GwendalTsang/DEFT09-parquet huggingface dataset:
Mr President, first I would like to thank Mrs Haug for a very well prepared report. It continues a series of reports in which Mrs Haug has meritoriously and comprehensively analysed the EU’s system of own resources. The report under discussion is based on the decisions taken at the Berlin Summit, which involve many compromises. The most important basis mentioned were the estimates for Member States’ contributions, reconciliation on which became more important than safeguarding EU financing. The cornerstone of the system of own resources is still, however, the percentage a member pays out of GNP. The ceiling for committed contributions remains at 1.27% of GNP, which guarantees that EU revenue rises with inflation and general economic growth. But this is where the system’s clarity ends. First, the premium paid for the collection of traditional own resources, i.e. customs duty and agricultural levies, was increased to 25%. This rise in the rate is, in fact, a clear concession to those countries that collect mostly customs duties, relatively speaking. The rise was justified by the need to collect contributions more efficiently, but that is not sufficient justification. Politically, the most problematic issue is the rebate in respect of contributions by the United Kingdom. The UK has been a member of the EU for 30 years, so it cannot be a matter of a transitional stage. The same might be said for the agreement made on the payment of this rebate. The reduced contributions by Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and Austria do not have any proper justification either. Mrs Haug’s report contains a proposal whereby a report on amending the system should be drafted before 2004. It should examine in particular concessions on contributions and the possibility of creating a new system of own resources that would relate directly to the public, without increasing their burden of taxation. The Liberals support this reform, all the while stressing that the burden of taxation must not be increased. Perhaps new forms of own resources could include environmental protection taxes, as environmental questions concern all, and not just the new Member States. It is important, however, that the new system outlined in the report should come into effect in all respects from the beginning of 2007.

Political group: ELDR
Mr President, in our plenary sitting in September we experienced and shared moments of optimism and hope with Abraham Burg, speaker of the Knesset, and Ahmed Qurie, President of the Palestinian Legislative Council. A month and a half later, what we are now sharing is great concern over the way events are developing. On the one hand, there is the decision by the head of the Israeli government to put the peace negotiations on hold due to the violence in the area and focus on the creation of a government of national unity with the head of the opposition, Mr Sharon. On the other, there is the feeling that paramilitary militias and fundamentalist agitators have taken over the streets and taken the initiative in the territories under the control of the Palestinian National Authority. What is certain is that it is in difficult times such as these that the historic stature of political leaders is measured. Right now, Mr Barak and Mr Arafat must make their people understand that it is only through dialogue at a negotiating table, with painful concessions on both sides, that the conflict can be definitively resolved. The international community, and in particular the European Union, must persevere with their efforts to avoid a confrontation which would, moreover, constitute an extremely serious source of global instability. From a European perspective, for the first time since the Madrid conference, the European flag has been on the table in the peace process. The unity of action at a given moment has made it possible for the work and prestige of one of the Member States in this area to be used to the benefit of all. And while we are immersed in the institutional debate we could ask the European Commission to show creativity and political decisiveness in order to make progress in our integration in the second pillar as well. Does the French Presidency not agree?

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I should like to thank Mrs Hulthén for presenting her report on sustainable development, which she produced under great pressure of time and difficult circumstances. The will support the report. It contains important emphases for environmental policy. We are not, however, really in agreement with the wording on every point. In the matter of what it says about economic and social policy, in particular, it would have been good if we had had more time also to discuss them with the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs and the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs. If, for example, in item 32 we are calling for a minimum income and talking about access to essential services, that should not have its place in a report on environmental policy that has actually been prepared only by the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy, but only after intensive discussion with the Social and Economic Committees. I also regret – and it was no doubt also due to pressure of time – that we have taken up only one point on the development policy aspects of sustainable development, because anyone who has looked into sustainable development and the Rio process knows that development policy is a key part of the entire issue. I think more could have been said about that. That is not, however, a recrimination, because it was simply difficult for Parliament to cover everything properly under such pressure of time. One point in the report and in what Commission President Prodi said about sustainable development has caused quite a stir in Germany. It is found here in items 21 and 22 of this report. It concerns the removal of environmentally harmful subsidies, especially on coal. I personally believe that it must indeed be our aim in the long term to completely abolish environmentally harmful subsidies. However, I think we must be very cautious about specifying a date in the very near future. If the Group is calling for an end to them before 2005 in its forthcoming report on the Sixth Environment Action Programme, that will lead to mass redundancies and then we will certainly not achieve the objective sustainably. I therefore believe we should clearly state the objective, there is no dissent about that, but we should also give thought to alternative employment... (The President cut the speaker off)

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the Socialist Group in this House supports Mr van Hulten’s report and therefore also the unanimous decision and proposal from the Committee on Budgetary Control. So – nothing against an independent, internal audit service, to which we are giving the green light today with Mr van Hulten’s report! A professional audit is an essential component of modern management in the public and private sphere. However, a good audit is not in itself a miracle cure. I will not name any names here, but one could give a whole list of companies where renowned auditing firms have attested that all is well, only to find a few weeks or months later that they have collapsed. That is why I find it worrying that the Commission is obviously still intending, as before, to introduce the new audit service not as a useful complementary service but as a substitute for the traditional financial control. As previous speakers made clear, that means it is on a head-on collision course with a majority in this Parliament, which after all is responsible for scrutinising and assessing the Commission. Nor, unfortunately, is the independence of the new audit service beyond all doubt. Under the so-called fast-track procedure we are discussing today, the Commission guarantees that independence, but the draft document on the general reform of the Financial Regulation, of which we already have a provisional version, is a step back again in that respect. Why, for instance, Commissioner, does the Commission not want to grant the internal auditor the power to initiate proceedings before the European Court of Justice in the event of his independence being impeded? And is the independence of the internal auditor not also impeded if – even before he is appointed – a fait accompli is established by recruiting his staff in advance? We have other examples of where that leads. We need only think of OLAF. Here too the Commission faced the new director with a fait accompli by simply transferring the entire team of the former UCLAF task force to OLAF, even though it was clear that some of the officials were totally unqualified for the job. Result: the new director may come from the outside, but he immediately finds himself ensnared in a system that is already firmly established. I hope we will not see a repeat performance here! I can understand the Commission wanting to show that it can produce quick results; but when you talk to Commission officials, you get the sense of a mood of growing depression over the past months, and not only among the so-called losers, for of course some people are bound to lose out in any reform. Like several Member States, I think there is still some doubt as to what this general reform will cost at the final count or what benefits it will produce. We are still starting out from the simple idea that in the end the purpose of reform is to achieve greater efficiency. Today we still do not know whether it will and until we do I would advise this House to take a rather sceptical view of the European Commission’s reform process. After all, we owe it to our voters!

Political group: PSE
Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, universities in Greece are fast losing their academic credentials. Their basic functions are being privatised, they are increasingly controlled by business interests and they are forced to operate as enterprises subject to competition and the laws of the market in general. As a result, the standard of education provided is falling across the board. The European Union is the main driving force in this direction and the report is right behind it. The Communist Party of Greece is radically opposed to the Bologna process, to private universities, to interventions via the Green Paper, to the so-called European area of higher education and, of course, to the creation of a seat of European universities, all of which eradicate independence and the free circulation of ideas. We are fighting for state universities and state universities alone, subject to academic, not business control, which will meet grass-roots and social needs. We support cooperation between universities with due respect for the academic order. Ladies and gentlemen, universities are not grocery stores. If we let them become so, we shall dash any hopes which young people have of acquiring a rounded education and any hope which society has of a better future.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Madam President, the political results of the G8 summit, let us be frank about it, were virtually nil or even negative, and yet everything was clouded, as we all know, by the violent clashes. We register here the strongest possible protest against the Italian government and police forces, who were tolerant and permissive with the violent, but savage against the innocent. Europe has been able to judge, and it has judged with dismay and indignation the atrocious images of acts carried out in the developing world, persecutions as seen in Chile, as have been perpetrated by a Member State of the Union. We also here express our utter condemnation of the mindless violence by some groups of demonstrators and our severe criticism of those organisers who reject violence in words but who were unable or unwilling, in fact, to break off all relations with those in the movement who preached or advocated violence. Any tolerance in this respect plays into the hands of the enemies of the people’s cause. Any naivety by those who believe that it is enough to be right for right to prevail and who do not take the trouble to oppose, isolate and exclude the violent of all kinds is not a virtue but bears a poisonous fruit. It is a real boomerang that will hit back against the need to extend and expand the great movement against neo-free trade globalisation.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, the excellent work of both rapporteurs completes a remarkable series of reports by this Parliament on the implementation of Article 13. This first year of the 21st century has shown the EU institutions determined to entrench non-discrimination as a basic European value and fundamental human right. I want to concentrate especially on the Mann report and specifically Article 4. This would permit continued discrimination where it is an essential or genuine requirement. In particular, it provides that there can be occupational discrimination on religious grounds. This is clearly a powerful exception to the rule on non-discrimination. It must be justified on tight criteria and not abused. I therefore welcome the committee's amendments to that end, although I would prefer that Member States should be permitted but not obliged to offer such religious privileges. I have requested a split vote on the word 'shall' for that purpose. It is essential that discrimination on religious grounds should not be a pretext to discriminate against employees on other grounds, for example, because they are homosexual. I am sure that sensible and moderate religious organisations would not seek to do so to exploit this as a loophole. But we must not allow fundamentalists with prejudiced views of any religion to allow their views to prevail against the non-discrimination standards of secular society. I am aware that there is a rising tide of lobbies in politics which are seeking to extend the grip of religion in the public sphere. There is a proper sphere for religion. The compromise in this report allows plenty of space to religious organisations and it must not be abused.

Political group: ELDR
Mr President, the aid which we are discussing is yet another instrument of foreign intervention in this highly sensitive region of Europe. International imperialism is well versed in the art of using the stick and the carrot, of alternating bombing incursions with humanitarian aid, destruction with reconstruction. Its final objective is to subjugate people to the new world order. What I want to know is how can those who sowed disaster talk of reconstruction? How do murderers of children and civilians have the gall to give their victims lessons in democracy, the rule of law and human rights? The imperialist forces owe Yugoslavia war reparation, not humanitarian aid. The events which unfolded in Yugoslavia a few weeks ago, the so-called popular uprising, was backed by at least USD 100 million in foreign aid to the so-called 'democratic opposition'. These events may well have created a climate of euphoria in leading imperialist circles; but they know full well that they have not subdued the spirit of resistance in the Yugoslavian or any other people. That is why they are preparing military and police strike forces.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, it concerns two matters. It concerns a number of agencies that we have looked at and, in particular, it concerns the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work in Bilbao. I was extremely surprised when I read the Court of Auditors' report, because the Court of Auditors accuses this agency of having carried over far too much. On closer examination, it turned out that this was in connection with an SME programme that we here in Parliament had resolved on. It took some time to reach agreement with the Commission about where this programme should be implemented, but eventually it was decided to give it to the agency in Bilbao. That, of course, is no fault of the agency in Bilbao, but nevertheless the Court of Auditors made a very negative comment about this. It would, of course, have been very easy for them to check that. You ask yourself sometimes: is that so? We all knew it here and rapporteur Mulder has stated that in the final version of his report, albeit rather less bluntly than I am doing. It would nevertheless be good if the Court of Auditors did not only look at the first level, but also went into things a bit deeper. That is my opinion on this matter; apart from that there are no problems with the agencies that we are dealing with. As far as the rest are concerned, we confined ourselves in the main to the Structural Funds. There is always a problem with that and that is the problem that Member States always over-estimate how much they can get out of the Structural Funds. That leads to a budget that does not balance, and that leads at the end of the year to money that has not been spent. This is especially the case at the beginning of a period. I think that the Commission needs to be a bit less naive in this respect. Up to now it was the case that when a new period started, we got practically nothing off the ground in the first year. It would be good, of course, if we could do better than this in the future. This point should be organised better in the future than it is now, otherwise it means that we never learn anything from the past.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, it is clear from what the Commissioner has said that the Commission is conscientious in measuring the additionality of structural funding at Member State level, and it was good also to hear his assurances about the various different levels of evaluation that take place. As the Commission will be aware, however, a number of Member States within the European Union have devolved systems of regional government. Such regional systems of government are normally financed in whole or in part from central government funds. It appears to me that, under the present rules, central government can build the EU contribution to structural funding into its calculations for determining regional government budgets. There appears to be no mechanism, despite what the Commissioner said, for ensuring either of two things: first, that the additionality rule is applied to this calculation, and second, that the amount of EU funding which ultimately reaches individual regions corresponds directly to the amount earmarked for those regions at the planning stage. At the very least, this engenders a lack of transparency. It may also mean that the additionality principle is not being properly implemented on a region-by-region basis. I accept, like Mrs Evans, that this does not, strictly speaking, contradict the letter of European Union law on this matter. But, unlike her, it seems to me to be quite clearly contrary to the spirit of additionality rules and undermines the very purposes for which structural funding was established in the first place. Although I come from Scotland, I know these issues are of concern not just to my Liberal Democrat colleagues from other parts of the United Kingdom but also to members representing regions across the whole of the European Union.

Political group: ELDR
Mr President, I have here a speech I gave on 9 April 1992, in which I referred to the coup, the so-called self-inflicted coup, by President Fujimori, and at the time I said that it was not acceptable for a democratically elected president to relinquish his legitimacy by relying on the armed forces. Since the last electoral farce, Fujimori has lost his legitimacy and not only that, but he has lost the political support that he previously had. At the moment, the question that arises is the future of Peru, of knowing whether the country will be able to get out of the difficult situation in which Mr Fujimori has now placed it. Various political groups have presented a joint draft resolution in which we basically ask President Fujimori to go, but to do so in such a way that, through a process of clean and democratic elections, democracy can be consolidated in that country. Secondly, we ask the institutions of the European Union to help the democratic process in Peru, which is something that they are capable of doing. We are also asking for a delegation from the European Parliament to go to Peru in order to monitor the development of events on the ground. We hope that Fujimori does not make things worse, that he makes this transition possible and that in Peru there will not be the same situation as there currently is in Belgrade, with a popular uprising that is practically on the streets. Therefore, I think that if the European institutions and the European Parliament help the Peruvian people at this difficult time, we could contribute to the stability of the country and to the consolidation of democratic institutions across Latin America.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, it remains to be seen how serious the growing threat of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome will become, but Taiwan has already demonstrated a willingness to respond expeditiously to the outbreak, in full cooperation with the WHO. This contrasts favourably with the abysmal response of the authorities in Beijing, whose first response was to find refuge in denial, misinformation and obfuscation. That response led quite rightly to the resignation of China's health minister and to the open admission by the Chinese Government of the seriousness of the outbreak. Nevertheless, Chinese television has so far found it impossible to ask the kind of searching questions which one would expect in a Western democracy. Sadly, China remains a secretive, repressive, Communist state in spite of free market reforms. Already there is talk of a new glasnost in China. That change is to be welcomed. The initial reaction of the people has been shock and disillusionment, but in time China will be stronger for its openness. Greater honesty with its people and greater debate will help China realise its enormous potential. An attempt to go back to the old ways would simply hinder that process. China can also learn from Taiwan in cooperating fully with the WHO, whilst observer status in its assembly for Taiwan will be of great benefit not only to the organisation itself but also to China. Cooperation is the politics of the future. We should also reflect in Europe on the need to give powers to public health authorities to contain those with the disease, so that any mass outbreak in Europe can be effectively contained. In that respect, I have to say with regret that the British Government appears to have followed the example of China's former health minister by pretending there is no problem to deal with in our country. We have a right to expect better than that from our elected representatives and their officials.

Political group: PPE-DE