GwendalTsang/DEFT09-parquet huggingface dataset:
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, let me just start with warm thanks to the rapporteur, Mrs Paulsen. I am committed to retaining the use of food waste as feed under appropriately strict conditions. Let me make it clear that we are talking here about dishes officially permitted for human consumption. Let those listening to me understand that, to take a couple of examples, this is about unsaleable bread that will no longer be fresh the following day, about left-over pieces of cake and that sort of thing. The prevention of disease is adequately taken care of by the heating of food waste in the manner prescribed, which furthermore facilitates proper recycling of such remnants and thereby acts as a deterrent against even more ‘rubbish tourism’. Moreover, it provides pigs with a first-rate supply of essential amino and fatty acids, and makes it possible to reduce the importation of feedingstuffs. It is a fact that liquid feed, that is, swill, derived from food waste, is known to have relatively few negative effects on rearing pigs. There is a need to guarantee an appropriate standard of sterilisation in order to kill off pathogens. The outcome of the conciliation procedure, with the seven amendments, was indeed accepted by the Council without further ado, and, on the extremely important Amendment No 25, which embodies a comprehensive compromise, I welcome the Council's draft providing for transitional measures under stringently monitored conditions for at most four years from 1 November 2002 onwards. Any firm undertaking by the Commission to develop a directive on biowaste including kitchen and food waste, by the end of 2004, must primarily aim to stipulate safe use, recovery and reuse. Contamination has to be monitored, and we welcome this approach. It is the firms that have invested a great deal of money in these measures in order to meet the very highest standards, and are officially monitored, that are the best guarantee of food waste for feed being harmlessly removed and processed under controlled conditions. As has already been pointed out by those who spoke before me, we could give a whole catalogue of examples to demonstrate that no adequate guarantee can be provided by a general ban on feeding this sort of stuff to animals. What becomes of it then? The future should find us still not destroying this valuable feed. Let me say in conclusion that, on this issue, I am myself a strong advocate of a regulation rather than a directive, because I can already see how these things will be transposed differently in different countries, because I have an inkling that competition will be distorted, and because, if something is wrong, then it is wrong everywhere, be it in Germany, in Austria, or in any other Member State in this internal market.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, we talked about this issue a month ago and had an excellent discussion with the Commissioner. We were all agog. Naturally we welcome the fact that the process has been opened up to North Korea. It is just a shame that we have not seen fit to make the necessary funds available to go with it. Apart from that, we feel the outcome left a lot to be desired, and that is putting it mildly. What we dislike about ASEM II is not so much what we have managed to achieve, because projects to do with money-laundering, HIV and AIDS, food safety and suchlike, are of course to be welcomed. In fact two concrete proposals have been adopted, notably the round table on globalisation and the duo fellowship programme, 4300 fellowships amounting to a total cost of USD 25 million. That is not to be sniffed at of course, but there are still a few questions we would like answered. I will return to them in due course. What is more important is what was not adopted. We could have done so much more in terms of financial stability, trade and investments, and infrastructure. An ASEM environmental centre was proposed. Now that would have been something. What concerns us is what we failed to do on the human rights front. Things were said but they have not found their way into the projects that were agreed, not even in terms of the considerable reserve, for example, although this could easily have been done. In any case, this considerable reserve also has something to do with globalisation. We agreed to concentrate on globalisation, in particular the adverse effects thereof, when in fact we believe that globalisation is a positive force. There is a down side but surely we should also consider the bonuses. We find it incomprehensible that the secretariat for the fellowship programme is to be located in Seoul. ASEF is working extremely well in Singapore, so why not establish it there? We know that the Commission values ASEM extremely highly and it has our wholehearted support on that score. What we want to know is whether our Ministers have given ASEM due consideration. We feel they have been sadly lacking in ambition and are therefore unworthy of praise. Some headway has been made in terms of Asia-Europe parliamentary dialogue. Perhaps we parliamentarians can succeed where Ministers have failed in this respect. The European Commission deserves our support because we are convinced it is going about things the right way. That said, we feel the Ministers ought to have been able to achieve a much better result.

Political group: ELDR
Mr President, I welcome the various reports, the Blak, Stauner, Folias, Seppänen, van der Laan and Rühle reports, because I know so much work went into them. I want to restrict my comments to Freddy Blak's excellent report on the Commission discharge for 1999. 1999 – what a year that was. Not only was it the first year that I was elected – and hold back your cheers now – but in budgetary control terms it was fascinating. It was the year of three types of Commission: two months of the old Commission that had a number of problems that we all know about; six months of no Commission whatsoever because they were not taking any management decisions; and then the rest of the year was with the new Commission who had no time to implement any of the reforms. 1999 – another year with an error rate of about 5% or roughly EUR 4.5 billion. 1999 – the sixth year running that the Court of Auditors refused to write off the accounts. 1999 – the year in which Freddy Blak found huge errors, fraud and problems in the accounts, scandals all of them including, for example, the wonderful Washington delegation that warranted a whole two paragraphs in the report. I believe the Commissioner will be able to confirm that the building was bought for USD 0.5 million, refurbished to the tune of USD 2.2 million – that is four times what it was bought for – whilst renting somewhere else for about USD 18 000 per month which was cheaper than where the Commission's residence was beforehand because I believe it was in the Four Seasons Hotel. There were other problems with IRELA, flax and Fléchard, too, and all we have to do in this House is look at our previous reports. We have consistently said that if the error rate does not improve in the 1999 year, then we could not and should not pass these accounts. The error rate quite simply did not improve. I checked with the Court of Auditors and they confirmed that the error rate was the same or marginally worse. What conclusions should we draw from this? It is fairly obvious: the error rate did not improve; EUR 4.5 billion lost, unaccounted for, mismanaged; we do not give discharge. I hear that the Socialists and other Groups are actually thinking of granting discharge and I cannot think why. How on earth are we going to explain that back home? Please do not be scared that by not granting discharge you will cause this Commission to fall. You simply will not. There is nothing in the Treaties that says that must happen. 1999 is not the year for which this Commission is responsible. What you will be doing, however, is sending a message to this Commission and the public who elected us here – you remember them, some of them actually bother to visit us occasionally – that we are steadfastly against waste, fraud and mismanagement; that we are drawing a line in the sand, that what went before 1999 was completely unacceptable and what happens now and in the future must be better. Commissioner, I would appreciate your answer on the Washington delegation because it is very odd that we do not get to see a number of these facts until we actually ask for them. I also ask you to promise us that the error rate will improve.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, may I say that Mr Aznar, the President-in-Office of the Council, very clearly identified the key words of the economic governance of Europe. As he indicated, the three wells from which the Union draws its economic policies are liberalisation, privatisation and competition. These wells, if I may say so, contain toxic water. The dismantling of public services which were operating more or less properly has been the source of all kinds of social havoc and inefficiency: the railways in Britain, the postal and health services in France, electricity supplies in most parts of Catalonia, and so on. In Lisbon the Council spoke of making the economy of the Union the most competitive in the world by the year 2010. At what price? At the price of all-out, dog-eat-dog warfare. We are far from the pursuit of happiness which the most perceptive politicians of the late eighteenth century regarded as an inalienable right of human beings. Instead, we have the prospect of permanent stress, widespread insecurity of employment, mass exclusion and perhaps, in due course, the same tragedy that has now engulfed Argentina. In Biarritz, Gothenburg, Nice and Laeken, grass-roots society has demonstrated against such aberrations. Tomorrow, in my own city of Barcelona, there may well be more demonstrations. I believe it is essential to listen to the voice of protest, and I feel that the Trentin report pays it insufficient heed.

Political group: Verts-ALE
Mr President, we all agree on the sort of regime over which Saddam Hussein presides. What we need to discuss are the policies to be applied. The European Union does not agree with the 'axis of evil' policy. Nor does it agree with policies of violent, controlled crisis; in the final analysis, they are not in its interest. However, let us take a look at the results after 11 years of applying a specific policy. Saddam Hussein and his regime still in place, a beleaguered nation and citizens whose problems were described earlier in the most eloquent of terms. But then there are the side effects which we do not discuss here. We have never discussed how many smugglers have benefited from the embargo, we have never discussed which companies here in the European Union are collaborating with the regime and snapping up every project on offer in Iraq on very good terms. This being so, the various committees being proposed should include a committee to write a who's who of Iraq's financial and commercial trading partners so that we can see whether or not sanctions need to be imposed and, if so, where. Apart from that, I just wanted to say that to describe certain circumstances as entirely Saddam Hussein's fault is wrong. Not every bad thing that happens is an opportunity to heap censure on a specific regime. I would like to point out here that the well-known problem of the estuaries of the Tigris and Euphrates and the problem of the marshlands are not of Saddam Hussein's making. The Ataturk dams are to blame, the 17 dams already up and running at the sources of the Euphrates and the Tigris, the purpose of which is to gain strategic control of water resources in the area. This is another matter we have not discussed and, in 2, 3 or 5 years' time, it will be the main factor in political tensions and armed reckonings. That is the problem. Τhe problem is not a few arrangements downstream at the estuaries of the two rivers.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, I very much welcome the programme and priorities of the Belgian presidency in the employment and social field. It is a programme essentially about the modernisation, but also about the renewal and reinforcement of the European social model, and as such it obviously strikes a positive cord with the Socialist Group in this house. One key element of that programme will be the work you will do to set out clearly the social goals we need to achieve in the reform of our pension systems. That, rather than a concentration on the concerns of the financial institutions, should be our proper starting point. Your work should also fit well with the communication announced in Parliament by Commissioner Diamantopoulou yesterday. In that broader field, you will be putting in place the most important building blocks for an open coordination for social protection, and we wish you well, although I was disappointed not to hear specific reference to social exclusion in that context. Three specific points in the employment and labour market area: first, in relation to quality of work, it would be very useful if you could work with us in Parliament to incorporate amendments on quality indicators into the employment guidelines for 2002 to jump-start the Commission’s communication on that subject. Second, also in relation to quality, I hope you will apply some pressure to the Commission to speed up its preparation and launching of a new strategy on health and safety. The delay is unacceptable. Finally, I know that you will work with us to adopt, as quickly as possible, the general framework on information and consultation and the company statute. But I also hope again that you will apply pressure to the Commission to speed up its work on the revision of the European Works’ Council Directive. That too is a very important ingredient and there is no good reason for its delay until the end of this year or the beginning of next.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, I wish to begin by congratulating not only the rapporteur on the report but also the Commission on the communication. For us it represents an important step in recognition of the role and legitimate rights of citizens who file a complaint with the Commission. It is also the first time the Commission has adopted public rules on how to deal with infringements of Community law by Member States. Those public rules are often a marked improvement on the practice in a number of our Member States. Secondly, I recall that when the previous Ombudsman, Mr Jacob Söderman, asked the Commission to adopt rules on how to treat complainants, his recommendation was to recognise that the complainant was a party to an administrative procedure. While my group considers that this should be the final objective, it also considers that the adopted code is a genuine improvement. Perhaps there will be an opportunity to advance further through the adoption of an administrative law for the Union's institutions and agencies. Thirdly, I want to mention an area on which my colleague, Mr Wyn, and I tabled an amendment which was rejected by the committee – which is unusual because our committee normally shows very good sense. The report at the moment states that the Commission enjoys a discretionary power in relation to its consideration of complaints. While we recognise that the Commission needs a certain discretion as to if and when it opens an infringement procedure, the discretion has to be used in compliance with the Commission's obligations to ensure that Community law is implemented and applied. Article 211, which makes the Commission the guardian of the Treaties, and Article 226, which gives the Commission the right to open infringement procedures, constitute the essential safeguard in the Treaties for the application of the acquis. Therefore, we are concerned about this view of the Commission's powers of discretion being extremely wide and would prefer to have them described as providing a certain margin of appreciation. Finally, I want to stress, as the Convention is coming to a conclusion, the importance of maintaining the Commission's role in monitoring the implementation of Community law. The number of complaints received by the Commission and the number of petitions to Parliament clearly show that citizens need that opportunity.

Political group: Verts-ALE
Madam President, with regard to the Minutes, my name is not on the attendance register of 1 March 2001. I probably forgot to sign the register, but I did attend and I took part in all the votes.

Political group: PSE
Madam President, I believe you have been told about the discussion which took place in the House this morning at the opening of the sitting. It is not my intention to reopen the discussion, because I am sure that Vice-President Imbeni will have mentioned the matter to you. We are looking forward to your answer, after voting time, if you prefer, because I imagine all the Members wish to vote.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, I wish in my speech to focus attention on Mr Jan Andersson’s excellent report on adequate and sustainable pensions. It is good that Parliament is taking an active part in the pensions debate, because pensions and how we pay for them will be one of the biggest social and economic challenges of the decades to come. Old age these days no longer means poverty, because statutory public pension schemes and the private occupational pension schemes and private insurance policies that supplement them are a guarantee to many Europeans that they can maintain their standard of living even after retirement. The generation gap must nevertheless be narrowed by means of vigorous pension scheme reforms, so that increased pensions do not become a burden on the shoulders of younger generations. Four factors will jeopardise state pension schemes if no reforms are made. These are the ever-increasing life expectancy rate combined with low birth rates, substantial long-term unemployment and people entering employment late in life. The baby-boom generation is beginning to retire in this decade and by 2050 the number of those in receipt of a pension in relation to those of working age will have doubled. In some Member States pension schemes paid for out of public funds are estimated to rise to one fifth of GNP. In my opinion, European pension schemes have, in the main, achieved their social goals. To strengthen pension provision, however, the priorities are that the age of retirement must be raised, the range of supplementary forms of finance must be increased, and there has to be an increase in long-term private savings. At Community level we need coordination in the taxation of occupational pensions to make it easier for people to move from one country to another and comprehensive internal market legislation for institutions offering occupational retirement provision. At European Union level we can play a part in defusing the pensions bomb by promoting the development of cross-border personal pensions and savings schemes. I hope that Parliament will, on the strength of this excellent report by Mr Andersson, also play an active role regarding these matters in the future.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, on a point of order, on Monday I raised a point of order about Rule 2 and yesterday had the Minutes corrected to indicate the exact purport of that point. In my remarks on Monday I suggested that there was a risk of a certain meeting of Pesca Ministers having been intended to interfere with the independence of action of Parliament. Mr Jové Peres was one of the rapporteurs in question and he made a statement this morning. I fully accept what he said and if I caused him embarrassment I would like to apologise. (Applause)

Political group: Verts-ALE
Mr President, the terrorist attacks of 11 September have finally brought it home to us that global crises have global consequences and that the European Union can no longer afford any eurocentrism. This does not mean downgrading the importance of EU enlargement and the stabilisation of the Balkans; it simply means that the Rio process must not suffer the same fate as the Barcelona process or the policies on the Mediterranean. It should not take a terrorist attack for us to give relations with these marginal areas of Europe or the Latin American region, a region which has strong historical and demographic links with Europe, the attention they deserve. The European Parliament's own-initiative report by Mr Salafranca is therefore timely, coming as it does in advance of the Rio follow-up summit in Madrid in May next year. We need to develop a strategy and give greater priority to our policies on Latin America at every level in order to combat poverty on this continent, consolidate democracy, tackle organised crime and drug trafficking, and, finally, to protect our economic interests. The conclusion of the association agreement with Mexico has had a positive impact on the European business presence in that country, which has benefited both sides. The association agreement with Chile will, we hope, be signed in Madrid in May. Unfortunately, the negotiations with Mercosur are not progressing as smoothly. I hope that in this context, the Commission and the European Parliament will do their utmost to overcome the hurdles concerning Argentina and Brazil. Free trade is not a one-way street, and more or less concealed protectionism should be a thing of the past. We must also increase awareness of the Latin American region. The establishment of a Centre for European and Latin American Studies would be a welcome step. What Latin America needs, however, are not only association agreements but general strategies to promote an investment-friendly climate, and this can only be achieved if there is political stability and an end to capital flight. Not every dollar earned should be transferred directly to Miami.

Political group: PPE-DE
Today, the European Parliament has approved the accession of ten states to the European Union. This is an historic day for Europe. Europe is united in freedom. This is a development that the CSU members in Parliament welcome. For many years, we have played a leading role in bringing about this historic event, but, despite all the rejoicing that attends this day, doubts still remain as regards the Czech Republic. European constitutional thinking knows nothing of the idea that one injustice cancels out another. It was the European Parliament that, alone, in the course of negotiations on accession, brought to European public attention Czech law's failure to deal with the past, and, over a period of years, demanded that this be sorted out. Parliament's initiatives have been taken up neither by Commissioner Verheugen, who is responsible for these matters, nor by the German Government. In vain do we wait for a political gesture in a spirit of reconciliation. It is the opposite that has happened, for, on 24 April 2002, the Czech parliament unanimously passed a resolution to the effect that the legal consequences of the Beneš decrees were ‘unquestionable, inviolable and unchangeable’. The Czech Republic is, of course, a country at the heart of Europe, but we have nonetheless voted against its accession with the intention of sending Czech politicians the message that the wounds inflicted in the past on the expelled Germans are still open, and that we must heal them together, in dialogue with one another.

Political group: PPE-DE