GwendalTsang/DEFT09-parquet huggingface dataset:
Mr President, Commissioner, the airwaves are buzzing. You cannot open a newspaper or put the radio or television on without being confronted by new developments in the IT or digitalisation sectors. Things are happening fast, in fact they are happening at the speed of light, which is why my group is delighted with the communication from the Commission and with Mr Veltroni’s exhaustive report, which looks into every aspect of these new developments. As the rapporteur rightly points out, the AV sector is an extremely important sector in terms of employment, but also in terms of freedom of expression, democracy and cultural diversity in Europe. But as far as the is concerned, that does not mean that Europe should set about regulating absolutely everything. This would not be possible, and nor would it be desirable. It is a self-aware sector and is perfectly capable of standing on its own two feet. As the Liberals see it, for one thing this means that there is no need for yet another additional subsidy over and above Media Plus for the European film industry. Complementary measures and cooperation with the business community, and fiscal measures, these are the key words of a more effective policy intended to increase the financial resources and to improve the marketing and distribution. That is why we have requested split voting for Recital N. Nor are we in favour of quotas. The TV operators must decide for themselves, on the basis of quality, what programmes they want to show. It is not Europe’s business to regulate this, so no artificial protection. The industry in Europe is more than capable of making interesting and quality productions that will attract viewers. As I have already said, it is only the marketing and distribution that need to be improved. On a final note: we attach a great deal of importance to the freedom of the user and therefore the same applies to parents. They have the right and the responsibility to decide for themselves what is suitable for their children. So we do not need complex censorship and filtering systems in programmes. It is often very doubtful as to where the boundary lies. And we certainly do not want a legal framework, where the powers that be set the rules. My group will vote accordingly.

Political group: ELDR
Mr President, in his report on the Irish Sea fishery Mr Nicholson recognises that this area has the dubious honour of pioneering the use of emergency measures to arrest the decline in cod stocks. But in the North Sea, too, we are subject to emergency measures this year, necessary measures aimed at maximum protection of cod during the spawning period between now and the end of April. Why is it then that, after so many years of a common fisheries policy whose principal intention is to conserve stocks, we have to resort to emergency measures in the Irish and North Sea cod areas? While accepting the need for these short-term measures, we must also learn from past mistakes and prepare sensible long-term management proposals to try to deal with these situations. The technical measures which have been pioneered in areas like Scotland must be built on and improved and extended to all areas of fishery. Appropriate action must be taken to prevent the displacement of effort leading to damage in other areas and to other stocks. The impact of industrial fishery must be properly assessed, in terms both of its allowable white fish by-catch, and of its effect on the whole marine food chain. Clearly a significant downturn in fishing activity can be expected in the next few years, and clearly with that significant downturn in activity will come a significant downturn in the income of many families and many communities in our fishing areas, both in the catching sector and in processing. Just as the economic and social effects of the lack of a new agreement with Morocco have been felt in very particular areas, so the effects of these emergency measures in the long-term cod recovery plans will have an effect in very particular areas. There is a case for looking at similar financial compensation measures for these areas. The CFP review provides a challenge and an opportunity. I hope that the solution we come up with will be one that actually works. The best means of doing that is to make sure that the new fisheries policy includes significant and adequate involvement of stakeholders – of fishermen, processors, scientists and conservationists from particular areas such as the North Sea, so that we can work together to recommend proposals for management which are tailored to and targeted towards the needs of these particular areas.

Political group: Verts-ALE
Mr President, in this connection, I should like to point out that the College of Quaestors decides on these matters, and that these matters also have political implications. I find it disquieting, however, that the College of Quaestors is now largely made up of members.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, it is a pity that the conservative group in the European Parliament prevented Parliament from taking part, even indirectly, in the Council summit in Stockholm by voting against the Bullmann report during the last part-session, thereby reducing us to the present alternative. The Council summit in Stockholm will have to take decisions on matters relating to education and research. We need to speed up the rate of development of the electronic learning sector. Innovations and new multimedia and Internet technologies will give us the tools we need for distance learning both for general education and for training and lifelong learning. At the Stockholm Summit, we shall need to start systematically monitoring electronic learning, bringing together indicators to control equal access of pupils and non-pupils to information and communications technologies and taking measures to combat geographical, social and cultural inequalities. On the other hand, lifelong learning is a prime means for the European economy of allowing the human resources which we need for a knowledge society to respond and develop. We need to bear the social cost of these policies in the conviction that they will bring in maximum returns, for the benefit of the European social and cultural model. Finally, the European research area must be given form and substance by coordinating activities and policies in the research area and supporting both basic research and pioneering technologies. We need to increase spending in order to catch up with the USA and we need better, more efficient relations between research and science and public opinion and the citizens of Europe.

Political group: PSE
The report being debated has no administrative character, it has a purely political character. The proposed introduction of European political parties is not the result of voluntary choice and agreement on action based on common ideological approaches; on the contrary, it is intended to bring about acceptance of the reactionary and anti-grass roots structure of the ΕU. For the ΕU, respect for the 'rule of law' is respect for the dictatorship of the monopolies, with the Schengen Agreement, fewer and fewer rights and personal freedoms, EMU, part-time and temporary work and anti-grass roots austerity programmes, in order to safeguard big business's profits. The ΕU's ambition, using blackmail and funding as a lever, is to incorporate its terms for building parties into its reactionary policies and so impose them. It opts for constant and institutionalised intervention in the Member States, in order to restrict the voice and action of the political forces which have an anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist character and are fighting the ΕU. The strategic objective is to depreciate the class struggle at international and national level in the consciousness of the peoples. A party has validity at European and international level when it is strong in its own country. Opportunist political configurations are being strengthened which put a brake on the radicalisation of consciousnesses, on the search for struggling poles of expression and action, trapping the peoples in reactions that are painless to the system. For these reasons, the MEPs of the Communist Party of Greece voted against the report and called for it to be withdrawn.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, first of all, I should like to express my thanks for the excellent report by my colleague Mr Cashman, and also for the positive commentary by Commissioner de Palacio. Mr Cashman and I have worked together on openness a great deal in recent years. That cooperation has always been very positive, very constructive and productive, and that way you start to become good friends too. The Committee on Constitutional Affairs made a number of comments on the first assessment by the Council, the Commission and Parliament regarding the implementation of the Regulation in its first year. We observed that the number of requests for access to documents that were refused by the Council and the Commission is still too large to be readily acceptable. In fact, we should like to see another assessment of the situation by the European Ombudsman for 2004, so that it can be ascertained where further improvements can be made with regard to Article 4, for example, in order to bring about an even greater access to documents; including in the Council, in particular. An important point regarding the Council is that it differentiates between documents of Member States acting, on the one hand, in their capacity as Council members and, on the other hand, as individual Member States. That leads to unequal treatment, with significant restrictions regarding documents of Member States who themselves hardly have any legislation on openness. In the opinion of the Committee on Constitutional Affairs, the most appropriate solution is to ask the Member States to adopt open government, too; the Commission would have to submit a directive on this. That is the appeal we make to the Commission: to see whether it can submit a directive that ensures that open government is the same in all the Member States. That would be a good thing for the citizens of those Member States, and also for the citizens who call on EU documents, because it would mean that they had equal access whether they requested them from Sweden, Greece or Portugal. That was my last intervention here in Parliament: I should like to thank Mrs de Palacio, and I should also like to thank the Presidency for its kind words earlier today. (Applause)

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, I think this is an excellent set of reports and that the Committee on Foreign Affairs has done a good job. Having said which, I think that no-one can hide their concern about how the enlargement of the European Union is proceeding and about the serious repercussions, especially the social repercussions, in a number of countries moving towards accession. As president of the EU-Bulgaria Joint Parliamentary Committee, I should like to say that, yes, there has been important intervention on the part of the European Union and issues such as the nuclear sector, restructuring of the agricultural sector and investment programmes in Bulgaria have been given positive momentum; however, at the same time, I cannot, for example, ignore the recent EUROSTAT report published a week ago, which shows that social rights fought for in Bulgaria are literally being demolished. I think we need to look into all this.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Madam President, I asked for the Commissioner to speak before we took a decision because Mrs Stauner raised an important question and we did not hear the Commissioner's reply. What is going on? Did this happen or not? And for us then to decide. I fail to understand how we can take a decision without the Commissioner's reply. Besides, I saw for myself that the Commissioner asked to speak.

Political group: PSE
I am convinced that the Members’ Statute, demanded so vehemently by this House, is yet another indication of the failure of the Italian Presidency of the Council. The chosen solution to the issue of the taxation of MEPs’ salaries is botched and temporary, but, above all, there are no rules on the legal status of MEPs. Under no circumstances can I vote in its favour while the issue of immunity remains unresolved, nor can I accept the curtailment of rights that guarantee the exercise of an independent mandate, such as are accorded to our counterparts in the national and regional parliaments. I therefore no longer have any confidence in the Council’s will, at the present time, to bring about a single statute for MEPs, and, for that reason, I vote against the resolution RC B5-543-/2003.

Political group: PSE
Mr Nielson, there was a long debate about this earlier this morning and you must accept that there is very little time between now and 1 July 2004 for all ships and ports to comply with the requirements of the ISPS Code, especially with the lack of total clarity at the moment. The financial risk to businesses that cannot comply with the code is enormous. What about flags other than European flags? Even if our own Member States comply, could there not be a substantial risk that many other ships will not be complying by then and will not therefore be allowed into European ports? Has the Commission tried to make any assessment of the impact on European and even world trade if there is not full compliance by 1 July 2004?

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, I should first of all like to thank the rapporteur, who has done very sound work, as usual. We agree with the gist of what he is saying, although my approach does differ from that of the rapporteur and that of the European Commission on a number of important points. It is unfortunate that in the framework of the TENs, the Commission is opting for the same approach as the White Paper: lots of trains, not much water. The rigid management of European trains makes rail transport as a solution to the congestion in goods transport less likely than we would like to think and hope. Development of the waterways is cheap in terms of investment, and unsurpassed as a solution to the problem of congestion. I, along with a few other MEPs, wanted to make this point and add a few specific, cross-border water projects. The strategy of the two large parties in this Parliament does not allow for this. Although I have been unable to see the point of this strategy to date, I have reconciled myself to it. If the three institutions had all decided against adding any projects, this would have been a logical step. It would have been much preferable not to review the annex in its entirety until 2004, by which time the acceding countries could have been taken into account to a greater extent. At the moment, only Parliament, which has nevertheless fought for the right of codecision on this score, will exercise restraint. This will result in a list that is a little one-sided from a geographical point of view. Fortunately, a few amendments, tabled together with the Liberals and the EDD, have been adopted by the groups. They call for alertness on all fronts concerning transport by water as a reasonably cheap solution to congestion. Furthermore, I am of the opinion that it would have been far better for the Gallileo project to be financed from research funds instead of infrastructural funds.

Political group: PPE-DE
A single currency requires a single economic policy. This, basically, is the conclusion drawn by both the Commission report and the rapporteur's report. Member States are being further restricted in the exercise of economic policy to a framework of decisions taken in advance and national parliaments are required to do no more than observe or, even worse, execute decisions taken by the ΕU. This is an attempt to undermine the workers' facility to react, as they are doing more and more decisively, to the choices made by big business. The EC report welcomes the EU's anti-grass roots policy and includes proposals whose sole function is as an alibi for the rampantly neo-liberal economic and social policy of the ΕU and the tragic impact which it has on the lower classes, such as prior agreement on the allocation of fortuitous or exceptional tax revenue – just to make sure nothing is spent on the social security sector. Integrating the 'issue of the ageing population' into national budgets is another move in the same direction. While the report posits that unemployment still affects 14 million Europeans and that the economic and social situation has not improved, it remains faithful to the policy of structural change and unemployment sharing. The involvement of the national parliaments in the form of an annual evaluation of the application of the broad economic policy guidelines decided in the European Council and the debate on the stability programmes approved by the Commission and the Council, are no more than a semblance of democracy, the aim of which is to entrap national representations in Community procedures, especially when it is proposed to strengthen the role of the Commission and impose sanctions on Member States which fail to apply the economic policy imposed by Brussels. It is an attempt to make national institutions accessories to a process which, on the pretext of coordinating economic policies within the broad economic policy guidelines, is further subjugating wage measures and social policy measures in general to the suffocatingly restrictive criteria for cohesion and of the Stability Pact. The Member States are expressly called on to 'coordinate their actions and refrain from adopting tax, budgetary or wage policies'. The break-up of the guaranteed national insurance system, in conjunction with wage cuts and the fact that working hours and costs are arranged to suit employers, are demonstrably increasing poverty and social exclusion among the working classes and reducing the quality and extent of services offered. Obviously, the more measures passed to restrict income and workers' rights, the greater the pressure for more structural measures, and the more the signs of slump in the economy increase, the stricter austerity policy becomes. – Peijs report (A5-0306/2001)

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, amendment of this directive had become urgently necessary in order to do justice to the Treaty of Amsterdam, which includes new provisions on equal opportunities for women and men, but many wide-ranging rulings by the European Court of Justice – for example in the Kalanke and Marschall cases – also provide grounds for adapting the directive. Both in Parliament and with the Council, we have striven long and hard for a workable compromise, never losing sight of our objective, which is to safeguard equal treatment for men and women as regards their access to work. The definition of sexual harassment was being honed right up to the end, although opinions can still differ as to whether it should form part of a legal text. A compromise was reached on the setting up of one or more independent units to analyse and oversee the transposition and implementation of the directive. Units of this sort, which can also form part of existing facilities, are worthy of support. The directive also deals with the rights of adoptive parents in those Member States in which adoption leave is recognised. The right to return to a former job or to an equivalent post at the end of maternity leave has also been incorporated. The Member States will now be obliged by this directive to introduce a range of binding measures on equal treatment, but businesses should not, in my view, be left to implement these on their own. To do it, they will also need support. It is only when the family, the raising of children, and the care of the aged are the responsibility of men and women equally, and only when men avail themselves of educational leave for family commitments as a matter of course, that we will have moved nearer to the goal of equal opportunities, equal rights and equal duties.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, EUR 280 million is being appropriated to public health care. Do not worry, I am not about to suggest you become a surgeon – although, for all I know, you might be dreaming of becoming a surgeon. I would just like to say that, with regard to this Community action programme, that I hope that the resources of all 15 Member States of the Union will be combined to fund a single European programme which, in addition to the funds appropriated by us, will also benefit from the funds that the individual national States make available to it from their national budgets. In particular, however, I call for a reduction in the working hours of those who work in toxic environments and, as a result, suffer from occupational illnesses, for this is one of the causes of the high public health costs, not just in terms of human lives but in financial terms as well.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, I would clarify that some amendments voted by the Committee on Industry, External Trade, Research and Energy have been withdrawn, as shown on the list. I refer to Amendments Nos 11 and 12.

Political group: PSE
I choose to vote against the position adopted by my political group when it comes to the rules about sending out unsolicited advertisements to consumers via e-mail. E-mail advertisements are, in general, an inconvenience for the consumer since it takes time, for example, to open and delete them. They also contribute to the spread of viruses on the Internet. What is more, it is the consumer who has to bear the costs of receiving and reading the advertisements. In the light of this, I consider that only an opt-in solution can effectively protect consumers from unsolicited advertisements. My position on this issue has influenced my vote in the final vote on this report. - Ries Report (A5-0271/2001) High brominated flame retardants are to be found high up in the food chain. This is being seen for the first time now that a Swedish environmental study has shown that high brominated flame retardants, which were considered to be less dangerous than low brominated flame retardants, are also bioaccumulative, having been found in peregrine falcon eggs in Sweden. The study shows that the content of brominated flame retardants in eggs from wild peregrine falcons is 400 times higher than that in eggs from falcons kept in cages. We know that low brominated flame retardants are bioaccumulative now that they have been found in birds, fish and mammals, but it was previously believed that high brominated flame retardants were not especially dangerous. High brominated flame retardants were thought to have larger molecules and thus to find it more difficult to penetrate the cell membranes of living organisms. This has now proved not to be the case. This is a major health and environmental problem because many users replaced the high brominated flame retardants in products with low brominated ones, and the use of low brominated flame retardants such as decaBDEs accounts for 80 per cent of all flame retardants. The Group of the therefore voted in favour of an immediate ban on the whole group of penta-, octa- and decaBDEs. This is required by the precautionary principle, given the new discoveries that have been made. A majority of Parliament chose to await the risk assessment that is at present under way in the case of decaBDEs. This means that tons of dangerous high-risk chemicals continue to be released into the environment, something which in our view is contrary to the intentions of the precautionary principle.

Political group: PPE-DE