GwendalTsang/DEFT09-parquet huggingface dataset:
The only question put to the House concerned assent to the request for the accession of 10 new countries to the European Union. Nonetheless, the House is being requested to endorse the content of the draft treaty on accession. We are in favour of uniting the whole continent and doing away with the borders fragmenting it. We are therefore obviously in favour of the right of these countries to accede to the European Union if such is the wish of their people. On the other hand, we are totally opposed to the spirit and the letter of the draft treaty the European institutions seek to impose on them. Regarding the content of this treaty, it formalises the unfair divide between the richer and poorer parts of Europe. The word integration is a euphemism for a relationship in which imperialist Europe will impose itself on the new entrants. The latter are mostly countries in Eastern Europe perceived as fair game by the financial and industrial groups in the former. As to the form, the new Member States are being blackmailed into accepting this treaty. The only choice open to them is one between accepting the treaty or remaining outside the Union. This treaty provides for a two-speed Europe as far the budget and politics are concerned. It heralds a Europe where some will be more equal than others. (Explanation of vote abbreviated in accordance with Rule 137(1) of the Rules of Procedure)

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, on a point of order. I will be very brief but I rise on a matter which is dear to the hearts of most Members here. On a number of occasions this week the Members bar has had in it visitors from outside Parliament and, actually, just members of the public. I know a number of Members during the week have been unable to get any food. Could we have some clarification from the Quaestors so that we can have a Members bar? We have a Members bar in Brussels. I am not against taking one or two members of staff or whoever it might be into the bar, but to bring visiting groups of 20 or more into it is wrong. I hope we can have some clarification.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, Mr Vitorino said at the beginning of this debate that it is important and sensitive legislation. Nobody would dispute that. Equally nobody would deny that in today's climate there is a need for strong international cooperation, sharing ideas, thoughts, data and intelligence. But I hope that Council will look at the report of this debate and will not use this legislation to ride roughshod over accepted values and practices in the European Union. Mr Hernández Mollar, the rapporteur, said that we cannot accept standards lower than those we would demand ourselves in the European Union. Mr Coûteaux a few minutes ago echoed these ideas. I believe that we are not just talking about Europeans – we are looking at the fundamental rights of people in the United States too. A number of Members in this House have serious reservations about that, and that is why we are concerned about some elements in this piece of legislation. President Bush has promised that the United States will always stand firm for equal justice. If that is true, he and others must call an immediate halt to the practice of executions in the United States. Over the last 25 years over 840 people have been executed following many of the murders in the United States. Murders are carried out equally by white people and black people, and yet some 15 times as many black Americans have been executed as white people. Black people are often tried before all-white juries, so we should have great concern about any Europeans being extradited to the United States and we must question even more the whole American legal system that allows that. My second point regards Guantánamo Bay, Camp Delta, a kind of US-run gulag for foreign captives held indefinitely without being charged. Mr Santini says we should leave that to another time. Mr Santini, your Group voted against this in committee, and you represent the Christian Democrat party. I have looked at all the details of Guantánamo Bay and I cannot see that it satisfies any Christian or democratic principles. I am surprised that you voted against it in committee. I hope you will think again when you come to vote on it in this vote today.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, I deplore the war and I deplore the fact that it started without a UN mandate and without having exhausted all the ways of achieving a peaceful solution. I also, however, deplore the challenging behaviour of Saddam Hussein who has continually managed to ignore the UN resolutions. Most of all I feel sorry for the victims and regret the human suffering that is without doubt much greater than we can imagine. Regretting and hoping that the war will soon be over is not all that there remains for us to do, however. We still have our responsibility for the future. We must try to alleviate the suffering by immediately making every effort to provide humanitarian aid. We must strengthen our relationships with Arab countries and give the Mediterranean dialogue a real chance to succeed. We must invest as much as possible in a definitive peace process in the Middle East. We must also not forget about repairing transatlantic relationships, whilst enforcing respect for our autonomy. I hope to find this all in the resolution we will be voting on tomorrow. Last but not least, however, we must do all we can to eliminate the divisions in the European Union. Our Member States must use the old, tried-and-trusted European formula and talk to each other, even on matters relating to foreign affairs and security policy. It is high time all the Member States together took another look at the common foreign and security policy and the defence policy, and the best place for that is the European Convention. There is a working party there that is actively working on foreign policy, and there is also a working party there that is actively working on defence policy. The people in the Convention are motivated to talk to each other and to everyone; they are not divided into groups according to the fault lines that the Iraq crisis has exposed. Let us encourage the Convention to reorganise its powers and its structure in such a way that the political will to cooperate is at least given a chance and encouraged to develop where it is lacking, and let us force the heads of government to sit down together, particularly when things get difficult.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, here, too, I have an amendment to the adopted text. Amendment No 31 deletes Article 10. Article 1(3) of the common position makes reference to Article 10; that article must therefore be changed on account of Amendment No 31.

Political group: ELDR
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the strategic goal of full employment established by the Lisbon Council has been achieved in some parts of the European Union while many others still have a long way to go. This not only raises a problem of cohesion – since it is not just a matter of compensating the less favoured areas – but also the problem of how to manage European development in the future, so as to promote the spread of development, and hence of employment, from the most favoured to the least favoured zones. In this regard, I call upon the Commission to combine its economic perspectives with identification of the territorial benefits to be had from the plan for European area development. I urge the Commission and the Union to pursue this ‘good’ full employment we want for Europe – ‘good’ in the sense of being capable of respecting environmental and social obligations – applying the method used up to now to drive forward the formation of the single market, with enlargement regarded as a valid part of this approach. Enlargement should not be seen just as a supplementary cost for the Union but as an opportunity to create wider market opportunities, where the method pursued so far can be developed, both by progressively liberalising the old markets – and I strongly welcome the invitation, which I believe we should extend to ourselves and to Parliament, to adopt new directives on procurement quickly, for example, and open up a huge market currently closed to European competition – and by preventing the new markets from creating a new monopoly situation as may happen in the case of telecommunications. For this purpose – both to liberalise the old markets and to prevent monopoly situations being created in the new markets – information can be very important and a bold strategy, helping the citizens participate in the process, can certainly be useful here.

Political group: ELDR
Mr President, Commissioner, I believe that this forthcoming summit can undoubtedly be a success if the factors stemming from Parliament’s debates and which are written down in this report are in fact taken account of. I should like here to seize quite specifically upon one particular point. I was particularly pleased to see that the report has dealt not only with the reform of the treaties and of procedures, and therefore was not just worded in general terms, but has in the last analysis declared itself in favour of setting and specifying priorities to the effect, for example, that progress must be achieved in the interests of the security of Europe and its citizens in connection with the further development of the area of freedom, security and justice, and that relevant procedures must be established so that this becomes a reality. In that way, citizens will be given a signal and main focus. In the report, a goal is also formulated which I consider to be particularly important, namely that Europe must be seen by its citizens to be transparent and to be conducting a more open debate. This, too, I consider to be absolutely necessary, as well as being a good opportunity, especially in connection with the development of the area of freedom, security and justice. We can show here that, in circumstances where the Member States are at their wits’ end, Europe can, in the last analysis, be helpful to the individual. If it is a fact of life that organised crime earns billions which, by being introduced into the legal economic cycle, damages our legitimate systems, indeed society as a whole, then we need Europol and we need European cooperation in the field of justice. If the drug trade already constitutes 8% of the volume of trade worldwide, then we must develop Europol as a European institution. If 400,000 asylum seekers are already coming to Europe each year, then we need relevant European regulations. By that, I mean that this report addresses something very real and contains elements which signify a genuine opportunity for the Helsinki Summit. We shall see whether, at this summit, Europe’s representatives can in actual fact avail themselves, in the interests of our citizens, of this chance to create more transparency and more opportunities for the individual. We can only hope so.

Political group: PPE-DE
The Commissioner has surprised me by going as far as he has done and I very much welcome the response that he has given. I look forward to working with him on the drafting body. I wonder whether you would agree that if, at the end of the day, we end up with a mere political statement, we will have wasted a year of our activity? It is not necessary to have 62 people working to draft a political statement. If this is what we are going to end up with we might as well send away a couple of officials to make a draft of the rights that we currently have in the Treaty. What we must have at the end of this process is a legally binding set of rights for the citizens of Europe.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, first and foremost, I want to say thank you to the participants in the Convention, both from Parliament and from the Commission and the Council. I think some very skilful work has been done. The Charter we are to approve today both strengthens and gives visible shape to the common fundamental rights and values our community is to be based upon. It is a Charter which, to a large degree, accords the human being a central place. I want to highlight a couple of important points. Firstly, I think it is good to have made it clear that the Convention on Human Rights and the Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg are to be respected. It is important that these two bodies should not lose their authority. At the same time, I think it is important to state that the common values must be established with reference to the different cultures and traditions we have in Europe. I believe it is important to keep this in mind if we are to obtain the necessary backing for the Charter from Europe’s citizens. I also want to highlight a particularly positive feature of the Charter, namely its concern with the issue of establishing very far-reaching provisions to rule out discrimination against minorities. That is something which I think is very much to be welcomed. I also think it is good to have been far-sighted enough to have included new areas of protection in the picture. I am thinking both of the environment and of biotechnology. I believe that adopting the Charter in Nice will be a powerful signal to certain applicant countries of the seriousness with which the EU regards respect for the fundamental freedoms. Finally, I must say that I am very pleased that the Charter is being adopted in Nice as a political document. I believe it will be a good basis for the dialogue we must have with the people of Europe about Europe’s future development.

Political group: PSE
The situation in Sierra Leone continues to be extremely unstable. The peace agreement offered improved conditions to only a very small number of the RUF hierarchy. As the rains in Sierra Leone have come to an end, the campaign of violence and terror against the civilian population has resumed. To improve things we need to change the quality of government. It is a country which was highly educated and highly law-abiding. It is being ruined by international money laundering: diamonds are more easy to exchange internationally than money. But the poor respect both education and humanitarian values and they respect democracy. Soon there will be another general election. We should support that push for democracy. They have earned their chance to vote. I call upon the European Parliament and the European Commission to give funding for education, basic justice and democracy immediately.

Political group: ELDR
draftsman of the opinion of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Human Rights, Common Security and Defence Policy. – Mr President, I should like to begin by thanking Parliament's rapporteur, Mr Färm, for his extremely cooperative and helpful approach to the budget this year. For the first time in my parliamentary career I can honestly say I am looking forward to working with the Committee on Budgets on this year's budget. The Committee on Foreign Affairs, Human Rights, Common Security and Defence Policy fully supports the Commission's reforms, which have increased its effectiveness and efficiency of delivery in the field of foreign affairs. We have some concerns, however, for the 2003 budget. Firstly, as we take on more responsibilities and as the Council goes around the world promising support here there and everywhere, insufficient thought seems to be given to where we get the money from. If we are to maintain the ceilings as they are, the only ways we can pay for increased responsibilities are either through the increasing use of flexibility instruments – and we have reservations about that – or quite simply through cuts in other lines. How can we maintain long-term programmes of support for the poorest parts of the world if we are constantly robbing Peter to pay Paul? We must try to address that question, or at least get the Council to address it. Secondly, we must have greater transparency in the budget, and that has to begin with this year's PDB. Far too much time is spent playing hide-and-seek, trying to work out what the Commission is actually proposing and why it is proposing to do it. It may be understandable to our budget junkies in the Committee on Budgets, but for us normal human beings most of it is incomprehensible. We cannot have cooperation between Parliament and the Commission unless we have greater transparency. Thirdly, we need to work harder still on implementation to make sure that we are spending the money and not just committing it, and that we are spending it in accordance with the priorities which are set out by Parliament during the budgetary procedure. Fourthly, we must have greater clarity in financing the CFSP – particularly the difference between administrative and operational expenditure. I would support the Commission's proposal on civilian crisis management and oppose the Council's clear intention of cutting Parliament and the Commission out of that. Finally, we must take more effective action in the field of small arms and light weapons; and if that is to be achieved, I believe it has to be moved into the first pillar.

Political group: PSE
The overall tenor of the Commission’s proposal is constructive. The EU must make a better job of coordinating the production of defence equipment between the Member States. Taxpayers would thus get more from their taxes. I was unable, however, to support paragraph 12, which says that ‘Community support programmes should be set up to review defence equipment’, and this in a context relating to the EU’s external borders. The EU is not at present a defence union, and it must not therefore be described as such, either. Parliament also proposes that increased orders of military equipment are needed ‘in order to ensure a safer world’. Certainly, international terrorism and other worldwide crime constitute an extensive threat to the Western democracies and to human dignity. By definition, this evil must not, however, be combated militarily in all situations, which is why I voted against recital G. The coordination of production and research between the EU Member States where defence equipment is concerned will hopefully lead to greater efficiency and better management of resources. That may in actual fact lead to the possibility of reducing military appropriations, without weakening military capability. Parliament’s conviction is that the appropriations should instead be increased.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, Mr President of the Commission, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, Belgium is Europe in miniature with all its advantages and disadvantages. This experience is partly the key to the success of the Belgian presidency. (FR) The Belgian work programme is ambitious, and it is also set against an extraordinary context in order to regain the trust of the citizens, in other words, with the introduction of the euro, a debate on the future of Europe and also a debate on enlargement. If we wish to gain the trust of the citizen, however, I believe that, above all, it is essential to make Europe credible and to make our policies credible. (DE) Mr President, in this context I should like to highlight a specific problem, namely the typically European behaviour which we have observed in recent years and which consists of fighting for one’s own country and for one’s own region, even if this is at the expense of Europe’s development, and then being astounded that the public have lost faith in Europe. However, this analysis goes even further. The end product of this – and this brings me to what the President of the Commission said – is a denial of solidarity, and we are only too aware of this. Just as it is in Belgium, it is also an easy but very dangerous policy at European level to convince the rich to refuse to show solidarity with the poor. I believe that today we need more courage to show solidarity, but the forthcoming enlargement means that we need even more courage. Making Europe credible therefore also means answering the very simple questions posed by the public, which are part of your programme. Why do we talk about a Europe without borders when in health, fiscal and social policy we still have borders, which even create competition? Why do we not simply say: we want enlargement towards the east, but no country is prepared to pay even one additional euro towards the cost of this. There are numerous questions and I would say to the Belgian Prime Minister: in the language of figure skating, your compulsory programme is outstanding, but you will be judged on your free programme, and in these efforts to win over the public Parliament will be at your side. (Applause)

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, Mr Brok has made it perfectly clear what our group thinks of the progress achieved in the field of defence and of the distance that still needs to be covered here. I shall confine myself to saying here, addressing Mrs Lalumière, that our group will be approving her excellent report tomorrow. But let me concentrate for now on the situation in Afghanistan. I was there in June and I witnessed both the plight of the refugees and the fanaticism of the Taliban fighters with whom I spoke. Since the fall of Talokan in September, which led to our Parliament's first resolution and has triggered today's debate, the situation has continued to worsen, especially in humanitarian terms. The Talokan offensive cut off the only route of supply to the Panchir Valley and the Shomali Plains, where Commander Massood's forces are concentrated, as also a large proportion of the uprooted people and refugees. Quite clearly, there is no military solution in this area, as has been said, and I therefore took note of the statements the Presidency of the Council made a short while ago, when it committed itself to apply all the necessary pressure on the neighbouring countries, and in particular Pakistan, to persuade them to stop interfering here and to seek a political settlement. But what we really must look at, I repeat, is the humanitarian situation, which is becoming increasingly precarious. Today there are more than 30 000 families, of whom half have no shelter, who are living in complete deprivation in the Shomali Plains, in the Panchir Valley and in the northern region where communications with Tajikistan remain very difficult. Fifty percent means 15 000 families. The temperature in the region just now is between minus 3 and minus 6 degrees and the only provisions these families have received over the past month is one sack of wheat. So it is extremely urgent to provide humanitarian aid. I think that has already been called for. A food depot should be set up in Dushanbe. I think we should consider establishing an air bridge, as we managed to do in other times and other places. It is a matter of the very survival of the people there.

Political group: PPE-DE