GwendalTsang/DEFT09-parquet huggingface dataset:
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, but above all Mrs Echerer, congratulations on the Sisyphean task that I am sure this report has been. That was inevitable with such a many-facetted subject, but its success is a tribute to you. We do not always have so large a consensus in this Parliament, and that shows that people have now become more aware of the problems. I will illustrate this with a few figures. When it comes to child pornography on the Internet, the media are full of headlines and leaders. But far less attention is paid to economic crime. If artists’ rights are ignored and they are denied the fair income to which they are entitled, that is also an aspect of economic crime. An economic loss of 5% of Gross National Product has been mentioned here; broken down into individual areas, it looks like this: 25% of audiovisual industry output is counterfeit, with sound recordings accounting for as much as 40%. It has become a lucrative market for organised crime. It is not simply a matter of lawbreaking by individuals becoming widespread. As is rightly described in detail here, it is also due to excessively lax and at any rate very different laws in the various Member States, which encourage such product piracy and use of counterfeits. The result is economic loss on a tremendous scale – lost tax revenue, lost jobs, lost investment confidence, which can be seen in the music industry in particular, but it also means lost rights for people like you and me, namely a loss of consumer protection, a loss of young people’s welfare and the like, and in the end it is also a threat to cultural diversity. It follows that a uniform legal basis for the protection of intellectual property is long overdue. The collecting societies that have already been mentioned many times have a particular part to play here, especially in light of the changed market conditions that we find in the information society. How that can and should be done is described in detail in the report, which also contains the opinions from the other committees. As a member of the Committee on Culture, I think it is particularly important to stress that the collecting societies are not simply a kind of protective association, but that they always have a cultural function as well, regardless of how they are organised. The protection and exploitation of rights in intellectual property help to promote culture and cultural diversity, so the Committee on Culture is right, in its opinion, to call on the Commission to pay particular attention to this aspect. (Applause)

Political group: PSE
This report on State aid closely follows the line of the previous report, endorsing the observation that there was a reduction in State aid during the period between 1997 and 1999, specifically due to reduction in aid in Germany and Italy, the two countries that provide the highest levels of State aid. The rationale of the report is based on defending the reduction of State aid and on stepping up the measures used in this context, specifically tax measures. The objective, in accordance with the conclusions of the Stockholm Summit, is to achieve a steady reduction in State aid by 2003, only allowing aid, in exceptional circumstances, specially requested by the Member States. Existing Community aid will, of course, continue. Nevertheless, with the creation of the State aid assessment panel, pressure on Member States to reduce aid will increase, with States basing their approach on protecting competition, ignoring the problems suffered by weaker economies and pilfering America’s own policy, which continues to grant State aid in various economic sectors, in defiance of WTO rules. This is why we have voted against the report.

Political group: GUE-NGL
The European Council directive claims to grant additional rights to the workers of European companies. These so-called rights are simply the participation of workers’ representatives in ‘the SE’s administrative or supervisory body’. Even by taking Parliament’s amendments into account, these minority representatives will not be able to influence any decisions. Furthermore, the legislator wants to ban them and even their freedom of expression with fellow workers by imposing a confidentiality clause on them. As a result, these representatives are only summoned when required to approve their employers’ policy or to be silenced. We refuse to approve this farce. That is why we abstained from voting on this text.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, the Pensioners' Party voted for the report on the current status of Bulgaria's application for membership of the European Union. I welcome this opportunity to extend a warm greeting to the pensioners and elderly people of the Bulgarian Republic. I would like to remind the inhabitants and, in particular, the government of the Bulgarian Republic that, as Mr Van Orden stated in his report, the Kozloduy nuclear power station must be closed down. Since this verdict has been given repeatedly, it would be as well to close it down as soon as possible. I call upon Bulgaria to comply with our request.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, we too protest against the sentences inflicted on many Iranian women, against the disgraceful sentence of death by stoning and against the two-fold oppression of women by the dictatorship of mullahs. We will vote for the resolution on the table in the hope that it will put pressure on the leaders of these countries and induce them to put an end to these barbaric practices. The dictatorship of mullahs is not the only regime under which women are barbarically oppressed, however. This is also the common practice of numerous regimes which the major powers consider to be their allies and on which they have the means to exert effective pressure, starting with Saudi Arabia and some of the oil emirates in the region. I also protest against the barbarity of the death penalty and against obscurantism, even when it is not practised by primitive religions but by the leaders of the principal world superpower, which has the gall to set itself up as the defender of civilisation.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, firstly, I should like to congratulate Mr Davies for the work that he has done on this report. He brings something to us which will hopefully provide some interesting issues to be debated and discussed and then resolved in consultation. This report excellently demonstrates why environment policy has to be achieved at a European level. Ozone is a European problem and the best example I can think of a problem that has to be addressed at the European level. For example, within the United Kingdom, where in many ways the circumstances are amongst the most favourable within the European Union, 50% of the ozone is created by emissions outside the UK. That is very much the pattern for the rest of Europe. Indeed, in many parts of Europe, a great many of the problems about ozone are not necessarily a consequence of activities by that individual Member State. Ozone is a collective problem which has to be dealt with collectively. I have one concern, namely that we are trying to set too strict values. We are setting target values that, by their very nature, will be almost impossible for many Member States to meet in certain given circumstances during the year. They are going to be, through no fault of their own, in breach of European legislation. It is not sensible that we should create a piece of legislation that puts Member States in this position. There are many Member States, particularly in southern and eastern-central Europe who are going to find themselves constantly in breach of this legislation, no matter what they do. Some of the things they are going to have to do, where physically possible, as indicated in the compromise amendments, is to close factories, perhaps shut down whole parts of industry, and create car-free zones inside their cities. And still they will not solve the problem of ozone. Still they will find themselves breaching this regulation we are creating. When we go into conciliation – as I expect we will because we will have the votes for many of these amendments in the House – we are going to have to think very carefully about whether we continue to adopt this type of approach and this type of legislation.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, I am pleased that Parliament, in collaboration with the Council, is now finally in a position to give Europe a chance to make its influence felt in the sphere of GMOs. We must be careful, however, that we do not now just sit back in the belief that we have finished our work. We have selected an authorisation procedure which is more restrictive than its American equivalent, and this will of course be significant in terms of our ability to hold onto the best companies and researchers. The time limits we adopt for processing applications should not, therefore, be applied as the rule but, instead, constitute an absolute maximum. We must reject the proposal that the entire liability for any damage should be shifted onto whoever has released the GMOs into the environment. A natural consequence of Europe’s strict authorisation procedure must be that the authorities assume a portion of the liability. Only by sharing the liability between the authorities and businesses in this way will it be possible to offset the competitive disadvantages presented by the laborious approval procedure, and only in this way will be able to compete with the Americans.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to start by congratulating Mr Howitt on a report which the Group of the European People’s Party can vote for almost without reservation, and the direction of which we endorse in principle. I would like to focus this evening on a group of non-state actors to whom the report does not give explicit credit. The report mainly refers to two categories of non-state actor: the trade unions, on the one hand, and private sector actors, on the other. It omits to mention one group of non-state actors which also meet the ‘non-governmental organisation’ criterion, by which I mean the independent political foundations. Being non-profit organisations, they cannot be categorised as non-state actors from business or industry. They are autonomous, even though their policy programmes are based on the political movements. In every case, however, they are non-governmental organisations. They are funded from within Europe. Their management and funding are subject to the most stringent financial controls and performance audits. They are established in most Member States and in a total of more than eighty countries worldwide, and they are recognised by the local partners. Most importantly, the foundations cover a wide range of fields: poverty alleviation, good governance, pluralist democracy, human rights, promoting SMEs, ‘green’ business, rule-of-law structures, control of security forces, healthcare, education and training in developing countries, etc. They develop synergies and work with many partners, especially NGOs. Until now, these foundations have mainly relied on national sources of funding. However, various functions have now been defined at European level for which these foundations have been qualifying themselves worldwide for decades. They are therefore natural partners for the EU in fulfilling these tasks. If the Konrad Adenauer Foundation or the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, for example, had not been present in a country such as Zimbabwe in recent years, many NGOs and civil society would have been without major partners to support their commitment to human rights, democracy and good governance. For this reason, the independent political foundations should also be given particular consideration in the present and, above all, in the future debate.

Political group: PPE-DE
Madam President, Commissioner Wallström, before turning to the de Roo report I would like to say a word about emissions trading in general, about the Moreira da Silva report, which Mrs Oomen-Ruijten also mentioned. In the Moreira da Silva report, Parliament proposed introducing an upper limit, a cap, for the national allocation plan, and we wanted every country’s national allocation plans to set the same limits. Unfortunately, the Council rejected the amendment at the time. That is one of the reasons why we are now faced with a situation where we have a hotchpotch of national allocation plans which are not really compatible with each other. Many Member States had still not notified a plan by 31 March at all, and some have submitted plans that are far from ambitious. I would like to expressly support you, Commissioner Wallström, in your commitment to encourage the Member States to implement the spirit and content of this directive, and if necessary bring proceedings before the European Court of Justice to oblige them to do so. Even though Parliament’s amendment was not adopted verbatim, the requirements of Annex III do not in fact allow industry to be granted generous increases in emissions. It is therefore very important that you keep your eyes open here. We have also written a letter to that effect to the President of the Commission, Mr Prodi. We cannot allow industry in those Member States that are relatively ambitious to suffer because a few Member States continue to believe they need not do anything at all; something must also be done at home, important as Joint Implementation and the Clean Development Mechanism are. This brings me to the de Roo report. I believe the de Roo report is an important step forward in international climate policy. We are strengthening the Kyoto process and we have also shown that there are certain limits here. Unlike Mr Linkohr, however, I believe we were right to stick to the position of not including sinks. You are almost always right, Mr Linkohr, but I believe you have miscalculated here, even if you are a physicist. In emissions trading itself we have an emission factor of zero for biomass, which means you do not need certificates at all if you burn biomass. Biomass burning gains a great deal from that. If we now also pay money for planting trees, we have deceived ourselves and are not protecting the climate.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, Commissioner, I wish to express my joy at having today been given the right for the first time to speak to this Parliament, the European Parliament, and to refer to an issue on which I have been engaged, the European Constitution. I was a member of the drafting Convention and I know that this Constitution is the fruit of agreement between the representatives of states, parliaments and civil society. It is not an editorial miracle, as many want and wanted what the Convention produced to be. However, it is a sui generis text which promotes the cohesion and unity of Europe. It promotes the principles and the values of Europe and it also promotes the vision of Jean Monnet and of the person we honoured today, Altiero Spinelli. Those who oppose approval of the Constitution are, I think, doing the European question a disservice because, in seeking something better, they are undermining something good. This Constitution, as I said, is the product of agreement; it is precisely what the European Union cultivates, a culture of cohesion and compromise. Consequently, extremes and approaches based on ethnic criteria are mistaken. I call for this Constitution to be adopted by the Intergovernmental Conference in 2004, so that 2004 can be christened the year of the European Constitution.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, Joost Lagendijk's report covers a great many issues, and we cannot comment on all of them here. However, I would like to start by saying that I totally support it, and that applies equally to my group. This part of Europe is a multi-speed region. Some countries, such as Macedonia and Croatia, already have agreements; theirs are stabilisation and association agreements, although that does not of course necessarily mean that all the conditions are being complied with in detail. Joost has already listed the deficits. It is, however, with some satisfaction that we can consider Albania, a country which has managed to make up for the fraudulent elections held in 2001 by electing a consensus president, something very few people expected, including the Commission. We would now like to see an early start made on the negotiations around this process, although we know that it will not be concluded rapidly, as there is still a lot of homework to be done. Turning to Bosnia and Herzegovina, it has to be said that this country is struggling to square the circle. I am referring to the Dayton Agreement. I simply wish to say, for example, that 67% of Bosnia and Herzegovina's entire budget is spent on ministers' salaries. There are over 120 ministers who only exist because they are virtually stipulated in the Dayton Agreement. Something has to be done about this and the last elections were a warning signal. Serbia and Montenegro's President and Prime Minister are squabbling with each other instead of jointly fighting for their country. Serbia and Montenegro should now be finding a joint path towards European membership, and the Solana proposal, no matter how limited it may be, is at present the best and the only way forward. With regard to Kosovo, which I visited again just last week, I can only say that we should be able to make sure that its peoples can coexist, thus making Serbian enclaves unnecessary. They have many problems in common. There are ethnic tensions in some countries, there are unsatisfactory refugee return arrangements, there is the battle against trafficking in human beings, which is also unsatisfactory, and there is corruption. Only one thing is clear, and that is that we must not back off from our commitment. That is the litmus test for our credibility. As Joost has already said, we need to have a precise idea of what we wish to achieve in this region in the near future. (Applause)

Political group: PPE-DE
The reduction of certain VAT rates could be an advantage for consumers. It must be said, however, that the term ‘labour-intensive services’ actually hides a barely-concealed subsidy for employers in certain sectors, without consumers enjoying, as we are led to believe, even the slightest advantage. We are in favour of removing VAT altogether, as this unjust consumer tax penalises even those whose salaries or pensions are too low to be taxable. It is a highly unequal tax, as it is applied at the same rate for the wealthy, who only spend a tiny proportion of their income on consumer goods, and the poor, whose sparse resources only just cover their expenditure. We abstained from voting on this report.

Political group: GUE-NGL
The eEurope programme forms part of the key aim of the Lisbon Strategy and of promoting the opportunities created by the new information and communication technologies (ICT), or what is known as the ‘new’ economy. This joint debate on the information society, of which this report is one component, seeks to give a new boost to this ‘new’ economy, pursuing the idea of a new model and that the ICTs are a type of panacea for economic growth, for job creation and for increasing productivity. Furthermore, the concept of innovation and the new technologies create new problems, specifically the commercialisation of knowledge and the creation of a two-fold exclusion/marginalisation, in particular for society’s most disadvantaged groups and for the regions that are geographically most remote or which have specific problems. The digital divide will therefore be between those who have and those who do not have access to the benefits provided by the new technologies, including small and medium-sized enterprises, which find it difficult to take full advantage of the new opportunities, because of shortcomings in investment and qualifications, despite greater pressure of competition. This attempt to provide a new boost, to be decided on at the Spring Council and which has come about in response to the failure of this model, proves that there is no such thing as a new or old economy; there is only economic rationality.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, as has been said, a British nuclear submarine has been moored at its Gibraltar base since 19 May. The smallest breakdown in the cooling system of a nuclear reactor can never be considered as insignificant, as it contains heavy water with radioactive isotopes. Moreover, the United Kingdom has knowingly failed to comply with Community regulations in terms of radiation protection, exposing its citizens in Gibraltar and those in Algeciras Bay to a very high probability of contamination, as it is now, and not last May, that it is recognising the extent of the breakdown. In this case, there has been a violation of Community law. We complained that Russia took four days to inform the European Community about its accident. We took two months. I suppose that the booing that we received from some British Members when we criticised the situation in this House was also directed at the citizens of Gibraltar. In this House we criticised the lack of information for the population in the area and of reliable and official news from the United Kingdom. In the same way, we criticise something which is a reality: the United Kingdom, faced with considerable social pressures in the country, has decided to transfer its base for nuclear submarine operations and repairs to Algeciras Bay, without respecting its own standards, which do not allow it to have this type of base in highly populated areas. Equally, we deplore the contemplative attitude of the Spanish Government, which only reacted when the pressure and concern reached a maximum. For the above reasons, those of us from Andalusia ask this Parliament, and its President, far beyond the bilateral diplomatic interests of the Member States, to carry out the appropriate consultations and negotiations to make it possible to immediately transfer this submarine to bases that have sufficient security conditions to repair it and thus to put an end to the public alarm that has been created.

Political group: Verts-ALE
Mr President, the Commissioner has made it very clear that the Convention in a sense falls into two parts: those parts covered by Community law and those parts covered by the Member States. But, as Mrs Banotti has indicated, the Convention is a holistic document and it would be wrong if some Member States had only part of it applied to them through the Community law method and did not ratify the other part. Now I know it is partly at the Commissioner's responsibility, but will he, in pushing forward the ratification of the Community part of the 1996 Convention, also make it clear to Member States that it makes sense for them to ratify the rest of that Convention at the same time so that there is no disparity between the Convention and the way it is applied in different Member States within the Community.

Political group: PSE