GwendalTsang/DEFT09-parquet huggingface dataset:
Madam President-in-Office of the Council, Commissioner, I am a right-wing Member of Parliament but I have the same battles as my colleagues in supporting and assisting fellow citizens in my country to gain power and access to decision-making posts, which should be feasible not only in the political arena but clearly also in all sectors of society. Quite simply, I would say that there are several ways in which to attain positions of power and I am particularly against the system of quotas, because I believe it is especially contemptuous of women and I come from a country where parity has just been achieved. It is quite logical, it is consistent! It should have existed for a long time because women represent more than half of society and it seems quite clear to me that it is natural for them to represent at least 50%, if not more, of those within decision-making bodies and, inter alia, in the political arena. So, there should be no positive discrimination to include women. Woman are capable of getting themselves included because they are pragmatic and full of common sense. When I see that we are asking for training for women in politics, I want to say – no, definitely not. Let us impose training for male and female candidates in politics – but why especially compel women to undergo training? That simply amounts to acknowledging their inferiority. But I do know that we have never felt inferior to men, particularly in politics. So I believe that we are conducting this battle to assist our fellow countrywomen to achieve decision-making power, to gain responsible posts in the political arena, but I believe that it will only be achieved if we completely change the way people think. We shall all have to be sufficiently strong to force our political leaders to voluntarily impose women’s participation in the political decision-making process.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, the report of the Court of Auditors is always rather like the starting pistol for the discharge procedure, which we then hope to conclude in the April of the following year, although we do not always succeed. Now that we have been working off the inherited liabilities for several years, something that has consistently attracted media attention, it now seems to me that we are tackling more systemic problems where it is not so much spectacular individual cases that are at stake, but rather whether systems are flawed in some way. I would like to address once again three points that arose most often in the debate. The first one is the high level of unimplemented appropriations. In the course of the discharge procedure, we will have to ask ourselves whether this is attributable to the caution officials exercise before they will sign something off and spend money, or whether it is to do with overcomplicated rules. For example, given the many complaints I hear from my constituents and others about all the red tape you have to cope with in dealing with Brussels if you want to get support for something, I fear that I know the answer already. Although I am willing to accept it if this is clearly refuted, this is still an issue we need to sort out. The second point is the statement of assurance, which has just been mentioned, and Mr Bösch has pointed out the dilemma we face. We need to ask ourselves if there are more reliable instruments or if we are treating this statement of assurance in the same way that the Council does year after year, that is as a kind of weather report that is not binding in any way. My final point is this: we need to establish whether the Member States' handling of EU money has got worse or whether it is just being scrutinised more carefully now. If the latter is the case, that would represent some progress and the Commission could be given some credit for that. But it is the Commission's job to step up pressure on the Member States, and we will be glad to help out.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, I am sure that you will now be able to confirm with considerable relief that a large number of cases pending before the Legal Affairs Committee about the immunity of Members will now lapse. (Laughter)

Political group: Verts-ALE
Up in the gallery, listening to you and me, are visitors. Everything is open here in Parliament. They can hear what we are discussing and agree or disagree. But the Council of Ministers meets in secret. Maybe you can slide out of this example and say it is a Member State talking to the Commission and they send them a letter. Nevertheless these matters are done in secret. If we – you and I – want the public to understand and agree with the decisions we take, surely you agree with me that it must be done in public?

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, I wish to take this opportunity to congratulate the rapporteur on an exceptionally good job. I have known Mr Adam for over 14 years and he did not deserve this – he deserved better. He has done a tremendous job on what was a terrible proposal in the first instance. The truth is that this will not work at ground level. I am totally in favour of what has been said about batch or flock identification. That will work, can work and is controllable. Anything other than that is totally irrelevant at this stage. I will be totally in favour of electronic tagging, when we have the technology and when it is cheap enough. However, it has to be clearly assumed that that is something for the future. The Commissioner has to take on board one other very important point: the question of who pays, because sheep farmers cannot afford this. They have been battered for far too long. They are surviving in atrocious conditions to provide lamb for consumption in the European Union. To put this burden on them is totally unacceptable and for the producer it is unworkable. I have a lot of respect for the Commissioner, but I have to say to him that it would be extremely helpful if his officials could put forward proposals after getting out of their glass ivory towers in Brussels and going to see the conditions people actually have to work and live in. Do you know what it is like at lambing time? Has anyone got a clue what it is like to lamb a flock of sheep day and night? Many farmers do not even sleep for days. This does nothing for the industry. We are over-regulating the industry; we are strangling agriculture by our regulations. At the same time, I am told that in the United Kingdom, if you buy a chicken sandwich, 85% of the chicken comes from Brazil or Thailand. Where is it traceable to? How can there be traceability there? The agricultural industry cannot take any more of this. I urge the Commissioner to reflect on what has been said here tonight. This is sincere and from the heart. This is the people talking. I urge you to reflect and agree with the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development and give us more time to get a proper identification system that will work.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, Commissioner, honourable Members, literature has a few well-known words for what we are discussing in the two Savary reports this evening: “You are late, but at least you are here”, was how Friedrich Schiller put it, words which also apply to our work here in the European Parliament. To discuss the interoperability of the conventional trans-European railway system at the end of the 20th century, just as everyone is getting ready to leave, looks bad, even if, admittedly, interoperability has increased. But still! It has taken more than 100 years for us to pluck up the courage here and give the railways another chance. And yet the facts do not look very promising. The rapporteur has included figures in his report which are all the more significant for being so thin on the ground. Mr Hatzidakis has already told us that the railways had a 21% share of the freight traffic market in 1970 and now have a mere 8.5%; in passenger transport, their share has fallen from 10% in 1970 to 6%. The prospects for high-speed trains are somewhat more encouraging, although here too, not everything in the garden is rosy. It is true that we have at least got something on the rails in western Europe, namely Thalys and Eurostar. But where we want to network Europe in the long term, especially with the future Member States of the Union, things do not look any better. Yet it is vital to win over Eastern Europe, which still makes relatively good use of the railway network, to interoperability with Europe before everything switches to the roads. Incidentally, this must be done through dialogue with the candidate countries, as the Savary report rightly stresses. On one point, there is a need for nostalgia: we want to maintain a small part of the history of Europe and keep historic railway lines in their original state. We shall leave them out of the scope of our directive and the friends of the railway will thank us. Interoperability is rightly not required where regional demands and solutions need to maintain their own legislation within the framework of subsidiarity. In this context, a word to my Austrian Minister of Transport. The southern railway in Austria is an old stretch of line and is of regional importance. But, more importantly, it is the north-south link in the east of the present Union. If we do not invest in it, the east of Austria will run the risk of economic exclusion in the future. That is in nobody’s interest. Austria is excluded from the Union at present more than enough as it is. Let us end all forms of isolation and ensure that we have comprehensive interoperability in the Union. (Applause from various quarters)

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, firstly I would like to thank all the rapporteurs for their work in this very important area. This is a difficult and complex subject not made any easier by the position that the whole railway industry finds itself in. If you look at rail freight in Europe, for example, the drop in traffic is quite alarming. If nothing is done, then within the next 15 years rail freight will not exist. There has to be change in how railways work, both in the passenger and freight sectors. The industry itself has to recognise that its service levels have been unacceptable and Member States must also recognise that investment levels have been in decline for many years. This is nowhere more apparent than in the field of interoperability: 15 different systems, different signalling systems, different power currents and an obsession at national level with working their own system to the detriment of international cooperation and to the detriment of interoperability. It is the inability of a train to cross borders without changing locomotives, changing drivers or even changing bogeys that is the problem for our railways. A 40-tonne heavy goods lorry is fully interoperable. A freight train is not. That is the difficulty that faces the industry. It is not an easy problem to overcome. We need to give the railways time to improve their interoperability, but we must also remind them that time is running out and frankly with regard to freight the industry is now drinking in the last chance saloon. I, on behalf of my group, have followed the report by Mr Sterckx with regard to safety more closely than the others. It is our belief that in any work in the area of safety those who work in the sector must be involved. In this regard a difference exists between us and the Group. Our main goals are to ensure higher levels of safety whilst fully integrating our European rail system. We must get away from the 15 different systems I mentioned earlier; however, we must ensure that Member States have an input, and in those areas where higher standards exist we must insist that they are maintained. Dilution of safety standards is not an option. That is why, as a group, we have submitted a number of amendments to Mr Sterckx's report. All of us here are supporters of railways. Indeed some of us are somewhat fanatical and are often called anoraks by our colleagues. I hope the Commission proposals and Parliament's response are seen by those in the railway industry as an honest attempt to ensure that Europe's railway industry has a future. In order to reach that goal we need politicians, we need governments, we need the Commission, but most of all we also need all sides in the railway industry working together.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, Commissioner, I wish first of all to congratulate Mr Sacconi on his excellent report, with which I am in complete agreement. Although in theory, voluntary environmental agreements are to be applauded, reality has shown that, precisely because they are voluntary, many of these agreements are ultimately not observed and, furthermore, have frequently been used as a pretext for not bringing into force more ambitious legally binding initiatives. We all remember what happened with the emissions trading directive: many people tried to prevent it being adopted because some States had voluntary agreements in place with industry. I therefore believe it is greatly to be welcomed that the Commission has taken the initiative to define clear rules for recognising voluntary agreements at Community level. I think that there are some rules that must be respected: first of all, the voluntary agreements must be seen only as a complement to environmental policy and not as a basis for it; secondly, they must be used only when they are proven to have advantages over conventional instruments; thirdly, they must be promoted only in cases where they attempt to go further than traditional legislation; fourthly, they must be geared towards technological research and be based on benchmarking criteria: it makes no sense to have voluntary agreements that do not promote the best technologies. Lastly, there must be deadlines, timetables, clearly defined targets and mechanisms for monitoring results and ensuring compliance.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, Commissioner Barnier, ladies and gentlemen, with this report, Parliament is getting the new year off to a good start – such a good start, that I have almost forgotten that I have forgotten to wear a tie. Ladies and gentlemen, this report's political message is that Europe's Parliament is drawing much closer to its regions, thus abandoning its former attitude, which was somewhat aloof. As far as the regions' right of appeal is concerned, I am glad that we have already come to an understanding about so much. We have agreed that the situation demands that the regions should have the option of laying claims before the European Court of Justice. We are also as one in believing that, on the other hand, the Member States must have some sort of monitoring role in this. In practice, this means that all that remains to be decided is what the role of the Member States is to be. Mr Corbett, your compromise proposes that it is only to the Member States that the regions should be able to make some sort of application, but that, unfortunately, gets us no further and is no sort of compromise. The fact is that the regions can of course do that already. Furthermore, it labours under the great disadvantage that we would be doing precisely what you advise us not to do, in that we would be interfering in the relationship between the regions and the Member States, and prescribing what that relationship should be. That is why I wish, again, to commend to you the compromise motion No 24, which would enable the regions to appeal under the Member States' supervision, as it were. This would leave room for flexible solutions in all the Member States, solutions that might be different in Germany from what they are in Great Britain. For this reason, I really do beg you to reconsider this. This is a sensitive issue for the regions, who are awaiting a signal from us, and I would be glad if we could join in sending that signal tomorrow. (Applause)

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, as draftsman of the opinion of the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs, it is natural that I should speak about the problems which the strategy for developing the internal market may pose from a social point of view. We are starting with a European social model – which is a national model – and we are transforming the economic structure of that society. In doing so, we are concerned that the effort to liberalise should not transform the essence of the current European social model. An example of this can be found in an area as apparently banal as urban transport. If urban transport is not subjected to political considerations and the intervention of local authorities, for example, straightforward liberalisation could make it practically impossible for us to reach our workplaces. We have had examples such as the case of Venezuela where a strictly private system of public transport led to a profound social and political crisis in that country. Liberalisation presents other difficulties. For example, when public services and public companies are privatised and those public companies come to be controlled by a private sector which in reality replaces the state monopoly with a private monopoly, liberalisation may not come about effectively at all. Liberalisation by means of privatising public companies may end up consolidating dominant positions and private monopolies which in my opinion may offer fewer benefits than a monopoly conceived in the public interest. Another aspect – which we referred to in the recent debate on the Kuckelkorn report – is the need to coordinate social protection. Social protection in a single internal market cannot simply be left to subsidiarity. Lastly, cohesion also seems to me to be important. If there is no economic and social cohesion, if we do not balance the quality of life in the different regions of the Community, we may find ourselves in a situation where the European Union is an unfair European Union in which some regions will make more progress and others will be left behind. This is the basis of the amendments which Mrs Berger and I are presenting, representing the views of the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs.

Political group: PSE
Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, if genetically modified organisms were dangerous, they would have to be banned straight away. We are all agreed on that and we would do so at once. Today's debate is about labelling, about traceability; consumer information is the ultimate objective, together with freedom of choice, and we are all in favour of that. Consumers must be able to decide what they put on the table for themselves and for that we need labelling. A whole series of genetically modified organisms has already been evaluated by scientific committees in the European Union. They found that these substances pose no threat to health or the environment. Nonetheless, information is important in the food sector and will, we think, help make the use of genetic engineering more widely accepted. Under the Commission proposal, GMOs will be labelled above a limit value of 1%. Following an amendment adopted in committee, which the and the voted against, this threshold will now be reduced to 0.5%. All our demands must be made with one eye on the practicability and implementation of the regulations. This also raises the question of whether accidental contamination can be avoided completely. Experience has shown that zero tolerance can almost never be guaranteed. And there is a real problem, to repeat what the honourable Member just said, with the requirement to label all meat products, eggs and milk from animals fed on GMOs or feed containing GMOs. If the end product contains no DNA or genetically modified protein, there is no point in attaching a GMO label to it. At the end of the day, we can only label what is actually there. Is there a farmer who puts his animals out to pasture who can guarantee that they have not ingested wind-borne GMOs? This, together with the minuscule amounts in feed, would mean that, in the end, all meat would have to carry a GMO label. And that would be an untenable situation both for Europe's farmers and for consumers. For consumers because they would have to process meaningless information and for farmers because, technically, it is a non-starter. It is also unacceptable because, at the end of the day, we cannot hold farmers responsible for introducing and spreading GMOs.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to start by thanking Mrs Berger for having done a great deal of meritorious work, and also my fellow MEPs for their contributions. Much that has been said has been very much to the point, and, in order to avoid repeating it, I wish to limit myself to just one aspect of the directive. The attempt is being made to make consumer protection a reality principally by the means of two instruments, rights of cancellation being one and extensive requirements to provide information, advice and guidance the other. It is immediately apparent that consumers are protected by rights such as these. On the other hand, this does have its drawbacks – as must of course often be the case. Do consumers read the information? Do they take it on board? Do they understand it? Do they really cancel, or is it not possible that they are led by it to too free a use of their signatures and a consequent inability to extricate themselves? On the other hand, it is in the interests of the business world and of the legal profession for contracts to be durable, and – to take the example Mr Karas has just given – their becoming immediately effective may be in the interests of the consumers themselves. The reason I say this is that, from these points of view, consumers are afforded better protection where provision is made for the statements they make to be authenticated by a notary. The procedure itself includes a warning in that the consumer has time to think things over, but, secondly, it involves advice from a third party, one outside the proceedings and obliged to be neutral, and, indeed liability if – as may of course happen – the right advice was not given. At the same time, though, it combines these points with the advantage of the durability of a deed or contract, and the provision of legal certainty. In these respects, as a whole, I see this as affording the consumer better protection where – as I have said – provision is made for this. That is of course not always possible, and certainly not in the day-to-day retail market. That is why, in my opinion, you should follow the principle that, where national legislation makes provision for consumer authentication, this must suffice, being the better way to protect consumers.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, with this joint resolution, Parliament is addressing very clear requests to the Council and the Commission regarding the respective competences, not least because it has been unanimously agreed that there is a situation of total violation of human, political and social rights in Burma. It has been noted that the military regime is continuing to prevent the parliament elected in 1990 and the parliamentary Committee created in 1998 which represents it from carrying out any democratic activity. It has been noted that, although no longer under house arrest, Aung San Suu Kyi is being subjected to pressure, threats and intimidation. It has been noted that the systematic use of torture, extrajudicial executions and forced labour is widespread in Burma. Thus, the requests are quite clear and direct. We call upon the Commission to bring the case of forced labour in Burma to the attention of the World Trade Organisation, pointing out that, in the Singapore Declaration, the WTO stated that the ILO is the competent body to deal with matters of respect for labour law. We also call upon the Council not to show any signs of openness towards the regime in Rangoon and to preserve and strengthen the Common Position, bringing all possible pressure to bear on the country, including pressure on foreign investments. This is the very clear appeal that Parliament is making. We expect a response from the Commission. It is a pity that we cannot have a response from the Council, but the request is contained in the resolution.

Political group: PSE