GwendalTsang/DEFT09-parquet huggingface dataset:
We disagree with the report due to its disproportionate ambition for an extremely poor document in the field of protecting fundamental rights. Examples of this are: - the desire to include the binding incorporation of the Charter of Fundamental Rights into the Treaties as one of the constitutional provisions of a future ‘European constitution’; - the ambition to create a legal instrument that would attempt to subordinate the national constitutions of the Member States as far as possible, however much it protests to the contrary (note its aim of increasing Community competences in various areas). Upholding the content of the report will only make it more difficult to protect the binding incorporation of this Charter into a future ‘constitution’. This content is characterised by a drafting of rights that represent, in practice, a step backwards in comparison with what has been achieved in national constitutions, such as that of Portugal, for example or in comparison with what has been achieved in European conventions to which EU Member States are signatories. Lastly, we should also disagree with its defence of the future methodology for amending the content of the Charter, enshrining, in practice, the existence of a permanent ‘convention’ (or of the proclaimed new institution – the ‘congress’) or of other mechanisms for amending supposedly ‘constitutional’ content, once again going beyond the current exclusive competence of the States (governments and parliaments) with regard to amending the Treaties.

Political group: GUE-NGL
My vote in support of the de Veyrac report on the application of the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage in the Member States of the European Union is based on the conviction that we must enhance the cultural dimension of the European Union. We must work to ensure we have a cultural policy in the Union which highlights, among the main features of its spiritual richness and that of the Old World, its cultural, linguistic, architectural and artistic diversity and all those elements that make up our common cultural heritage. This is clear when you travel around the Union and see how the diverse spiritual trends over the centuries have been embodied in our monuments, artistic styles, value systems, religious and spiritual trends, and schools of philosophical and scientific thought. In short, and in accordance with the Treaties, we must go deeper with our European cultural policy, supporting and protecting our cultural diversity, a factor which in turn defines the European Union. The de Veyrac report is a laudable contribution towards this. - Doorn report (A5-0351/2000)

Political group: ELDR
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to make two points about the strategy we should pursue at Cancun in September. My first point is that the Doha Declaration is very clear on the need to ensure the best possible balance between commercial and non-commercial aspects of trade. In this connection, key issues include the precautionary principle, food safety, basic rules governing GMOs and also respect for designations of origin and geographical descriptions. We will have to make it clear that the use by various third countries of our geographical descriptions and designations of origin, which are linked to a culture, a region and a history, as generic and semi-generic products is completely unacceptable. For Australian, Canadian and New Zealand producers to sell products labelled as ‘port’, ‘Madeira’, ‘champagne’, ‘Parma ham’, ‘Manchego cheese’, and so on, is unacceptable because it demonstrates an improper appropriation of a commercial advantage to which those producers are not entitled. My second point is to remind you that the recent reform of the common agricultural policy (CAP) fully permits us to assume a more assertive stance in the negotiations. Rather than pour all our energy into the issue of protecting geographical descriptions and non-commercial concerns, we can also attempt to impose a wide range of regulations, in particular toughening legislation on export credits, state-owned enterprises and the abuse of food aid and the de minimis clause. We can convince all rich countries to grant the 49 poorest countries in the world the same conditions granted by the EU through the ‘Everything but Arms’ initiative. We can force a clear distinction to be drawn between developing countries and the poorest countries in the world, since it is unrealistic to put countries such as India, Malaysia, Indonesia and various South American States in the same class as Mozambique, Chad, Burkina Faso and most of the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) States. Apart from agriculture, this is also an issue in, for example, the textile and clothing sector, where the complete opening up of the Community market to products from the former group of countries would destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs in the European Union, especially in the poorest countries and those lagging furthest behind, such as Portugal, Greece, Spain and the new Member States in Eastern Europe. It is to be hoped, then, that a fundamental balance between all these concerns can be reached at Cancun. If it is not, globalisation will be rejected by our societies.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, the Commission has argued that the right of access to documents and the right to privacy are both legitimate rights and that when they both enter into consideration, a balance has to be struck. However, the idea of striking a balance between them on a case-by-case basis whenever a name is mentioned misrepresents the nature both of dealing with openness in the public sector and the right to privacy. The principle of openness means that public bodies should take decisions as openly as possible and is now defined in the public access regulation. That regulation provides for exceptions to access. The point of this exception is that a public body may, in carrying out its public duties, come into possession of information about the private and family life of individuals. However, there is nothing in Article 286 of the EC Treaty or in the Data Protection Directive to suggest that data protection rules should be applied as a general principle of confidentiality in public administrations so as to require a public balancing exercise whenever a document mentions a name. Such an over-interpretation would damage not only the right of public access to documents, but also the genuine purpose of data protection and the performance of the duties of the Data Protection Supervisor.

Political group: PSE
Madam President, the Committee on Budgets decided that it would be wise to draw up a report on this subject. As a consensus could not be reached on the person to draft it, it decided that the Chairman of the committee should also be the rapporteur and I was left with the wonderful task of putting this report together. Because of that, I am wearing three hats at the same time – if that is possible. I wear one hat as the rapporteur and reflect the wishes of the committee in the way it has voted and amended the original draft. I wear another hat as the Chairman of the committee, thereby keeping an eye on the rapporteur. I wear my third hat as a British Labour Member who is at odds with a number of amendments from his own political family, the . It has not been easy trying to put those three together. It is fair to say that the only change I attempted to make to this report was to try to merge Paragraphs 6 and 8 to make it more coherent. However, I failed to achieve a consensus amongst the political groups and, therefore, the report stands as it is. If I could change those hats – which I cannot because I am wearing my hat as the rapporteur – and if I were speaking as a British Labour Member, then I would approve Mrs Buitenweg's text as it reads well, it is simple, concise and, in particular, it does not make any big deal about own-resources! However, I would run a mile – well perhaps I could manage half a mile – from the amendments by the Group! Let me make it absolutely clear that I am not speaking as a British Labour Member and, therefore, I cannot say those things. I have to wear my hat as the rapporteur and speak as the rapporteur, knowing full well that the Chairman is keeping a watchful eye on what I say. In fairness, the report is acceptable to all the political groups. The vote was almost unanimous in committee, but there are one or two small points of disagreement on own-resources. That is why the Group has tabled two amendments. What we are all agreed upon is that the budget procedure needs to be simplified. That is quite clear. The own-resources system in this age of transparency is completely opaque and no one outside the Committee on Budgets or the Budget Directorate-General understands what it is about and how it is made up. Codecision is needed and, therefore, compulsory and non-compulsory expenditure need to be eradicated. This is stated quite simply in the first three paragraphs of Mrs Buitenweg's report. We need to reform, update and simplify our procedures. There is a need for the budgetary system to be more transparent, comprehensive and democratic, and the codecision procedure should apply to all legislation, including the Financial Regulation and the budgetary procedure. Under those conditions, compulsory and non-compulsory expenditure would disappear. I hope when we vote on this – I am sure the vote will be successful – that we can send this along to the members of the Convention and that our Parliament representatives on the Convention can present this as Parliament's position for the future.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, representing a constituency in the North of France, I have indeed had painful experience of steel industry restructuring in my region. In the 1970s and 1980s, brand new factories were closed down. I have to tell you once again this evening: twenty years on, that wound is still open and sore. I therefore feel the current crises particularly keenly, especially that of Terni, where 900 jobs are under threat. While I was preparing this speech, after reading the motion for a resolution, I re-read my report on steel, which Parliament approved in 1996. At the time, having observed that successive restructuring had cost over 500 000 jobs in twenty years, I was in a position to state that, and I quote item F, ‘the Community steel industry may these days be regarded as generally cost-competitive and technological effective, even though the problem of overcapacity could emerge again in the event of a new crisis’. Two years later, towards the end of 1998, the industry was struck by a devastating crisis following a market crash in Asia. Since then, we have seen a succession of crises – some small, some large-scale, the result of local or world level restructuring – leading to a catalogue of redundancies. As recently as the beginning of 2003, it was Arcelor and the announcement of thousands of job losses. Today it is Terni and the thousand jobs deemed surplus to requirements. Without wishing to attribute greater importance to my 1996 report than it deserves, reading it brought back to me the risks that were already bubbling under the surface: unbridled globalisation, American pressure and production at the cost of the social and environmental aspects. It also recalled, however, measures that were needed to prevent further crises – measures in terms of social acquis and social rights, conditions of State aid, training for employees, respect for the environment, diversification, research, new products and the penetration of new markets. The motion for a resolution before us recalls others, and this proves, unfortunately, that our warnings were not heeded. The Terni situation is symptomatic. This is why we must rein in the great roaring machine, not only because the workers demand it of us, but also because if we let go, then great swaths of the European iron and steel industry will go by the wayside. In this context, despite the efforts and sacrifices of workers in the past, there is a danger that the European Steel Industry will disappear completely, followed swiftly by those industries that use steel products; in the fullness of time, therefore, it will be European industry as a whole that is under threat. Further proof that there is no such thing as a good economy without a social element, without training and without respect for the workers. In the short-term, some will make a profit, but that is not the issue for us. The issue for us is defending the economy, industry and jobs.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, the Commissioner has said that there is no agreement and no decision, but there is an interim rule. My question therefore is how long can such an interim rule be valid and how must we view it? Protection of personal data is a fundamental right under Article 7 of the EU's Charter of Fundamental Rights. It is probably also going to form part of our European constitution. So this is a very serious matter. All this is also laid down in our directives and in particular Directive 95/46/EEC. It also contains exceptions that we could meet. But as far as I have read these exceptions, I have to say that the transfer of data to the US is systematic and does not fall under the exception of Article 13 of that directive. It is also the case that the data in question are so all-embracing that you cannot say that they are not relevant and not excessive and therefore cannot fall under Article 6 of that directive. In addition, Directive 95/46/EEC says in general that the transfer of personal data to a third country may only take place if that third country offers an adequate level of protection. In my opinion this has not been satisfied either. I have listened carefully to the Commissioner, who has said that he has done his best to find a balance between maintaining privacy and protecting the airlines. I have some sympathy for that, but I nonetheless believe that he has gone the wrong way about it. There is no democratic legitimacy and agreements have been concluded that could not be tested by the representative body. That is totally wrong. At the moment my position is that the measures in their present form must be suspended.

Political group: ELDR
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, Europe was founded on the idea of putting an end to war between the various nations in it. At some point in their history, these nations decided never again to allow themselves to fall into the cesspit of genocide. At the same time, they abolished the diplomacy of threat and pressure and replaced it with the language of reconciliation, compromise and understanding in good faith. Primarily, enlarging Europe can only mean one thing: extending the application of these principles. And nowhere in Europe today is there a more pressing need for the application of these principles to be extended than in Cyprus, whose history of violence, threat, blood-stained borders, military occupation, armed reckonings – all the situations from which Europe has drawn back in horror – is repeating itself for both nations living on the island. The upshot of this for northern, Turkish-occupied Cyprus has been economic ruin and the abolition of political freedom for its people. They live under a military regime in the guise of a pseudo-democracy. In southern Cyprus, which constitutes the internationally recognised Republic of Cyprus, and which functions as a true democracy, even if it is handicapped by the Turkish occupation, the economy is flourishing, prosperity is increasing and all the economic and political criteria set in Copenhagen have been met; however, the people are deprived of the natural, supremely human right to travel around their country, to return to the houses in which they were born, to their small villages, to travel the length and breadth of the country without coming up against barbed wire, road blocks, divided towns or armed soldiers ready to shoot. Under these circumstances, the accession of Cyprus into the European Union, which should not be delayed, will also bring new peace to international relations between Greece, Turkey and Cyprus in the eastern Mediterranean in general – the European Union's blessing on all three countries.

Political group: PSE
Madam President, I should simply like to assure Mr Swoboda that there most certainly is a European culture. If there were not then there would be no Europeans, and there would be no point in building a European Union. I should like to thank the Italian MEPs concerned for setting up the wonderful Christmas crib opposite the Chamber and I would invite all colleagues to take a look at this piece of European culture.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, Commissioner, the measures contained in this directive range from drafting water management plans, comprehensive information and hearing rights, and close cooperation between the Member States, to combating water pollution caused by individual pollutants. And considering how long this Chamber has been trying to introduce a framework directive of this kind, I am pleased to be present here today, and I would like to congratulate Mrs Lienemann on being in the happy position of presenting this report to us. However, it is also extremely important to me to point something out that many people actually take for granted. I would still like to highlight this point though: this directive does not constitute any kind of legal basis for diverting water from a Member State’s territory against its will. And by way of reaffirming this once again, I have introduced an amendment – gratifyingly with the support of a large number of Members – and I would be very pleased if Parliament would endorse my proposed amendment tomorrow. It is all about making it clear that water – and this is not the first time this has been mentioned today – is no ordinary commodity but a resource which belongs to the individual EU Member States and which must be protected and treated with the respect due to it. I am aware, and the previous speaker highlighted this, that there are States in the European Union that have problems with water. I believe that every one of us, in every country, could improve the way in which we manage our water and could make use of it in a cleaner way. This applies to every country. But only when each country has done its utmost to conserve its water resources, when literally everything has been done that could have been done in our own countries, only then, in my view, should it be necessary to start thinking in terms of harmonising water usage.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, on behalf of the I would like to welcome Greece into the euro and say that we shall certainly be voting in favour of Greek membership. For those other ‘out’ countries, including my own, I very much hope that they will be able to join the euro soon. I very much regret too that there are so few British Conservatives here in the Chamber today because it shows, with Greece now the twelfth member of the euro zone, how far from reality British euroscepticism about the future of the currency is. The euro has successfully delivered low inflation, rising growth, falling unemployment and protection for the euro zone economies from the ups and downs of the foreign exchanges. Indeed, the British perception of the euro as a failure, because of its fall against the dollar, simply misunderstands the whole project. The key test of a currency is price stability within the economy, not the value of the currency against other currencies outside the economy. On the test of internal stability, with inflation at less that 2% and growth higher at 3.1% in the euro zone than in Britain, the euro is clearly succeeding. Indeed, research at the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi recently calculated the euro’s value as if it had existed over the last few decades, weighting each predecessor currency's value to create a synthetic euro. Historically, that research found that the euro actually swooped between a high of USD 1.70 in December 1979 and a low of just USD 0.69 in February 1985. In other words, the euro could stay within its historic trading range and happily now either fall by a further 23% or rise by 188%. Certainly that synthetic euro included currencies such as the Italian Lira, but the same point applies even to the mighty German Mark on its own. If the euro is a weak currency, than the Mark was positively anaemic. It plunged to DEM 3.45 against the dollar at the end of February 1985, which is a third below its current rate of DEM 2.16 to the dollar. Within three years, and a dollar crash, the Mark was back to DEM 1.57 during December 1987. The truth is that the history of foreign exchange is a history of gross misalignments, of overvaluations and undervaluations, each inflicting either depressive pain or inflationary costs on the economy and, as Greece has rightly recognised, the euro is a way of regaining control over a key part of our economic environment.

Political group: ELDR
Mr President, it is morally reprehensible and completely unacceptable that the EU Commission is to shelve consumers’ justified demands to know about the origin of the foods we all eat. The EU Parliament ought to put the screws on and ensure that all EU countries label beef and register cattle. Back in 1997, the governments of the EU countries resolved in the Council to implement labelling and registration. This has unfortunately only happened in fairly few countries, and there is a tremendous amount of trouble getting the resolution implemented in a number of other countries where not even a start has been made on setting up a labelling system. For the Group of the European Liberal, Democrat and Reform Party, it is crucially important that consumers’ confidence should not merely be preserved but also increased, that public health should be protected and that the quality of foodstuffs should be high. It is therefore completely unacceptable that the Commission should not have put this important area in order. Consumers should be able to rely upon the quality of the beef they buy, and they can only do that if it is possible to monitor the animal concerned from its birth until such time as the beef ends up on the dinner table. That is to say, the animal’s country of origin, the country in which it was slaughtered, the name of the abattoir and the identity of the butchers should be known. The Commission’s proposal to postpone compulsory labelling and registration is quite unacceptable. We can support Mr Heinz Kindermann’s opinion and we also expect at least EUR 15 million to be allocated for the purpose, for it is an urgent matter to get these arrangements in place.

Political group: ELDR