GwendalTsang/DEFT09-parquet huggingface dataset:
Madam President, if something characterises the production of this report on terrorism, it has not just been the rigour and know-how of the rapporteur, Mr Watson, whom I would expressly like to congratulate, but also the willingness and understanding of almost all the political groups in this House to reflect not only their rejection and condemnation of terrorism, the people involved in it and the methods it uses, but also to reach a consensus on the legal instruments which we must create at European level in order to combat and pursue the crimes involved in terrorist activity and organised crime. We can state unreservedly, without any doubt – at least on my part – that the approval of this report would represent a European pact against terrorism. Because, for the people of Europe, violence and terror are absolutely incompatible with democracy, dialogue and the rules of the game which the democratic States have set ourselves in order to live together in peace and, in particular, in order to resolve absolutely every – and I stress, absolutely every – one of our problems and differences of whatever nature. Nationalist or independence movements that use terrorist organisations such as ETA in Spain as decoys are only really hiding the reality of their trade whose only objective is to spread terror, destabilise democracy and indiscriminately murder children, young people and adults of any trade or profession. Another argument endorsed by this report is the urgent need to update the legal instruments which a new area without borders, such as the European Union, must have so that it is not easier for the violent people and terrorist groups to carry out their criminal acts than it is for the police and judges to pursue and punish them. Because, Madam President, Commissioner, it is contradictory that there should be barriers and borders for judges and police while, for example, criminal groups organise themselves in one country of the European Union, carry out attacks in another and then return to shelter under legislation that is obsolete and incompatible with a common area of freedom, security and justice. Hence the need for the four recommendations, which are the backbone of the report. It is true that Spain and its government are particularly interested in what we resolve here today, but so should other countries such as France, Belgium, Italy or the United Kingdom or the other countries of the Union, because the roots of terrorism are in violence, its funding, the technological means it employs and the recruitment of young people who are trained, with money and hatred, to kill. And this is a problem, ladies and gentlemen, which transcends the borders of the European Union. Madam President, we are moving in the right direction. I must insist once again on the urgency of the proposals and the urgent need for us to continue truly creating a new area where there is only room and freedom of movement for those of us who want to live in peace and freedom. Commissioner Vitorino has the political support of this House. We genuinely await his proposals with great interest.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, the Group of the has indeed voted for Mr Bowis’ report and, while we welcome the fact that the European Parliament and the Commission, with its White Paper, are offering European consumers interesting prospects, food safety must remain an absolute priority in our policies. Let us not be too ambitious, however. The more progress that is made in scientific research, the more new questions are raised. We need only look at developments involving BSE. New cases are being identified week after week and in new geographical areas that had been spared in the past. This applies in particular to the Vosges department in the Lorraine region. With all the measures proposed in the White Paper, we will still have to flesh out a number of points in order to guarantee food safety and in particular restore consumer confidence. The most important points include the creation of the European Food Safety Agency, which we welcome and of which we expect a great deal. It is vital to its credibility that it is independent. This authority must be totally dissociated from the interests of private companies or the Member States. That independence also implies financial independence. The Union will have to free up funds to run it, but will the EFSA be enough to reassure consumers who are worried about what they find on their plates and will soon find in their drinks? The authority will have to be set up by 2002/2003 and we very much hope that the question of where it will have its headquarters will not be an obstacle to its establishment. Meanwhile, the Union must continue to assess and manage food safety risks. That means it must be vigilant day in day out. It means guaranteeing that the policy-makers and the policies that have been put in place really do deal with what people want. The use of animal meal, which is triggering a new food crisis, is unacceptable. Henceforth we must ban all animal meal. That is the strong stance our citizens expect, rather than the kind of tolerance that can end up seriously damaging consumer health. This kind of recognised scientific risk must not be tolerated in any way. Mr Bowis’ report takes that line. That is why the Green Group fully supported his work and voted for the report.

Political group: Verts-ALE
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, we can but welcome the convergence of these reports, which seek to further Europe’s progress towards a new phase of technological development, in a highly specific manner. Perhaps, however, it is not just the market that will benefit, as has just been maintained. I believe that the benefit will lie in the development of this Information Society into a society that is equally focused on the human dimension. The Information Society towards which we are moving is, without a doubt, a society that makes intensive use of information technology networks and produces a large amount of innovative communication services and information. It is also, however, a society in which the risks of exclusion are many. Ignoring these new developments at an individual level means taking the risk of suffering the consequences. Collectively, it means running the risk of whole segments of the population falling by the wayside. This progress does also provide opportunities for development. Information and knowledge are the raw material in this society and the source of new wealth. Creating a link between them to make them accessible means increasing the existing potential for innovation. It is essential, however, for the European Union’s public policy to keep pace with the development of these markets and harness the benefits of this development. First and foremost, therefore, we must ensure that no citizen is excluded from the Information Society, since, to some extent, taking action with regard to public services and the public interest, in a way, involves using information technology in community and spatial development. By making available to all the means for active participation and considering access to it as a citizens’ right and an obligation of general interest for the Member States, we can ensure that this Information Society is actually created for the citizens and around the citizens. A fair Information Society is therefore created methodically and patiently with decisive strategies. These are essential elements if we are to ensure that 2010 is not merely a technological mirage.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, the European Environment and Health Strategy will have an important role to play when the EU’s Sixth Environmental Action Programme is implemented in practice. It was the third priority of this environmental programme and at the time it was said that it was a very important component in the new challenges that lay ahead of us. In many countries the work done in environmental healthcare and environmental protection has already had a significant impact on achieving high standards of environmental health. We still nevertheless have work to do. It must also be one of the major goals in a Union of 25 countries to achieve and maintain standards of healthcare that are as high as possible. The prevention of disease and the general assurance of good health everywhere must play a key role when the strategy starts to be implemented in practice. For some reason this principle was not given due consideration by the committee when the matter was being discussed, but I hope that this issue of prevention will be given top priority in future debates. The first phase of the strategy will focus on factors that aim to have a beneficial effect on childhood diseases. This is a good basis and starting point for the aim of offering our citizens an environment in which levels of pollution are not enough to produce harmful effects on people’s health and the environment. To achieve this we naturally need investment in research, but also in training and education, and tangible levels of investment to ensure a better environment in the future.

Political group: PSE
I congratulate Mrs Langenhagen on the excellent report she has produced on Special Report No 2/2002 of the Court of Auditors on evaluating the implementation of the Socrates and Youth for Europe Community action programmes in the 1995-1999 period, which I fully support, particularly with regard to the issue of imposing clarity, accuracy and rigour at every stage of the Community programmes, from design to evaluation. In this context, I should also like to emphasise that the European Parliament must, under the decision-making process that leads to the adoption of Community acts, call for the clarity of texts, simplified procedures and, when appropriate, mechanisms that ensure the effective management and evaluation of the act in question.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, Madam President-in-Office of the Council, Commissioner, I too welcome this first annual European Union report on human rights. Obviously, we have had Commission documents and many European Parliament reports in the past, but this is the first time that the Council of Ministers has given us this type of text. This demonstrates a welcome desire for transparency. It will, I hope, improve the information given to the public on the specific actions carried out between June 1998 and June 1999 and on the instruments and means available to the EU. My only criticism is that this report is probably over-optimistic. Inadequacies and grey areas are hardly mentioned. However, the publication of this document encourages me to look to the near future and the preparation of an EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. This project, which must be part of the IGC’s work and which could be completed by the end of the year 2000, is of major importance for the Union, for all those living within the Union and for the applicant states. Yet we currently have no guarantee that this text will meet expectations. In particular, we fear that the European Council and the Council of Ministers have only very limited ambitions, namely to draft a mere declaration without any legal or binding force. If this were to be the case, the European Union would lose all credibility in its own eyes and in the eyes of the rest of the world. In addition, there is a concern about the risks of competition and even contradiction between this future Charter and existing texts which have indisputable force. I am referring, of course, to the Council of Europe’s European Convention on Human Rights. I hope, Madam President-in-Office of the Council, that the Helsinki Summit will reassure us on all these points. You are personally well acquainted with these issues.

Political group: PSE
Commissioner, Scottish fishermen and others north of 55o north are being restricted to 15 days, which they find difficult to accept, all the more when they see the industrial fishermen scooping up a million tonnes of sand eels and Norway pout, which are both the feedstock for their whitefish, and in many cases, immature haddock and other whitefish. How can you justify this to the fishermen of Scotland?

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, I would like to thank the Commission and, at the same time, the rapporteur, Mr Graça Moura, for having permitted so many amendments, many of them open to broadening the scope of the Year and extending it to rural areas and the least favoured areas. However, I would also like to express certain concerns with regard to the economic restrictions. I would recommend that many projects be allowed since it is clear that cultural projects attract a lot of investment from Autonomous Regions and private initiatives which we cannot afford to lose. I would also ask, in this era when emotions often take precedence over good sense, that we do not support projects which are aimed at exclusion and the use of language to support positions which often seek to cause divisions between people, when the objective of this programme is to unite people. I would also like to see the European Union begin to take great care of languages which have no country, maternal languages which often have no school and no teachers; languages which are spoken throughout Europe, which no state accepts and which will never become official. I am referring, for example, to Ladino and Yiddish. These languages furthermore do not have any media of their own. Of the 150 languages which are spoken in Europe, we should make a list of those which are only transmitted from mothers to their children, which are only spoken in a domestic setting and which, currently, with the invasion of the media and with the official use of languages in schools, will have very few years to live. I would like this European Year of Languages to be opened up to them as well and that a space be made for them so that they may be considered in any other future programmes which may take place.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, on Mr Jové Peres, the EPLP voted differently from the proposed PS line in order to be consistent with the approach taken by the UK Government on fisheries and to reflect our support for the following: to look at fisheries management on the basis that absence of scientific evidence does not mean postponing conservation support for a strong role for regional management councils with decision-making power and access support for extension up to 24 miles, support for 12 miles and support for 50 miles for remote areas, for effective measures to reduce fishing capacity and for a continuation of relative stability.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the fact that we are debating the code of conduct is a positive step. Nonetheless, several legitimate questions arise. Is it possible for those who used their weapons in Yugoslavia to murder civilians, destroy buildings and bridges, and cause irreparable destruction to the environment, and those who murdered, and continue to murder, children in Iraq, to be really interested in arms control? Is it possible for those who acknowledge that the European arms industry is important both economically and strategically to be sincere when they say that the external actions of the European Union must be inspired by the values of democracy and the protection of human rights? Rather, as has already been said, they are far more concerned that their weapons will end up in the wrong hands, or that their acts of aggression will accept enemy fire from weapons they have made themselves. But the weapons are already in the wrong hands, and we would be deluding ourselves if we believed that procedures such as the code of conduct could put a stop to the acts of aggression and crimes of the new order of things. We are convinced that the existence of the code of conduct is not the result of the philanthropic feelings of those who inspired it, but of the intensified resistance of people against the barbarity of imperialism. We place our hopes for a world without conflict and weapons in the universal, peaceful and, more generally, popular movement.

Political group: GUE-NGL
The reimbursement of Members’ travel expenses must be based on the expenses actually incurred and all Members must receive the same salary. Many of the things that Parliament is adopting with the Rothley report on the Statute for Members of the European Parliament, such as the late entry into force in 2009 and the subordination of future fellow Members from the accession countries, I do not like. I would also have liked to see the majority of this House show a greater readiness to compromise. It will now be very difficult to bring the governments and MEPs into line with one another. We in the Group of the European Liberal, Democrat and Reform Party, however, are prepared to make compromises, because in the end statutory provision has to be made for these things. Moreover, it is the last chance before enlargement to regulate the Statute for Members and with it a better travel expenses scheme. All things considered I have therefore voted for the Rothley report because keeping things as they are is not acceptable.

Political group: ELDR
Mr President, I believe that this is the sixth resolution on the situation in Burma that we have introduced along with fellow MEPs. It is now more than 10 years since Mrs Aung San Suu Kyi won the election there by a large margin. The country was subsequently taken over by a military dictatorship. It is also more than 10 years since the elected parliament was dissolved and many of the members of parliament were murdered, went missing or fled. Mrs Aung San Suu Kyi was imprisoned and then placed under house arrest. Her house arrest continues to this day. The repression continued even after she had won the Nobel Peace Prize for her peaceful resistance and was subsequently awarded the Sakharov Prize by our Parliament. This same repression was also unleashed on the population, and in particular on a number of minority groups, with unprecedented viciousness. Many people fled, with the result that there are many refugees in neighbouring countries such as Thailand, Malaysia, Bangladesh and India. However, there now seems to be some light at the end of the tunnel. A number of political prisoners have been released and talks have been going on between the junta and Mrs Aung San Suu Kyi. Nobody knows what the outcome will be, however, and on that point I would like to warn the European Commission against making any premature concessions to the Burmese military government until it is clear that they are genuinely willing to release all political prisoners. Or that they are genuinely willing to stop repressing minority groups. Or that they will genuinely allow refugees to return. Or that they intend to restore democracy or allow Mrs Aung San Suu Kyi to take her place as president of Burma. In December, it will have been 10 years since Mrs Aung San Suu Kyi won the Nobel Peace Prize. If there are still no positive developments by then, the European Union will have to step up its measures and put a freeze on investments, for example, just as the United States has done. We call on the Commission and Council to exert more pressure so that democracy can finally be restored in Burma and Mrs Aung San Suu Kyi can take her rightful place.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, this evening, we have returned to the European Parliament, at 11.40 p.m., to discuss the document on the Community incentive measures in employment, an extremely important document which calls not only for our presence here but also for that of Commissioner Diamantopoulou, who is thus demonstrating a certain concern for employment issues. Moreover, since 14 February, Valentine's Day is only a quarter of an hour away, I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate all lovers: I hope that there are some in this rough, tough, severe Parliament as well. With regard to the document under consideration, I have tabled an amendment on behalf of the Group of the calling for the scope of the directive to include an analysis of policy developments from the viewpoints of certain categories of people such as the elderly, the disabled and other vulnerable groups. Mr President, this programme appropriates EUR 55 million over five years, chiefly to statistics and the drawing up of documentation on the employment strategy; we are talking mainly about aid to the Member States to achieve the above statistics. A small proportion of the amount, which I feel should be increased, is for pilot projects intended to identify new forms of employment and work. In my opinion, these should certainly include – as Commissioner Diamantopoulou said in her first speech – the new activity of caring for the ever-increasing number of elderly and disabled people carried out by young workers who are able to find work in this field and, at the same time, make life easier for the elderly. I have already tabled this amendment in committee, Mr President, but I am afraid that the -wing section of Parliament, the s that is, rejected it. I am tabling it again in the Chamber in the hope that, this time, the request for the scope of the directive to be extended to include this activity as well will be accepted by that section of Parliament which professes always to be sensitive to the problems of elderly and disabled people, that is the side, and that Mrs Jensen's central section will vote for this amendment too. Tomorrow morning, I shall request a vote by name on this amendment, although I am sure that this will not be necessary and that it will be accepted unanimously. I truly hope that Europe will concern itself, at last, with elderly and disabled people in the field of employment.

Political group: PPE-DE
UK Conservatives voted today against the Skinner Report, for the reasons given in my speech to the House the day before. However, despite what I said in that speech, my comments were deliberately misrepresented by subsequent speakers from the UK Labour party, presumably for the same domestic party political reasons which dictate so much of their comments to the House. Stephen Hughes accused me of regarding Safety issues as a trivial matter: I have never said this nor thought this. Peter Skinner said that I had apparently complained to the British press that people were being told they needed to be trained to go up ladders, but the only reference to training was alleged to be an amendment from me. This was also untrue. My amendment followed on from existing wording about training, and merely added that workers should be made aware of their own responsibilities for safety together with those of their fellow workers. The Socialists asked for a split vote, which retained the training reference but removed my helpful amendment. It is important that untruths are rapidly rebutted. This explanation of vote is necessary in order to correct the record.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, I and the Confederal Group of the take the basic view that a pensions system must be based upon solidarity between the generations. I am therefore in favour of a ‘pay as you go’ system, which is much more stable. Savings systems, which are dependent in one way or another upon the capital markets, constitute a much more unstable project. In my own country of Sweden, which has been singled out as a model in certain quarters, we have moved in the direction of a capitalisation of pensions arrangements and of greater dependency upon the capital markets. With the victory for the ‘no’ side in the Swedish referendum on the euro, we have obtained slightly greater freedom when it comes both to economic and to pensions policy. I believe it was precisely that which the Swedish ‘no’ voters wanted: greater freedom of action, and solidarity as a feature of development in Sweden.

Political group: GUE-NGL