GwendalTsang/DEFT09-parquet huggingface dataset:
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I actually wish we had been able to have an open debate in this House on optimising the way in which Europe’s Capital of Culture is chosen. Instead, we have to deal with what has to be called some kind of emergency solution or repair job. It has been said, and quite rightly, that it was utterly egoistic of the Council to come to a snap decision to make use of all the present Member States by 2019, in the full knowledge that we would have unification to deal with, in the shape of enlargement. Now that enlargement is imminent and it has dawned on some people that it cannot be right and proper to put these countries off until 2020 or even later, the Commission has now come up with this tandem solution– and a solution it is, although I have to tell you, Commissioner, that it does of course leave a disagreeable aftertaste. I think you are aware of that too. I will readily concede, though, that you have tried to make the best of it, and it really is a great shame that we in this House are in two minds about it and that opinions differ on it, with the result that the proposals Mr Rocard has made in his report on the qualitative improvement of the selection procedure cannot be discussed in isolation from the question of what actually happens if fundamental changes are made. I am a German MEP. In Germany, 17 cities are seeking to be the Capital of Culture for 2010. We are told that nobody wants to interfere with this. What legal certainty, though, is there for these cities if the procedure cannot be completed? They have applied and are engaged in a contest that I believe can point the way ahead. The only real recommendation I can make for the future is that a competition be held within the Member States, with the Member State making a qualitative decision, which would then be taken up to European level, where I would like to see a competitive selection procedure. I hope that the new Parliament can do some fundamental new thinking about this.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, I should like to take up a point Mrs McKenna raised yesterday concerning electronic voting and the secret ballot. It is unhappily the case that the secret ballot arrangement by electronic voting is imperfect at the moment. It is imperfect because, even when one uses the device mentioned by Mrs Jackson yesterday of a paper to cover the screen, it is easy for one's colleagues behind and beside to see how one voted. When a secret ballot is important, Members should be protected from peer-group pressure. I would therefore like you to refer to the Bureau the question of whether the electronic voting system can be improved in order to really function as a secret ballot and protect Members from those pressures from which they ought to be protected.

Political group: Verts-ALE
Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I too would like to congratulate the rapporteur on his report on this extremely complex issue. Mr President, the nuclear plants in the joint research centres date back to the 60s and were intended to provide direct support to the European nuclear industry. These installations, therefore, should not be considered research installations in the sense that is understood today. It should not, therefore, be the case that the Fifth Framework Programme should single-handedly carry the cost of decommissioning. But the proposed alternative, namely to dip into budget lines which have not been used over the year, demonstrates how little insight there is into the budget discipline. It begs the question how seriously we take ourselves if, every year, we need to look for any left-over funding in order to clean up the nuclear legacy. And how seriously will the electorate take us if we deal with public health and taxpayers’ money in this way? My group will therefore support Amendment No 12 in order, in consultation with the Council and Commission, to reach a final budget decision for 2001 onwards. In addition, my group is of the opinion that we should not only find a budget for installations which are out of action. We should already make provision for the future decommissioning of plants which are still in operation at the moment. Mr President, my group is concerned that in a number of Member States, notably Italy where most plants are located, legislation on the storage of nuclear waste is still in its infancy. This can lead to complications during decommissioning activities and can also result in additional financial problems. Also, it goes to show once again that the drafting of minimum safety standards with regard to the design, construction, operation and decommissioning of nuclear reactors within the European Union is a matter of extreme urgency. I have also suggested including this in the Euratom Treaty at the forthcoming IGC negotiations in Nice.

Political group: ELDR
I wish to put two questions to the Commissioner. Parliament has passed a resolution calling for the polluter pays principle to be applied in this instance and for both the shipowners and the owners of the cargo to be liable. The question for the Commissioner is really whether these principles can actually be applied and whether we will get any money by way of compensation from these people. The second point relates to the future and the publication of the Commission’s White Paper on environmental liability which is designed to ensure that the polluter pays principle applies in future and to ensure that we are better able to enforce European environmental legislation properly. It is recognised in that White Paper that liability is only effective where the polluter can be identified, where the damage can be quantified and where a clear causal connection can be made between the two. The Erika incident could not illustrate the point more clearly because it sums up exactly what that White Paper is seeking to address. This question really would therefore seem to be a perfect measure of how to deal with problems of this kind in future. The proposed directive provides for strict liability for damage caused by EU-regulated dangerous activities and my concern, and perhaps the Commissioner can deal with this, is whether or not the environmental liability paper will be able to deal with problems of the type of Erika in future. Will it really address the concern or will, in practice, in the case of maritime accidents involving ships on the high seas, the polluter once again escape from having to pay for the damage they cause.

Political group: ELDR
Without doubt the economic crisis is worsening, having already been exacerbated by the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. This recession, which appears to have set in for the duration, at least according to most analysts, cannot be resolved, yet again, at the expense of the workers, by making mass redundancies and eroding their rights. Overall employment has basically bottomed out and unemployment is staying put, even if it is not increasing as, for example, in my country. At the same time, more mass redundancies are on the cards in important sectors of the economy, such as transport, tourism etc. Employment policies have become an exercise in apportioning unemployment, even more so in the guidelines for 2002. It is no accident that the countries ‘patted on the back’ here by the EU are the countries which first proceeded to overhaul the labour market, especially by extending part-time and other forms of flexible employment. The European Parliament report supports the guidelines, which revert to the familiar subjects of structural reform and more flexible employment contracts, the purpose of which is to create a huge army of employable people with no rights or claims, whose productivity and competitiveness are tailored to the speculative demands of big business and its interests. Geographical mobility of the workers serves no purpose except to strengthen the concentration of human resources and wealth in the rich areas of the ΕU, which get richer by absorbing the best manpower and scientists. The sole purpose of the second pillar of the guidelines on entrepreneurship is to make the unemployed self-employed, thereby artificially reducing unemployment and rejecting the responsibilities of social solidarity. As for subsidised job schemes, not only have they been completely ineffectual in combating unemployment, the money has generally gone straight into the employers' pockets and workers have been replaced by the subsidised unemployed, resulting in constant infringements of collective agreements. Continuing privatisation, mergers, adjustment to EMU, increased imports and more intense capitalist competition, thousands of small and medium-sized farms wiped out and the closure of small and medium-sized enterprises have created conditions for spiralling unemployment. The policy which the ΕU persists in applying, despite an average rate of growth of 3.3% in 2000, does not appear to be reducing the unemployment or the poverty which is the bane of the lives of 22% of the population of the ΕU. The workers want a different policy, a policy predicated on people and their needs, with full, secure social rights for all workers, a better standard of living and real social development and prosperity.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I would first like to thank Mrs Fourtou for her openness, which was exemplary. Right from the start all the shadow rapporteurs were involved in the discussions and also in the trialogue. That is something I have rarely experienced in this House. And she did that long before her family circumstances were seized upon by the press. I do not wish to comment on that now, I shall leave that to my colleague. So much for the form. There are problems, however, as has already been mentioned, particularly by the previous speaker. That this directive is needed is something on which everyone – including Members of this House – agrees. So do the players in the market, ranging from the telecommunications industry to consumer protection organisations, from the pharmaceutical industry to generic drug manufacturers, from artists to content producers. We need a good directive. I believe, though, that the compromise that we have negotiated has not entirely succeeded in addressing these many and diverse needs and concerns in a single directive. There are two specific policy areas where reasonable agreement is important. One is that we wish to limit the scope of the directive somewhat, to use for commercial purposes; the other area is that of patents. There is certainly scope for debate about patents and also about common practice in Europe. But it remains a fact that we do not have a European-level patent, and we do not want to use the implementing directive to pave the way for one through the back door. This needs to be discussed very carefully; it is not such a simple matter. I therefore urge you to give a large measure of support to these two amendments on patents and the scope of the directive. I believe that this directive, this compromise, will then have been sufficiently improved for us to jointly adopt it as a compromise before the end of this parliamentary term.

Political group: Verts-ALE
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the Community initiative LEADER proved itself to be an effective instrument to initiate innovative developments and pilot projects both within and outside rural areas. The preservation of this Community initiative in particular, in the form of a new version – LEADER+ – is therefore greatly to be welcomed. The new LEADER+ programme now covers all rural areas in the European Union, which will open up greater possibilities for potential projects. It is important for there to be coordination between LEADER+ and the other support initiatives in the European Union, but coordination with other national support schemes is also just as important. Overlap between support schemes must be avoided and at the same time it must also be possible to exploit any synergistic effects. In this context the aim of stepping up networking between eligible zones under LEAR is very welcome. Agriculture is one of the cornerstones of the rural environment and it must be possible for it to have a part in the LEADER initiative. In the same way, through the LEADER initiative, structural change in agriculture can be supported by creating new jobs in rural areas. Attention must be paid in the LEADER+ programme to all the sectors of the economy in rural areas; only a combined effort will reap an optimal result. LEAR must now move into the implementation phase. The operational programmes need to be approved as quickly as possible by the Commission, which implies practical and efficient administration of applications and completion of the application approval process as quickly as possible. Five months are provided for this. That seems to me to be rather too long. Efforts should be made here to achieve shorter times. Because anyone who develops a project and has it ready will also want to start implementing it as soon as possible. Despite all the delight over the reworking of this Community initiative LEAR+, I do still have one further concern. In its proposal the Commission called for an observatory for the LEADER+ programme without going into detail on how this proposal would be implemented. For me this raises the following questions: who will work there? How will these people be selected? Where, above all, will the required money come from, and where should this observatory be located? I do think, though, that the LEADER+ programme has not got a penny to spare on additional administrative tasks, which in the normal course of events would have to be carried out by the Commission in any case. In addition, experience from other fields where observatories have been set up shows that, apart from rather dubiously creating jobs, they are not of any great benefit. I would therefore call on the Commission to fulfil its monitoring duties directly itself and to do all it can to ensure that LEAR+ programmes run smoothly. Assessment and publication are part of this, and it has of course assumed responsibility for these in the past.

Political group: PPE-DE
An insult to and mockery of women is the only way to describe the European Parliament resolution on International Women’s Day. Any encouraging of equality of women and search for responsibility for the trivial results are wiped out by praises for ΕU policy and positive criticism of the decisions by the Lisbon and Barcelona Summits. The harsh reality experienced by women in the EU (high unemployment rate, few, poorly paid, scarce jobs, terrorism in the workplace, lack of measures giving social support to the family, increase in the retirement age, wage discrimination and so on) is the outcome of the strategic choices of the ΕU, to which the Lisbon and Barcelona Summits gave significant momentum. The proposals to promote women as Commissioners, to create a special portfolio for women’s rights in the Commission, to give women equal representation on European Parliament ballot forms, to set up a European institute for gender issues etc. illustrate how far the temporary residents of Brussels are from the real problems and concerns of working class women. How can a partially employed, partially paid, partially retired woman, which is the model being promoted or at least accepted by those who inspire such texts, become fully involved in social and political life? That is why we MEPs of the Communist Party of Greece abstained from the vote. - Report: Andreasen (A5-0107/2004)

Political group: GUE-NGL
Adopting a resolution on a Community strategy on endocrine disrupters is the minimum we should do on a complex subject for which no regulation exists. Listing and studying the phenomenon of disruption of the endocrine systems of men and animals, validating the studies, and demonstrating the causal links between certain products and certain anomalies found in humans and animals (decline in fertility, certain malformations, certain cancers), is a necessary point of departure as long as it respects the precautionary principle and at the same time promotes a need for transparency totally absent from the text. The fact is that private and public decision-makers will not act unless obliged to do so by public opinion. The lists of products suspected of being endocrine disrupters must be made known to the public and health professionals, as and when new ones are discovered. While studies must be conducted to find out about the dangers of endocrine disrupters, firms using suspect products must also be made subject to regulations applicable to drugs, especially in terms of furnishing proof that these products are harmless, whenever they are considered suspect by the European groups of experts. So an arsenal of restrictive regulations is urgently needed to make it possible to ban such products in the years ahead.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Madam President, the destruction of cultural heritage in Hebron is very symbolic. The power of oppression originating from it is not only destroying houses and stone; it is destroying people and their existence. It is killing them. The State of Israel is oppressing the Palestinian people, with the clearly displayed or hypocritical collusion of all the major powers. Why should the extreme right-wing powers in Israel be worried by the friendly admonishments from the major powers every now and again when the Israeli army goes beyond certain limits? Mr Sharon is aware that what he is doing in Israel is simply a copy of what the United States’ leaders did in Afghanistan and are preparing to do in Iraq. Why should Mr Sharon be bothered by the empty protestations from countries who pretend to distance themselves somewhat from his policies, such as France, when that very country is in the process of engaging in a dirty war itself? The French army is not protecting the population against ethnic and xenophobic killings; it is protecting the clique in power that is carrying them out. The rebels are undoubtedly no better, but it is not for the French army to act as arbiter or policeman. By protecting the government in power, it is mainly protecting the French corporations that have major interests there. So yes, the Israeli army should withdraw from Palestine and the French army should leave Côte d'Ivoire and Africa.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, it is always difficult, in two minutes, to sum up or evaluate a Council with a full agenda like the last one which took place in Brussels. I am going to comment on the economic context, also with reference to many of this morning’s interventions. It is a fact that there is something wrong in our analyses, something that is wrong somewhere. We have come out of a global World Trade Organisation summit which has not provided the expected results at all, and the word ‘failure’ is a realistic way to describe it; we have a multilateral approach to trade policies which are currently in deep crisis; we must begin once more to ascertain whether the Doha requirements still do not have a basis, or whether the evolution of Doha will lead us to assume other positions. At the same time, we have a situation in Europe where inflation levels are essentially under control; the energy prices are, I would say, fairly stable and financial market conditions are not negative. So the question is: why is there no recovery? And economic recovery depends on series of factors which can only come into play in a European context. It is true that we are reinterpreting a Keynesian model readjusted to present times, but in this Keynesian model we need to speed up structural reforms. When we talk of structural reforms, we also have the political burden and task of leaving behind privileges of position which at this time are becoming onerous with respect to economic developments. The Brussels proposals are tangible and interesting. We have learned that politics is a job which must produce daily results, and that it is built on the basis of daily efforts and daily work. On 12 and 13 December, I think that we will see much of what was considered at last week’s Council become concrete proposals.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, much has been said today about the cynicism and hypocrisy of the past, but I want to say to you that there is nothing more cynical or hypocritical than people who have already announced that they were going to vote against the Commission commenting on the process of hearings. We had part of this House announce even before the hearings started that they intended to reject the Commission. We need the progressive forces of this House – and I say this to people like Mr van Velzen and to others – to unite after the vote tomorrow to work with the new European Commission so that we can actually make progress, because we have had nine months of stagnation. We must stop the political guerrilla warfare that is going on in this House. We must work together. Let me make a comment on the fact that two members of the potential Commission have been criticised. We are not offering the European Commission a blank cheque, Mr Prodi; we will be watching very carefully what you and your colleagues do. But we will not see members of this Commission hounded by the press in any Member State of this Union. If there is evidence, it will be presented, and we rely upon you to take action where it is necessary. We will be voting within the Socialist Group in the European Parliament not on a party political basis but on the objective basis of the hearings and the questions that we had answered over the last couple of weeks. Let me pick up the point made by Mr van Velzen because I think this process is in two stages. We have had the speech by the President of the Commission and we have had the hearings, but the second stage is the work programme of the European Commission. The work programme should be an exciting indication of where the European Union is going and of what the European Union intends to do. In the past even under Delors and under Jacques Santer it never appeared that way, but the second stage is vital. That is why I agree with Mr van Velzen: we must make sure that this work programme is understood by the public, and that it is important to the public; and we have to work with you to deliver that work programme. We have made a good start with the hearing and after that vote tomorrow let the progressive forces in this House work with the Commission to deliver what the people of Europe want.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I regard the referendum on 23 March as a first step in attempting to stabilise the situation in Chechnya. I also welcome the administration's efforts to make life more bearable, to gradually reopen schools, and to partially reinstate energy supplies, public transport and medical care in Grozny at least. But that is by no means enough. The Russians really need to make reconstruction a top priority. Against that background, I hope that the elections in December 2003 or March 2004 will lead to political stabilisation in Chechnya. The European Union should be prepared to provide whatever assistance is needed to hold free and fair elections. Nevertheless, I regard it as highly problematic that international organisations have still not been given free access to Chechnya in order to provide urgently needed humanitarian and medical aid. As has already been mentioned, the refugees' plight remains precarious. Humanitarian aid must not be cut, nor should refugees be forced to return against their will, unless and until the necessary conditions have been met. I am concerned that since 11 September the Council and the Commission have effectively stopped discussing the actions of the Russian army in Chechnya, which have chiefly resulted in enormous suffering amongst the civilian population. Whilst we condemn acts of heartless violence by Chechen terrorists, we also condemn the disproportionate use of military force and arbitrary acts by the Russian army. You cannot cherry-pick when it comes to human rights, and it is not by breaching human rights that the conflict will be de-escalated. If the European Union wants to help resolve the conflict, it must work with Russia and press it for further changes in its policy towards Chechnya.

Political group: GUE-NGL