GwendalTsang/DEFT09-parquet huggingface dataset:
Mr President, we need to bear two guidelines in mind when deciding whether or not to accept the proposed amendments. The first is that it will be much easier for the liberal professions to move around than it has been to date, especially for those who exercise regulated professions. The aim here is to develop the internal market and the service sector, which is lagging behind. The second guideline we need to lay down is quality assurance of the services provided during cross-border movements. Within this context, we need to examine the basic innovations of the proposed directive, such as distinguishing between the cross-border provision of services and cross-border establishment, the proposed levels and so on. As regards the cross-border provision of services in particular, I think that amendments which set terms and conditions in order to prevent infringements should be accepted. On the other hand, the innovation in the directive introducing the concept of common bases should be especially welcomed, because it gives the liberalised agencies the opportunity to take an active part in strengthening their cross-border cooperation. Now there is an opening in civil society; however, if we are to safeguard consumer interests on the basis of the second guideline which we referred to earlier, we have a reasonable interest in calling on the Community legislator not to turn mobility into a pretext for undermining the level of training of the professions on the move. That is why it is important, where diplomas certifying a theoretical education are granted to diploma holders who study in various countries, that we demand as a sine qua non that their courses be held in every country by recognised education establishments and not by companies which do not fall within the official education system of the host country. We all need to agree on this if we do not want to put the product of education on the same footing as an uncontrolled industrial product. Consequently, it is one thing for us to encourage cooperation between universities – or even, if you like, between universities and other education establishments, on which no-one can disagree – and it is quite another thing, under cover of cooperation, for us to indirectly allow units not recognised as education agencies by legislation to be recognised as such. That is why the amendment proposed by Mr Hatzidakis is a dangerous amendment.

Political group: PSE
Madam President, I asked for the floor before the sitting started in order to say something solely intended for you as President of this House. We have a procedure for visits to be made to this House to report on certain situations. I do respect and agree with this procedure, as I also agree with the freedom of expression for everyone. However, for the second time in a fortnight these visits have been used to attack individuals, political parties, including my own, and institutions. I feel that this behaviour, particularly in your presence, is unacceptable and totally repugnant, especially when we are on the point of an electoral campaign. Therefore, particularly out of respect for you, I must say that I do not approve of this type of behaviour and in fact totally reject this.

Political group: Verts-ALE
Mr President, we have come to depend in the 21st century on what we call a knowledge based economy and the information society. However, not everyone has access to this knowledge base. The proposals on lifelong learning are an emerging response to this deficit, but only an emerging one. It is not simply a matter of training for particular job skills, although people with a low educational base face a higher risk of unemployment and such inequalities of education need to be particularly targeted in the case of both women and men. Training cannot replace a poor education and there is considerable risk that those with a strong education base will benefit further from lifelong learning and those without it will become even further marginalised. This should be of particular concern. The proposals are encouraging, but it is far from clear how they will be implemented and funded. Here, the rapporteur has done an excellent job in firming up rather vague proposals. This is not the fault of the Commissioner, whose commitment is not in doubt, but is due to the difficulties in coordinating education across the Member States when there is no clear European responsibility.

Political group: Verts-ALE
I have voted in favour of the report in the final vote and against all 25 amendments from the Committee on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market. As a Swedish Christian Democrat, I felt compelled to support the restrictive and winning policy (311 votes in favour, 202 votes against and 39 abstentions) in the European Parliament. The directive involves a ban on advertising tobacco products in newspapers, radio broadcasts and on the Internet, as well as making tobacco-related sponsorship illegal. The Member States will retain the right to take such measures as they deem necessary to protect public health when it comes to advertising not covered by the directive. I consider it a strength that all European medical organisations were united in their support of this policy. - Report McNally (A5-0357/2002)

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, I simply wish to point out that the text whose amendment we are discussing received a practically unanimous consensus in committee and that, at this moment, this consensus is being broken by the Socialist Group. (Parliament adopted the resolution) *** Report (A5-0054/2001) by Mr Wijkman, on behalf of the Committee on Industry, External Trade, Research and Energy. on the Commission communication to the Council, the European Parliament, the Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions – Action Plan to Improve Energy Efficiency in the European Community (COM(2000) 247 – C5-0567/2000 – 2000/2265(COS)) (Parliament adopted the resolution) *** President. – That concludes the vote. EXPLANATIONS OF VOTE Jackson report (A5-0041/2001)

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, I voted for the Swoboda report as well. I totally disagree with the previous speaker, for I consider that the liberalisation of public services may work to the advantage of the citizens, particularly in that the Swoboda report provides for an appropriate public-benefit transport service eligible for State compensation. In voting for the motion, I call upon the States to decide to allow the least well-off citizens, those who have nothing, and that includes pensioners and the elderly, whose pensions are not even sufficient to allow them to live properly, to travel free of charge. The States of Europe must assist the least well-off citizens by providing them with free services.

Political group: PPE-DE
Madam President, in the text of the Minutes that have been distributed, only the second part of the decision made by the Committee on Constitutional Affairs is included. Yesterday, you read both the first and second part in the House. The second part refers to the interpretation to be inserted as a note in the Rules of Procedure, but the first part says: “the declaration of the creation of the Technical Group of Independent Members is not compatible with Rule 29(1) of the Rules of Procedure” and you have entrusted us with this matter and also given us the opportunity to make our own interpretation as a note in the Rules of Procedure, which will be relevant in the future too. I therefore think that the Minutes should also include the first part of the statement you made to the House yesterday.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, today more than ever, I wish to speak on behalf of the fishermen and ship owners of Andalusia, the Canary Islands, Galicia, Barbanza, Morrazo, of La Guardia, and of the people of Spain and Portugal who need and who continue to call for a fisheries agreement to be signed between the European Union and the Kingdom of Morocco. They are calling for fair agreements which will be of mutual benefit, in line with the whole range of economic, social, political and human relations established in 1995, defining the neighbourly relationship between our countries and the Maghreb State. They are calling for an agreement on appropriate terms, which has been repeatedly approved by this Parliament and they do not accept the negotiations undertaken without faith or conviction by the Commission over the last 16 months to be valid or fitting. Nor do they accept the failure that has been announced. For the same reason, I cannot accept the dismantling of the European fleet in Canary-Saharan waters and nor is it feasible to relocate or transfer them safely to other fishing banks where, furthermore, it would compete with other European boats. Nor can we leave 4400 fishermen redundant and the coastal communities that live mainly from fishing are not in a position to find new ways of earning a living overnight. We must not accept that their future lies in early retirement for the older people or in emigration for the younger ones. The communities I represent demand that the Commission returns to the negotiating table to conclude the fishing agreement with Morocco. They demand that the Member States, specifically the Spanish Government, abandon their passive or complicit attitude and bring into play the political and economic resources necessary to conclude new negotiations. Mr President-in-Office of the Council, Mr President of the Commission, ladies and gentlemen, we are facing a European problem that is affecting European citizens and which is undermining the very credibility of the Union’s institutions and their ability to address a critical aspect of international relations for which they have responsibility, such as fisheries. There is no reason to consider the agreement to be in conflict with preserving Morocco’s fish stocks. I am convinced that this will benefit the collective interests of the Moroccan people.

Political group: Verts-ALE
I would like to thank the Belgian presidency for its answer and at the same time welcome Belgium as the country holding the presidency of the Council of Ministers in the European Union after the Swedish presidency. Many of us, including myself, see Belgium almost as our second home in that we live in Brussels during the week but go home, in my case to Sweden, at weekends. I would like to address the issue of Turkey. It is clearly the case that Turkey has not understood the difference between, on the one hand, the Eastern and Central European countries which were considered for the ISPA and SAPARD funds and, on the other hand, Turkey, which was not considered for these. Is the legislation insufficiently clear with regard to Turkey? Turkey also feels that it wants to be treated well and fairly. I would like to advise you to clarify why Turkey was not considered for these particular funds.

Political group: PPE-DE
Madam President, I am a Basque and I belong to the Basque Nationalist party. However, firstly, I congratulate the leaders, political parties, intermediaries and, in particular, the people of Britain and Ireland, on having found a road to peace by all giving ground on their original positions. I, too, join in the condemnation expressed by this European Parliament with regard to ETA’s abandonment of the truce. I can confirm my total rejection of the use of violence to achieve political aims. However, I must also say very firmly that we have a problem in the Basque Country for we are in political conflict with the Spanish State. From this Parliament I call on the Spanish Government and the Spanish political parties to have the same tolerance as the British and Irish so that we can all find the road to peace and a solution to the Basque conflict which is as much a European matter as the Irish conflict. We Basques want peace and we want to find a lasting solution which is acceptable to everyone. However, to achieve this, we must all make an effort to find common ground for the future and for peace.

Political group: Verts-ALE
Mr President, this Statute is important, and it must not be allowed to go under. That is one reason why I am sure that by far most of our committee can live with the fact that this compromise takes no account of a number of our important points; this is, though, a parliament and not a meeting of diplomats, and that is why a certain number of things remain to be said. In the committee, we favoured putting the financing of European political parties under the Commission’s budget rather than Parliament’s. In this afternoon’s debate in this Chamber on the outcome of the Convention, Mr Hänsch told us: ‘The nation-state of the nineteenth century is not the blueprint for Europe's architecture in the twenty-first century.’ We have to remind ourselves of this when discussing the question: what about the requirement that parties be independent of the state? If we take that as being fundamental, we may well get different answers to that question at European and at national level. It may be that the reasoning underlying the imperative that states should be at arms’ length from political parties and their financial arrangements, is best satisfied if, at European level, they are linked to the Commission rather than to Parliament. Our committee was in favour of incorporating tougher sanctions in the event of political parties failing to comply with the requirements of financial transparency. We wanted the money not merely to be repaid; we wanted it to repay twice the amount. If there is not to be too great a temptation to do this, then sanctions must really hurt. That is why it is regrettable that it was not possible to negotiate this with the Council. There are two further comments I would like to make on the questions that have cropped up. The way the Commission said that the doubling of the amount was not on, because there was no provision for it in the Financial Regulation, reminded me of encounters with people who say such things as, ‘that is how we have always done it’, ‘we have never done it like that before’, and ‘who knows what would come of it?’ Those are the sort of archetypal experiences that you get with bureaucracies. Or what was said on the subject of the question raised in the original draft, to the effect that ‘you in the political parties can do anything except fund election campaigns’; if that was the line taken over a long period of time by the national governments and the Commission, then that is another reason why the bureaucracies of the Council and the Commission were known and feared throughout Europe for their capacity for innovation, and I think we should not forget that, when it comes to taking decisions, a bit more awareness of real life would do us all some good.

Political group: PSE
The majority of the members of the Security Council seem to want to give peace another chance. They prefer to disarm Iraq by peaceful means, using the weapons inspectors. More pressure must be put on Iraq to cooperate. Parliament has contributed to this through its resolution and by a number of MEPs travelling to Baghdad to explain our position. A majority in Parliament is on the same wavelength, therefore, as the majority of the public. It is remarkable that the governments of some Member States would rather take the side of the United States than that of their own citizens. Even Turkey, traditionally a staunch supporter of the United States, considers war to be very risky. And then people say that France, Germany and Belgium are isolated! Would it not be the US, rather, that was isolated if they could not bring to bear a whole arsenal of means of coercion? It is not enough to make every effort to stave off a military invasion of Iraq. Peaceful means must indeed be used to bring Iraq not only to disarm, but also to change, to respect human rights, to respect the right to life and respect for the diverse peoples and cultures within the Iraqi borders and to respect for all the peoples in the region. (Text abbreviated in accordance with Rule 120(7) of the Rules of Procedure)

Political group: Verts-ALE
Mr President, due to a financial interest I cannot participate in the next vote. On Amendment No 10

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, when we discuss this report dealing with animal by-products that are not intended for human consumption, we must not speak exclusively of waste products. The basis for a very specific distinction is provided by the submission from the Commission, which divides the materials into three categories. They must be separately registered, stored, treated and marketed, and evidence of each operation must be recorded. The items that must be destroyed and removed from the food chain are quite clearly defined, as are the conditions for their removal and destruction. We are all agreed that contaminated and inferior material has no place in the food chain. On the other hand, we can treat and then re-use important nutrient carriers that were properly prepared for their original use. Strict rules govern the procedure for such recycling. Here we have the example of pigswill. To allow the use of pigswill, the Committee on the Environment adopted Amendment No 10 on the recycling of catering waste. There is pressure to adopt this particular amendment within a short time frame. The directive on swine fever enters into force on 1 November and imposes a blanket ban on the feeding of catering waste. And this is why I ask you, Commissioner, whether Compromise Amendment 25 that has been set before us lifts this ban. A legal loophole must not be created here, because the existing processing facilities produce hygienic feed which contributes neither to the spread of classical swine fever nor to that of foot and mouth disease. I believe Amendment No 10 was good, which is why the committee adopted it. It is for this reason that I asked my absolutely clear and unequivocal question about the new compromise amendment on the table. We should take particular care to ensure that we make clear and unambiguous statements and that we leave no scope for confusing double standards and overlaps between different regulations. This sort of thing affects small and medium-sized abattoirs. For that reason, we must support Amendment No 2 to Article 4. May I reiterate my sincere thanks to Mrs Paulsen for this report? It is a matter of the safety of our food chain, which is, after all, very closely connected with the health of consumers.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, let me start by associating myself with Mr Watson’s determined protest against the grave and ongoing violations of human rights in the USA’s prison camps. Let me now turn to the Intergovernmental Conference. I ask myself why in fact the governments summoned a Convention, when, even without one, they could still have had the age-old spectacle of the nations haggling over their interests. While the governments are turning the Convention draft inside out, we in this House have gone back to drafting resolutions, repeating ourselves, protesting against the eternal sameness of things, but to no avail, with neither a response nor even a serious debate to show for it. The question we should be asking ourselves is what we should be doing. The governments think they know what our response is going to be; we gave it to them after the partial failure of Amsterdam. It was, ‘this is better than nothing.’ Then, after Nice, where the failure was complete, we gave it to them again: ‘this is better than nothing.’ Now I have come to believe that a bad constitution is not better than nothing. We should make it plain to the governments that it is not they who are the masters of the treaties, but the parliaments and the people they represent, and that it is these who can bring this constitution down. We are then told in tones full of emotion that the dignity of every single Member State must be safeguarded. What about Europe’s dignity? Nobody said a word about that. I cannot imagine that the dignity of any single Member State demands that the principles of the separation of the powers and of the public nature of lawmaking be violated, or that the legislative council – the Convention’s big idea for greater democracy – be done away with. I cannot imagine that the dignity of a Member State demands that the undoubted legitimacy of dual majority be traded for the lottery of Nice. I cannot imagine that the dignity of a Member State means that more laws have to be passed in Council, or that more offences against parliamentarianism and the public nature of lawmaking are called for. That has nothing whatever to do with national dignity, which does not require an attack on Parliament’s budgetary rights. In the last debate, and in the corridors and behind the scenes, I have heard people calling for compromise. To hear Mr Méndez de Vigo speak about it, you would think it was about this House renouncing its loyalty to the Convention and setting out on the treacherous ice of compromise. We are offered compromises only when we are in retreat. We are offered negotiations only when democracy and the rights of Parliament are disputed. Nobody seems to me to be offering to negotiate concerning our demands over and above the Intergovernmental Conference. This time, we should make it plain that a bad constitution is not better than nothing. (Applause)

Political group: Verts-ALE
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, in the wake of numerous food scandals, consumer awareness has heightened very considerably. In the domain of EU consumer policy, I believe ‘from stable to table’ has few rival claimants to the title of Expression of the Year. If, however, we want to apply this principle of transparency consistently, our commitment must stretch from the farmer’s pitch fork to the consumer's table fork. Consumer safety begins with animal feed, with its ingredients, the declaration and, last but not least, the official inspections. These three reports place us on the horns of a dilemma. As far as feed content is concerned, let me say that food safety is a highly sensitive issue. If scientific studies come out unequivocally against the use of certain substances, the precautionary principle must apply. I doubt, however, whether we shall succeed in introducing a zero-tolerance threshold. That would be dubious consumer protection and, what is more, it would surely be impracticable. I believe it would undermine the very legislation it was intended to reinforce. As for the declaration of feed materials – the open versus the semi-open declaration – our dilemma is surely between consumer protection and economic viability. With today’s analytical methods, Commissioner Byrne, any recipe is as transparent as can be. Any manufacturers who therefore wish to discover precisely what a competing company is offering its customers have long been able to acquire this information. I should like to conclude by dealing briefly with two problems relating to the declaration. The number of those who seek precise details on ingredients is relatively small, according to my research. This brings me to the other point. The full declaration certainly costs money, and the farmer ultimately has to foot the bill. The official feed inspections are the final link in the chain of transparency in the sphere of animal feed. Unfortunately, however, despite all our efforts, it will never be possible to completely eradicate criminal practices. For my own part, finally, the quality of our food concerns me less than the eating habits of our citizens in general.

Political group: PPE-DE