by a renegade group of Farc rebels when they returned to the area they had both lived in for most of their 18 years to visit relatives there. When Mr Moscovici answers Mr De Rossa that he is sensitive to what he says, why is it that when the General Affairs Council on 9 October particularly referred to a European plan for Colombia, the European Commission subsequently issued a communication on 18 October which uses the words “Plan Colombia”, with its military aid and with its aerial spraying of crops which have been condemned by the Panamanian Interior Minister, Winston Spadafora, the Venezuelan Minister, José Vicente Rangel and governments in Peru, Equator and Brazil? Will he today repeat that the Council will not support Plan Colombia, as Mr De Rossa and I and every civilised Member of this House want?

Political group: PSE
On account of the guarded resistance to the forming of small groups, there are fewer groups in the European Parliament than in some national parliaments. The advantage is that international groups combine adherents of more or less the same political persuasion, instead of 150 groups of individual national parties. But it also has disadvantages, such as the position of individual Members who do not belong to any groups or who switch groups from time to time. In the Netherlands, I am used to a system where parliamentary groups are formed on the basis of the election result. Every list that obtains seats, even if this is only one, is recognised as a group. In the European Parliament, on the other hand, groups are not formed until after the elections, and the switching of individual Members to another group is not considered as theft of seats. Since a large number of Members from different Member States are needed in order to be recognised as a group, there will be political movements left over that are too small for this. This leads not only to the setting up of ideologically-connected groups, within which, based on differences of national public opinions, Members do not always see eye to eye on practical choices, but also to artificial, technical groups, in which parties work together that do not know each other. In my view, an obligation for all Members who cannot find any groups to join, to take part in a mixed group based on a Spanish model, is complete madness.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, when I spoke this morning in the Iraq debate I drew attention to the self-interested agenda of France, a nation for which I have great affection, but whose foreign policy has some very dangerous elements. One of its key aims is to remove American involvement in European security. The primary instrument of this policy is ESDP which otherwise sensible European states have been hoodwinked into supporting. They have been given a false prospectus. Ironically I blame Mr Blair just as much for this because it was he who gave the green light to EU defence policy at St Malo in 1998, and a month ago he compounded his error at Le Touquet. The existence of this separate ESDP has undoubtedly been a factor in weakening the coherence of the NATO alliance, contributing to the recent very damaging disagreements. Now, and without adequate consultation with the United States, the European Union is preparing to take over the NATO mission in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and apparently plans to assume the military responsibilities in Bosnia. It is predicated on the bizarre idea that if we set up separate EU decision-making structures, distract NATO's Deputy Commander by giving him two sets of political masters to serve, and stick different flashes on the arms of the same troops in the Balkans, NATO's capabilities are somehow reinforced. By the way, for Mr Gollnisch's information, there are only 30 American personnel in the Macedonian force, and none of them are combat troops. To add to this charade, in order for the European Union to raise its flag on a military operation it has to rely on NATO for its operational planning and for reinforcement or extraction if the relatively soft operation in Macedonia should turn into something more dangerous. But the tragic events of today underline how very combustible the situation in the Balkans remains. Having created an unnecessary and artificial military divide, the EU and NATO have had to spend two years on negotiating and arrangements to enable the European Union and NATO to find a way of working together. The fact is that the EU's Ruritanian takeover of the NATO operation in FYROM will not contribute any additional military assets. It merely opens the opportunity for political division between European and North American allies at the very time when they should all be sitting around the same table. How much simpler if France were merely to rejoin the integrated military structure of the alliance and then everyone would be happy. Instead of building divisions into the western alliance, both the North Americans and like-minded Europeans must make the necessary political and material commitments to revitalise NATO as the primary instrument of western security. We need to bring Europe's military contribution back into the NATO fold and start rebuilding the common western strategic culture before it is too late.

Political group: PPE-DE
Madam President, first of all I would like to thank our rapporteur Mrs Villiers, who has demonstrated remarkable patience in the light of certain positions and changes of direction during this long procedure, which has finally ended in the compromise on which we must vote tomorrow. As our rapporteur has rightly said, this compromise has failed to achieve its basic aim. Specifically, the directive should set down Community rules applicable in all the Member States, in order to create equal conditions for the various actors and to allow banks and other financial institutions to enter into competition with stock markets and offer their customers the ability to internalise. As you know, France, Italy, Spain and Belgium do not currently authorise these sales outside of stock markets. The factor that brought France and Italy around to the common position was that financial institutions have to make their quotes public before the transaction and must keep to a fixed price. As you know, Luxembourg, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Sweden and Finland rejected this common position. I would also like to state that the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs rejected it, by adopting Mrs Villiers’ report in February. At least the compromise reached continues to partially respect Parliament’s opinion by limiting the price transparency obligation to sales of securities that are smaller in volume than the standard market size. To summarise, the compromise that has been submitted to us is a poor compromise, but, with a heavy heart, I will nevertheless vote in favour of it for two reasons. Firstly, because of the risk of going back to the common position – which is even worse and would damage the financial sector even more – and, secondly, to avoid having to go into conciliation with a new Parliament that is less well-informed in this field. In particular, I deplore the position of the s and above all of their coordinator, Mr Goebbels, who have done nothing to ensure that the position championed by the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs is adopted at second reading, when this would have been much more beneficial for consumers and for investment firms.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, it is customary to be able to respond to the Commission if at the end a question has been ignored or not fully answered. We believe that the European Union is a virtual desert as far as venture capital is concerned and that this needs to be addressed urgently. There are perhaps only one or two countries amongst the 15 where it really operates. The rest of them, I am afraid, are virtually asleep. Even in those countries where it does operate it operates in a different way from the system across the Atlantic. At the very least, issues like the pension fund can be introduced fairly quickly. These issues must not to be put on the back burner.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, the biggest environmental problem in my own country is the acidification of land, forests, lakes and watercourses. Acidification leads to the death, or reduced growth, of forests and causes fish to die and fewer plants to grow. Acidified water also releases heavy metals which constitute a health problem. The countryside in the Nordic countries is particularly vulnerable to acidification because these countries are largely lacking in means to protect themselves against it. Acidification occurs due to acid rain, caused by air polluting emissions produced by the burning of fossil fuels. In Sweden and Finland, we have taken extensive measures in order to reduce national levels of air pollution. We are making major efforts to add lime to lakes and wetlands. We are, for the most part, complying with the emission targets proposed in the now current directive. However, more than 80 per cent of the acid rain over our country comes from air pollution not in our own countries but in other West European countries. We are therefore appealing for your help. Many North Europeans believe that it is only through environmental cooperation with other EU countries that our problems with acidification can be solved. To the members of the Committee on Industry, External Trade, Research and Energy I want to say that the UN resolution in accordance with the Gothenburg Protocol is far from being adequate. I am convinced that the EU can be better than the UN at solving the environmental problems in Europe. The proposed EU directive against air pollution can, in fact, constitute an important step towards combating the acidification of the countryside, mainly in the northern area of the EU. In addition, significant reductions in the percentages of unhealthy ground-level ozone, mainly in big cities in the southern part of the EU, can at the same time be attained. We ought therefore to have a common interest in applauding the present EU draft directive.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, I want to deal particularly with the issue of public expenditure, quality and employment. The explanatory statement of Mrs Peijs' report is very interesting because it explains the background. We have to beware of chasing the American economic model. One of the things that has made many people within the European Union hostile to the euro is that they have seen its introduction as linked to cuts in public expenditure. We have seen, with the American economic model, the prioritising of the private and the cutting of the public. The result has been a tremendous disparity between rich and poor and high levels of child poverty – unlike in countries which invest in social expenditure and reduce the wealth gap. We know that child poverty is linked to poorer educational attainment, poorer job prospects and so on. We have also seen in that economy a reduction of job security and longer working hours, with the introduction of a flexible contract culture. In the UK, contracting out at lower cost quite often means compensatory tax measures at the lower end of pay, a public subsidy to poor wages from poor employers. The American model also represents an unsustainable pattern of consumption, which will have an economic impact in the longer term. My group believes that Mrs Peijs' report does not look sufficiently at the quality of the contribution of public finances. So we cannot support the report in its current form. Hence the amendments we have tabled. I know that it is very difficult to measure the benefits of public expenditure in the same way we look at the balance sheet of a private health care company for example. Public expenditure is an investment in social cohesion and we are gradually coming to recognise the costs of not investing in that. Indeed, a priority for the European Union now is combating social exclusion. We count as an economic success private spending to compensate for the lack of public expenditure. Every burglar alarm bought, for example, is because we feel we are not safe. We agree that we need to reduce the cost of employing people and to focus on lifting taxation costs for the poorer paid, many of whom are women. But we also need to reduce working hours as part of increasing employment opportunities. It is clear to us that a knowledge-based society which tackles social exclusion – we have to remember that Lisbon also said that – needs greater investment. And where will that come from if there is no significant public expenditure? Employers increasingly want ready-trained employees as part of the flexible contract culture. We consider that public investments can have a very positive value and can help to shift the direction of our economy, as we recognise our ecological responsibilities.

Political group: Verts-ALE
Mr President, in spite of the power of work that Mr Herzog has put into this report, I have to say from the outset how far the report, as adopted by the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs, has fallen short of our hopes and expectations for a vigorous European instrument on services of general interest. My group cannot accept it. The text has become an ode to liberalisation with one single aim in mind, namely to make competitive market forces the sole regulator of service provision. Recital H, for example, emphasises that liberalisation in leading sectors in the internal market is a factor in technological progress and economic efficiency, while paragraph 13 welcomes the liberalisation that has taken place in the fields of telecommunications, postal services, transport and energy. Even the moderate proposal calling on the Commission to perform without delay a precise and comparative evaluation of the real impact of the policy of liberalisation of services of general interest before embarking upon further liberalisation, a proposal contained in the Langen report which was approved by this very House, is not endorsed in this report. On spurious pretexts, the report also discards the aim of a framework directive in which services of general interest and the obligations they entail for governments as well as for public and private operators could be defined more precisely. Only basic education and social protection would remain in the public sector. This is far removed from the sort of approach that is absolutely essential for the protection of people’s fundamental rights to energy and water supplies, transport, housing, communications and information. The purpose of services of general interest should be to guarantee these rights in accordance with a number of principles, namely equal access for everyone, information, consultation, user and worker participation and financial viability. It is impossible to achieve this ambition by relentlessly continuing to pursue the sole aim of liberalisation. This text is unacceptable as it now stands. The hopes and expectations aroused by the Green Paper were that public services would play a pivotal role in guaranteeing economic, social and environmental rights, that the true ambition of Europe was to satisfy the needs of the greatest number in a society characterised by solidarity. It follows from these remarks that my group will support all the amendments that are designed to remove the constantly recurring references to liberalisation and those which strengthen a model of services of general interest that are worthy of the name. My group reaffirms the need for an evaluation. It emphasises that services of general interest are elementary public services. It also expresses its desire to confirm unambiguously the right of local and regional authorities to choose freely the way they administer the services of general interest for which they are responsible. These things, at the very least, must be guaranteed if the services of general interest are to be an engine of solidarity in Europe.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, are the non-elected executives of industry the legislators, or is this the task of the elected representatives of the people? Industry would like measures on a voluntary basis that only partly meet the public’s expectations and that can easily be avoided by companies that stand to benefit from doing so. It is sad that the European Commission wanted to meet this wish and that some of the Right-wingers in this Parliament were prepared to endorse this. The argument in favour, namely faster results and more flexible adjustments, is largely cancelled out by the fact that the interested parties themselves have a huge bearing on the outcome. They want to leave room for effects which may be harmful to others but beneficial to themselves. Insofar as additional agreements with industry are meaningful, these can at most relate to the speeding up of the introduction of new rules and ways with a view to a prompt and goal-specific application. I should like to finish off with a remark about the content of the covenant itself. Compulsory daytime use of headlights is only safe in sparsely populated countries with a low sun position, few cyclists and without the need to make motorbike riders more visible, and there is a problem in this respect.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, I have a somewhat urgent question to put to Mr Prodi before he speaks. We have just heard that Mrs de Palacio announced at the Transport, Telecommunications and Energy Council meeting that the Kyoto Protocol is dead. I should like to hear from you what the Commission’s position is on this and whether Mrs de Palacio has acted within her mandate.

Political group: Verts-ALE
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, Korea also has poor and problematic conditions of employment, and it is getting worse. We could, therefore, say that aid does not beget healthy competition in the shipbuilding industry either. It would be very awkward if the aid scheme returned. We would be seeing this sort of Korean time bomb situation here within the Union if certain types of ship were given financial support, and some not. We therefore have to avoid a situation that would lead to new problems within the Union. It was interesting to hear about the plans. I think the WTO solution to this dispute should be expedited. Commissioner Monti, what are you doing, besides using the opportunities presented under the sixth framework programme, with regard to this work, acutely serious and extremely important as it is to us all, in this highly technical, modern area?

Political group: PSE