GwendalTsang/DEFT09-parquet huggingface dataset:
Is Afghanistan condemned to sink back into the dark ages and suffocate slowly under the Taliban yoke, in the image of its women under the weight of the obligatory chador? How many more deaths and displaced persons do there have to be to pierce the veil of our political indifference? How many more tons of drugs injected into the veins of young people worldwide must we deplore? Must we wait until state terrorism is fully established, wait for the victory of Jihad, the application of the expansionist will of religious fanatics to the whole region, before we Members of the European Union finally agree to get involved, as is our duty? The long offensive carried on by the Taliban, with quite open support from Pakistan, is now cutting off the peoples of the Northern Alliance from a supply route essential to their survival. The international community can no longer content itself with burying its head in the sand, and conducting ‘wait-and-see’ diplomacy. I think I speak for many people here when I declare our rejection of a comfortable neutrality, making a theory out of passivity and justifying blindness. We protest at the sort of neutrality that tends to put the protagonists on the same level, stacking the daily atrocities of the Taliban regime on the same shelf as the armed resistance of Commander Massoud. Massoud is seen as a war leader, but how could it be otherwise after so many battles? But for those who know him and have seen him at work, he is also a man of dialogue and unification. He sees himself as the champion of a tolerant Islam. He can be a man of peace. Massoud insists that there is no military solution to the Afghan problem. He is right. We must act urgently to find political solutions which respect the values underpinning our Union. That is the thrust of the resolution drafted by all the groups, which I have the honour of defending here. Essentially it calls on the Council Presidency to bring its influence to bear to put an end to foreign interference in that country. It calls on the Commission to take stock of the humanitarian aid measures intended for the Afghan population so that this aid reaches everyone. Finally it insists, and this is the essential point, that the European Union coordinate its initiatives with those of neighbouring countries to impose a solution whereby peace, stability, and respect for international law and the most elementary human rights can be re-established. We are well aware that this will not be an easy task, but here I would like to quote the motto of a great European, William of Orange: “Hope is not necessary to engagement, nor success to perseverance.”

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, we are, then, well and truly members of a society with wall-to-wall media coverage, one that is inclined to favour certain aesthetic notions that tempt not only many women but also many men to change their appearance. A number take the plunge and have recourse to cosmetic surgery. For others, such surgery takes on a reconstructive role and helps them heal their wounds and rebuild their bodies. In the former case, however, it is material external to themselves that their bodies are having to incorporate. In every case, it is essential that prostheses in the form of breast implants be subject to investigation and regulation and that all surgery be accompanied by safety information and be followed up, over the very long term in the case of women patients. In the light of all this, we can but agree with Mrs Stihler’s report and approve the changes proposed with a view to better informing and protecting not only female, but also male, patients. I would note, for my part, a number of areas on which our activity must be focused. Although silicone implants are highly disparaged and have been subject to many studies, silicone is not the only component of the prostheses. I therefore think it essential to pursue research and clinical studies in this area, especially where women are concerned, by focusing the research on the long-term risks and on the other components. Moreover, I think it important that our nations and their health services be able to work as part of a network and to share information and good practice in this area so that all women patients in Europe might benefit from the same information and the same guarantees and so that impetus might be given to research. Since we are concerned here with the provision of information and follow-up, it is essential that all patients possess all the data concerning their implants and the surgery that they are to undergo. It is also important that they be warned of the risks, the costs, the advantages and the disadvantages connected with the insertion and wearing of breast implants. I should think it worthwhile if, for once, Europe were to take its cue from Thailand and perfect measures designed to protect consumers against this advertising and fashion phenomenon and, in particular, to ban very young women from receiving implants. It is more and more important for all sections of the public to be given clear, scientific and comprehensible information if they are not to be the victims of false advertising and misleading images. For the well-being of patients and the medical follow-up they require, I would therefore defend the idea of setting up national and European registers and of centralising data and other information in this field. In compliance with the law on the protection of personal data, such information should of course only be used for the purposes of studies and research in the field of health, particularly women’s health.

Political group: PSE
I have voted against the report. From among several points of which I am critical in the report I wish to mention the following examples: Paragraph 49: “Calls at all events for any Member State not wishing to take part in a task to be required, by reason of the mutual solidarity linking the Member States, to make a financial contribution to be divided between the participating States”. Paragraph 50: “Considers that Petersberg tasks should in the long term be funded from the general budget of the European Communities, which would require a revision of Article 28 of the TEU and of the Financial Perspective”. I consider that these two points are so far-reaching that it is difficult to maintain the right of alliance-free States such as Sweden to independent decision making within defence policy and the right to non-involvement in armed conflict. The wording in the report is thus too far-reaching and consequently reason enough to vote against the report as a whole.

Political group: PPE-DE
I voted against this text which does no more than set the stage for a new round of deregulation in the telecommunications sector, without the least consideration for public services or the services of general economic interest even though they are provided for in the Treaty of Amsterdam. In the absence of any framework directive to protect these public services which are essential to regional planning and to citizens’ equal access to these services, I reject any further liberalisation. Moreover, the reports drawn up within Parliament on the implementation of opening the telecommunications sector up to competition revealed that, in virtually all countries, even the meagre, restricted universal telecommunications service could not be guaranteed. At the same time, the profits of major multinationals in the telecommunications sector are soaring, while subscriptions and local communications are becoming an increasing drain on the budgets of the poorest individuals. The report does not introduce cheap and simple access, guaranteed to everybody, wherever they are, to Internet services as part of the provision of a universal service, thus showing that we are light years away from what a modern public service ought to be, in the age of the e-economy. It is high time, however, that we put this fine European idea into practice. In pursuing the interests of untrammelled competition, the European Parliament does itself no credit.

Political group: PSE
Madam President, I too congratulate Mr Vidal-Quadras on his report on the decommissioning of nuclear installations and waste management. However, it has to be said that the current situation of the Joint Research Centres, particularly the situation of the Ispra site, is the result of a past policy which did not take the problem of the disposal of nuclear waste into due account. The issue of the safe disposal of the waste is, to say the least, worrying. We need a specific and – in my opinion – short or medium-term project to promote the safety of the citizens who live in those territories and the surrounding environment. It might be useful, in this regard, to capitalise on the experiences of the other countries of the Union, for example, England, Germany and France, where, although the disposal issue has not been completely resolved, it has been targeted for some time now. In a country such as Italy, in particular, where there is no specific legislation, we will have to rely on the abilities of the Ispra research scientists for the disposal of radioactive waste from that site. I tabled two questions on the Ispra issue but I did not receive satisfactory responses. I, too, call for the 1998 Commission internal audit report to be made public so that a comprehensive, exhaustive assessment of the issue can be made. I feel that there is a need for Parliament’s voice of democracy to be genuinely heeded in this case, so that we can guarantee to the local communities that they will not be in any danger.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, the principle of prevention being better than cure applies before anything else. It is one of the tasks of the Temporary FMD Committee under the dynamic leadership of Mrs Redondo Jiménez to look into this and to publish a report on this subject later on in the year. Every attempt should now be made, however, to prevent FMD from being imported. The outbreak in South Korea is now in the limelight accidentally because that is where the World Cup is being held. Many supporters travel to that destination. Some return and some do so much sooner than they had wanted, and there is thus a risk of them bringing the FMD virus with them. As Dr Kindermann rightly pointed out, however, travellers and tourists are already returning from Africa and Asia every day, where FMD, with its many varieties, is a common occurrence. The big question is what the European Commission and the Member States have done since the most recent major outbreak last year in order to protect the external borders more effectively. The daily traveller has noticed no difference at all since then. Despite this, the latest FMD outbreak incurred billions ́worth of damage to the European economy. Better border control is also expensive, of course, but much cheaper than what we have had to spend in the wake of the FMD outbreak. Financially, it is an extremely profitable investment. We have to model ourselves on the United States, Japan, Australia and New Zealand and impose heavy fines on imports of foodstuffs from countries that, in terms of infectious animal diseases, are in the risk area.

Political group: ELDR
Mr President, Ireland is committed to working with all Member States and international bodies to achieve higher standards in animal welfare. Due to our peripheral location and our island status, as Mr Maat has recognised – for which I thank him – we have no realistic alternative to exporting our live cattle by boat, and we need to find export markets for nine out of the ten animals produced on our farms. While I fully support the general principle of slaughtering animals as close as possible to the point of production, the reality is that many of the export markets available to us demand live animals rather than the processed products and for the foreseeable future the proper functioning of our market will require a balance between the dead meat and the live meat trade. Regulation 615/98 links all payments of export refunds to compliance with strict animal welfare standards during transport, including full clinical examination of every animal. We must police and enforce this fully. The live export incident involving Germany and the Lebanon this summer resulted from the inexperience of the German authorities, as they are infrequent exporters of live animals and had no prior veterinary agreement with the Lebanese. Hard cases make bad law. I do not agree with the German agricultural minister's view that export refunds on live cattle can now no longer be justified. If Europe does not fulfil the requirements of third countries, they will get their supplies from far further afield, with little or no controls and regulation from an animal welfare point of view since there are still no internationally agreed standards on transport. We have to have the highest possible standards not just in the interest of the animals but also of the producers, who will get a far better price for healthy unstressed animals. It is true that we must continue to review our standards of protection of animals during transport and each Member State must be willing to police and enforce the law. However, with over a million tonnes of surplus beef in the EU, export refunds will be required for some time to come and I will not be supporting any proposal to remove them.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, rather than supplementing the question, because I consider the Commissioner’s reply to be correct, what I will do is inform her that in that case they used her name and those of two officials from the Directorate-General for the Environment wrongly. As I said in the question, a number of petitioners spoke with Mr Gemelli, in Asturias – my region – and then there were a series of visits to the Commissioner. Now, what appears in the regional press is that the Commissioner and the officials say that this case is closed. It seems to me unfortunate to use the names of two officials from the Directorate-General for the Environment. The Asturian petitioners quite rightly asked me how it could be that a case was closed when it had not even been discussed in the Committee on Petitions. I therefore say to you that the appearance in the press of the names of these two officials and of the Commissioner greatly damages the credibility of the European institutions and of the Committee on Petitions. It grieves me that your name and those of these two officials should be linked to a political issue which should not have appeared in the press in this way.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, Commissioner, I have not yet had the opportunity to read the report, but the first report on cohesion clearly showed that the common agricultural policy was not contributing to cohesion in the European Union. The Agenda 2000 reform was limited to maintaining the status quo in the CAP. I now wish to ask the Commissioner whether he can tell us anything about the report’s conclusions on the CAP.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, I beg leave to speak under Rule 146 of our Rules of Procedure. The debate on Turkey has taken up the entire morning, which has meant that the scheduled debate on the European Capitals of Culture could not take place. We are not disputing the fact that Turkey is a matter of prime importance. Nevertheless, this is the fourth time since I became chairman of the Committee on Culture that the discussion of cultural matters has been postponed, either to the late evening or to a Thursday afternoon, despite the importance of the subject. The first consequence of this situation is that we cannot vote on this draft, even though it is on the agenda. The second consequence is that, since we are now preparing for the election campaign, everyone will have left by the time we come to deal with this afternoon’s business. I therefore ask that the debate be rescheduled for 20 April, the Tuesday of the next part-session in Strasbourg. This request has the approval of my own group – the – and the Group. I apologise for not having had the time to consult the other groups, since we have only known about this for half an hour.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, you do not have to be an implacable opponent of GMOs – and I am not – to challenge the undiluted advocacy of them in this report. Many Liberal Democrats will be challenging the report in the vote tomorrow. We want to see a reduction in the use of pesticides and herbicides. We want to see insects and wild plants flourish in our countryside. We want sustainable agriculture in developing nations. But we need to know that the proposed solution is not the cause of even greater problems. We hear claims from the manufacturers, intent as they are with stuffing their pockets with gold and making sure that farmers across the globe are locked into their supply chain. But where is the scientific evidence about the medium- and long-term effects of GM crops upon biodiversity? Who is going to compensate organic producers whose crops become contaminated and lose their value? We need answers to these questions before we open the floodgates. The jury is still out regarding GM crops and, given the irreversible nature of these decisions, there is no sound basis for making claims that biotechnology will be the answer to all our problems.

Political group: ELDR
Mr President, whereas, in the rest of Central and Eastern Europe, considerable progress has been made when it comes to freedom of the press, matters have, as we have mentioned, taken a wrong turn in both Russia and Belarus. As the Commissioner said earlier, these retrograde steps are in danger of having a harmful effect upon developments in the rest of the region. It is deeply worrying that, in recent years, an average of ten journalists per year have been murdered in the two countries. They have typically been journalists in the process of investigating events which those in power did not want to be discovered. The authorities rarely have much desire to throw light on such matters. Parliament should support the recommendations by the International Federation of Journalists, or IFJ, which rightly points out that there is a need for the international community to be much more vigilant in monitoring and protesting against the infringements of press freedom that take place. That applies when. through legislation, governments attempt to prevent the operation of independent media that are critical of them, as happened, for example, with what was termed an ‘information law’ in Belarus. It also applies when, in specific cases, governments restrict the freedom of the press, as happened, for example, in the case of the journalists Nikolai Markevich and Pavel Maozheiko who took the liberty of criticising President Lukashenko during the presidential election campaign in Belarus and were given severe sentences as a result. We have clearly expressed our rejection of laws which restrict the freedom of the press, and we must protest against specific infringements of press freedom wherever in the world they may occur, including Russia and Belarus. We must step up our monitoring of what is happening in those two countries when it comes to pluralism and freedom of the press. Over and above that, the international community should also do a very great deal more to support projects aimed at promoting the professionalisation of the media through the training of those who work in the industry and through giving the industry’s organisations a more significant role in democratic development.

Political group: ELDR
Mr President, this will be the third time that I have spoken in the House during this part-session on various aspects concerning Turkey and its relations with the European Union. This will have given me an opportunity to address a number of points that I will be taking up in the report this Assembly has asked me to draw up on enlargement to Turkey and its accession to the EU. I will not go back over that but I do want to give my opinion here. If it turns out that the bombardment of Kendakor on 15 August was carried out by the Turkish army, we will have to encourage the Turkish Government gradually to reduce the role its armed forces continue to play, on the pretext of combating terrorism, in areas likely to cast serious doubt on the credibility of Turkey’s wish to join the European Union. There seem to be signs that the fight against terrorism is being won and I sincerely believe that the time has come to take this kind of decision. Simply because the military has that force, it cannot and must not, except in times of emergency, have the power of decision on the use of force. My 40-year military career has fully persuaded me that cedant arma togae, let war yield to peace.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, Mr President-in-Office, ladies and gentlemen, one thing is clear: if one of the groups here in the House or one of our more than 100 political groupings had written the Charter, it would have be very different on a great many points. But that is all by the by. What we needed was a European consensus and that is what we have got. This is the most modern fundamental rights document in the world today and it really does deserve our special appreciation. As far as I can see, the convention has extracted everything worth its weight in fundamental rights from over 31 legal sources. It has clarified the bedrock of values of the European Union and I call on all those who have spoken and who, for example miss the lack of political responsibility in the Charter – heaven forbid – to appreciate the fact that, as stated in the preamble, this text has been formulated in an awareness of the spiritual, religious and moral heritage of the Union. Allow me to make one further point. Unfortunately, it proved impossible to secure sufficient coverage in the Charter for the rights of minorities. The European Parliament delegation wanted to take account of ethnic minorities but failed to persuade the convention as a whole. In my view this is a failing and it should have been mentioned. And a word to our critics. It is standard practice for journalists to criticise politicians. That is all well and good and that is how it should be, but I should like to turn the tables for once and give our critics, i.e. the journalists, a taste of their own medicine: you have failed right along the line. We have been working on this text of fundamental rights publicly and transparently for nine months and the whole of the European press has failed to tell our citizens anything about it.

Political group: PPE-DE