GwendalTsang/DEFT09-parquet huggingface dataset:
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, as we have already said, the backdrop to Mr Sturdy’s report is the dramatic context, both for farmers and consumers, we should remember, of the BSE crisis and the resources put in place to eradicate it. Commissioner, one of the seven measures that you proposed several months ago is today being proposed for implementation. This is, in addition to using set-aside land to grow protein plants, a step in the right direction, even if, in the opinion of the Group of the , it is still not enough. Mr Sturdy has tried to push the Commission position on farmers further, by dealing with other aspects of beef production. On the other hand, he has not considered a serious problem of fraud in the BSE crisis. Now, Commissioner, I suppose that you too have seen the latest report by AFSSA (the French Agency for Food Safety), which has been well-documented and is damning on this issue. It shows that the cases of animals suffering from BSE, described as naïve and, more often, extremely dumb, are caused by the fraudulent use of bone meal from carcasses in animal foods. We therefore need urgent measures to step up checks and sanctions. The health of consumers depends on this, as does consumer confidence. The second point that I would like to draw your attention to is that the measures proposed by the Commission are moving towards extensification whilst relieving a saturated market, but there is a risk that the special premium for cutting headage of male cattle per hectare will have no effect unless a ceiling is imposed on surface areas, since the advocates of high productivity may attempt to claw back this premium, which is not intended for them, by increasing surface areas, which are, in any case, already high in their case. We should therefore do our best to encourage small holdings, which are endangered and threatened by the latest food crises, and this is what I hope you will soon be doing.

Political group: Verts-ALE
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Mrs Rühle's report on the discharge for the European Development Funds presents an honest picture of the contradictions in our development policy. On the one hand, there are complaints that we are not willing enough to make generous development aid available, and, on the other hand, it is undeniable that the money actually made available is often only disbursed very slowly. There must be something wrong with a system under which at the end of 1999 resources of almost EUR 10 billion had been promised and made available without any specific deadlines, but had not been taken up. The Commission will, of course, say that since then there have been signs of improvement here and there. Nevertheless, it is a fact that we need to fundamentally review our approach. The aid we offer through the Development Funds is reaching its limits, because it is geared towards supporting states that in some cases only exist on paper. There is often a lack of an even semi-functioning public administration, there is a lack of democratic control of those in power, and many countries are in a state of open civil war or on the verge of it. In a civil war situation, we first need to concentrate aid on conflict resolution and on humanitarian aid. In other cases, we should concentrate our efforts to a greater extent than before on establishing properly functioning public administrations, which are a prerequisite for meaningfully applying aid from the EU or other donors in the international community. Such administrations are also a prerequisite for ensuring that countries use their own tax revenue responsibly and in the interests of their citizens. Our aid must therefore always be linked to reform programmes for public administration. If these reforms make progress, aid is given, but if they do not progress or if there are setbacks we should not be afraid to turn off the tap. I know that is a difficult thing to do, but it is precisely in such circumstances that the Commission needs to stand firm and adhere to its principles. Finally, I would like to say one more thing about this discharge procedure. The discharge had to be postponed because the Commission did not initially provide the necessary information. Furthermore, there was again the problem that certain confidential information was only forwarded to the committee chair and to the rapporteur. As I have often said before, and I shall say it again now, this leads to two classes of Member of the European Parliament – those with and those without access to information. The committee made it patently clear in its report that this situation should not be allowed to recur, and that the provisions of our Rules of Procedure in respect of the discharge procedure should be fully implemented in future. In other words, all Members of this House should have access to all confidential information.

Political group: PPE-DE
Due to the large number of road victims, road safety has finally become a political issue. Public opinion is right to be indignant about the many vulnerable road users who are the victim of road traffic that kills. The Petersen report helps to do something about this. Cars should be safer not only for car drivers; they should also be safer for the vulnerable road users. I emphatically endorse the wish in the Petersen report that the European Parliament be involved in legislation in this area. Road safety cannot simply be the concern of the executive and car manufacturers. As long as increased car speeds are used as a sales argument, I shall remain suspicious of the industry. After all, it is impossible to cut down significantly the number of victims of road accidents if the speed on the roads is not reduced, if car drivers do not adapt their driving behaviour and if the infrastructure is not conducive to caution and safety. Road accidents are not natural disasters. We must prevent them.

Political group: Verts-ALE
Mr President, the Commission document on health and safety at work is a good document. It talks of the importance of health and safety at work, of the need to strengthen the prevention culture and to secure a better application of existing law. I very much agree with all of that. It portrays the problem as follows: the preventive culture of EU directives has not yet been fully understood, nor has it been applied effectively on the ground. I agree. It admits that people tend to see the Community legal framework as being excessively complex and unclear and proposes that it be simplified and rationalised. I agree with that too. I would have hoped that Parliament might have seen fit to endorse these Commission proposals, but the rapporteur has gone off in the opposite direction. He claims that, because Commission staffing has been reduced to some 40% of its 1992 levels, this indicates much lower priority within the Commission. This is nonsense. However, for some people all roads always lead to the standard solution of more money, more people and more regulation. I note the rapporteur graciously referred to the joint amendment we tabled, which was the great highlight in committee – perhaps it could be the highlight of his report. Colleagues may well hope this is the start of a great new partnership, but I suspect they may have to wait a little longer for it to blossom. We will hope together for progress. Meanwhile, the rapporteur wants to extend the scope of the framework directive to propose new legislation on workplace bullying and a new directive on workplace ergonomics, strengthen the display screen equipment directive and amend the manual handling directive. All that appears on just the first page of his recommendations. We do not need more directives. I suggest his conclusions are wrong because his analysis is wrong. The UK Conservative delegation will be voting against it and we will not be alone. I would add that Ireland has just voted to allow the entry of applicant countries into the EU. If the applicant countries read the Hughes report, they may not want to join. IN THE CHAIR: MR ONESTAVice-President

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, I asked the President-in-Office of the Council a specific question on statements by the Spanish Prime Minister – who is also President-in-Office of the European Council – that made reference to my political family in the Council, but he has not yet answered my question.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, Vice-President of the Commission, this report on the accelerated phasing-out of single hull tankers seemed at first to be an extremely complicated matter and we have been down a long hard road in order to reach today's result. Nonetheless, I think that we have finally done so in a most satisfactory manner, which has gone beyond all our expectations. On the one hand, we have managed to find an effective response to the concerns of the citizens of Europe, especially in France following the shipwreck of the Erika, as regards environmental protection. At the same time, we have taken fundamental measures in maritime safety because, as all sides agree, double-hull tankers may not be a panacea but they are at least proven to be safer than single-hull tankers. However, we also achieved another objective: the objective of protecting the competitiveness of the shipping industry. We must not forget that this is a vital sector of our economy, a sector which employs tens of thousands of workers throughout Europe and one of our priorities must be to protect it. We also achieved something else which I think I should highlight: we managed to find an international solution to a problem which goes beyond national borders. We have before us a solution which has now been adopted by all the countries in the International Maritime Organisation. I think that credit for this has to go to the European Commission, the Member States and the European Parliament because, thanks to our initiative, thanks to our – how shall I put it? – our threat that we would proceed unilaterally if the International Maritime Organisation failed to act, the International Maritime Organisation which, we must admit, has not always acted quite as fast as we would all like it to act, has pushed ahead and adopted a number of measures which mirror the initial proposals submitted by the Commission and the Member States. So clear, efficient measures are being taken for all the classes of tanker which have concerned us and I am happy to say that today we have achieved something which did in fact appear to be beyond reach just a short time ago. On the one hand, I think that people in France are relatively satisfied with the measures we are adopting and that every European with an environmental conscience is satisfied with the significant progress made while, on the other hand, industrial factors, people engaged in shipping, seamen and shipowners, feel that we have not gone too far and undermined the interests of this important sector of the economy. So I should like to thank all the honourable members with whom we cooperated so efficiently that we now have this text before us and, of course, to thank and congratulate the Vice-President of the European Commission, Mrs de Palacio, for the way in which she has handled this issue and for her decisiveness and excellent disposition towards the European Parliament.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, the content of the regulation being discussed here is based on the situation that existed at the end of the 1980s, but since then things have changed greatly. More attention must be paid in the protection of forests to the effect of climate change. We have succeeded in bringing traditional forms of air pollution under control in the last ten years, thanks also to EU directives, but at the same time, the risk of changes to global weather patterns getting out of hand has grown. This development must also be looked at when reviewing the way the forests of the Union are monitored. The regulation on the subject of the Community’s forests must be reformed, but Parliament cannot undertake financial commitments until the present regulation expires in 2001. In this situation the suggestion that there should be an increase of tens of millions of euros for just a little over a year is not reasonable. It is not sufficiently justified by the fact that the Union’s forest area has grown since the last round of enlargement. The situation is so different between the north and the south. For example, in Finland and Sweden we long ago reached the stage where the forest is used as it grows. Here at Union level at the moment we are discussing many genuine legislative proposals concerning forests, including a common position on the emissions ceiling directive and on the directive relating to large incineration plants. They must be supported, so that they are as successful as possible and so that we can do more to protect the forests as a result.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, the rapporteur who drafted a report on the development of the Community’s railways has adopted the guiding principle that for the time being, the railway industry has largely lost the competitive battle to road transport and aviation but that despite this, it is preferable to hold on to the railway industry and strengthen it. I could not agree more. But this is about the only issue on which I see eye to eye with him. I believe Mr Jarzembowski is quite mistaken. What he wants to achieve requires a complete change of tack and what he proposes will lead to further regression. His proposals are in line with views held at the end of the twentieth century. In all areas, we are witnessing a neo-liberal attack on public services, Community undertakings and employers’ organisations. This attack is mainly aimed at postal services, rail and the energy sector, companies which have the potential to demonstrate that we can organise our economy in a more democratic, environmentally-friendly and less profit-oriented manner. Unfortunately, these companies have for years been neglected by their owners, the democratically elected community which belongs to us all, and have been treated as private companies. The rapporteur considers the rail industry as an irritating state monopoly with difficult and demanding trade unions in tow. He wants to break this monopoly as quickly and radically as possible. Instead of focusing his attention on stepping up cooperation between the existing railway companies and enhancing the democratic say over these companies, so that benefits of the rail industry can be better enjoyed on a European scale and liabilities can be eliminated more effectively, he puts all his hope in competition and liberalisation. In his opinion, the form of organisation by means of which road transport and aviation have largely triumphed over rail, should also be applied to rail itself. We have now gained some experience in liberalisation thanks to the English and Dutch models. The English variant carved up the national railway industry into regional companies, some of which ended up in the hands of large foreign concerns. In other regions, they remained a monopoly. That country now invests less in innovation than any other country. Trains are shorter and overloaded, and the safety of railways has declined. According to the Dutch version, competitors can obtain licences for lines on which they want to compete with the existing railway company. This company was established in 1939 and is an amalgamation of old private railway companies which operated inefficiently. Following a propaganda war between a newcomer and the existing company, operating different rates and using different trains, this newcomer was first taken over by a large French water company and subsequently ceased all activity. It is evident that it is only profitable to operate lines over which you have complete control. This reality renders the proposals made by Jarzembowski unviable.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, I should like to concur with the words spoken, to my great delight, by Mr Nassauer, namely that the implementation of the 2004 work programme is starting under a very dark cloud, particularly on account of the fact that the two key countries, France and Germany, which, in the framework of the EMU, invented the Stability Pact, have, five years down the line, pretty much forgotten the promises they made. And that the architects of this pact have shifted from being strong to being weak, from being stable to being unstable, from being reliable to being unreliable, and from having a sense of responsibility to having no sense of responsibility. These are the terrible facts that were also recently reaffirmed on Dutch television by the director of the Dutch Bank, when he also remarked that without a Stability Pact, there would not have been a euro and that we are even being taken for a ride by those who have drafted this Stability Pact. It is under this cloud that further discussions on the EU's enlargement are taking place. There are a few more countries waiting to join. In my view, it is very important for us to doggedly persevere with honest and coherent policy, and also to remain strict with those countries in respect of the criteria, particularly where the issues of the rule of law, democracy and good neighbourliness are concerned. It is unwise to treat the Balkan countries as if the race were already over. Those countries will first need to prove that they belong in the European Union. In addition, the introduction of criteria other than those previously agreed should be rejected, such as differences in religion, the size of the country or of the population, any strategic location, political benefits, the date of membership application, historical relations or economic benefit. These are all elements which, naturally, occur to everyone sooner or later, but it would be extremely bad if these were to exclude or relativise the agreed criteria. Mr Verheugen mentioned the need for more common foreign and security policy in the light of enlargement. What is the Council's position on that? Does it share Commissioner Verheugen's view that we, because of enlargement, should strive towards a common foreign and security policy with all the more urgency?

Political group: PPE-DE
Madam President, everyone is aware of my group’s reservations about the Member State initiatives concerning the judicial European area. The most effective and consistent method, in most of the matters that this involves, is the Community initiative, which we hope will be, following the work of the Convention, the prime working method, precisely because only the Commission is in a position to defend and promote the balance of values and principles that are not depleted by the construction of Europe’s security, which is drifting away from the Europeans’ deep-rooted component of rights and freedoms. The history of the construction of the area of freedom, security and justice is still made up much more of isolated initiatives by the Members States, which make specific contributions concerning security as they see fit, given the concerns of their citizens. Instead, we are seeing the dissipation of Commission initiatives to approximate legislation, in which efforts to prosecute crime are tempered by the protection of individual values. This is not the Commission’s fault, but a result of differences between the various Member States. Furthermore, although there is no proof that the national area is the best suited to combating international organised crime, nor will it ever be proven that freedoms are best protected within the strict framework of national borders. Take for example the motives for requests for accession and the examples of Spain and Portugal, which quickly became part of the European framework, and consequently, stable and deep-seated democracies. This initiative and this report by Mr Di Lello, which adopt similar mechanisms for the freezing of property and evidence that I myself covered in this Parliament and to which the Council has still not given its agreement, deserve a better fate than the one befalling my report. Therefore, regardless of the method and some points of relative disagreement, we are voting in favour of this initiative and this report as a sign that Parliament is pursuing its efforts to support the Tampere Council and the Commission’s sensible and genuinely European interpretation of the promises made at the European Council. Because, Madam President, the electors do not want crime to go unpunished, specifically international crime, for the sake of the judicial sovereignty of each Member State.

Political group: PSE
Like all the rapporteurs who have already spoken, I am delighted to see that negotiations are advancing and advancing well for all the candidate countries. Despite the difficulties, the work that has been carried out is considerable. It must be said that, on a technical level, the negotiators must be congratulated on the great efforts they are making and we also congratulate you, Commissioner. However, I would like to insist on two points that have not been forgotten but which, in our opinion, should be emphasised. In the first instance, I am thinking of the social repercussions of enlargement. It seems that the Commission, the Council and the rest of us should take greater steps to face up to the disorganisation of society that will inevitably result and is already resulting from economic reforms forcibly imposed in the candidate countries. Restructuring of companies, privatisation, modernisation of working methods, which seem necessary to us, create unemployment, disrupt social protection systems and have disastrous consequences for families and individuals. Let us all make a greater effort to limit these social problems that could, if we are not careful, become serious political problems. The second point I want to stress concerns contact with public opinion, both in candidate countries and Member States. Negotiation should be left to the specialists. I would once more congratulate them on their responsible approach. However, the accession of a country to the European Union affects its whole population. Opinion polls show this. As the deadline approaches the amount of opposition increases, but so does the number of those who are concerned and anxious. We need to provide more information and explanations, making things seem as undaunting as possible. This is a huge exercise in public relations to which the Commission – and we ourselves as well, of course – should devote more effort.

Political group: PSE