GwendalTsang/DEFT09-parquet huggingface dataset:
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I too would like to congratulate the rapporteur and thank him for his attitude towards the amendments I have proposed. The European Commission's initial proposal of introducing a recovery plan for Northern hake was not – or at least did not seem to be – anything more than an unjustified transposition of the measures applied to the recovery of cod to this species. Clearly, the executive Committee did not take account of the latest opinions of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (IC), according to which the hake stock will reach a level of total safety if over the next five to eight years the level of mortality from fishing is maintained. It will therefore reach a safe biological level, to use the term recently used by the Commissioner. According to this information, it is not necessary to implement a drastic recovery plan for Northern hake. Rather than a recovery plan, it would be more appropriate to implement a management plan in accordance with Article 6 of Regulation (EC) No 2371/2002, in a manner which is compatible and also consistent with the biological and environmental component, on the one hand, and socio-economic factors on the other, within the context of the new common fisheries policy. That is the will expressed by the Committee on Fisheries in its opinion: to replace the recovery plan proposed by the Commission, which imposes severe restrictions on the fishing effort and extremely serious social consequences, with a management plan which allows for the establishment of a total allowable catch that is compatible with the maintenance of the reproductive biomass. The European Commission recently presented another proposal for the recovery of Southern hake stocks and langoustine stocks, and it has not calculated the socio-economic consequences for the sector of the measures proposed in that case either. A scientific study is therefore needed, as well as the opinion of the new regional advisory councils provided for in the reform of the common fisheries policy. Furthermore, we should also stress – and I will end here, Mr President – that the Council of Ministers for fisheries last December committed itself to consulting the professionals of the sector before drawing up an action plan for these species. The involvement and participation of the sector in decision-making should not be forgotten given that these decisions affect the viability of fishing, jobs, living conditions and the very survival of families which live in European regions highly dependent on fisheries policy. And I believe that we must insist on this involvement and this participation.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, this report wants us to believe that the European Union has a major role to play as regards human rights at global scale. It is a fact that in the wealthy countries of Western Europe and in the United States, personal rights and freedoms are slightly better protected than among the poor majority of the planet, as long as you do not look too closely. As long as you close your eyes to the hunt for immigrants, the so-called ‘sans-papiers’, the deportation orders, the laws against poor people, as long as you forget that many people are refused the right to decent housing. As long as you ignore the fact that in a country such as France freedom of expression stops at factory doors, that distributing a political pamphlet inside can be justification for dismissal. As long as you forget that in some EU countries basic rights are refused to women, such as the choice of whether or not to have a child. As long as you believe that it is normal that the right to employment, to a decent wage is not recognised as a fundamental right and is not applied. Even though limited human rights are only assured in wealthy countries because they are refused to the poor people of the planet, it is precisely the wealthy countries, so proud of their human rights at home, that maintain in the poor countries a number of terrible regimes, based on oppression and, in particular, on endless misery.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, I hope that Mr Lunardi will have time to glance at the Minutes of this sitting, for he will find some useful recommendations for his work in the Council Presidency, first and foremost relating to the danger – which has already been pointed out by Mrs Frassoni and which I, too, fear – that, on 1 October, the adoption of this list of 18 projects compiled by the Van Miert Group will be rushed through more in the style of a ratification. Clearly, to adopt the list without any strategic assessment of the environmental impact, profitability or practical safety of any of the 18 projects would be merely to rubber stamp it. The Commission is being called upon to rubber stamp the 18 projects submitted by the governments. I would like the Commission to know that, when Parliament is asked to give its opinion, it will refuse just to give its seal of approval or ratify them, not least because some of the proposals and demands of the Member States are nothing more than whims. One example, in particular, which we have discussed at length with Commissioner Van Miert, is the project to build a bridge over the Straits of Messina. There is clear, solid opposition to this bridge from all the local communities concerned. Its profitability is questionable, there are deep concerns as regards safety and, most importantly, the environmental impact would be terrible if we were to build a pylon taller than the Empire State Building on the outskirts of the city of Messina. In response to our objections and to the request for clarification which we put to Mr Van Miert, to find out what the exceptional grounds were for selecting this project, it was explained that the Italian Government had put forward strong arguments for it, to the effect that this bridge would save 5.5 million Sicilians from isolation. Madam President, as a Sicilian, I can tell you that this is not true. The isolation of the Sicilians is caused by the fact that getting from Palermo to Messina involves a five-hour train journey, not the fact that it is 20 minutes by ferry from Messina to Reggio Calabria. We have had to sideline another project – a genuinely key project – corridor 8, which would have made it possible to link southern Europe to the Balkan countries and would, moreover, have helped to confirm our particular consideration for the economic future of the Balkans, in line with the intentions of the Italian Presidency. With regard to all these considerations, I hope that Parliament will have the opportunity to return to the subject and to discuss it with representatives of the Commission and the Council here in flesh and blood.

Political group: PSE
Madam President, Madam Vice-President of the Commission, ladies and gentlemen, the fathers of Europe at Laeken – there were probably no mothers there – gave the Convention on the future of Europe something more than a year in which to achieve a big success in the process of making Europe more visible, by drafting the text of a new constitutional treaty. A quite disproportionately small part of the Convention's work will be devoted to preparing solutions to the issues now raised in the Gil-Robles Gil-Delgado report – a uniform system for elections to Parliament, which will then truly merit the name of ‘European’, solutions under the heading of ‘regionalisation’ to the system's proximity – or lack of it – to the citizens, and to the problem of how to make it possible to use the elections to the European Parliament to reach a decision on how to give Europe a face, that is, by the direct election of the President of the Commission. There is, alas, nothing of any real substance on the subject of European lists. Work on these few topics has to date taken the Council and Parliament almost thirty years, not always with much by way of results. Vive la différence is still the watchword for the organising of elections to the European Parliament. Quite apart from many other aspects, it is precisely this bewildering array of proceedings every fifth June that makes it easy for the European public to regard European elections as unimportant or incomprehensible. Turnouts of under 50% are their reaction to this deplorable state of affairs. What is to be done under such circumstances? Do we put a brave face on a bad job, rejoice in small improvements, thank the rapporteur for his good work and await the miracle that the Convention will bring to pass in fifteen months' time, changing everything and making it better? I accept the compromise and join in thanking our rapporteur Mr Gil-Robles Gil-Delgado, and I call on everyone to wish the Convention and its members success in making the impossible possible, giving Europe a comprehensible and workable structure that the citizen can understand, with electoral laws by which the public will know themselves to be challenged to join in deciding what the future of our shared European home should be. (Applause)

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, I am sorry that, because my train was delayed, I have only just arrived and have not therefore been able to hear the previous debate. I have asked to take the floor because, last year, I was rapporteur for a report dealing with the local dimension of the European Employment Strategy. In the report, I wrote sincerely in favour of a number of the aspects commended by Mr Napolitano in his report and, in particular, the importance of a bottom-up-perspective. I do not, however, share Mr Napolitano’s perspective which, at heart, appears to be in some way trying to reduce or even do away with the importance of the national political democracies. He emphasises very strongly the local and regional levels, on the one hand, and the Commission and EU levels, on the other, an approach I believe to be very dangerous. I believe, in spite of everything, that the national democracies themselves form the democratic basis for the European project. I therefore believe that this local and regional development should take place within the framework of these national democracies. The nations, and above all their governments and parliaments, must be the link between the local, regional and European levels. To circumvent the national level would be completely reprehensible. It could not lead to anything other than a weakening of European democracy, and that is something which none of us could wish to see.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, Commissioner, this pilot project affects three countries, Germany, Austria and Italy and operates in a sensitive zone through the ancient Hauptkamm, where the Brenner motorway operators on the south side of the Brenner pass and now the equivalent organisation on the north side of the Brenner pass want to use the road to subsidise the railways, so as to prevent ecological damage and set up a pilot project. But the project needs to run until 2035. 2005 is not long enough, i.e. the Italian concession needs to be extended by thirty years. The Italian Government sent a message of support through Minister Buttiglione, until recently a Member of this House, and it is to be hoped that this pilot project, which could set an example and which your colleague, the Commissioner for transport, thinks is a positive move, will be seen as such and an exception will be granted. Though I have heard you make positive points I have not heard you say you are in complete agreement. Could you perhaps comment on that?

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, we have now heard it said several times that Echelon really does exist. The question is: what does Echelon entail? It entails a monitoring system which is tantamount to a massive global violation of fundamental rights, infringing not only the privacy of industrial communications but also the privacy of every form of communication between individuals. This violation of human rights is surely the real scandal of Echelon. But what exactly is the statement on this issue from the European Parliament? The essence of the message contained in this report is, in fact, that we condemn this system because it is operated primarily by the United States and because it works too well. What countermeasure does the report propose? As a countermeasure, it proposes the establishment of an EU intelligence service. As we know, there are also monitoring standards such as ETST, and European monitoring plans bearing the name Enfopol have come to light too. Neither of these points is mentioned in the report, which essentially focuses on the monitoring that is undertaken by national intelligence agencies in violation of fundamental rights. If we are tempted to follow the path that some Members would wish us to pursue and restrict our efforts to establishing control over the intelligence services, relying on democratic control of these bodies to solve the problem, we must first look at the various secret services around the world; as we do this, it will become clear to us that democratic control has never worked. I know of no country in which it works. So in my view it is no solution. Let me make one more point on the subject of foreign policy, to which several references have already been made. If an EU armed force is established, the logical consequence would be the creation of an EU intelligence service as well. I am opposed to both of these developments, because I believe they will result in the militarisation of the EU. If there is any serious intention to create an area in which peace, security and justice reign supreme, the intelligence services will have to be disbanded; the surveillance authorities will also have to be dissolved. Then, perhaps, even former employees of the surveillance authorities will be taking advice from computer hackers on how to protect themselves with the utmost effectiveness against government infringement of their fundamental rights.

Political group: Verts-ALE
Mr President, an interesting debate, but one wonders what the point is of tracts fifty paragraphs long on the subject of terrorism, over and above their value as a medium for a series of internal exchanges of views between the political groups of the European Parliament. If, however, you turn on the mass media to which the citizens of Europe are listening, you will see that the main terrorist-related issue today is the question of the attack on Iraq, a country which is harbouring or is considered to be harbouring weapons of mass destruction which might be used to support terrorist and other activities. The European Union has literally become an international laughing stock in this Security Council procedure, what with the British Government secretly making proposals which are then tabled by the United States on the one hand and the French Government refusing to go along with the notion of unconditional intervention in Iraq on the other. I think the European Parliament should have taken a stand on these issues, but it has deliberately avoided doing so in the vague wording of this motion for a resolution which, I think, responds neither to the interests of the citizens of Europe nor to the demands of the time. IN THE CHAIR: MRS LALUMIÈREVice-President

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, Madam Vice-President of the Commission, ladies and gentlemen, the brief time that Parliament has accepted for debating the vote on these guidelines, as well as the strong commitment being made to reaching an agreement that will allow the work to be completed by the end of this parliamentary term is proof of the importance that Parliament too attaches to defining the European transport networks. These are seen as tools both for constructing the internal market and for strengthening the cohesion of the Union. They are tools that will cause a profound shake-up and readjustment of priorities in the territory of the Union and that will go on to force everyone to find their own role in building the new European area. TENs were first defined in 1996, whereupon we found ourselves, little by little, having to look again at this project several times, changing the content too, because motorways of the sea are fundamentally a novelty that must above all be seen as a tool for allowing some traffic to be taken away from our Union’s congested roads. We are now faced with a dual necessity: that of strategically defining the works that will have a long-term effect and that will significantly reduce the construction time, and that of continually adapting to those economic and social changes that, in turn, alter the demand for transport. Flexibility on two levels is therefore to be commended: flexibility over time, which should be partially – and I must say adequately – guaranteed by the concept of biennial reports that can lead to the agreed forms being revised; and flexibility in the actual definition of the group of projects corresponding to each of these proposals. I say this because we are essentially talking about major waterways, but major waterways can only be classed as such if they have working tributaries and if proper links to these are put in place. Well then, I will take the liberty of insisting that thought be given to the possibility of ensuring that major tributaries and the links essential for major waterways to work are placed on an equal footing, as indicated in the tabled amendments.

Political group: ELDR
We are against direct or indirect advertising of tobacco products and [support] measures to reverse the spread and increase of this unhealthy habit, especially among young people. May we emphasise once again, however, that an anti-smoking campaign is not the same thing as an anti-tobacco campaign and that the anti-smoking campaign should not take the form of a campaign against tobacco cultivation in ΕU member states, as the EU argues in Amendment No 17 of the report. To say tobacco farms are to blame and that tobacco farmers should be punished by proposing that subsidies be abolished, is to deliberately confuse the question of protection of public health with maintaining traditional single-crop farms so that tens of thousands of farmers in mainly poor southern areas, who are not being offered any specific alternatives, can survive. These proposals are hypocritical and underhand and run counter to consumer interests and public health, given that 70% of the European Union's tobacco is imported. Consequently, abolishing aid for Community production will not reduce smoking; it will merely make us dependent on imports and flood the European market with tobacco from third countries.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, I am very grateful to both the President-in-Office of the Council and the Commissioner for their statements today, which remind us of the tenth anniversary of the internal market. This is a special date for me, as it was in the final analysis the European Union's internal market project that sparked debate in Austria, Sweden and Finland as to whether we too ought to join the European Union, and I am very glad that we took this step and can take part in today's event, which is in part a review. I believe it is the imminent risks and historic projects of the European Union – the forthcoming great enlargement and the Convention's fundamental reform of the EU – that make it necessary to consider whether yesterday's objectives have been achieved. It is also right that we should be proud of what we have achieved and constantly remind ourselves of it. The internal market is already regarded as all too self-explanatory, yet it is all the more painfully apparent that it still has loopholes resulting from the deficient or delayed transposition of directives in the Member States, and my own country, alas, lags behind significantly in this respect. These loopholes and obstacles came about, though, because we did not have enough success at European level in taking the necessary action to harmonise and coordinate. Commissioner, you adduced some very pertinent examples of loopholes and obstacles that still remain, mainly in the area of the provision of services and the movement of goods. I believe that, where this is concerned, we also have to very strongly highlight the area of the free movement of workers, where obstacles to the internal market still persist, affecting the truly mobile elements in the population. One aspect needing to be addressed here is the situation of third-country nationals, both in their role as workers and in the provision of cross-border services. I believe that, even if we review the objectives of the internal market and are willing to do everything to ultimately achieve them, we should also recall that our concern must be with guaranteeing a high standard of protection for consumers and the environment. Let us not be concerned only with the range of goods and services available, but also with their quality. I will conclude by asking all those who are working on the final realisation of the internal market to help prevent its legal basis from being put at risk by the debate on the future of the European Union, its competences and the principles by which they are exercised. It is particularly with reference to the subsidiarity principle that the occasional tendency in that direction is noticeable in the Convention.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, the Greek Presidency of the Council has managed to do good work under tragic international circumstances and in an economically and politically unpromising climate. For that reason, I too should like to congratulate the Presidency of the Council. Much has been achieved in many areas, but the Presidency of the Council will, of course, be best remembered for the kick-off of the final decision on the constitutional treaty. I hope that this will result in an Intergovernmental Conference that will decide to sign a treaty that is actually based on the Convention’s conclusions. Not only was the method of the Convention a sound choice, the leading triumvirate was one too, and it is fortunate that the Convention’s ordinary members have also added value in a significant manner. Anyone taking part in European debates nowadays is mainly faced with criticism, and I admit that we are keen to join in. What we agree on is something that we believe to be already as good as established, something we believe to be very much a matter of course and for which we have been asking for a long time. As regards the things that we think are less successful, we hope that they can still be rectified, obviously in the direction we indicate. We should not overlook the fact that there is still to be an IGC, and that we still need to convince the public. We should therefore not be tempted only to focus on our minor or major disappointments, but rather look at the whole picture and, with a sense of balance, point at the increased opportunities for transparency and at the Union’s decisive policy. Despite this, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, I too should very much like to know whether the mandate which the Convention has with regard to Part III still leaves enough room for the Convention to file down a few layers of the remaining veto rights, whether the Convention now has the authority or not to change anything to Part IV and whether the European Council actually believes itself that the Union can hold out beyond the period of the next financial perspectives to work with the current financing mechanism. I am really happy today to be a Christian Democrat; not because we are celebrating our fiftieth anniversary, but mainly because our ideology takes as its starting point the need to believe in people. You cannot rely on structures alone. The structures with which the Convention provides us will not, on their own, enable us to move mountains. We will therefore need to rely on responsible people, and I hope that there are many of those left in Europe.

Political group: PPE-DE