GwendalTsang/DEFT09-parquet huggingface dataset:
Mr President, we know that one reason for military intervention is the search for weapons of mass destruction, but there are, of course, other reasons. Parliament's resolution of May 2002 made a proposal which still has not been taken up. It suggested that an international ad-hoc tribunal be set up to try Saddam Hussein and his officials, and that the Commission should set up an office of human rights to collect the evidence. There are, of course, different reasons for intervening: humanitarian interventions, self-defence, Article 51, as was used in Afghanistan, and now a new proposal of anticipatory self-defence – the so-called pre-emptive strike – discussed by President Bush for regime change. Even the 'bullet in the head' option has been discussed. But this Parliament, surely, should have one thing in mind: the people of Iraq. Here I call for a prosecution of Saddam Hussein and his officials under the 1948 Genocide Convention. This is a crime against humanity of such a scale that it can never be forgiven and we must invoke justice and the rule of law. The Genocide Convention to which we and all our allies are parties imposes a duty upon us to punish all acts of genocide ordered by constitutionally-responsible rulers. It expressly envisages that an international court may be established for that purpose, preferably in the territory in which the crimes were committed and if not, elsewhere. In this way all perpetrators may be tried by such international panel tribunals which may have jurisdiction with respect to those contracting parties which have accepted its jurisdiction. The Nuremberg precedent reminds us that a torturer is a torturer even if you are in a uniform and you have accepted an order to torture one of your fellow men or women. In other words, being an official does not exempt you from prosecution. This means that we have an absolute duty to look not just at Saddam Hussein but at all of those officials. What are Saddam Hussein's genocidal acts? In the past, we have seen the use of chemical weapons in the north, the decimation of the gypsies, the persecution of Jews, the Assyrian Christians, over three-quarters of a million displaced people, assaults on Shia Muslims and those of Iranian descent. Thirty years of murderous assault and still he goes after the remnants of those unfortunate people. Genocide now concerns the marsh Arabs: over half a million people destroyed in the last few years. They have lost their place, the people, the fish, the animals, the water, the land, their homes, their farms, villages, towns, boats and agriculture through killing, burning and draining. We have seen the total destruction of a unique, distinctively different and ancient tribal people. That is genocide. A UN resolution is required but we need the evidence to be brought up front, in front of the peoples of the world, to alter the perception of why this course of action is required. The establishment of the Office of Human Rights was accepted in principle by Commissioner Patten at our debate in May 2002. I urge him to set up this office without delay – we have already lost too much time.

Political group: ELDR
Mr President, we must welcome the courageous study that the Commission has undertaken on sales promotions in the internal market and the legislative approach it has chosen and most of the solutions found to the regulation we are now considering. However, no fine intention to improve the functioning of the internal market and to make best use of competition rules – as the Commission would like to see, and rightly so – can hide the irrationality of allowing sales below cost. As has already been said in this debate, no one gives anything away for nothing and there is no such thing as a free lunch. Nevertheless, selling below cost is a commercial stratagem which will, sooner or later, be tolerated by consumers. The fairness of commercial practices is an essential and absolute value for the construction and development of a healthier, fairer and more cohesive economy. The predatory practice of pricing below cost is incompatible with these values. Indeed, when this practice is widespread, it imposes unacceptable pressures on the production system in a field with a dominant position, destroying legitimate profit margins to an unimaginable level and, consequently, the survival of small and medium-sized enterprises, which are thereby bound to make all types of concession and are subject to every type of moral pressure. This practice is also responsible for promoting impulse purchases, which obviously present no advantages for consumers, and instead threaten their interests and change their scale of priorities. The ban on irresponsible selling must, therefore, be maintained as a principle crucial to fair commercial practice. Furthermore, we have seen that the commercial strategy of predatory pricing is not controllable simply by applying the general rules on unfair competition. The European Parliament must, therefore, table amendments to the Commission regulation, respecting the principles that I have mentioned.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, the informal meeting of Foreign Ministers in Evian has, in fact, already anticipated to some degree the excellent proposals in Mr Galeote Quecedo’s report. As I understand it, it was agreed that the EU embassies in third countries and the embassies of the Member States should improve their level of cooperation and coordinate their development programmes, and that there should be far more joint action. Now these are things we have already called for on countless occasions, and so I am delighted that Mr Galeote Quecedo has made a proposal that is very much in line with our wishes. Mr President, last week, I was in Indonesia on a fact-finding mission and all I can say is that the EU delegation out there provided me with outstanding support. When I go on foreign trips, I always ask for a meeting to be arranged which will be attended by all the EU ambassadors, i.e. the ambassadors of the 15 Member States. This occasion was no exception, and a meeting was indeed arranged. And then there are complaints that the joint policy of the EU Member States is not in the limelight enough, and that although people in Indonesia know full well what Japan and the United States are doing there, they do not have a clear enough idea as to what the 15 Member States of the European Union are doing there. If I then ask: ‘how do you coordinate your work, and how do you harmonise your activities, the answer is: ‘that is not something we do’. And I would go so far as to say that people seem to be in great fear of achieving a degree of coordination and harmonisation. That is why I think it is so important that these agreements were reached in Evian, and why I welcome with open arms the fact that an EU college of diplomacy has been proposed. The national diplomats should also be required to attend courses at a college of this kind, so that they understand how to take joint action at European level. There is an urgent need for this. It is not a question of wanting to outdo the United States, or Japan, for example, but what we do need to do is give Europe a much higher profile in third countries. Accordingly, I have a great deal of time for Mr Galeote Quecedo’s report and I truly hope that the Evian proposals come to fruition.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, we probably do not always feel comfortable in this Parliament, because what is approved is not what we wanted to be approved. However, once again, this Parliament is going to speak to the rest of the world against the death penalty. I therefore feel proud to be here this afternoon and to be able to vote, unanimously, for a condemnation of the death penalty. The death penalty is barbarous. As other Members have said, it is a terrifying fact that many innocent people have been executed. And I do not understand how anybody can live with that on their conscience. In reality today’s resolution talks about three specific cases: firstly, the case of José Joaquín Martínez, a Spaniard, in whose trial enormous irregularities have occurred. I have here a copy of a letter which one of the witnesses sent. He is in prison, it is true, but he sent a letter to the court saying that he had heard somebody claiming responsibility for the murder which José Joaquín Martínez is convicted of. With this simple source of doubt, it is impossible to condemn a defendant to death. Therefore we ask in the resolution for a new trial and that under no circumstances the death sentence be passed. The second case is that of Abu Jamal. There are many reasons to believe that the trial and death sentence on Abu Jamal were motivated by political factors, above all, because he was a leader. For the moment he has been spared. His execution was set for 2 December. We also demand that this death sentence not be carried out. And we also take up the case of a person who is mentally ill, who was about to be executed and who has been spared. It seems to us an enormous and terrifying cruelty that anybody should consider executing ill people of this type and that people should be kept in prison for 21 years, as is the case with a Canadian who was due to be executed and, half an hour before his execution, had his appeal accepted in court. This is tremendously cruel and the world cannot accept it. This Parliament must champion the demand for a universal moratorium, if this is not approved now. And to this end we must display our moral authority.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, Council representatives, Commissioner, as you will certainly have understood from the applause, we value your work and your efforts to find good, pragmatic solutions and work together with Parliament, as well as the progress which you have chalked up on the scoreboard. I am delighted at the commitment of the Swedish Presidency, even if a great many problems still remain to be resolved. But, that notwithstanding, allow me to draw your attention to three problem areas, parts of which have already been addressed, namely the deficits which we have, secondly, the solutions which we still need, because the proposals seem to bear no relation to reality and, thirdly, the uncoordinated initiatives by Member States. I shall start with the last point. You have my support here, Commissioner. You feel that we need a new modus operandi here. We spend a great deal of time on parallel initiatives which very often have no legal basis and which we often suspect are nationally motivated rather than concerned with finding European solutions. We need an efficient mechanism for pushing ahead with the positive aspects here. The second point is that there has been a dramatic increase in both drug abuse in the European Union and in drug production, especially the production of synthetic drugs, in the European Union. In the meantime, there are now over 5 million young people taking synthetic drugs. The European Union has become the biggest producer and exporter of synthetic drugs in the world. And if we look at the scoreboard, then we can see that very little action has been taken. An initiative plan was submitted in 2000, but no further action was taken. I would ask for this to be made a new focal point. Finally, I should like to mention one more thing. Where there is no bearing on reality, as in the case of family reunion ... (The President cut the speaker off)

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, Commissioner, Mrs Keppelhoff-Wiechert, we in the Group of the naturally support the policy of ceasing to add antibiotics to feed. This is an old demand by Parliament, and the ban might certainly already have been imposed years ago, but we wish to commend the process we are now completing. I must also take this opportunity to show respect for the Commission for having complied with this request by Parliament. We are part-way through the codecision procedure, and that gives me the opportunity to refer nonetheless to a number of reservations. Mrs Keppelhoff-Wiechert, in your first reports, you had proposed a tougher approach to the registration of manufactured substances and to the timing of such registration, and the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development did of course fall in with this proposal. In particular, you had initially recommended that coccidiostats be phased out by 2008. This has now been postponed to 2012 and not even, as yet, with a view to banning them definitively but rather with a view possibly to categorising them as medicines. That seems to me to be a very long wait. Why can they not be transferred into the medicines category before that? Not that doing so would necessarily justify a ban. I have the impression that, in moving in that direction, you have been considerably influenced by the industry concerned. In the throes of a codecision procedure, a large group like the Group of the European People’s Party has the opportunity of using its large quantity of votes to prevent us from obtaining the 314 votes we need and, through preferential negotiations, has the considerable power to land Parliament with results that we cannot then alter. In saying this, I would indicate that codecision does not necessarily always produce good results. Instead, it must be taken seriously and handled responsibly, and – above all, in the large group – there should be no getting carried away into complying with the interests of the industry. Nonetheless, we shall endorse this report, and I hope that you will reconsider whether it might not, however, be possible for your group also to support what has been decided by the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development on the subject of registering manufactured substances.

Political group: Verts-ALE
Mr President, first of all, I should like to thank Mrs Fraga Estevez for a splendid piece of work in connection with the report. Just as I said earlier in connection with Mr Gallagher’s report, those of us in the Group of the European Liberal, Democrat and Reform Party are concerned that, in line with developments, we allow the self-funding sector, that is to say the ship owners and fishermen, to pay a larger contribution towards those agreements from which they of course benefit most. The fisheries agreement with Madagascar is valuable not only for the Community but also for Madagascar. The high degree to which the Community’s fishing opportunities are exploited is impressive and worth emphasising. I should like to support Mrs Fraga Estevez in saying that, in the funding of the fisheries agreements, a sharp and clear distinction should be made between the portion used to fund fishing opportunities and the portion used to fund development measures which, in the EU’s budget, should appear as development aid. The agreements are exceedingly important to those regions of Europe in which fishing is the most important activity, and we are concerned here not merely with the work of the fishermen but also with associated businesses on land. It is the EU’s responsibility to ensure that, when we conclude agreements, it is surplus resources with which we are concerned. Matters must be arranged in such a way that local fishermen are provided with development opportunities, and that means that the EU must secure the concept of sustainability. This agreement, like the one with Senegal, is important to the Community, partly of course in the light of the fact that the fisheries agreement with Morocco was not renewed.

Political group: ELDR
Mr President, the arrest at the weekend of Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the Burmese National League for Democracy, is deplorable and shows that the military regime in Burma has no intention of democratic reform. Reports of personal injuries are all the more alarming. This turn of events also calls into question the effectiveness of EU action against the military dictatorship. We demand the immediate release of Aung San Suu Kyi, as well as the release of all political prisoners and the lifting of restrictions against the NLD, universities and other institutions. The very worrying deterioration in the political situation in the last few days is just the latest twist in a story of consistent human rights abuses. Anyone who expresses opposition to the regime is subject to harassment and arrest and goes in fear of their life. Ethnic minorities such as the Karin and the Shan continue to suffer violent oppression, and there are over 130 000 refugees in camps on the Thai-Burma border. Regrettably we witness yet another example where the efforts of the European Union and the wider international community to encourage change have brought few tangible results. Clearly we have not yet hit the regime where it hurts. The EU's extension of its travel ban against the regime, and assets freeze, were agreed in April but suspended until October in the hope of some improvement in the situation. The situation has clearly deteriorated, and the Council should take action immediately to implement the measures that it agreed in its common position. This situation could best be resolved if the Burmese regime were to respect the results of the 1990 elections, as the international community has consistently demanded.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, it may be possible to reconcile the two positions: firstly, we would accept the joint proposal from our two groups to debate Chechnya on Wednesday afternoon and secondly, we would defer the point on Bolivia to Wednesday evening, which means that it would be addressed in the presence of the Commission only. Opting for this solution would, I think, enable us both to express our views on Chechnya and also say what we think about the bloody repression in Bolivia, which, I would remind you, has led to the deaths of almost eighty people in the space of one week. (In successive votes, Parliament agreed to include in Wednesday's agenda Council and Commission statements on the EU-Russia summit – with motions for resolution – and a Commission statement on Bolivia) (The order of business was thus established).(2)

Political group: GUE-NGL
I abstained from the vote on the joint resolution on poor countries’ debt because I feel that it is wishy-washy and ambiguous in the face of the financial mechanisms known to us all which plunge the greater part of humanity into the most abject poverty. Today, even the multilateral organisations such as the World Bank and the IMF are talking of reducing the debt, for the mechanisms stifling the economies no longer make sense, even from a neoliberal perspective. At the June 1999 G7 Summit, the United States, the United Kingdom and other countries talked of reducing the poor countries’ debt to 90%. If we look closely at these proposals, we see that they would not really be a solution, for if these measures were to be applied, they would only affect 8% or, at most, 10% of the debt of the 41 countries involved, which is, at the outside, 1% of the total Third World debt. But these same measures are given minimal application, which has tragic consequences for the indebted countries, but which benefits the creditors themselves in terms of export loans, financial bodies and multinationals, for example. First of all, we must acknowledge that the Third World debt is illegal. Therefore, the European Union should promote an international, bilateral and multilateral action cancelling the Third World debt with no conditions attached. The Member States must cancel the debts of the poor countries in practical terms and urge the international bodies which represent them to take similar steps. We must ensure that the cancellation of debts is not conditional upon cooperation, as is often the case, or linked to any sort of structural adjustment measure. We have to influence the financial mechanisms which caused this debt and the structural adjustment policies which continue to contribute to it, spreading poverty throughout these countries. - Resolution on Zimbabwe

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, I would like to congratulate the rapporteur on his hard work and particularly the excellent definition of renewables. This directive should be solely directed towards supporting new renewable technologies that are not yet commercially viable. The directive, as some of the speakers have already said, needs to have binding targets in order for the Member States and the entire EU to achieve a significant increase in the share of renewable energies in the total energy market. I note that the Commission is proposing a review in 2005 but I would urge that you also ask the Member States to make annual reports on achieving the targets in the White Paper. I would also like the directive not to establish any ceiling or limitation on direct support mechanisms chosen by the individual Member States. It should also encourage fair and non-discriminatory network access as its most important item. The directive should also contain mechanisms to discourage, as we have already heard, the Member States from their market distorting subsidies to traditional forms of energy, particularly fossil fuels and nuclear. There are a lot of covert subsidies to the nuclear sector that have been there for a long time and that are long overdue for a considerable review if not a total ban. Attempts to say that support for renewable energy is a distortion of the market in the context of the vast subsidies for nuclear and fossil fuels that exist in the European Union are totally spurious. I hope that the Commissioner will really take that point to heart. The directive should explicitly propose a system of support and advantages for the small and medium-sized companies in decentralised production and distribution of renewable energies. It should include incentives allowing the Member States to clearly support advantages for the regions, especially rural areas, in respect to labour intensive green production. Most importantly, the directive should propose mechanisms for the internalisation of external costs of traditional energy production. Finally, I would urge that it is important that some of the undertakings by Member States to include renewables in the energy mix in the electricity sector be at least equal to the total EU commitment made in the White Paper on renewable energy, as endorsed by the Council and this Parliament. I would like to make particular reference to the unsatisfactory rate of uptake in the UK, Ireland and France. Here we can clearly see from empirical studies that network access is by far the best way to achieve high percentages of renewable energy rather than the other methods that have been undertaken in those countries.

Political group: Verts-ALE
As an MEP for London, I have a strong interest in combating and reducing drug-related deaths and drug-related illnesses such as HIV, hepatitis B and C and tuberculosis, one of the targets of the EU Drugs Strategy (2000-2004) endorsed by the European Council in 1999. I support the Malliori report with some minor exceptions. Although it proposes a range of non-binding measures, the stress on the role of local communities, especially police, social workers, local authority healthcare staff and others is the right emphasis. I am particularly supportive of the call for Member States to pay more attention to high-risk environments, like prisons, and the call for action on new 'drug patterns' such as 'designer drug' use, which is increasing in my constituency.

Political group: PSE
Madam President, I consider proposed Amendment No 27 to be invalid, now that we have mercifully decided that we should lay down our own rules of procedure and that we should only be advised and that other institutions should not decide for us. We have deleted the words in question and the insertion added under proposed Amendment No 27 no longer makes sense. It only makes sense if another forum decides the rules for us and mercifully comes to an agreement with us. As this Parliament has proven that it has backbone enough to want to decide on its own procedures, I consider this proposed amendment to be invalid. (Applause)

Political group: PSE