GwendalTsang/DEFT09-parquet huggingface dataset:
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, we perhaps have to remind ourselves that much has happened in Russia: over 5 000 nuclear warheads have been withdrawn from use, democratic institutions have been created, and the media there may criticise the government, and, in fact, dare to. It is true the media is more and more passing into the hands of the few, the very people who, as the previous speaker reminded us, have acquired common property for themselves. At the same time, however, we must remember that Russia’s leaders are primarily and directly responsible to their own people, the Russians themselves. I would like to raise the issue of this ruthless campaign of terror and bombing – the most recent explosion took place yesterday evening. The intention of this action is to create instability in the whole area, for the whole vast region, and it is happening at a very awkward time. Russia has two elections in the near future, the situation is very tense, the country has a sick president, and the whole economy is in difficulties. We must condemn, as we are now doing, those states that are aiding the terrorists in their aim to create new instability in a region where there is enough of it as it is. We should not speak of a financial crisis in Russia, however. Russia has a political crisis, and that has continued since the country changed direction. We can certainly see the reasons for this political crisis, but the situation will not be remedied with money, however much of it you heap on Russia. We have seen how things go with money: they go fairly badly. With regard to the West, I would really like to bring up another issue. We still have no clear policy on Russia, although we have a bulky agreement on partnership and co-operation. We have practised collaboration in many ways and we support democracy and civil society in Russia, but, for all that, we do not understand Russia. One reason for that is, in practice, we do not know the Russian politicians very well. We have concentrated on one person, or one body of people, in fact, on one narrow group of people in power. As a consequence, what happens in Russia always takes us by surprise. We should therefore broaden the scope of our political contact with Russia, and, this would help us to understand the changes that take place there so unexpectedly. We know that our financial aid and food aid have pretty much slipped into the hands of those for whom it was not intended. It is the Russian elite that are guilty of this, a group we have had no hold on. I think we should discover how, for example, the competition for transporting food aid granted to Russia by Europe was organised. I perceived problems there, and I would ask the Commission to give an explanation of this affair. In this situation, however, it is necessary to increase co-operation with Russia, and not terminate it. The Northern Dimension, medical care, the Nordic regions, etc, will all be important. Now Russia needs from us very concrete proposals on co-operation, and that is why I regard the aspect of the Northern Dimension as so important, and I hope the Commission will act.

Political group: PSE
Madam President, it is a fact that over recent years, as immigration has increased, a climate of prejudice has started to creep in, racial violence has become more and more frequent and even political parties have been set up on the basis of racist ideology. In other words, a social climate is developing – and it made its appearance in a wing of our House this morning – which suggests that the protection of human dignity, respect for those who are different, democratic values and social solidarity have not yet been fully mastered. Our action to foster respect for human rights and create a fair society of creative coexistence therefore needs to be examined against a backdrop of policies and measures which seek to improve economic and social conditions for everyone and combat unemployment, poverty and social exclusion. The new multicultural Europe needs a policy which ensures that immigrants and different social groups and minorities are integrated into the social, political and economic life of national societies. What we need is a common European asylum and immigration policy based on European humanitarian values. Of course, the education sector is also important and we need huge improvements in education for the children of immigrants and gypsies. At the same time, the mass media need to help fight prejudices and to demonstrate the beauty of modern multicoloured, multicultural society. Of course, within this framework, respect for those who are conscientious objectors, for example, and who do not therefore wish to serve in the army, should be guaranteed. I should like to take this opportunity of assuring the European Parliament that the problem which used to exist in Greece no longer exists, following the adoption and application of legislation on 1.1.98. The reference in question, therefore, in Mr Haarder’s otherwise excellent report, is therefore irrelevant today.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, I too should like, on behalf of the Group of the European Liberal, Democrat and Reform Party, to express our great disappointment at the search made of the human rights office and take strong exception to this event. I agree, however, with Mr Ceyhun that we must be cautious in our interpretation of it. As the Commissioner mentioned, we are in fact seeing an express desire for reform in Turkey and a desire to comply with the political criteria, as required if the country is to embark upon negotiations concerning EU membership. We saw this with the amendments to the constitution last August, when the death penalty was abolished in peace-time and a series of other freedoms was established. Further reforms are on the way, moreover. I myself took part in the Turkish National Assembly’s symposium at the end of April when it was discussed what changes there needed to be to the Turkish legal system if it were to comply with the political criteria. What I witnessed was an objective and open debate, in which, for example, legal experts and representatives of the judiciary provided clear and incisive descriptions of the reforms that would guarantee the independence of the courts and the observance of fundamental human rights. If the National Assembly follows the good advice and adopts reforms that guarantee the independence of a legal system that is also in accordance with human rights, Turkey will be another step on the way towards negotiating for accession to the EU, and – just as importantly – the Turkish population will be guaranteed the fundamental and democratic rights I believe they really desire. The fact of the matter is, of course, that it is not enough to amend legislation if changes do not also take place in practice. We should then be back to square one, as the Commissioner emphasised, and I think it important that we emphasise this. It is therefore very sad that we continue to receive reports of torture in Turkish prisons and of other infringements of human rights, including violations of freedom of expression. The events of 6 May unfortunately show that there are still forces in Turkish society that either do not understand the need for changes or do not approve of them and who act on that basis. This is unacceptable. Turkey is a very complex country with many different cultures. It is also a very dynamic country with major resources and a lot of talent, and continued cooperation between the EU and Turkey is in the interests of both Turkey and the EU. Membership of the EU requires, however, that specific principles be observed. We often hear Turkish politicians say that tougher demands are being made upon Turkey than upon other countries where accession to the EU is concerned. This is not the case. The ten countries that are to accede in May 2004 have had to implement difficult reforms for which there was often little grass-roots support and which were also opposed internally. For all countries, democracy is a process, and we need to be on our guard against human rights violations and any imbalance between institutions.

Political group: ELDR
In July 2003, the Commission laid off Eurostat’s management in response to the persistence of the fraud cases that had been known about for a long time. I immediately demanded that the facts be published. It is pointless to ask institutions dependent on the Commission to institute an inquiry if they subsequently have to keep their findings secret. Only when public opinion is well informed and can help pass judgment can fraud, self-enrichment and nepotism be prevented in future. Investigation by Parliament makes that possible. Even though a secret report was submitted to the members of the Committee on Budgetary Control at the end of September 2003, the Commission can still act as if it does not carry any responsibility. The person primarily responsible, Commissioner Solbes, has meanwhile become minister in the new Spanish Government. There is no evidence to show that the problems that forced the previous Commission to step down before the elections five years ago have well and truly ended. To illustrate the seriousness of the situation and to ensure that the next Commission will be required to address the problems, I am voting in favour of the motion of censure today. The fact that the , previously in opposition, turned against this in the previous meeting, with the aim to prove their administrative reliability, makes it no less necessary to continue the fight against fraud.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, this debate comes just a few hours after another terrible tragedy in the St Gotthard tunnel, with ten people known to have died and eighty missing, according to the latest news. This tunnel has the same specification as the tunnel rebuilt under Mont Blanc: substantially the same technical specification as regards safety, with the same carriageway width of about seven metres, or even worse, in that the Mont Blanc tunnel has no parallel service tunnel. Having heard the Commissioner, I have come to the following conclusion: more disasters will have to happen in order finally to persuade the European Commission to give up its policy of White Papers, which no longer apply, and the associated illusion that technology can solve any problem, and make it realise that a 40-tonne lorry in a seven-metre-wide tunnel is a lethal weapon. Commissioner, we must ask the governments involved to delay the reopening of the Mont Blanc tunnel so that we can seriously reconsider what kinds of vehicles should be allowed to use it. We must say no to large HGVs; we should place a strict limit on the number of HGVs that can go through each day and we should ban dangerous loads. This is the only way we can prevent further disasters.

Political group: GUE-NGL
All the compromise amendments were proposed in one go and given to Mr Radwan at the same time. At 5 p.m. yesterday afternoon, he decided to take the first and ninth amendments – you will see in your documents that their numbers have changed – and as for the others, Mr Radwan refused them. His two previous comments were made purely and simply in order to manipulate the House.

Political group: Verts-ALE
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I support Mrs Bonino's report, which provides for greater efficiency and transparency, and on which the Committee on Development and Cooperation has given its opinion. I would like to thank her for her outstanding work. I witnessed the suffering of mine victims with my own eyes during and after the war in Bosnia, in 1992, 1995 and 1999. Many victims are small children, who suffer terrible trauma and appalling mutilation, and whose lives are destroyed before they have even started properly. Every child that we can protect from death or terrible injuries because of mines, be it in Bosnia, Africa or elsewhere, makes all our efforts worthwhile. I would also like to sincerely thank the non-governmental organisations for their commitment. I would briefly like to comment on one point, and this concerns our amendment to the motion for a resolution. There is no worldwide consensus in favour of banning anti-vehicle mines. They are still regarded as essential protection against armoured vehicles throughout the world and within NATO. No one should seek to belittle the achievements of Ottawa by saying that anti-vehicle mines should have been included. In that case the Convention would certainly have been doomed to failure from the outset. With regard to the enlargement of the EU, the candidate countries absolutely must sign the Ottawa Convention. The USA, Russia and China should be urged to sign the Convention. Greece and Finland should ratify the Convention as soon as possible. In conclusion, I would like to say that I would dearly like to see all mines banned throughout the world, as they are some of the most diabolical and repulsive arms that exist. Unfortunately, however, we are not in that utopian world.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, today, with the report by Mr Jarzembowski, whom I should like to congratulate on the lengthy efforts he has made to bring us to this point, we are essentially doing no more than what we did when Parliament called for postal services to be opened up to competition, railway services to be opened up to competition and air transport to be opened up to competition. It would be strange if this Parliament, which has been at the vanguard of opening up these services, came along tomorrow and said, for incomprehensible reasons – to me at least – that there must be an exception from this long line of action to open up all these services to competition and that the exception was port services. At the end of the day, as Mrs de Palacio said, numerous positions expressed by Parliament were accepted during discussions with the Council. Pilotage services, which are an exception, self-handling, which has been restricted to on board ship, competition between ports, where basically Parliament's position was accepted, while the Commission – at the beginning of the procedure at least – was against. Protecting employment rights, where there is an express provision in the directive that we cannot have a lower level of protection than that which exists in each Member State. Consequently, I at least honestly fail to understand why certain people continue to oppose what we have achieved which, it should be pointed out, does not make industry absolutely happy, especially the shipowners, who wanted something bolder. I, for my part, think that this compromise which we have before us serves the interests of industry to a certain degree in that there are other service providers – it breaks the monopoly and there is greater choice – and it serves the workers, because in this way new companies are being created and new companies mean new jobs. Consequently, it is a step forward, which is why we must support the outcome of the conciliation and vote yes.

Political group: PPE-DE
In his sterling report, the rapporteur once again underlines the importance of TENs. It is therefore beyond me why the European Parliament should not be a party to deciding on this list of priority projects. Parliament demanded this at the time of the initial decision in 1996; it now has this opportunity and it is not seizing it. The Commission backed Parliament in 1996, and we are now about to turn down this opportunity, as is happening in the Committee on Regional Policy, Transport and Tourism. Mr President, this is beyond me. This is also unacceptable, in my view. This is why my group, with the support of a number of members of other groups, has re-submitted the projects that were turned down in the Committee on Regional Policy, Transport and Tourism – both my projects and those of other fellow MEPs, who have had to withdraw their reports on account of some pressure or other. This is, in my opinion, not sensible and not acceptable. These are reports that originate from different countries, including Italy, France, Great Britain, the Netherlands and Belgium. It is therefore nothing to do with national thinking only. It is my belief that Parliament must take part in the discussions on this list. I should like to spotlight one project which is of extreme importance to me, as someone from Flanders and Antwerp: the Iron Rhine, the railway connection between the port of Antwerp and the Ruhr area, a railway line which already exists and which therefore does not need to be constructed, and which only needs modernising and re-commissioning. The rapporteur states in his report that connections between ports and their hinterland, between water and rail, are important. The Iron Rhine is one such case. In its White Paper, the Commission states that we should promote the railways, that we should start re-using abandoned infrastructure and using lines that are specifically intended for goods transport by rail, and that we should tackle the difficulties at border crossings, as these constitute the pressure points. The Iron Rhine project meets all these conditions, that are listed in the report and in the Commission’s White Paper. It is a project that is relatively cheap from a budgetary point of view, because the railway lines are already in place. It is a project that adds enormous value, because it can also provide some relief for the East-West line and can therefore combat congestion. I would therefore find it incomprehensible if the European Parliament were not to take part in this discussion and if it were not to table this, and other, projects. I am not saying that we should have the last word, but we have to engage in the discussion.

Political group: ELDR
Mr President, Commissioner, the merit of providing information quickly is to achieve an effect of surprise when giving good news. And I must congratulate you on the news you have brought us today, which was directly related to my first budgetary question, which I now have to adapt. However, I would like to stress the importance I attach to moving from 10% to 20% in the projects. My question is, ‘how have you done it?’. Because this action is of interest to us in terms of future actions and requests by this Parliament. So where did you get that 10% from? Can the same be expected for other modes of transport? Secondly, the environmental impact. When you appeared before us in 1999, at your hearing as a candidate for Commissioner, you said that you would pay very close attention to the environmental impact. Do you intend to maintain this level of attention in relation to these projects and not be mechanically subject to the will of the States, which normally incorporate truly harmful environmental effects into some of these areas? Thirdly, we have still not been able to digest the projects which you have just mentioned to us, but I would like to ask you a question with no ill intention, but simply so that we may know your initial opinion: do you think that your proposal tackles the problems of the peripheral regions and is therefore of a cohesive nature?

Political group: PSE
We are naturally grateful for the information which Mr Patten is giving us. It is true that there is an office for the defence of human rights in Colombia. For several years Parliament asked for it, and finally the Commission, together with the United Nations, finances this human rights office in Colombia. However, those of us who have been here for years know what the words “displaced” (800 000) and “murdered” mean in relation to Colombia. As well as the Spaniard Egiluz and the Colombian priest Mazo, two journalists have been murdered in recent days. 150 journalists have been murdered in the last ten years. In many cases, it is perfectly clear that it is the paramilitary groups who are carrying out these murders. We know that this is a difficult and complex matter, but, Commissioner, I would like to ask you two questions. Firstly, do you not think that, as well as talking and maintaining dialogue – which in my opinion should always be done -, we should put pressure on the Colombian Government so that, once and for all, it will try to get rid of the paramilitary groups responsible for these acts? And secondly, is there any truth in the rumours that, in the name of the fight against drug trafficking, the United States may be planning an intervention strategy in Colombia? And I believe that the European Union should act decisively in that event, because such an intervention would lead to a spiral of violence which none of us want to see.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Madam President, I would like to start by saying that I welcome the working method used to address this Parliamentary resolution. I would now like to ask a question: who are the targets of terrorism and what is the logic behind it? It would appear that terrorism targets human beings, and it therefore contravenes the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and cannot be based on religious or ideological considerations. If today, the entire world has taken up the fight against terrorism, it has done so because terrorism violates precisely that which the entire world – all the States and all the citizens – has subscribed to in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Well then, when we produce definitions of terrorism, we specify, for simplicity’s sake, the groups which carry out terrorist activities. It would be shame, however, if this were to induce us to fall down the slippery slope and lump together with these groups what we define as religious movements, only very small parts of which may be involved in terrorism. If we have to take a step forward, we must do so not least by sending out a message as the European Union, calling for monitoring of the penal systems of all the States which have signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, for, very often, the penal systems which have produced their own internal definitions of human rights are not consistent with the Declaration. This is what I wanted to say in my speech, for I feel that we have to overcome this period of conflicts and be more proactive in working for the good of the whole world.

Political group: PPE-DE
Madam President, this is not just a matter of Mr Cox understanding what was agreed. In line with the fact that there is a political programme for legislature, which began belatedly last year, the Commission has presented a programme for this year and the measures appear in the annex, which do not number 200 but 485, according to my group's counting; 205 are legislative and the others are not, and of those there is a substantial number which is carried over, since they were not implemented last year. Therefore, it is not sensible for us to table a resolution in which all these extremes are included; the procedure which we have agreed is that the relevant committees will examine the resolution in detail and, all things being equal, in April we could vote on this in full knowledge of the facts. In relation to extending this programme to the Council, that may be an interesting suggestion for the future; but the interested parties at the moment are the Commission and Parliament.

Political group: PSE