GwendalTsang/DEFT09-parquet huggingface dataset:
Mr President, Commissioner, my heartfelt thanks are due today to Mrs Martens and Mrs Avilés Perea for their reports on the programme of action for mainstreaming gender equality in development cooperation and on the annual report for 2000. I think there are a number of parallels between them, and Social Democrat members can note with satisfaction that yet another building block has been added to implement the platform of the Beijing Conference on Women. The framework strategy of gender mainstreaming is being implemented consistently. We are facing a thorough analysis of the problem and see here clear instructions as to how it is to be implemented on a regional and national basis. Gender awareness is in the meantime becoming accepted among some decision-makers, and we know that sustainable development must first begin with women. We also know that sustainable development cannot be had for free, and so it is appalling that the Budget allocation for gender-specific development cooperation, which was EUR 5 million as recently as 1998, was cut by 60% in 2001. How is a change in thinking to be brought about? Incidentally, I recall that the Member States had undertaken to utilise 0.7% of their gross national product for development aid. We are nowhere near approaching that. If we do not act without delay, the credibility of the so-called developed countries will be at stake. I also ask the Commission what became of the ‘gender desk’ in development cooperation. How are we to improve reproductive health and family planning, improving access to contraception – which includes ensuring the prevention of HIV/Aids – and, moreover, get these things into rural areas, if we do not replenish Budget resources to a marked degree? Political discussion may well have enabled us to rescue from the realm of taboo practices which demonstrate contempt for the personal value of women, such as genital mutilation, public floggings, stonings, violence and sexual abuse, to blow the whistle on them on the international stage and also combat them politically, but there is also a need for practical implementation. We need consistent annual reviews such as that in Mrs Avilés Perea's report, in order to be able to examine the facts. That is why my group supports both reports. We can do no other than back them up entirely and call on the Commission to make these noble objectives a reality.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, I would like to tell Parliament that this morning the Prince of Asturias Foundation awarded the prestigious Concord Prize jointly to Daniel Barenboim and Edward Saïd. I believe this is an appropriate encore to the concert we enjoyed on Monday. (Applause) ***

Political group: PSE
Mr President, Commissioner, the economic relations between the EU and Yugoslavia are of a special kind. For a long time, there were no relations. After October 2000, the EU promptly made EUR 200 million available to Yugoslavia by way of emergency aid. This just illustrates that even the EU can work quickly and efficiently. Last week, the EU showed itself in its best light at the donor conference. We are now discussing here in Parliament macro-financial assistance to the tune of EUR 300 million to cover budget shortages, including a considerable gift in the sum of EUR 120 million. In my view, the assistance we are discussing this evening is representing the end of a certain era, namely the transition from autocracy to democracy. This aid is welcome and appropriate at this stage, but in my opinion it also has the feel of a one-off gesture. It may also be useful to indicate that special conditions apply, of which I should like to mention two. As Mr Brok has already stated, it is not the case that the approval and spending of these funds are subject to very special conditions, but sound cooperation must be established with the political and safety committee because the EU’s aid to Yugoslavia must be granted in a politically coherent fashion. That also applies to the assessment of that aid. Subsequent to this macro-financial assistance, it will have to be carefully examined, particularly on a political plane, if this form of aid is required in future. My group has reached the conclusion that it is important for the EU to be quick off the mark, efficient and generous, whenever that is useful and needed politically speaking. It is about being able to transfer resources quickly and efficiently, not being afraid to take the lead and not being frightened to be dependent on other donors. But we must also be able to change strategy quickly and efficiently. That is why, in my view, it is important to support this kind of aid in the anticipation that it will probably be the last time that aid will be granted to Yugoslavia in this form.

Political group: Verts-ALE
Noise at work can cause effects such as fatigue, communication difficulties and total hearing loss. This report won my vote because it lays down a balanced set of rules aimed at protecting workers against the risks of exposure to noise, and sets out exposure limits. Implementation of this directive will thus lead to a significant reduction in existing noise levels and, therefore, an improvement in working conditions. Current problems in this area may in future be greatly reduced or even avoided altogether through the action employers are expected to take to assess and improve the noise levels to which workers are exposed. Nor must we forget the adoption of preventive measures at all stages, from the design of workstations and workplaces, through improvements in their layouts, to the provision of suitable machinery and equipment. Lastly, workers must be made aware of the problem and be trained in the right way to use the equipment.

Political group: PPE-DE
Let us talk about the Galileo project, Mr President. As you know better than me, Galileo Galilei, the great Italian scientist, used to study the sky with his telescope from the earth. Here, the opposite is happening: Galileo will study the earth from the heights of the satellites, which is where he will be sent into orbit. This coincidence is curious but it does not alter the fact that the Galileo project is very important, and so I voted for the motion.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the Committee on Citizens’ Freedoms, I would also like to congratulate the general rapporteur, Mr Costa Neves. I also want to offer congratulations and thanks to all my colleagues on the Committee on Budgets. It is a rare privilege – and I can measure its worth as a committee rapporteur – to be able to say that the Committee on Budgets accepted all the demands we had made, they were, of course, legitimate and carefully considered, and which were put forward in Parliament at second reading. So I want to thank the general rapporteur and all the members of the Committee on Budgets. That said, I would like to address the Council more directly, address the intelligence of the Council, if I dare put it that way, knowing that Mr Vande Lanotte is bound to understand what I mean. Four years ago, the European Parliament proposed setting up a European fund for refugees, an idea that the Council angrily struck off the list at second reading. No European refugee fund. Four years have passed and now the Council has just proposed more money than we ourselves had even asked for the European refugee fund it had refused to create. It took the Council all of four years to understand, to become responsible and, with respect, to show some intelligence. Another example: for several years now we have included a Schengen list at the budget’s first reading, because for several years we have wanted some of its aspects to be communitised and financed from the Community budget. Each year the Council would angrily strike off the Schengen heading at second reading. This time, the Council needs the Schengen heading we had introduced because it has to finance SIS II and has decided to finance it on a Community basis. That brings me to the third problem. We decided – Parliament did so at first reading and will do so at second reading – to vote to enter EUR 5 million under the Europol heading to combat terrorism. The Council did not accept this at second reading. I would ask the President-in-Office of the Council to do the impossible and to create the necessary legal basis and agreements. I would ask it to use this money without waiting four years, because the terrorists for their part will not wait that long. IN THE CHAIR: MR PROVANVice-President

Political group: PPE-DE
The Moderate delegation has today voted in favour of the resolution on the closure of undertakings after receiving EU financial aid. We Moderates find it gratifying that, with this resolution, the European Parliament is attending to the harmful consequences that often arise in connection with the EU’s Structural Funds. We believe that the Structural Funds lead to a large and unwieldy merry-go-round of subsidy which, when it is used to aid undertakings, causes unemployment to be transferred between the EU Member States and a distortion of competition for individual undertakings. What, instead, is required as a basis for creating more jobs are deregulation, lower taxes and fewer barriers to trade. If the European Union is to have any possibility of achieving the Lisbon objective, the Structural Funds’ aid activities should cease as soon as possible. ***

Political group: PPE-DE
The Members of Parliament from the Lutte Ouvrière Party shall not be voting in favour of these reports on European competition policy. Competition is a war which has major concerns fighting each other, which constantly takes the form of layoffs, factory closures, not to mention extensive waste of production capacity. We see a further example of this with the planned layoffs in Europe proposed by the corporation ABB Alsthom Power. Eighteen million unemployed and 50 million poor people within the European Union, despite its being one of the wealthiest regions in the world: these are the results of this competition which the European institutions intend to promote. The Commission’s declared intention to regulate the conditions of competition on the European market is ridiculous, for the only law which competition respects is the law of the jungle where the most powerful squash or devour the weakest elements. This is repulsive most of all in social terms. The European Commission’s report is a blunt demonstration of the fact that the Union institutions have no interest in anything except the major capitalist corporations who are engaged in this economic warfare and have no interest in the victims this causes. There is nothing to prevent the spread of unemployment, nothing to protect employees, nothing to prevent the major concerns driving part of the population into poverty simply to make their shareholders richer still! We acknowledge that this report does have one good point – it shows that the working class majority in society can expect nothing from the European institutions in terms of safeguarding their living conditions, and still less of improving them.

Political group: GUE-NGL
May I support the efforts of Mr Papayannakis to endorse proposals for an EU-wide compulsory identification system for cows and the labelling of beef and beef products. Following the hullabaloo of food scares in recent times, most notably Mad Cow Disease, it is vital that we take measures to ensure that this type of food hazard does not happen again. Food safety is a top priority and we must work hard towards alleviating the fears of consumers. These new proposals enable consumers to trace the source of the meat they buy right back to the animal. This should allow for any possible health threats to be tackled early and effectively. From September 2000, beef labelling must show the point of slaughter of the animal, and from 2003, the origin of the animal including where it was born, reared and slaughtered must be added. Public confidence in food safety has fallen tremendously in the past. We must, of course, put safety first, and also make moves towards rebuilding public confidence. British farmers particularly recognise that clear labelling is the best way of reassuring worried consumers that the beef they buy is safe. This House should do its utmost to ensure that public health and safety is high on the agenda. Pushing for clear labelling is the only way to convince our customers that food safety is top of our list. - Lisbon European Council

Political group: PSE
Mr President, I should merely like to clear up a misunderstanding. An amendment to measure military noise has not been re-tabled, as was wrongly assumed by some MEPs. That is therefore no longer a point of discussion.

Political group: Verts-ALE
The explanatory statement quite rightly denounces the ‘social’ apartheid that continues apartheid pure and simple, and claims to act to ‘reduce the gap between the poor and the rich.’ If this were even slightly true, we would vote in favour of this report, but we have our doubts, because the main sector mentioned as destined to receive a restructuring benefit of EUR 15 million is the South African wines and spirits sector. It seems doubtful that this type of assistance will reach the townships, the squalid and crowded districts where the poor live. The report does not even make it possible to rule out the hypothesis that, among the wine producers in question, besides rich South Africans, there are also big Western companies. Furthermore, nothing makes it possible to verify that the ‘direct budgetary support’ is indeed going toward social budgets or public utilities and not, for example, toward the purchase of arms and military and police equipment to confront the poor. This being so, we prefer to abstain.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, I should like above all to thank the rapporteur for this report. It is good that we should not forget frontier workers and their problems. The report is further evidence that Regulation 1408/71 requires thorough revision and simplification, proposals for which have been before the Council for two years. We can, therefore, once again regret the lack of success in obtaining more majority voting at the Intergovernmental Conference in Nice. The Danish Social Democrats broadly agree with most of what the rapporteur says, but I completely and utterly disagree with her when she sees it as a problem that ever more features of national social insurance are financed through public funds. Regulation 1408/71 concerns the coordination, and not the harmonisation, of social security arrangements, and it is important to make this clear. I should like to emphasise this, because it is precisely this form of argument which has given an unwarranted boost to those Danish opponents of the EU who maintain that the EU is eroding the Danish welfare system. It is partly those who organise resistance to the EU who are purposefully working to ensure that nothing at all happens in this area. They seem to forget that the Council’s incapacity for action does in fact have consequences – consequences for those people and their families who work across national frontiers and who are plagued by uncertainty. However, one further consequence of the Council’s incapacity to act is, in actual fact, that it is the courts, instead of the politicians responsible, who take the decisions. The Eurosceptics talk such a lot about democracy, but it can never be democratic to omit to take the necessary decisions and, in that way, to consign people to insecurity and to give the courts a degree of influence which politicians ought to have.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, in the coming weeks we shall have to carry out a rigorous, in-depth analysis of the conclusions of the Intergovernmental Conference and the fundamental questions which it has thrown up. I will not go back to the comments of the different speakers regarding the method nor the other subjects such as those covered by Mr Brok just now. Of the fundamental questions, the first is that the Nice conclusions do not guarantee on an institutional level the necessary continuity and the necessary development of the process of integration into the larger Union which is about to come into being. Therefore, even though we may not call them leftovers, the issues which were not adequately resolved in Nice will inevitably arise again. I refer to the changeover in qualitatively essential areas to qualified majority voting and to the very procedures for taking majority decisions. Time will show us which issues we need to return to, whether we like it or not. The second fundamental issue is political rather than institutional. The atmosphere of the Nice Council, the lack of openness, as President Prodi said, the blinkered vision characterising the attitudes of the different governments – the narrow-minded defence of national interests or policies – explain, it is sad to say, the root of the problem: a serious loss of the sense of shared European interest, of a common European vision. Well, the appropriate responses to both the institutional and political fundamental questions, which are our most negative legacy from the Nice Council, must be sought in dialogue, in the evaluation and development process which must be pursued under the title 'the future of the Union'. We must reflect seriously on what has happened. We managed to avoid an open crisis which would have threatened enlargement by coming to a last minute agreement on the Treaty, but we are left with a latent crisis which will have to be dealt with. Building a unified Europe requires far-sighted vision and coherence. In response to President Chirac, we are not calling for haste; we are asking not to have to take one step forwards and then one backwards, not to call for promotion of the drafting and proclamation of the Charter when we do not then dare to include it in the Treaty, not to call for the new wording of the Convention to be produced when we then do not even dare to suggest it as a potential post-Nice procedure. We want the objective of constitutionalisation to be called by its name; we are asking for a response, with a clear, coherent vision of the future of Europe, to the disappointments and fears which are spreading amongst the citizens over the current or future nature of the Union. Mr Prodi, Commissioner Barnier, this is our task. We have every confidence that Parliament and the Commission will proceed together in this direction, as they have done throughout this difficult year 2000.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, I have two points. While legally debatable, the execution of Sheikh Yassin must not cause us to forget who he was: the instigator of the worst suicide attacks and the head of a movement whose charter still calls for the destruction of Israel and, beyond that – let us not forget – the physical elimination of Jews throughout the world. Do we mourn this man? Secondly, the American plan deserves some consideration since it invites us to move beyond the illusion in which European action is currently mired, the illusion whereby resolution of the conflict would precede the democratisation of the Middle East. As we know, democracies do not wage war against each other, so there will be no lasting solution to the conflict without democratisation and modernisation of the Middle East. Without such a Copernican revolution, Mr President, we will forever have the spectacle of a sententious but powerless Europe, which Commissioner Patten embodies with the perfection of an old Shakespearean actor.

Political group: ELDR
Madam President, as the representative of the Pensioners’ Party, there have been many occasions on which I have stated, at the committee stage, that the European Union must intervene in regulating the lives of the elderly, and in the measures and rules on pensions, as is already the case, in coordination. Similarly, as concerns the field of justice and criminal law, which we have discussed today, I believe not only that the different criminal law, juridical and administrative legislative systems should be coordinated, but also that we must at last formulate common standards: an offence committed in Italy must also be viewed as an offence in Great Britain, Spain or elsewhere. I believe that we, the Parliament of the European Union, who are the elected representatives of the citizens, must give sharper impetus to ensuring that the European Union provides for the regulation of every facet of the lives of its citizens, including that of justice, and that of pensions.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, Commissioner, it is a well-known fact that you are not entirely averse to cars yourselves and also enjoy driving. It would therefore be a jolly good idea if, merely by being fitted with new tyres, our own cars were to cause 40% less noise and, at the same time, use 5% less fuel and also emit less CO2. This is the road we should be going down. There are already tyres whose specifications are well below the values proposed in the common position when it comes both to tyre noise and to the rolling resistance which is responsible for petrol consumption and CO2 emissions. There are even tyres to which the Federal Republic of Germany awards a Blue Angel as a sign of environmental friendliness because they are a model of quiet operation and give rise to low petrol consumption. Now, these tyres are not particularly unsafe. On the contrary. Michelin and Dunlop tyres even make for shorter braking distances while remaining quiet and preserving fuel economy. I am therefore wondering why this Parliament cannot summon up the courage to say that whatever is now already state of the art technology is what we demand by 2005 for all tyres, particularly those fitted to private cars. I should therefore like strongly to request that we adopt Amendment No 1, through which we call for limit values not only for tyre noise but also for rolling resistance, and that we adopt, in particular, Amendment No 2 in connection with quieter tyres. I would ask you to consider that this does not yet mean the end of the negotiations. We are entering into the negotiations in the Conciliation Committee with the Council, and we shall then see what emerges. However, we must also have room for manoeuvre.

Political group: PSE
I should like to congratulate the Commissioner on the win by his home team in football today. I want to follow in a similar vein to the previous speaker. We welcome the proposals in the Green Paper. However, Commissioner, you will agree that your ideas are progressing very fast in this area. In the light of the proposals on better government that came out last week, which Mr Harbour mentioned, I want to ask you three specific questions. What improvements do you intend to make in terms of consultation of all the actors involved – consumers, SMEs, and the government departments that will have to implement any particular laws that emerge from this? How do you intend to improve the evaluation of the impact assessment in terms of cost? Can you guarantee to make available all consultations on the web so that these will be available for consultation? I would like to thank your staff for providing me with previous consultations. However, it has to be said that they are all in different languages. I cannot read all of them; and if there is to be transparency on these issues they need to be available publicly on the web and in languages that people can understand.

Political group: PSE