GwendalTsang/DEFT09-parquet huggingface dataset:
Mr President, once again we are reminded of the desperate tragedy that continues to afflict the people of Burma. Much attention has been paid to the fact that talks have been going on between the military regime and Aung San Suu Kyi since October 2000. However, in reality, little in the way of substantive political progress has been made. The military regime continues to deprive the National League for Democracy of its election victory of 1990, keeping its leader and 20 of its MPs under arrest. Moreover, it continues to violate in a most appalling way the basic human rights of its citizens. While it is perhaps invidious to focus on any one individual, as so many suffer, I want to draw particular attention today to the case of 74-year-old Dr Salai Tun Than, retired rector of the Yezin University in Upper Burma, who is currently being held in the infamous Insein Prison. Dr Than, who is not directly affiliated to any political movement, has had a long and distinguished career of public service, with the founding of the Myanmar Integrated Rural Development Association among his many accomplishments. In any civilised country he would be held up as a pillar of the community. Instead, on 29 November last year, he was arrested for handing out a petition calling for a return to civilian rule. In February of this year he was sentenced to seven years in prison. Dr Than has had no access to visitors since his arrest, save for the Red Cross, who have provided him with medicine for a chronic eye condition. He is just one of more than 1,300 political prisoners languishing in Burmese jails, most of them guilty of nothing more than having the courage to stand up for their legitimate political freedoms. I call upon the Burmese authorities to release Dr Salai Tun Than immediately. It is now time for us to send a clear message to the military regime in Burma as a matter of urgency: it must heed calls for a return to democracy and political freedom. Only then can it hope to qualify for much-needed international assistance that will enable this desperate country to halt its ruinous economic decline.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, my group opposes lifting the arms embargo, and thus we support the general line of not lifting the arms embargo on China now. I should like to add a couple of things, however. Everyone who has had the opportunity to visit China on several occasions over the past ten years – as I myself have done – will know that a tremendous economic dynamic is discernible there, with substantial regional differences, and with what could almost be described as rigid capitalism at internal level, which gives rise to numerous major social problems. A society developing in this way also needs a political system capable of handling this. There is clearly an enormous tension between that economic freedom on the one hand, which leaves insufficient room for shaping at the social level by the social players such as the trade unions and others; and the political level on the other, which leaves no room for political democracy. We are, of course, all watching that whole process with bated breath. China is no small player. It is large and powerful both in economic terms and in terms of population size. When trying to look at that region from a geopolitical point of view, therefore, do not just look at it in relation to Taiwan. Naturally, that is one point, but much broader factors affect that region. China naturally wants to become a global player, little by little. It is trying to launch a charm offensive: after all, it knows fine well that a great many people are intimidated by its enormous economic power, and it is trying, as it were, to be a positive player at global level. In order to do so, it must effectively make more room for democracy and respect for human rights in its own country. It is not yet managing to control that tension very well, and some do not even want to control it or are themselves engaging in something that we do not think possible, which is having freedom on the one hand and a lack of political freedom on the other. Nevertheless, we, Europe, have an enormous amount to gain from helping China take on this new role. Therefore, all fellow Members are rightly saying ‘no lifting of the arms embargo’: that gives out the wrong signal. At the same time, however, ladies and gentlemen, let us put it in a wider perspective and make clear that we genuinely desire that in-depth dialogue with China – that goes for the Council, too – and that we also want to help with that process. It is fundamental that China assume a role in the world and that that role is compatible with the international legal order.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, competition is at the heart of the European internal market policy and is also its driving force. A free and open market can only exist by the grace of competition, marked by clear, uniform rules. In his report, Karl von Wogau manages to capture this very well. But Europe is changing. The economies are growing, we are enlarging to 25-30 Member States. The European Commission will become overburdened if it pursues its current policy. It is therefore necessary to modernise competition policy. This is not in question. Having said this, I still have concerns about the proposed decentralisation. How will the Commission, as keeper of the Treaties, guarantee that decisions are taken uniformly in matters of competition in London, Palermo, Helsinki and, soon, Budapest and Ankara? This is necessary if legal inequality is to be prevented, and issues of competition will gravitate towards the court where the most lenient judgements are given. It is not enough to say that, in the Member States, there is already 40 years’ worth of experience. In the Netherlands, the competition authority is still in its infancy. This country has a very small market which, unfortunately, is often at the same time defined as the relevant market. This in contrast to Germany, where a very experienced Kartellamt is exercising its powers within a gigantic market. The European Commission’s belief that, in all quarters of the Union, legislation will, almost as a matter of course, be interpreted in the same way, is what, within catholic circles, we term “foolhardy,” and this is not allowed. Uniformity needs to be worked on. Think of specialist, national courts with the option of direct appeal to a special competition court at the European Court. This special court in Luxembourg is necessary in order to build up broad expertise. Moreover, due to the immense economic and social interests involved, we cannot afford to wait for a judgement to be pronounced two years after the event, as is now quite normal. What is the Commissioner’s opinion of this? I would like to finish off by making an important point for small and medium-sized businesses. In order to grant small and medium-sized companies greater security, the European Commission itself needs to draw up an exemption regulation for small and medium-sized businesses so that, alongside vertical exemptions, horizontal exemptions will also be possible. Through cooperation, small, independent firms must be able to stand up to the large chains. It cannot be the aim of European competition policy to make life impossible for small businesses. Moreover, regarding these small businesses, we will have to consider whether it would not be better to apply a system with a prior warning built in, the yellow card, instead of an immediate red card, which will be a large fine and will threaten the company’s very existence.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, I am speaking on behalf of the Socialist Group and also as the Socialist coordinator of the Committee on Fisheries to draw the attention of the House to the oil spill from the Prestige, to which previous speakers have also referred, which took place last week near the coast of my region, Galicia. On Thursday – the accident happened on Wednesday – I tabled a motion for a resolution before this House and also tabled two motions for resolutions, because I understand there are common interests here: environmental interests, fisheries interests – which the Committee on Fisheries will have to pursue – and interests relating to the maritime transport of dangerous goods, which the Committee on Regional Policy, Transport and Tourism will have to pursue. The tanker has already left an oil slick 37 km long which is spreading towards the coast, paradoxically, despite being named Prestige – and you can see that this will indeed be a European problem – it is Bahamas-flagged, with a Philippine-Romanian crew, it was travelling from Lithuania – a candidate country – to Gibraltar, which involves a European Union country, a Member State, in this case the United Kingdom, and was under the command of a Greek captain. I would call on the Community institutions to strengthen legislation in this field, comply with existing legislation and devote their attention to this kind of disaster by means of European solidarity, such as that provided, for example, in the cases of the natural disasters that have taken place in four Member States over the summer. (Applause)

Political group: PSE
Madam President, I do not wish to drag this out and frustrate Members waiting to get on with the vote on the budget. The test should be very simple. All you need do is ask for the version with the signatures of the various signatories from the different groups that combined in this joint resolution. If the reference to Michelin is there, that is the text we should vote on today. I would oppose a deferral until Brussels.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I should like to make four comments. The first one is about Kaliningrad. I believe that enormous efforts have been made in this regard in recent months. The Commission and the Council had meetings with Mr Rogosin, the presidential envoy, and with Minister Rasov. At the instigation of our President, Mr Pat Cox, they also had parliamentary support at two meetings with our Polish, Lithuanian and Russian colleagues. I believe that we can be satisfied with this and my group is satisfied with the result achieved. Secondly, Chechnya. Yes, it is clear that the events in the Dubrovka Theatre must of course be condemned, and as Chair of the Russia delegation that is what I immediately conveyed to Mr Lukin. We can condemn it and we do of course also want an explanation of the gas that was used, of the circumstances in which action was taken and of how the forces of law and order acted. I believe that some additional clarity about this is required. We also note that there is a tougher stance on the part of the Russians with regard to Chechnya. Nonetheless, the European Parliament has taken the lead in this debate in recent months. We have said that we are in favour of negotiations and talks, because a military solution is not going to produce a result. I find that our Russian friends, President Putin not least, have now adopted an extremely rigid attitude and since 11 September have put the whole struggle in Chechnya in the context of the war on international terrorism. I believe this to be an aberration. Only holding talks, even with the people around Mr Maskhadov, will lead to a genuine solution. Thirdly, I should like to express my concern here about the general state of human rights in Chechnya. Amnesty International has recently published a report about the freedom of the press, about the lack of religious freedom and about the general human rights situation in Russia. I believe that this warrants some attention on our part. Finally, I would draw your attention to an environmental problem. At the beginning of October my delegation visited Murmansk. There we studied the nuclear inheritance of the Soviet Union. All the local people and all the local authorities there are asking for a multilateral nuclear environment programme. I should like to ask the Commission and the Council very clearly how things stand with the negotiations on this treaty? It is absolutely essential that there is one, otherwise no one can take responsibility for clearing up the nuclear inheritance of the Soviet Union properly. I should like to put this question to you Commissioner and to you Mr Haarder, for which my heartfelt thanks.

Political group: Verts-ALE
I hope Commissioner Fischler understands that Members of the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy fully endorse what the Commissioner has just said about the need for extra resources to ensure that environmental legislation is properly enforced. But it is not just Ireland that is causing difficulties. In October last year a reasoned opinion against the construction of the Odelouca dam in Portugal was issued and yet I understand that construction on the dam started in January this year. What steps has the Commission taken to try to persuade the Portuguese authorities to stop construction of this dam?

Political group: ELDR
Mr President, this morning we had a debate on whether or not, in future, the House should meet in plenary on Fridays. A possible justification cited in favour of change was that the agenda is generally relatively uninteresting and that something should be done about this. For that reason, and in order to establish whether a quorum is guaranteed on Thursday afternoon when there is an interesting agenda and very important votes, I request that you establish the quorum. (Applause)

Political group: GUE-NGL
On a point of order, I would like to point out that, with the exception of the last speaker, not one of our colleagues has respected their speaking time. The result is that we have dealt with only nine questions, the first four of which had a joint answer.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, I would like to thank my colleague, Mr Carraro, for this competently prepared and timely report. This ICANN manoeuvres the Internet’s information channels and determines who has the use of addresses and how they might achieve this. Whole countries can fall foul of the organisation’s tyranny and be cut off from information if they do not agree to play the game. Companies’ profits can dive if a letter or dot is put in the wrong place. The organisation’s power now extends to copyright and consumer matters, and that power is growing all the time. But the organisation is supervised by no one and responsible to no one. This is a peculiar combination! Recently there was a vote to increase the Board of Directors to nineteen members. Of the three billion of those entitled to vote in the network vote, just seventy-six thousand did. It is a strange game! This is an incredibly undemocratic system in an incredibly important role. The Commission has quite rightly taken action, and so it must. But we need something more. ICANN cannot be the administrative organ of the networked world or its nerve centre without having any responsibility, led by a random group of people. Surely somebody must be responsible for something. I would nevertheless like to thank the Commission and Mr Liikanen, who has worked hard to produce an excellent document for the Stockholm Summit at this serious point in time, which Mr Carraro, among others, referred to. It is an important contribution, and it will give hope to the IT sector in its proposal for measures that would make it easier for companies to function, increase employment and, as a result, boost European competitiveness.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, this issue should not even be a subject of urgent debate. I deplore the cynical Green exploitation and misrepresentation of the situation. Interference in the internal affairs of a candidate country with the political blackmail of a threat to veto accession to the EU is wholly unacceptable. I regret that people in Austria have allowed themselves to be ruled by emotion, not rational scientific argument. The Czechs show every sign of behaving responsibly and properly according to internationally accepted standards, and we should leave them to get on with it. Although I signed the joint motion as instructed by my political group, I intend to vote against this resolution.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and acts of aggression involving actions against third countries are the four types of crime which could be tried in the international criminal court. The four Geneva Conventions of 1949 for the protection of victims of armed conflicts already oblige States to pursue and try the perpetrators of such crimes. The plan for an international criminal court is another step forward in the creation of an international humanitarian legal system. I am reminded here that the preparation period for the statute of the international criminal court was long and tense. I had the honour of participating in that process on behalf of the world parliamentary community in my capacity as the then President of the Inter-Parliamentary Union. I can therefore bear witness to the fact that, in that very complicated negotiation, many concessions had to be made in order to draw up a text which, although falling short of our initial aspirations, achieved the necessary consensus and was finally able to come into play as an acceptably effective instrument. It would be irresponsible today not to publicly recognise our disappointment at the fact that, a year and a half later, only 91 States have signed it and just five or six have ratified it when – as Mrs Schörling has said – 60 ratifications are necessary for the court to come into effect. Therefore, by means of the resolution we are about to approve, the European Parliament is coherently maintaining the support which it always expressed for this initiative. However, to sum up, what we are going to do here in these final debates of the year and the century is to publicly and formally recognise that this issue is still outstanding, and that we also have the commitment to persevere with our efforts to fulfil the objective which we set on approving the court’s statute, also urging the Council and the Commission to act to this end. In all these actions, we Socialists are guided by the awareness that, in a world which is being globalised, it is essential that the Rule of Law is globalised as well and this is what we should work towards.

Political group: PSE
Madam President, Commissioner, no one can fail to be moved by the problem that we are debating today, famine in the world, and since it is still so very acute we are called on to show greater political will, in particular at the forthcoming World Food Summit. It is therefore vital that at this summit the European Union participate fully in this battle to gain recognition of the fact that the right to food is a fundamental human right. It is true that famine may seem to be the consequence of bad distribution of food between over-nourished and undernourished countries. Nevertheless, the solution to this problem does not lie solely in establishing better trade between regions of abundance and regions of poverty. The priority has to be to find and promote solutions where the problem arises, if only to keep in step with the food culture of the people concerned and to consolidate the rural economy. From this point of view, the fight against hunger and poverty certainly requires us to cancel debt, support education and vocational training, increase technical assistance and encourage investment in these countries which are lagging behind. It also undoubtedly requires good use of water and the preservation of biodiversity, and we are expecting these to be declared 'inalienable public assets' by the international community. Above all, however, we cannot forget that it requires us to exploit fisheries and promote the development of food-producing agriculture on a sustainable model. In this sense, promoting agricultural practices which are adapted to local conditions, processing food products locally, developing local markets and ensuring that developing countries have freedom of choice when it comes to new technologies are priorities which are just as important in regions stricken by famine, and this means that the WTO's provisions on special and differentiated treatment will need to be reinforced. I would therefore ask our Commissioner to defend the ideas contained in Parliament's joint motion at the forthcoming World Food Summit.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, today’s vote is important and fits in very well with our work timetable, as tomorrow negotiations will begin on partnership agreements with the ACP countries. It is therefore important for Parliament to send a loud, clear message to the Commission with regard to these negotiations by means of the recommendations we formulate. I would like to thank our rapporteur warmly and congratulate her. Mrs Boudjenah’s report was unanimously adopted in committee, which is very good. We fully share her point of view on the matter and we support her. In this regard, I was sorry to hear Mr Schwaiger’s statements, which could divide Parliament on the matter at a completely inappropriate time. Perhaps, however, the does not fully share Mr Schwaiger’s position. With regard to the amendments tabled by the , I do not believe they improve the report, but rather that they aim to weaken it or sugar the pill. From a political perspective, there is no real point in presenting a weak or sugared position to the Commission. Basically, when we talk about partnership agreements, the word “partnership” has an eminently pleasant connotation, we all agree on that, as it concerns a relationship between equals, or partners, with the ACP countries. This, however, must not make us forget that we are not equal to the ACP countries. These countries have weak and vulnerable economies. Committing to the concept of absolute free trade, without first assessing the consequences for the social, environmental or economic situation of these countries, is rather like going down a dark tunnel. We therefore think an impact assessment should be carried out first. Two years after Cotonou, this would be welcome. We must also remove the structural and commercial barriers which prevent these countries from being able to benefit fully from the current non-reciprocal preferences. Maintaining them would be suicidal. What are these barriers? Although the matter has already been raised by the rapporteur, I would like to emphasise a factor that we have repeatedly criticised, namely the problem of grants from the European Union for exports, in particular in the agriculture sector. Furthermore, the lack of opportunity for local product processing is one great weakness of these economies. I shall end there, as I see I have exceeded my speaking time and you are being uncompromising today, Mr President. The problem of local processing, which creates added value at local level, is clearly fundamental and the rapporteur has quite rightly emphasised this point.

Political group: Verts-ALE
Mr President-in-Office of the Council, I am truly grateful for your full answer to this question on the programmes which, as you have pointed out, have been implemented. However, the question stressed the fact that this is a problem which has recently become more serious, precisely because of the ease with which our borders can be crossed. This movement of people basically originates in the candidate countries of the East. The majority of cases involve women in illegal situations. This immigration is taking place in the worst possible conditions and these women are defenceless victims of every type of marginalisation and hardship. I believe that an effort has been made over recent years, but I must insist that it requires special attention now and we must prevent such problems in the future, since it is possible that this problem will become even more acute.

Political group: PPE-DE