GwendalTsang/DEFT09-parquet huggingface dataset:
Mr President, Elisabeth Schroedter, our colleague from the Group of the will be talking about Kaliningrad in a moment. On behalf of the group, I should also like to express thanks to our fellow MEP, Magdalena Hoff, for her immense efforts and 100% commitment to Eastern Europe. In my view, she deserves a mention here. Fellow MEPs, we have all listened carefully to the speech by Mr Miguélez. For fifteen minutes, and more, he talked about Russia, but never mentioned Chechnya. How is this possible, Mr Miguélez? I do not understand. There has nevertheless been a great deal of consultation with the Russian authorities recently. Lengthy discussions have been held, and what is the outcome? Business as usual. We have talked about the economy. I even heard my own Prime Minister mention this when he met Mr Kasyanov. Despite this, surely we have now learnt from the conflicts in Kosovo, in Bosnia Herzegovina, that conflict prevention is crucial. That it is the alpha and omega of every peace policy. We give Russia an enormous amount of financial aid: EUR 65 million via Echo for humanitarian services, and 2.5 billion over the past decade via Tacis. Should we not be able to use this money to engage in conflict prevention at long last? Mr Miguélez, I urge you not only to talk about the economy and free trade in Moscow, but also about Chechnya, about observing human rights, and the persecution of environmental activists. I implore you to do this. You will help make the European Union more credible if you do.

Political group: Verts-ALE
Mr President, I think we all agree that a European legal area must be created. We also all agree that there should be harmonisation in a field that is marked by the great disparity of our legal systems and, what is more, concepts. The very word bankruptcy, the legal concept of bankruptcy, does not cover the same accounting concept in each of the Member States of the Union. We therefore all agree on the established facts, and the draft regulation and the report are going in the right direction. If I may, however, just make a few comments on the method. When you observe – and you cannot fail to do so – the disparity in the legal systems and concepts, and the fact that we wish to improve coordination, I believe that there are three ways in which we can proceed. The first is to establish equivalence, saying: in the final analysis, bankruptcy in France is the same thing as bankruptcy in England or in Germany. The second way is to recreate a law ex nihilo, that is to say, to harmonise the systems and completely overhaul all the concepts and legal systems in each of the Member States. That is not the route that has been taken. The third route that has been taken is in the end to superimpose above the existing systems, which are not touched, a real embryo of Community law of collective procedures and procedures for companies in difficulty. This is a good thing, moreover, and the result has probably exceeded what the authors had hoped for. But at this stage I should like to make an observation, which is not technical, but more philosophical and taken from practice. It is that bankruptcy is experienced within the European Union, in the majority of States, as an absolutely definitive event for the person it affects. And I believe that it is our responsibility, in an ever more rapidly moving economy, where everyone must have a real opportunity, to give people the chance of running a commercial enterprise, and a second and a third chance, if necessary. Today, in many Member States, that is not possible. One of the reasons that explains the difference in competitiveness between the European area, for example and the United States, is precisely this ability of bouncing back that exists on the other side of the Atlantic and that we just do not have here. I believe that since we have gone that far and we are continuing along that path, which is the route of creating a collective procedure for regulating this type of legal standard in the European Union, we should bear in mind that it should not become the allegorical figure of the guillotine.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, on Amendment No 6, I should like to draw the attention of the House – and particularly of all those who support the general philosophy of the report and intend a priori to vote in favour of it at the end – to the fact that this amendment stands in total contradiction to the rest of the report. If therefore you support the philosophy of the report, as your rapporteur I strongly recommend that you reject this amendment. (Applause) Paragraph 19:

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, with regard to fishing, I am not going to go into the details of the Commission’s legislative proposals. However, I would like to hear a clear commitment from the Commission that it will seek a solution for the speedy transposition into Community law of the recommendations of the regional and international fishing organisations. Mr President, in the last plenary part-session, regarding the Gallagher report on the recommendations of the ICCAT on bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean, we had the opportunity to debate this issue of Commission delays, which are becoming a very serious problem. Although these recommendations will become binding on a particular date, their absence in Community legislation means that the fleet is not complying with the measures and may lead to the initiation of infringement proceedings against the European Union. Delays in transposition are an endemic problem in the Commission. For example, we have been waiting since 1996 for the incorporation into Community legislation of the ban on landings from Honduras and Belize, or, for example, since 1998 for the control of the fishing capacity for albacore tuna in Community waters. The Commission is always accusing Member States of not transposing its decisions and directives into their national legislation, while it is doing exactly the same thing on an international level. It is clear that the proposal presented by the Commission on the communication on the reform of international organisations, with a view to speeding up the process, tries to separate the legislative processes both of Parliament and of the Council. From the point of view of this institution, there are serious doubts as to whether this is the best way to resolve this problem. I hope that President Prodi will now commit himself to resolving this problem once and for all, and that, in any event, Parliament will always be connected with the legislative procedure for incorporating the recommendations of international fishing organisations into Community legislation.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, it would appear to me from the vote and from the report that, in fact, we have rejected the Council's proposal. (Applause)

Political group: ELDR
Mr President, for the this agreement is rather different to others. As we have said here many times, our position is not against fisheries agreements in principle but more against the way in which they are negotiated and the terms arrived at. All too often there is very poor – if any – scientific understanding of the status of the stocks. There is also poor control and enforcement of EU fishing activities. Negotiations do not take place in a regional context. That is why we have generally voted against them. The Greenland agreement is different. It falls in the geographical zone of three international fisheries organisations: the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea, the North West Atlantic Fisheries Organisation, and the North East Atlantic Fisheries Commission. These are among the most scientific regional bodies that exist. There is therefore scientific information on the status of the stocks being fished and we note with approval that the overall quantities to be fished have been reduced dramatically and are more in line with responsible fishing opportunities. Both NAFO and NEAFC also have among the best and most comprehensive programmes for control and surveillance. For that reason, this time we will support the agreement. We will also support the amendment by the Liberals on the Commission recovering the costs of the agreement from the ship-owners who benefit from it. This is an extremely important principle, which should be followed.

Political group: Verts-ALE
Mr President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, Commissioner, we are pleased to see that the question that we raised on the trafficking of human beings and children in Mozambique has sparked a broader debate on the illegal trafficking of human organs and tissues, not only in the EU, but on an altogether wider scale. There is, indeed, nothing more abominable than tampering with the human form – which should be a finished article in itself and whose integrity and dignity must be protected – and turning it into an object in which you can look for an organ to transplant into another person. This practice is so gruesome that the EU should be duly alarmed and we – that is, Parliament, the Commission and the Council – must do all we can to provide ourselves with the means to stop such trafficking from proliferating any further, from becoming any bigger and from making a few unscrupulous people and their criminal networks any richer. I should like to speak about Mozambique. In Mozambique, mystery surrounds Nampula Province. Child trafficking has taken place there; fifty children are known to have disappeared, probably abducted and sacrificed, be this for the purposes of removing organs for witchcraft, magic rituals or satanic rituals, of sex slavery, or of removing organs to sell them on some international network. Mystery surrounds the existence or otherwise in Mozambique of an international child-trafficking network for obtaining organs. The Mozambican church says that the suspicions are well-founded and that there is a fear that the network is indeed functioning. The Mozambican authorities have made contradictory statements on the matter, which range from statements, designed to allay people’s fears, that there is no proof that such trafficking takes place, to suggestions that there are indeed signs that the network exists. I should therefore like to ask you, Commissioner, Mr President, to call on the Mozambican authorities to clarify the matter. The matter needs to be clarified, and the people of Nampula, and the children of Nampula, and Mozambique as a whole, need to be helped, so that they can live in peace. IN THE CHAIR: MRS LALUMIÈREVice-President

Political group: PSE
Mr President, there is a problem with the German urgent debate file – I do not know if the same applies to the other language versions – in that it only contains the proposed amendments of the group but none of the motions for resolutions and not even the joint text. That is a serious error. If I had not been given information by Mrs Langenhagen, who is a first-class shipbuilding and shipping safety expert, I would not now know what I was supposed to be voting on. Please ensure that this does not happen again. IN THE CHAIR: MRS FONTAINEPresident

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, I should like to make one or two observations with regard to social policy. I totally agree with what Mrs Jensen said on this subject a moment ago. It is regrettable that some areas leave something to be desired. I should particularly like to ask for attention to be paid to the European Year of the disabled which we are celebrating at the moment and which is also reasonably successful. It is, in my view, very important that we should provide an opportunity for follow-up next year. I also hope that provision can be made for this in the budget during the course of this budget procedure. I should also like to make a brief comment further to what Commissioner Barnier has stated. Needless to say, we have all looked into the figures. It is indeed satisfying to see that the situation has improved particularly over the past few months and that a little more money is being spent than during the period immediately preceding it. Despite this, I do think that we have not solved the problem by a long way. Neither am I completely convinced that we need an additional budget. I myself do not expect this at all. What can we see happening? Countries are working out how much money they would need to spend in order to use up all the money that has been allocated to them. Those countries are saying: well, it should be this or that amount, which they subsequently find impossible to spend. They are far too optimistic and there is no monitoring procedure of any kind. I think that we ought to be extremely grateful to the Commissioner for having introduced all kinds of gentle mechanisms that will hopefully rectify the situation to some degree. For years, I have been indignant about the fact that everyone knows that there are too many payment credits and that the money is not being spent. The only thing we notice at the end of the year is that a great deal of money is retuned to the Member States. I think we should put a stop to this. This is probably more important than approving the occasional additional budget.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, Commissioner, given the increasing volume of business mergers and their profound social and economic impact, there is room for improvement on the proposals contained in the Green Paper. As the rapporteur, Mr Berenguer Fuster, points out, the control of mergers is one of the mainstays of Community competition policy. Competition, however, cannot be used as the sole criterion when assessing the acceptability of a planned merger. Other objectives defined in the Lisbon strategy, such as the dynamics of full employment and competitive industries, must also be included in the assessment. Both types of objective should be accorded equal legal status with a view to preventing any lessening of competition but also with a view to advancing the interests of industry and employment, which have become the poor relations in our present-day economic policies. The question of renewing the assessment criteria is therefore crucial. Greater consideration must be given to the realities of global competition, it should be recognised that the idea of national markets is becoming meaningless in all but a few segments of the economy, that the European market is what counts now and, finally, that there is a need to develop the concept of contestable markets by moving towards the criterion of significant lessening of competition. At the same time, procedures must be improved. The One-Stop Shop principle for operations of Community interest is excellent, provided it is combined with good safeguards. The notification conditions can be simplified and the two-thirds rule preserved without losing sight of the need for coherence within the Community. However, it is on two methodological aspects that substantial progress must be made. In view of the huge social impact of these operations, it is imperative that representatives of the workforce and the other interested parties be consulted before any final decisions are made, as proposed by Mr Goebbels and Mr Berenguer Fuster in their amendments. The procedure used to test the market must be made completely transparent; to this end, it will be necessary to listen to the arguments of the interested parties and to respond to their observations. The interests of industry have thus been protected, which was the purpose of one of my amendments. More could be done, of course, with regard to the contestability of decisions. Effective competition in the wider market on the one hand and development of industry and employment on the other: these are two aims on which further improvement is needed.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, on this point I do not mind what we do. Mrs Malliori would like this to be passed through Parliament today and she has to leave this afternoon. She is anxious that it should get through under the Greek presidency. I do not want to be difficult in saying that we would vote against it, but, as Mr Posselt has said, we have to be careful about setting precedents. As Mrs Malliori has said, the key thing is that we would like from the Commission a clear statement on the labelling. The Commission has made commitments concerning labelling in other legislation. We would like a statement from the Commission on this now, regardless of what this Chamber decides on and whether or not we have a debate.

Political group: Verts-ALE
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I should like to begin by congratulating the Spanish Presidency and, in particular, Mr Piqué on all their efforts to bring the Valencia Conference, whose results I do not underestimate, to a successful conclusion. I also congratulate Commissioner Chris Patten on the intelligence, impartiality and astuteness of his intervention. My question is a simple one and is addressed to Mr Piqué: do you believe – having heard Commissioner Patten state that the Middle East is in flames, which is indeed the case – that the Barcelona Process can withstand the conflict in the Middle East? In implementing his reprehensible policy, Mr Sharon has demonstrated that he does not respect the resolutions of the European Union, those of the United Nations or even the recommendations of President Bush. He does not take them seriously! I wish to ask: are we going to continue to churn out the fine words, the stirring speeches and the impressive-sounding votes, which we know are not really having any effect, when we have within our grasp the means to force Mr Sharon to change policy? Why is the Resolution, which was approved by a large majority by the European Parliament, to suspend the Association Agreement between the European Union and Israel not being implemented? Why is no serious initiative being adopted under the auspices of the UN, to impose a peacekeeping force on Israel? As a long-standing friend of Israel, it pains me to have to say that Mr Sharon is irredeemably tainting Israel’s honour and is putting his country in a morally indefensible position and in a greater situation of international isolation than ever before. (Applause)

Political group: PSE
Mr President, I am speaking today as the representative of the Committee on Regional Policy, Transport and Tourism, which has had to deal with questions of competence from a very early stage, but has not, unfortunately, been sufficiently involved in the latest. I see that the report proposes that a special report on this matter be drawn up, and I consider this a very good thing, as these questions are not actually adequately dealt with in the report itself. I would like to take this opportunity to clarify again the position of the Committee on Regional Policy, Transport and Tourism, and then perhaps a place might be found for it when this special report is prepared. I consider it most important that we should not be waiting too long for it, as, if these questions are not resolved while we prepare for the new constitution, it will, I think, be very hard for those citizens who identify with the regions and local authorities to accept this constitution as being their own. I would like to point out that most EU legislation does not only touch on national competences and national law, but has a direct effect on local rights. We see this in the area of public services, we see it in the economy as a whole, we see it when it comes to tendering, and so on and so forth. That is why we need to build in an early warning system. We have put forward two basic suggestions about this. One is that all laws should be developed in line with certain principles that would apply across the board, ranging from the principle of subsidiarity to that of partnership. The other aims to involve regional and local authorities as early as the preparatory stage of legislative processes, that alone being the guarantee that their standpoints will be taken into account with all the others, something which even national representatives will often not have done at the end of the legislative process. My request to the rapporteur is that, in future, we should carry on working on this issue with the Committee on Constitutional Affairs, and keep this in mind when we do so.

Political group: Verts-ALE
Mr President, first of all my Group would like to say how very grateful it is to the rapporteur, Mrs Izquierdo, for this report. It represents the attempt we need to give the financing for groups and associations in the EU agriculture sector a legal basis. This budget line has always been there, only there were no legal safeguards, and the Court of Auditors criticised us for this. In producing this legal standard, the Commission has now put the matter to rights. The only difficulty regarding implementation resides in the fact that the Commission is now to lay claim to a large portion of the budget for its own information measures – or so the report says – when previously, the budget was available in its entirety to the associations in varying amounts. We have reason to fear that these funds are now to be withheld from the associations, and that is not a very happy turn of events. Secondly, it used to be the case that the money was made available to the associations and it was for them to draw up their own criteria as to how the money should be spent. This was, and continues to be, an unacceptable practice, and it is therefore right and proper that the criteria are now to be stipulated. However, precise rates of interest are now to be fixed for the financing – Mrs Izquierdo has already made reference to this – which will mean that small associations having limited financial resources will be deprived of the opportunity to delve into this pot because they do not have their own resources. The smaller, weaker associations will therefore be at a disadvantage. That is why we welcome with open arms Mrs Izquierdo’s proposal that the possibility of full financing be allowed for where there is evidence that the measures meet the criteria, and where there is financial weakness – which may be the case throughout the region – so as to avoid these areas being completely left out. All in all, our Group welcomes the fact that we are now to get a legal basis, and also supports the proposed amendments tabled by the rapporteur.

Political group: Verts-ALE
Madam President, I would like to thank the Commissioner for her report, although a number of points seemed very unclear and could even be described as highly ambiguous. If I am not mistaken, the total appropriations for Serbia are EUR 2.3 billion. These appropriations are not purely nominal; it is simply that they will remain on paper for as long as the Milosevic Government is in power. This is neither the time nor the place for me to criticise this government, but I would like to ask the Commissioner whether the Commission took into account the fact that neighbouring countries, as well as the Serbian civilian population, were being penalised when it decided to defer appropriations on purely political grounds. Without direct appropriations and aid, how does it intend to resolve the issues of industrial pollution, the navigability of the Danube and the Danube’s bridges destroyed by American bombing, which drastically reduced the river traffic of as many as five neighbouring countries? What contribution is the Commission going to make – not in three years’ time but in the next few months – to resolving the issue of the vast amount of pollution caused by the bombing of the Pancevo petrochemical plant, which contaminated huge areas, seeds and harvests with poisonous gases and which, according to the latest United Nations report, even polluted the water tables with dioxins, mercury and other toxic substances? I would therefore like to ask the Commissioner whether there is any chance, any prospect of taking direct, immediate action on Serbian territory as well, in the interests, and I stress this point, of the neighbouring countries and regions.

Political group: GUE-NGL