GwendalTsang/DEFT09-parquet huggingface dataset:
Mr President, I would just like to say that I support Amendment No 48, although you may have been informed otherwise in another context. The misunderstanding arose because I was previously of the opinion that this amendment would not be discussed but since this is not the case, I will express my support for it. The amendment aims to reinforce the general principle of not having to pay.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, the resolution on the legal personality of the European Union is one of Parliament’s contributions to the Convention charged with drawing up the European Constitution. The Carnero González report stresses that the attribution of its legal personality is an essential step towards the constitutionalisation of the Treaties and improves the coherence of the various European policies. Opponents of the Union speak of a superstate, a Europe that has fallen into the hands of a stateless bureaucracy. In reality, Europe is not a threat to national identities, and national identities are not a threat to Europe. Political unity is the only way to prevent the individual countries from being overwhelmed by untamed globalisation or to prevent difficulties from making the ghosts of nationalism re-emerge. Anyway, we are not starting from scratch. In the past the Treaty has attributed legal personality to the European Communities, but with the birth of the Union there is a legal void to fill. The Council has addressed this several times, without, however, reaching clear conclusions. Public opinion and all countries that have relations with Europe are convinced that their relations are with an autonomous and unitary system. Moreover, in the sphere of foreign policy, defence and security, the European Council can deliberate on procedures that represent the beginnings of a legal personality. One has to recognise the benefits for European citizens and for the Union’s international image. It is not true that we are trying to build our common house from the roof down. Construction by pillars reveals a problem, which Mr Carnero’s proposal remedies by taking up a 1997 Parliamentary resolution on international law, Community law and the constitutions of the individual Member States. This resolution made express reference back then to the need to give the Union a legal personality. We cannot, of course, pre-empt the Convention, but this resolution gives a great boost to a constitutional process to which, in our opinion, the future of a democratic Europe is bound.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, the will support the Katiforis report on the broad guidelines for economic policies, which we are especially satisfied with since many of our observations were accepted during the debate in committee. At a time when we are debating the weakness of the euro, at least in relation to the dollar, I think that we would do well to remember that the state of the European economy is solid and offers a framework for stability and solidity as well as excellent prospects for growth and employment. In short, we can look forward to very positive development over the next few years. Therefore, the fact that, in some ways, the US economy is doing better than the European economy, at least in terms of growth forecasts, should not mask the fact that the European economy is doing well at the moment. Furthermore, it is the European economy which is funding a good portion of US development. However, we should not only be concentrating on the more positive aspects; we should also be taking note of the fragility of continued growth and solidity in the European economy. In order to overcome this fragility, in our view, we need the European economy to function better, since it is still subject to excessive corporate rigidity, in both the public and private sectors, and on the part of both economic and social operators. We therefore propose greater adaptability and flexibility in the labour market. This would clearly involve the removal of the existing obstacles to the proper functioning of the European internal market and a deep reform of the tax system, with the adoption of a tax package at European level. To sum up, we should overcome the conservatism which still exists in certain economic and social areas of the European Union.

Political group: ELDR
Madam President, I would like to congratulate the rapporteur on her work and I very much welcome the outcome of conciliation on the subject, but I think we have several causes for complaint as well. Four subjects were covered by the original physical agents directive, noise was one, but the original 1986 directive on noise was due for revision in 1991. Here we are almost at the end of 2002 before we finally have a revised text. Vibration was another subject but it took Council eight years to reach a common position on vibration, and, as we have heard from the Commissioner, we still have the aspects concerning fields and waves and optical radiation to be dealt with. Progress is painfully slow. Yet, all around us in this high-tech era we are increasingly being bombarded by fields and waves from wireless local access networks, from blue tooth devices, from class I lasers and the like. I hope we will see a renewed sense of urgency on the part of Council. The directive is to be welcomed. It will bring about direct improvements. Workers will be exposed less to noise at work. Then their representatives will play a part in risk assessment in the choice of hearing protectors. Our preventative audio-metric testing will be made available under certain circumstances. All of these things and many others are to be welcomed. For the music and entertainment sector, I think we have established a very good approach. Member States will, as we have heard, draw up a code of conduct in consultation with the social partners and will give practical guidelines on how employers and employees can meet their obligations in that sector. The approach has been very much welcomed by the Musicians Union of Great Britain who acted to coordinate the work of musicians' unions across the European Union. In the interests of time, I will make just one other point. Many voices were raised in conciliation about the importance of business impact assessment on proposals of this sort – rigorous impact assessment. I will pose the question here that I posed in Committee: what value should we place upon whether a person in their 40s or 50s can actually hear and communicate with their infant grandchildren? Because that is the part of the hearing spectrum industrial hearing loss often destroys. So, let us have a cost-benefit assessment by all means, but let us take all of the costs and all of the benefits into account, not just narrow financial ones.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, Mr Byrne, you have presented the Council decision to us here today. I agree with you that this is really the task of the Council, but I would like to refer to the seventh point, which says that there must be a labelling provision as soon as possible in consultation with the European Parliament. I consider this passage to be cynical, given that this paper again excludes the European Parliament from codecision. It is the same approach as that taken in 1997 when the Commission proposed codecision to us and Parliament and the Commission tabled a proposal. We made a great deal of effort only to see the Council unanimously reject the proposal and decide without Parliament. That meant that the Council had taken over responsibility. The Council failed to fulfil its responsibility to implement what it itself had decided in Article 19, namely to issue implementing provisions on 1.1.2000. Then Parliament was again taken to task and again it fulfilled its obligation. We have not moaned and groaned, we have sat down and got on with the work – on the subject of which, Mr Papayannakis, heartfelt thanks to you as rapporteur and to Mr Kindermann, the rapporteur for the Committee on Agriculture, and to the administration and legal service. Everyone has made an effort! There was good coordination between the Committee on Agriculture and the Committee on the Environment. We negotiated with the Commission. We put our cards on the table and said, excuse me, but we have a contribution to make to this procedure. The result: do or die! If you want to be part of the procedure, then you must divorce yourself from it as far as the content is concerned, otherwise we will not accept your case! Mr Byrne, you said earlier that the decision now rests with Parliament. This means that if we adopt what you have submitted to us, then it will go through. If we table amendments which really are justified, over which we have taken time and trouble, then you will decide without us. This is a snub to Parliament by the Council which we are not prepared to accept. Now to the role of the Commission. The Commission has told us that there is no longer any time for implementing provisions. Please, indulge us! We are indulgent and where does it get us? Since the way in which we have amended it obviously does not suit you, you go on to the next proposal by introducing the compulsory system under Article 19, saying at the same time that the voluntary system will be extended by one year, thereby excluding Parliament from the process. That too is a snub to Parliament which we cannot accept. We take the view that Article 19 does not legally allow this postponement. We have been involved in a procedure since the 1997 decision and we shall most probably find ourselves involved in a procedure again after this decision, which means, furthermore that it would be in the consumers’ interest to draw up an urgently needed timetable with us in order to ensure the reasonable and timely application of this compulsory labelling system.

Political group: Verts-ALE
Mr President, you will no doubt recall as vividly as I do the late nights in Luxembourg in June 2001 when we last went through this exercise, followed by the heated third-reading debate in this House shortly thereafter, which was lost by a tie. It is worth reminding ourselves that although technically we are now at first reading, this is in fact a fourth reading, even just for those of us who have participated in the present Parliament. We have been through this a long way and I myself am one of those who think that if we can bring it to a successful conclusion this time, then we should do so. I take the point made by Mr Huhne and Mr Bolkestein that there are further problems we did not have before. It is perhaps a little like the story of the Sybilline Books. The first time they were offered as a set of 12 and Tarquin refused them. Three of them were then burned and they were offered as a set of nine at a higher price: each time the price goes up and the quality goes down. Maybe that is so, or maybe not, but we are now in a position where we have to make up our minds. My Group is firmly of the conviction that we must take full and proper account of employees' rights in this context. Employees are not just pawns on the chess board. Employees are the people who make companies work and make them function effectively. Their interests have to be taken fairly and fully into account. Their right to consultation and information has to be taken seriously. On that account, my Group will certainly vote for the sets of amendments agreed between us, the Group and the Group when the vote is held tomorrow. Thereafter we are of two minds: some of us are firmly of the view that we should adhere to this to the last, and that if they are not carried then we will vote against the directive in its present form. If that means the compromise colla s then it will simply have to go to second reading, and so on. Others - and I am one of those others - think that the time has come to reach a conclusion. I shall vote for these amendments, but at the end of the day I shall try to get this through at this reading.

Political group: Verts-ALE
Mr President, I have just become aware of a communication from the services of the sitting which tells Members – and it appears that it was announced at midnight last night – that, in relation to the Boogerd-Quaak report, on freedom of expression and information, in view of the large number of requests for roll-call votes, separate votes and split votes, the vote cannot take place today. You will remember, Mr President, that you and I spoke on the telephone last night at 10.30 p.m., and that I expressed my concern about all the incidents surrounding this case. I really must say now that this decision, taken by I do not know whom – and we should know this and whether you support this decision – goes against all the practices followed in this House. My group, and I do not know about the others, has not been consulted and I would request that at the beginning of the vote at 12 noon, we vote on including this item once again in the vote. (Applause)

Political group: PSE
Mr President, I am pleased to announce that in the Committee on Industry, External Trade, Research and Energy this evening the last piece of the jigsaw, Mr Clegg's package, was voted through unanimously. The Lisbon aspiration has been an ambitious one, and it has taken dogged and indefatigable rapporteurs, as well as a quite determined Commissioner, to reach the stage we are at tonight. We have considerable experience with the original rather limited liberalisation directive in our Member States. We have seen that there has been market opening in some countries to 100% of customers, that there has been an unbundling of network operators in all Member States to some extent, but not completely, and there has been a limited increase in clarity and transparency of regulation. However, those earlier directives were inadequate. There is still market dominance and predatory, anti-competitive behaviour in some Member States, and some European citizens have not benefited from an enlarged and opened market in particular countries. I have no fears that what is being suggested is wild and savage liberalisation because we have insisted on regulation unbundling, public service guarantees and labelling for environmental impact which leads to informed choice by customers. We have seen that cross-subsidies will be prevented, particularly the quite scandalous use of decommissioning funds in the nuclear sector. That is not an anti-nuclear remark, that is a pro-fair play remark. There are risks from liberalisation, but they do not concern security of supply. Types of energy choices can be affected, however. We need to look at that. Environmental protection need not be at risk, nor need access by the public to energy. Indeed, fuel poverty has decreased thanks to liberalisation as carried out in the UK. The risks are to research. That is an important risk and we must draw our attention to that in future work. And there is a risk of skills being lost; again this is a risk to which Member States and the European Union must pay attention. Tomorrow's vote is an historic one, though we call many votes historic in this Parliament. It is an important move forward. Amendment No 6 to the Mombaur report should not be admissible. It is not something that was covered earlier, but I commend those who have worked hard on this package. We will have a better use of energy in Europe because of it. IN THE CHAIR: MR PACHECO PEREIRAVice-President

Political group: PSE
I note that Mr Holmes is leader of the UK Independence Party. I wonder whether that means that the UK Independence Party is now transferring in its entirety, or at least the two Members who are present here, to the other group.

Political group: PPE-DE
On behalf of my Group, I welcome the Commission’s report and the rapporteur’s report. The incidents which precipitated the study and the subsequent reports in Spain and in Hungary have made us aware of the problems posed by mines and mine-workings, both old and new. The potential problems – particularly the problems of water pollution – are cross-boundary problems and therefore worthy of European-wide legislation. After consideration of existing legislation, be it on IPPC, landfill or Seveso, and in each case I have acted as the rapporteur at different stages of development of that legislation, it is clear that none of them can provide a comfortable solution to the range of problems presented by mining operations. So I would concur with the rapporteur that a new piece of legislation – some kind of new initiative – is required to regulate the mining industry in particular. I would raise two points with the rapporteur. Firstly, old sites do not necessarily need to be cleaned up. Many old sites are literally centuries old and have developed in such a way that they are now sites of scientific interest and contain particular flora and fauna. I would urge that we should consider preserving sites and using sites in that way rather than simply clearing them off the face of the earth at great expense. Secondly, I would say that classifying mining waste as waste is very difficult when you consider that large amounts of it are simply crushed rock and quite similar to products that you would get from any quarry in the Union. Therefore I would say that we have to look more particularly at processed waste from mines which often contains high levels of toxic chemicals. That does require regulation. I would say that the amendment from the EPP Group is not particularly helpful, since it tries to reduce the scope of this directive to the mining of metal ores. From my own experience, the first tailings dams I ever saw were in Derbyshire in the north of England, and they were the result of the mining of fluorospa, not a metal as any chemistry teacher will tell you. But they present exactly the same problems as tailings dams resulting from mining operations. I would recommend a positive vote tomorrow and, I hope, rapid action by the Commission to implement the recommendations.

Political group: PSE
chairman of the Committee on Budgets. – Madam President, as you said earlier, this will be a long process. Normally we like to streamline the budget votes so that we can get through them in as quick a time as possible. However, we have a lot of amendments on this occasion. Whilst I respect people's democratic right to table amendments, can I just warn Members of this House that if some of the amendments which are not in the general framework agreement between the groups are voted, then we will begin to exceed ceilings and we will have to stop the vote. We have no margins in virtually all the categories. If this vote does not go as we had planned, then just be aware that I may be standing up, or Mrs Haug may be standing up, to say we have to stop the vote. We can then assess what we can vote on. I would like to make two pleas. One is to our colleagues in the Committee on Agriculture who have tabled over 30 amendments. The amending letter will be coming forward before second reading and that is when we will take final decisions on agricultural issues. If I could ask them to withdraw those amendments it would save a lot of time. I would also ask Mr Heaton-Harris and his colleagues if they could withdraw their 33 amendments. Once again that will save us a tremendous amount of time. I must say the 33 amendments are far better than the 393 that were tabled by Mr Heaton-Harris and his colleagues in committee. So we have to be grateful there are only 33, but I would welcome it if he would withdraw them. It would speed this process up considerably.

Political group: PSE
The Intergovernmental Conference in Naples had no trouble whatsoever in agreeing on the further militarisation of the European Union, in that no-one raised the slightest objection to the ΕU’s becoming a global policeman at the side of the USA. At the same time, it became perfectly clear that the famous solidarity, should a Member State be attacked, is not only not mandatory, but also comes very clearly under the NATO umbrella. This in reply to all those who maintain that Greece could rely on the EU in the event of an attack by Turkey. There is not a trace of sensitivity in the European Parliament resolution to the extremely negative consequences which, as we have repeatedly stressed, the new ‘Constitutional’ Treaty will have for the peoples. On the contrary, its only concerns are that the text elaborated by the ‘Convention’ should not be changed and that its role within the framework of the EU mechanisms should not be cut back. That is why we MEPs of the Communist Party of Greece voted against it. We call on the peoples to step up their fight against the European Union and the new bonds which it is trying to impose on us through the ‘Euro-constitution’.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Thank you for your reply. I asked you and the Commission this question purely and simply so that we would all sit up and take note of an issue which has always been dealt with in the past either as a question of crime or as a question of international terrorism. I want to use this point of view to draw your attention to the fact that, when the political decision to enlarge the European Union was taken in Helsinki a few days ago, the political criteria of the Europe of the 15 were included, the Copenhagen criteria, were included, and rightly so; however, you should take account of the fact that there are problems in the new applicant countries which did not apply in the past to the fifteen. In this context, when the question includes the matter of what the European Union is doing in relation to applicant countries where these materials are transported through their territory or these situations are covered up, what it means is what policy will it follow or what political commitments will it impose on these countries so that progress can be made with accession procedures. This is the political issue, over and above any others in relation, for example, to the manpower which has know-how on these issues and which has remained unemployed, in relation to the laboratories of the Soviet Union and certain other matters. My question referred to this political issue and that is why I asked it.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, I will concentrate on the electricity market and competition policies in that market. On paper on 3 July 2004 we will create 25-country electricity markets. In reality, the market is becoming an oligopoly. Germany and France and their companies EdF, Eon and RWE presently control 40% of the electricity production in Europe and 50% of all the grid and the balancing capacities. So, Commissioner, you are asking for national competition authorities to able to act and to create competition in the national market. The Eon-Ruhrgas merger and the decision by the German Government show us that the German Government has the option of having national championship-building and is not playing the game of establishing a competitive market in Germany. Their idea, and this is also the idea of the French Government, is that their three companies will dominate the European market. These two countries have also been successful in blocking ownership unbundling, and thus the complete separation of interest between production and grid, which is necessary if you do not want these companies to control new entrants and you want more competition in the market. These two countries have also been able to block access to decommissioning funds, and thus these three companies buy up the other companies. My analysis, as Parliament's rapporteur on the electricity market, is that today in the European Union we do not have the relevant instruments to cope. The only country to be really successful in establishing a competitive market is the UK, because when the British opened the market they had a tough divestment policy. France and Germany will not touch divestment policy. We thus need an instrument to impose on them, at European level, the divestment of their two big companies. Otherwise there is no hope at all for competition in the market, for lower prices, or for innovation

Political group: Verts-ALE