GwendalTsang/DEFT09-parquet huggingface dataset:
Mr President, I too want to thank the rapporteur for his report and congratulate him. The Committee on Regional Policy, Transport and Tourism as a whole is pleased about this agreement because it was well known how very difficult it was to reach a transport agreement which established a fair balance between competition and the environment and which would also produce a satisfactory solution for both sides. The two agreements that directly concerned us, and that we have analysed, concern air transport and road and rail transport. Here we must note, with regard to air transport, that Switzerland is, of course, already a member of numerous international conferences and organisations and has therefore incorporated in its legislation quite a few aspects of what we in the EU regard as the acquis communautaire. Its adoption of the regulation on the liberalisation packages is the most practically significant measure. The Transport Committee regards it as a small weakness that the duty-free agreement is not applicable to Switzerland in this case. The road-rail discussion is a more difficult and also a more interesting one. We think the experiment being proposed here is most interesting. On the one hand, Switzerland will gradually forego reducing the number of heavy goods vehicles. It will allow vehicles of 34 to 40 tonnes up to the year 2004; on the other hand, it will abolish the quotas accordingly. Eventually it will replace this system with a road tax, of approximately EUR 200 on average. So you can understand why the transport operators are rather critical of that. And in my view their criticism is fair because we believe these road taxes do not take sufficient account of the fact that the transport operator may invest in environment-friendly lorries. But what the Transport Committee considered even more important was that this agreement points the way to a transport policy entirely in line with that of the EU: reducing the burden on the roads while supporting transport by rail. We believe the proposed agreement between the EU and Switzerland is a pilot agreement; the same applies to the analysis of the means by which what we regard as a theoretical transport policy may subsequently be put into practice.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, during the first reading of the directives being put to the vote, the European Parliament fought vigorously for the incorporation of social and environmental criteria in the procedures for concluding public contracts, confirming its role as the champion of the European social model and sustainable development. To our great sorrow, we find that the Council's common position has not accepted many of our amendments, which is why we need to continue our fight and stand firm by our initial positions. Respect for the acquis communautaire on employment and environmental issues cannot be ignored in the procedure for concluding public contracts. It is not possible for the European Union to be indifferent to such commitments by the Member States in public contracts, when the quality of employment relations and, more generally, the quality of life is now a generally recognised aim of all its policies. In addition, just as we are willing to promote companies' social responsibilities in the private sector, it is inconsistent for Member States to be indifferent to issues that constitute companies' core social responsibilities when concluding public contracts. Thus, quality criteria can and must be taken into account by the contracting authorities as a matter of obligation. In the same spirit, infringement of the relevant obligations on the part of candidate companies must act as a reason to disqualify them from the procedure. We would also stress that it is not enough to refer to social and environmental criteria in the preamble, they must also be included in the regulatory text of the directive. The area of public contracts is also an ideal area for taking account of people with disabilities. We therefore welcome the amendment introducing the obligation for contracting authorities to take account of accessibility criteria for people with disabilities. To conclude, production agencies must understand that, by helping to implement European social policy, they do not incur an economic burden; on the contrary, they have economic benefits, such as subsidies when public contracts are awarded.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, in recent days, 22 people drowned off a Sicilian island, Lampedusa. They had come from Somalia and paid USD 1 200 each to come and die in an attempt to reach Europe. Since the beginning of the year, 7000 refugees have come ashore on Lampedusa, all fleeing in desperation from places that are not far from Europe. It is a tragedy in which we may well be able to offer nothing more than routine and resignation. At the Brussels Summit, a number of major European countries refused point blank to consider whether European quotas for legal immigration might be appropriate. The Italian Presidency declared that strategic measures combating illegal immigration must be organised at European level rather than Member State level. We agree with that, but we can only lament the fact that the Presidency has not be able to overcome this reluctance and achieve something more effective in the summit conclusions than a study on the relationship between legal and illegal immigration, which will certainly be useful as a study but is a wholly inadequate instrument if Europe is to respond properly to the tragedy.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, forest fires are indeed a scourge which destroys thousands of hectares of woodland throughout the European Union every year, especially in southern countries. As we know, not only was this year no exception to that rule, but the situation reached tragic proportions in southern countries, and especially in Portugal, where 20 people died, 45 000 lost their sources of income, and it is estimated that more than 11% of woodland was consumed by the fires. The total cost is more than EUR 1.3 billion in direct damages. This disaster provides ample proof that the European Union needs to promote measures for fighting forest fires, particularly at the level of prevention. A large majority in the European Parliament used the resolution of 4 September 2003, on the consequences of the summer heat wave, to indicate that that was its understanding of the situation. That resolution asked not only for more funds to bolster the Forest Focus programme, but also for the inclusion in that programme of adequate prevention measures consonant with the actions laid down in Regulation No 2158/92, which expired on 31 December 2002. I would also like to remind you that not all the fire prevention measures included in that regulation are covered by the forestry-related actions laid down in the recent Regulation No 1999/1257, on rural development. I mention this because continuity is important in relation to prevention measures, which are even more urgent under the present circumstances. The rapporteur rightly reiterates her insistence on including the prevention-related amendments tabled at first reading and then rejected by the Council. She also asks for an increase in the amounts for financing the Forest Focus programme. These are positive proposals which should be adopted once more by this Parliament and which I support. Moreover, I regret the fact that the final compromise does not consider all of these measures together. I feel that the need to preserve the heritage of our forests, combined with the high-risk situation of many woodland areas, means that the Council must accept these amendments, tabled by Parliament, on prevention and financing.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, I have a short question for the Commissioner. I was the rapporteur seven and a half years ago when we first discussed this project. I am pleased to see that the Commission has moved so far, but I still have a question. Maybe I am too cynical and too liberal, but why do we need to have rules? Why cannot we just use the Treaty as it is? Why do we need to have special rules for car dealers and for car sales? So far as I am concerned we could use the normal competition rules.

Political group: ELDR
Mr President, the rapporteur has come a long way in recent weeks in terms of dumping some of her more extreme amendments. However, I take little comfort from this. I hope the rapporteur will not take this personally, as I know how much thought and work she has put into the report. However, in my view, the amendments that remain are neither necessary nor helpful. This is not just my own view. I am delighted to see the extent to which Mrs Lynne echoed this view so powerfully a few moments ago. In the words of the UK Health and Safety Executive, the body set up to give the UK Government the expert and impartial scientific advice so necessary when dealing with such issues, these amendments provide 'no benefit for health and safety and their sole effect will be to place unnecessary and unwelcome burdens on industry, particularly on small firms'. The Executive advises us to oppose most of the Socialist amendments. Independently, UK Conservative MEPs had come to the identical conclusion. One of these is Amendment No 18, which I see the trade unions are supporting, while curiously claiming that many employers support it, too. I have not come across a single employer who supports this. It will be interesting to see whether UK Labour MEPs vote as their government has advised or their trade unions have instructed. I suspect the answer will be no surprise. We shall be supporting the amendment to exempt music from the directive, an amendment originally conceived by my colleague Mr Pronk. However, that still leaves us with the problems facing industry if other amendments also pass. It is very telling that in the week EU leaders are in Barcelona, calling for EU businesses to become more competitive, and on the very day that the UK Prime Minister, Mr Blair, is spinning the line that he is so much against red tape, his Socialist MEPs continue to pursue the same old agenda, regardless of the impact on jobs. I urge them, even at this late stage, to vote against these amendments, to vote for jobs, to vote for reform and to vote for Barcelona.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, the temporary confusion that may have reigned in Lebanon from time to time has obviously led to confusion in Parliament. I wish to inform you that Amendments Nos 10 to 15 have not – contrary to what is stated – been tabled by the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Human Rights, Common Security and Defence Policy, but by Mr Belder, and that they should therefore be dealt with accordingly.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, Commissioner, this time I cannot talk on behalf of the Group of the European Liberal, Democrat and Reform Party because we have not adopted positions on a number of the most critical issues. Just as Mrs Gebhardt said, we face an unusual situation. There is a danger of Parliament impairing the Council’s common position on environmental matters, a factor that also emerged from Commissioner Bolkestein’s contribution. It might conceivably involve a deterioration in relation to the position in the majority of Member States. That would be a scandal and must not happen. To Mrs Niebler, I wish to say that a strict liability exists that is much more comprehensive on many issues than the situation that would result from this common position. The proposal is not, therefore, particularly radical, either. Allow me to take a practical example. If the committee responsible had its way or if Amendment No 61 were adopted, we should be approving a situation in which it would scarcely be possible to require the Helsinki port authorities to repair the damage that is in the process of occurring there through TBT Poison being produced due to dredging and then spread in the watercourses in eastern Helsinki and in the surrounding archipelago. That is because dredging takes place completely under licence, and the authorities had at no stage been able to foresee that this poison would exist in the dredging waste. This case is now also being dealt with by the Committee on Petitions. I wanted to mention this in order to show how unreasonable it would be to adopt the reservations, now chosen by the Committee on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market, relating to existing levels of knowledge and to exemptions from liability if permission has been given. Financial arrangements must be acceptable in the compromise proposal we now have. They cannot, however, be harmonised too far, because we have different, quite creative arrangements in different Member States. Finally, I want to ask MEPs to remember that ‘state’ is not synonymous with ‘authority’. This matter also affects the local authorities to a very great extent, and this fact must be taken account of in the vote.

Political group: ELDR
Mr President, Mr Blokland, ladies and gentlemen, waste management is a complex task. This is confirmed yet again by our discussions and the particularly powerful lobbying. I therefore approve of the European Union’s approach which is to adopt an overall strategy in relation to this major environmental and health issue. Nonetheless, personally speaking, I have always been rather worried to see the incineration of dangerous and non-dangerous waste dealt with in the same legislation, and I expressed my opinion on this point at first reading. The majority decided in favour of coincineration. My opinion is that today we must fight to prevent the emission standards for dangerous waste being relaxed. The volume of waste to be incinerated is going to be significantly increased. The figure of 31 million tonnes in 1990 has been mentioned. This year we are talking about close to 60 million tonnes, and waste incineration generates, as everyone has mentioned, the emission of particularly dangerous substances into the atmosphere and soil. The debate has focused on coincineration. I find the maximum standard of 40% excessive, but I should like more especially to stress, just briefly, the fact that the increasingly widespread use of dangerous waste in coincineration units is liable to lead us to accept the production of this type of waste, with a particularly high risk of hearing, tomorrow, that serious investment has been made with a view to constructing coincineration units. They therefore now have to be made to run profitably, leading to an increase in the volume of dangerous substances transported, with all the risks that this entails. In conclusion, while mentioning that penalties must be applied in cases of non-compliance and perhaps also that support should be provided for the authorities modifying their household waste incinerators to comply with the standards, it is still essential to stress that our top priority is, and must continue to be, avoiding the creation of this type of waste and recycling as much as possible.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, Madam Vice-President of the Commission, firstly my sincere thanks go to the Vice-President for the White Paper that she has written with her colleagues. I believe that the approach to European transport policy that is advocated in the White Paper is a good one, namely of working on the supply side to restore the balance between the transport modes by 2010. Commissioner, I would ask you also to do all you can now to encourage the Greek Presidency to put the second railway package on the Council's agenda and to reach a common position, because railway policy is one of the core components of your White Paper and if we do not make progress here we can forget the whole idea, that you have stated in the paper, of getting more freight and passengers back onto rail. This is a genuine fear if the large States get together and simply say: we do not want to open up the markets; we do not want to modernise the railway structures. I hope that you will tell us how likely you think it is that we will still be able to conclude the second railway package in this legislative period. Because if we do not manage to do so in this parliament then the question is whether we will manage to do so in 2005, 2006 or 2007; if we do not then it will undermine the entire objective of your White Paper, namely to restore the balance between transport modes by 2010. I now turn to our excellent rapporteur to say that my friends and I will in any case have to reject two points, the first being paragraph 66 on setting up a road safety agency. Mr Izquierdo Collado, Commissioner de Palacio has rightly stated in her White Paper that we do not want to have any legislation on road safety in the next five years. We want to take best practice and see how we can reduce the number of deaths on the roads and achieve higher levels of road safety on this basis. If there is no European legislation, what do we need a new road safety agency for? I would suggest that we should ensure that the maritime agency, the air safety agency and the railway agency do their jobs properly. But let us not have yet another agency! I must say to the rapporteur that I cannot support paragraph 79, which advocates the setting up of another new transport fund, either. I say to previous speakers: it is your region and your Member State that will have to improve local public transport in your cities. We cannot spend European funds on tasks that are the responsibility of the Member States. We need the resources that we have for the trans-European networks. As it is we have too few resources here. If you take a look at what we have achieved with the Essen projects, which we agreed together in 1996, you will see that not even all 14 projects have been implemented, and we do not have enough money for them. We already have the Cohesion Fund, the regional fund and the ISPA fund. Ladies and gentlemen, let us not have yet another European transport fund! We need to support the trans-European networks and leave the rest to the Member States.

Political group: PPE-DE
The Economic Forum and the World Social Forum met concurrently, reflecting the split between the outlooks they represent. The venues for each were also symbolic: the Economic Forum met in the ski resort of Davos, the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, in the midst of a continent in full-blown economic crisis. Yet, in my view, opinions do not have to be so sharply divided. It is unfair simply to equate globalisation with an unbridled cross-border capitalism that is to the advantage only of multinationals. Those who were called anti-globalists have themselves understood this, and now call themselves alternative globalists. I think that general free trade still always offers the best guarantee of economic growth in all parts of the world, even in the poorest. The European Union is the best example of this. The thoroughgoing economic integration of Europe by means of the internal market and the opening up of our internal borders have already made it possible for us to live in what is at present one of the wealthiest parts of the world. It is this unique model of true globalisation that we have to take out into the wider world. There is certainly no way back. As the European Union, we have an important part to play in this debate. We must endeavour to bring the speakers at Davos and Porto Alegre together in an attempt to persuade them that liberalising world trade is an equitable way of improving living standards and bringing greater prosperity to the whole world.

Political group: ELDR
Mr President, I must firstly convey my special thanks to Mrs Ayuso, the Commission and the Council for cooperating so well on the current proposal and compromise concerning additives, so that we might conclude this matter no later than at first reading. I suppose our package permits the further use of additives, but it has been quite crucial for me that we are now also putting the emphasis on the Commission’s supervision and re-evaluation of the use of previously approved substances. I hope that we do not continue with the policy of just going on accepting new additives and an extended use of already approved substances so that such additives and substances are only omitted from the list when the industry itself informs us that they are no longer used. I think that the policy so far has been unduly defensive. In my opinion, the Commission should constantly inspect and re-evaluate the use of additives so that the three well-known conditions for using them are fully complied with at all times. I am therefore very pleased about the provisions in the package whereby the Commission must, within two years, present an overall report on the re-evaluation of additives and whereby this report must promptly focus especially upon the use of certain types, including nitrates, nitrites and polysorbates. I hope that tomorrow’s adoption of the reports and the process leading to approval of the package may herald a better policy on the use of additives in food. I should also like to take the opportunity of thanking Mr Olsson for his really constructive cooperation in connection with banning the use of hormones in animal husbandry. In this area too, we are now obtaining a result in which the use of the carcinogenic hormone, oestradiol 17β will cease in the course of two years. In other words, hormones in general will cease to be used in animal husbandry. This is a sound and very positive result that Mr Olsson has piloted through.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, I should like to enter this very interesting debate and state that I agree with the answers the Commissioner has given. Nevertheless, I believe that the problem of unemployment amongst young people in Europe is almost a red herring since, if we are able to increase Europe’s economic growth, we will be providing employment and we will need many young people. Consequently, the young people from the countries now joining the Union, who will be able to compete on the labour market of the current fifteen, are an asset and not a problem. There could certainly be a problem in the countries they leave behind. To put it briefly: economic growth plays a crucial role in a country’s capacity to absorb young people and this growth and economic development must be of concern to everyone. Young immigrants are always an asset. Mr Bushill-Matthews is well aware that the contribution made by young Portuguese people and Portuguese immigrants has been crucial to the great prosperity that his country, Luxembourg, now enjoys.

Political group: PSE