GwendalTsang/DEFT09-parquet huggingface dataset:
Madam President, I learned yesterday that Mr Akim Birdal, the former chairman of the Turkish Committee on Human Rights has been reimprisoned. Mr Birdal had asked to be released on health grounds, after being attacked. That request was refused and he is in prison because, some time ago, he dared to suggest seeking a political solution to the Kurdish question. I think it would be very welcome if you, as President of the European Parliament, were to approach the Turkish Government, in whatever way you consider appropriate, and ask for this man of honour to be freed.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President-in-Office of the Council, Commissioner, last Monday 22 March, there took place in Athens the inaugural session of this Euro-Mediterranean Parliamentary Assembly, of whose future importance in relations on both sides of the Mediterranean President Cox just reminded us. This session marked the culmination of the efforts made immediately after 11 September 2001 to reach, on both sides of the Mediterranean, a better mutual understanding and to dispel the spectre of war between civilisations, which is a potential consequence of the downward spiral of blood and vengeance into which the barbaric supporters of indiscriminate terrorism are attempting to drag us. Still reeling from the shock of the images of 11 March in Madrid, it was on the morning of 22 March that we learned, President Cox, of the assassination of Sheikh Yassin, with all the consequences this could have. This gave us another reason to reiterate, in the presence of the official delegations from Israel and Palestine, the urgent need to find a fair and lasting solution to the conflict in which they are embroiled and to emphasise how important it is for the European Council, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, to launch that strategic partnership for a common future with the Middle East on the subject of which you have just addressed us. Let us be aware on our side of the Mediterranean that our future and that of our children and grandchildren will depend on the way in which we have been able to extend to Africa in general and to the Middle East in particular, that area of peace and stability that our founding fathers were able to establish on our continent. Let us therefore resolve to have more influence in the negotiations in progress within the Quartet, since we well know – as you said, Commissioner Patten – that Europe can and must now play a decisive role there. Whether or not we wanted it to be, the United States is considered, rightly or wrongly, to have taken Israel’s side. Russia does not have the same interests as ourselves, stemming from our geographical proximity to the region, and the United Nations does not have our means to act. If we Europeans were finally to speak with the powerful voice expected of us, there is no doubt it would be heard. I am sure that the will to do so exists in our Parliament, as this debate will once again prove, quite simply because it reflects the will of a very large majority of our fellow European citizens. Mr President-in-Office of the Council, Mr Commissioner, can we begin to hope that this will might finally manifest itself other than through pious wishes?

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, the safety of our citizens is a priority for all of us. We are aware of the importance of external border controls and the need to strengthen them, also as a result of freedom of movement and the abolition of controls at internal borders. We are living in times in which the growing threat of cross-border organised crime, illegal immigration and above all terrorism have moved to the top of our political agenda and have become the focal point of the public's concerns. This represents a threat to our democracies, a threat we need to combat by strengthening our own democratic systems and instruments here in Europe. Mr President, all this means that we need a system for rapidly and efficiently exchanging information for border controls, including the area of political cooperation. For this reason, it is vitally important either to develop a second generation SIS – Schengen Information System II or SIS II – or to create a visa information system, not forgetting the issue of introducing biometrical data. We need, however, to do this within a framework of clear rules that ensure that the system is effective, economical, and scrupulously respects Community rules on personal data protection. The proposal before us and a second proposal announced by the Commission – for the purpose of defining the system and the way in which it is to operate – are complementary and must be dealt with jointly. If something is to be financed, both the legislative authority and the budget authority need to know exactly what. Having said that, I call on the plenary, on behalf of the Committee on Citizens' Freedoms and Rights, Justice and Home Affairs, to reject the Commission initiative, which is little more than an empty vessel. I hope that at the start of the next parliamentary term the Commission will submit a detailed, exhaustive and soundly based proposal, unlike the one before us today. Mr President, given that we are at the end of the parliamentary term, I would like my draft legislative resolution to be put to the vote also. (Applause)

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, I would simply like to tell the House that, in agreement with Mr Turco, there is a correction to the explanatory statement.

Political group: PPE-DE
Madam President, the CFP has totally failed. It has not maintained the fishing stocks or fishermen's jobs. Discarding nearly two million tonnes of healthy fish each year is absolutely ridiculous. Fish do not swim separately in the sea. They swim together and the sooner we work that out the better. The 6- and 12-mile limits must be confirmed permanently. I am not convinced by the argument that we cannot do it and I shall be voting firmly for the fact that these limits should be etched in stone. Not only must those 6- and 12-mile limits be there, but they must be managed at a local level and properly devolved from Brussels, not just some token gesture. If local fishermen have proper ownership of these waters, the conservation measures will work. In the North Sea cod is disappearing. Is it a coincidence that the cod are disappearing in the areas where the industrial fishing takes place? We take out millions of tonnes of sand eels and scour the sea beds, and the cod eat sand eels. It is not a coincidence. We must do something about it. Norway and Iceland have good fishing stocks and they are not part of the common fisheries policy. Again, is this a coincidence? I would agree here with Mr McCartin. Do we need to make fishing resources part of the common fisheries policy? I will say this quite bluntly: if the Commission cannot run the common fisheries policy properly, then send it back to the Member States and let them do it.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, the bad news for the Commission and Council is that I expect to be back in the next Parliament and I am the rapporteur for the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Human Rights, Common Security and Defence Policy on the regulation covering third countries. It is quite clear that the Committee on Development and Cooperation is content with the operations under the European initiative for democracy and human rights and it is understandable that two-thirds of the money should now be released for next year. I am sure Mr Nielson is pleased about that. On the other hand, the Foreign Affairs Committee, which actually began this programme some twelve years ago - it was 1992 not 1994 and I was the original rapporteur - is not content. Its members have agreed that we should withdraw my report, which should have been debated today, to allow us time to put more pressure on the Commission and Council over the coming weeks to agree to two very simple requests. The first request is that an advisory committee should be set up – outside comitology, composed of representatives of Parliament and the Commission and probably chaired by the High Representative – to deal with this fundamentally sensitive programme, which should not necessarily involve the developing countries but rather the countries nearer to us - the 'new neighbourhood' as it is now described. The second request is that an independent study be conducted, and I await a serious offer from the Commission on this, not just 'we have an open mind'. The Commission does not have an open mind. It wants to keep the entire programme to itself. However, there is a better way of delivery, as is shown by the Americans, the Danes, the Germans, the Dutch, the Swedish and the British, and that is to have a separate foundation that is reliable, flexible and expert to assist the Commission in the delivery of the programme. That is our position and we look forward to some proper reaction from the Commission and Council to these suggestions in due course. The Commissioner said that this result was welcome and in everybody's interest. Is he talking about the hundreds of millions of people who live in the new neighbourhood, from Russia, Belarus and the Ukraine, through the Caucuses and down through the arc of instability across North Africa to Morocco, into the Arab world? Two hundred and eighty million Arabs live without democracy. Is he proud of that? I now have to address my remarks to the Press because we have an election coming up and in today's Financial Times I write that 'Europe's power risks being so soft that it can hardly be felt by the people to whom it is addressed'. Unfortunately, this welcome programme, brilliantly implemented in the former-Soviet bloc, is totally ineffective in today's world. It is the Commission's responsibility to make it effective and I intend to press very hard to ensure that it does.

Political group: PPE-DE
I would just like to explain why I abstained in the vote on the resolution on the search made of the headquarters of the Human Rights Association of Turkey. It is true that Turkey is flouting human rights under the pretext of combating terrorism. It is doing so, as you are quite aware, in the Kurdish issue. I am a friend of the Kurds and I consider this search to be scandalous. Why did I abstain, then? I abstained because we need to put our own house in order. Exactly the same thing is happening in Spain and in the Basque country in the name of combating terrorism, and Parliament is turning a blind eye. We have not managed to hold a single debate on the banning of the only Basque newspaper, Egunkaria. This newspaper was banned and its journalists thrown into prison by a magistrate on the pretext that they were collaborating with ETA, but this claim is absolutely unfounded. Egunkaria is merely a newspaper. Therefore, let us put our own house in order. That is why I abstained.

Political group: Verts-ALE
Mr President, I would first of all like to join with previous speakers in warmly and sincerely congratulating the rapporteur on this complete, systematic and, if I may use the term, pedagogical work on an issue which, apparently, everybody knows about, although this is not always the case. I have tried to cooperate with him on two points. The first, which many other speakers have referred to, is the insistence that the Charter should be incorporated as it stands into the Treaties. As Mrs Almeida Garrett has said, all human work is perfectible and of all human works, legal texts are usually the most perfectible. However, there is a Spanish saying that states that the best is the enemy of the good and, in this case, the choice is not between this Charter or a better Charter; the choice is between this Charter or no Charter, and we believe that this Charter is what we need. The second point, Mr President, consists of expressly pointing out something that this Parliament has included in its Rules of Procedure: the Charter is already binding for us; for us, the Members of the European Parliament, this is already the parameter in accordance with which we must ensure that legislative initiatives conform to fundamental rights. We cannot forget this. If we, by means of the Corbett Report, have included it, we cannot be the first to disown it. Therefore my group – and I myself – are going vote enthusiastically for the Duff Report, because we believe that the Charter has the enormous merit of being the first Union text that has the support of the public. This is its great merit, and not any provision on its reform. This will ensure that the Charter is not watered down or distorted in the future. European public opinion is behind the Charter, whatever some people may think, since many people think it is very important to them.

Political group: PPE-DE
Thank you for that very full reply, Mr President-in-Office. Since the budget will become European Union operational on 1 January, will the budget for the Satellite Centre be part of the European security and defence budget, which the Council will put forward and which Parliament can debate and amend, as necessary? Will it be budgetised within the EU's normal financial procedures?

Political group: ELDR
The good intentions of our rapporteur notwithstanding, we are worried that the European Year of People with Disabilities (2003) will be a year in which a great deal of money is spent and numerous events are staged, but which does nothing to change the situation of disabled people, especially those from the poor sections of society. We are worried by the hypocrisy of all this interest being expressed in people with disabilities by the various institutions of the European Union because it is the very policy of the European Union, with its capitalist restructuring, privatisation of health, welfare and education and undermining of workers' rights and social insurance, which is to blame. The first dramatic victims of this policy are the handicapped and people with disabilities. They hypocritically maintain that their aim is to 'promote equal opportunities' and 'combat discrimination'. But does a young person or a child from a poor, working class family living at risk of disease and accident have the same opportunities, first and foremost in preventing disability, as a young person or child of the bourgeoisie? Does a child whose father is an executive of a multinational company have the same opportunities in finding work as a child whose father is unemployed? It is impossible to combat the various types of discrimination which arise in a capitalist society as long as the main type of discrimination between the exploiters and the exploited continues to reign supreme. What sort of a fight against discrimination is their policy, which spreads poverty, unemployment and illiteracy? Of the 38 million disabled in the ΕU, 7.5 million are of school age. How many of these children have special schools or special classes and the special equipment needed for them to acquire an education? In Greece, only 7% of disabled children attend special schools, while 185 000 disabled children are not even in the education system. And yet not one ΕU text, including the one under debate, so much as mentions free national health, welfare and special education, even for these people. Nowhere does it suggest that the technical assistance needed for education, vocational rehabilitation or daily life should be provided free of charge. This situation will change when the people, the workers and the disabled fight to obstruct the policy of 'free competition and market laws' until it has been overturned. This fight has the vote of the Communist Party of Greece.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, I too should like to begin by congratulating Mrs Smet on having, as usual, done a sterling job. In my own country, Sweden, a national election campaign is under way right now. Those in Sweden who belong to the same political group as Mrs Smet usually maintain that the social agenda is not something for Europe but that social policy is a matter only for the individual Member States. I usually put forward Mrs Smet’s view. Despite our belonging to different political groups, we are in complete agreement about the need for national social agendas. A European social agenda is also needed, however, as something which is becoming more and more important. Like Mr De Rossa, I approve of what happened in Lisbon. Incredible progress was made, and we succeeded in broadening and deepening the social agenda. At the same time, I am rather uneasy about the signals which have been produced in the course of last year and which I see in terms of attempts to throw the Lisbon process off balance. The talk now is simply of companies and of competition between companies, and the social dimension is forgotten. It is therefore good that there are MEPs who wish to go beyond party boundaries in promoting the social aspects, and I wish again to congratulate both the Commission and Mrs Smet on their work. I also share Mrs Smet’s views on the scoreboard, namely to the effect that it must be more forward-looking and strategic and be based upon the conclusions from the spring European Councils. I hope that the Commission too will take that view on board, as well as the open coordination method, which is something to which we have returned time and again. We have debated this on many occasions, and I am myself a proponent of the open coordination method. It has meant that we have been able to develop cooperation in new areas. If the open coordination method is to be successful in the long term, it must not however be applied behind closed doors. If the method is to be employed for a long time, it must be subject to democratic control and be debated both here in the European Parliament and in the national parliaments. We must hope that the Convention will get to grips with this issue so that the open coordination method is taken account of in the Treaties. The social agenda is important in another perspective too, namely people’s willingness to take the EU project to heart. The social agenda concerns precisely those questions that people consider to be important – the fight against poverty, together with increased employment and a more just society – and that is why the social agenda is important.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, the control of state aids is one of the three pillars of competition policy. Many of these aids concern industry, the energy sector, the transport sector or agriculture, which is why the Committee on Industry has issued an opinion on the Herzog report. In this opinion, which was adopted by a large majority, we firstly welcomed the State Aid Scoreboard, which provides greater transparency and openness and gives a clearer overview of the situation. Secondly, in conjunction with this, we adopted a series of demands in the Committee on Industry, which are addressed to the Commission. Firstly, we welcome the objective of continuously reducing overall aid allocations. Secondly, we say that future scoreboards should include subsidies in the accession countries. Our third demand – and this is an old request – is for the thresholds applied to the 'de minimis' rule to be raised. In the future we want the smaller cases to be exempted so that local decision-makers have more room for manoeuvre. In addition, we want the special tax arrangements to be subjected to more intensive scrutiny and to be included in this Scoreboard. Finally, in particular where services of general interest are concerned – other Members have already commented on this – we want the Commission to at last get round to doing its job, as it has been saying it will for so long. We know that a Green Paper on the provision of services of general interest is currently being prepared. We hope, Commissioner, that this Green Paper, which is of course being drafted primarily under the authority of the Commission President, will encompass all aspects of services of general interest. We do not think that in general these services should be exempt from the competition rules, as has just been said, but that where the picture is unclear, clarity can be achieved. Our final point in the Committee on Industry is a long-standing demand on the part of Parliament. It concerns the regulations on which you have just reported, Commissioner, and which will entail an update of Regulation No 17. We want these regulations – including the forthcoming rules on services of general interest – to be classified as internal market legislation and to be subject to the codecision procedure. I know that this is not in your interests, but it is in ours. Nevertheless, we hope for your understanding on at least some of these points.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, the policy pursued by many Member States and, to an ever greater degree, by the EU too in this area gives us all a direct share of responsibility for the cor s at Dover and for the bodies washed up on the Spanish coast. What we are doing is treating the symptoms. We are doing nothing about the real disease. The disease is, of course, the fact that there are 20 million refugees in the world. The present project will lead to there being fewer humanitarians and more mafiosi involved in the trafficking in human beings and in helping to transport refugees. It is said that trafficking in human beings is a lucrative business, but I maintain that, with projects like this, it will become still more lucrative. The price will rise, and the mafia will, of course, add the cost of their fines to it. That means more money from desperate people in the pockets of the mafia. There will be fewer suppliers and ever more demand. That means higher prices. We know this, of course, from the market economy in general. It will mean more unscrupulous players and, therefore, more Dover-style accidents. I have to say that the rapporteur has done his best to temper the proposal. He has really made an effort, but it is nonetheless still a matter of treating the symptoms. We are not treating the disease. Our group will, of course, support the amendments tabled by the rapporteur and the . Above all, we shall support the proposals completely to reject this move, and my group will vote very differently in the final vote on the report.

Political group: GUE-NGL
The elections in Zimbabwe have been both a victory and a defeat for Mugabe. They were a defeat in the sense that, for the first time in its short independent life, Zimbabwe has a multi-party political system, which was something that Mugabe clearly opposed. Apart from tolerating, and even, as we know, promoting, a climate of intimidation and violence, Mugabe has made considerable errors of judgement. On the one hand, he has underestimated the European Union’s seriousness, willingness and capacity to act in the case of Zimbabwe. However, he has also confused the factors within his own country. I wonder if this is due to the arrogance of a former, although once respected, African freedom fighter, or to his ignorance of the sociological and political evolution of his country. It is probably a combination of both things. Mugabe has brought to these elections the customs and methods of a war of liberation, on occasion treating political rivals as if they were colonial occupiers who needed to be banished. However, he was unable to appreciate that the emergence of the middle classes was an element which was going to have a different effect for the first time on these elections. This relative consolidation of a new urban vote, together with the manipulation of official democracy and the violation of human rights, would not otherwise have led to many citizens voting against him, and that is what they have done. The country and the population will gain as a whole if the current government and the emerging opposition show sufficient political wisdom and common sense to generously and cautiously deal with the transition from former political customs to other new ones. In this area, the opposition also has a role to play. Now, after all the accusations and condemnations, in the coming weeks we must watch carefully for any signs of verifiable reconciliation and self-critical acceptance of the errors made. Mr President, this will help the future of Zimbabwe, its society and the new political culture born of these elections. We must give decisive support to its future.

Political group: PSE