GwendalTsang/DEFT09-parquet huggingface dataset:
Mr President, I believe that this is the first time that the debate on assistants to Members of the European Parliament has had the honour of being discussed in the open, in other words, in a plenary sitting. I therefore wish to begin by welcoming in particular the initiative presented here by our colleague, Mr Rocard, to bring into the open a debate which must be conducted with the utmost transparency. Ladies and gentlemen, from a personal point of view, I would even argue for a common statute for parliamentary assistants based on the categories currently laid down in the Staff Regulations. The revision proposed as a joke by Commissioner Kinnock might even be a good opportunity to lay down a decision of this type. In any event, I suspect that we are a long way from that point. We must therefore do the best with what we have and with solutions which may be enshrined in European instruments, such as the Staff Regulations, but which represent only one possible approach towards a future European statute. We all know that the new rules adopted by Parliament on the situation of parliamentary assistants are nothing more than internal regulations. We must ensure the transparency of the contracts, public recruitment procedures, the requirement for an effective system of social protection and the payment of tax in each of the Member States. These rules are an expression of our political will but they also reveal the weakness of Parliament’s powers to regulate an entire statute for parliamentary assistants, which involves, of course, much more than just these issues. In any event, now that these rules have been agreed on, I am sure that there is a broad majority in this House, and this can be seen in the Bureau, in the Contact Group and in the speeches that have been made here, that wishes the Council to frame in law what is already being practised, affecting only our institutions, through an amendment to Regulation No 1408/71, which is a general rule covering migrant workers. Ultimately, by means of the amended base Regulation which applies to all the Member States, we want parliamentary assistants to be given the right, as migrant workers, to be able to choose to be governed by the legislation of the country that is most relevant to their work, which is divided between Brussels, Strasbourg, Luxembourg and the country of origin of the Member of the European Parliament for whom they work. We have been informed today, by Commissioner Liikanen, that the Commission is, at last, going to get the ball rolling on this dossier. We will then begin to emerge from the tunnel in which we are stuck if the Belgian Presidency manages to close this dossier. Later, if the Belgian Presidency is successful, we will have to conclude the work. That, however, Mr President, is simply a matter of tidying up loose ends.

Political group: PSE
Madam President, let me say right away that we shall be voting in favour of the Trakatellis report, but, once again, we see dysfunction in the European Union, because we are urgently adopting a link between two programmes, as if it were a surprise that programmes supposed to end in the year 2000, actually do end in the year 2000. I agree with Mr Trakatellis: you cannot play games with patients’ health when they expect our help, or with non-governmental organisations which need these Community budgets to deliver the health policies on the ground. In general, it is high time the Member States agreed to give the European Union a greater margin of manoeuvre and a more substantial budget, on a legitimately supranational issue: diseases know no frontiers. Above all, a framework programme should not forget the specific actions on the pretext of refocusing. For example, even if the fight against AIDS is not fashionable, it still needs to be a priority because this tragic disease remains very present, particularly in the future candidate countries. In conclusion, we hold that the goal of a future European strategy must be the incorporation of health issues into all the other Community policies, so as to put an end to current anomalies, like allocating 50 million euros to the fight against cancer while subsidising the tobacco industry to the tune of one billion!

Political group: Verts-ALE
There were many of us, not only here in Europe but throughout the world, who put our faith in President Khatami. That applied above all, of course, to the Iranian people. We all hoped that he would be able to lead Iran onto a more democratically open and tolerant path. Unfortunately, we have all, time after time after time, been disappointed. The latest reports are frightening. Journalists, intellectuals and critics of the regime disappear and are tortured, imprisoned and put on trial for trivial reasons. The death penalty is frequently applied. In that respect, Iran is one of the world’s worst offenders. The latest reports of women having been stoned to death according to ancient sharia laws are utterly hair-raising. The fact that this is happening in 2002 is completely unacceptable. A whole world turns in abhorrence upon Iran. Relations between the EU and Iran are characterised by a certain amount of caution, which is good. If these relations are to become meaningful, the issue of human rights must always be at the top of the agenda, however. I would also draw attention to the fact that Parliament has its veto when it comes to acknowledging possible agreements, and this is something we shall use if the situation does not improve.

Political group: ELDR
Mr President, obtaining food supplements as health products from the Internet is not encouraged by this report. I well understand the life stories of the individuals who are concerned by this directive, but my own experiences tell me something different. In my opinion, substances that are used to treat and alleviate the symptoms of serious illnesses, of illnesses that may not yet be curable at the present time, should be covered by legislation on medicinal products and have nothing to do with the consumption of foodstuffs. In other words, products with pharmaceutical ingredients which are advertised as possessing medicinal powers must be subject to licensing as medicinal products. The aim of the directive is to harmonise maximum permissible quantities of active ingredients throughout the 15 Member States and to improve national conditions on the basis of criteria relating to the harmlessness of products to human health as a preventive measure of consumer protection. The national food and pharmaceuticals industries are vying for an extremely lucrative market in foodstuffs enriched with active ingredients. A new type of food product is being advertised here, and the advertisements often focus on additional health- and performance-enhancing qualities, sometimes proven but often imputed, of these products. I believe that it is important and that it befits our responsibility to ensure that the line between medicinal and food products does not become blurred or negotiable. In this expanding market, the pharmaceuticals and foodstuffs industries will move heaven and earth to enrich food products with additives which are not naturally found in those products. The report is based on transparency, disclosure and safety for consumers. For this reason I support it. The directive will never absolve patients and consumers, however, from the imperative obligation to read the small print: ‘If in doubt, please consult your doctor or pharmacist’. This is why scientists and researchers have a legal entitlement to improve this common position.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, I fully support Mr Watson’s excellent report, particularly the text of the question in which the European Parliament calls upon the Council and the Commission to take seriously the fundamental human rights which the European Union proclaims every day. We believe that it is possible to respect human rights while pursuing a proper policy of combating illegal immigration. However, we do need appropriate instruments, appropriate forms of control, for otherwise a blind, bureaucratic system of rejection and forced repatriation will lead to tragedies such as that which occurred recently in Italy. In Milan, a family travelling from Syria, in transit from Amman to Casablanca, was forced to be repatriated to Syria, where the head of the family was immediately arrested and is in danger of being tortured and may be sentenced to death. We call upon you to ensure that similar tragedies are avoided so that nobody can say, as is stated in the minority opinion, that the Union’s readmission policy leads to the death of human beings. I call upon the Commission and the Council to make every endeavour to remedy the consequences of that tragic act carried out in my country, which can lead to a person being killed in another country.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, I too am sorry that the vote will not now be taking place. I am concerned, as are the other speakers, at the plight of the people in Iraq. One should never forget that the plight of the people in Iraq is being inflicted upon them by their own government. We should not forget that in January this year Parliament passed a resolution asking that the Kuwaiti prisoners of war still imprisoned in Iraq should be released or at least that details should be given to their families and that there should be compliance with the United Nations resolutions. That has not happened and we must be quite unequivocal in sending the message to Iraq, and indeed to the people of Kuwait, that we in Europe are not going to forget and are not going to ignore the plight of those people still being improperly imprisoned in Iraq. We want to make that message as loud and clear and unequivocal as we possibly can.

Political group: PPE-DE
I voted against the motion for a resolution on services of general interest since the voting trends of the majority of MEPs do not give an objective picture of the consequences of the liberalisation undertaken to date. Furthermore, they pave the way for the liberalisation of other sectors. Today, as we have already asked in the past, we must hold a serious, pluralist and open assessment of liberalisation policy and make the conclusions public. We must re-examine the liberalisation that has taken place, in order to make the adoption of a framework directive as effective as possible. Furthermore, it is high time we definitively excluded some sectors from the prevailing competition policy at Community level. This applies particularly to health, education and social services, including social housing. Finally, we must guarantee the subsidiarity under which local or territorial powers are exercised. This motion does not establish European services of general interest as an added value of the European structure but as a means of achieving the EU’s territorial, economic, ecological and social cohesion goals. Services of general interest are an essential element of our social model, which we must defend and promote.

Political group: PSE
President, this Parliament, by huge cross-party majorities, has made clear that it will no longer accept that animals should be made to suffer for the sake of developing yet more products to flatter human vanity. It is a moral issue; human health will be protected, because after the deadlines for the end of animal testing, new cosmetic products simply cannot be put on the market until alternative testing methods are in place. This is the seventh amendment to the original directive; each time the deadline drew near an extension of time was granted to the industry, so incentives to invest in the development of alternatives were removed. We are today drawing a line that must not again be shifted. Animal welfare groups are unhappy with the outcome of the negotiations between Parliament and the Council, but I hope they recognise that real progress has been made. The Commission's proposal has been transformed, there will be a complete ban on animal testing within the EU and a ban on the sale of cosmetics tested on animals outside the EU, six years after entry into force. Month after month, ministers told us that such a marketing ban would be contrary to WTO rules, but these objections were at last overcome during our middle-of-the-night negotiations. I pay tribute to our rapporteur Dagmar Roth-Berendt, and I thank our chief lobbyists Marlou Heinen of the RSPCA, Emily McIvor of BUAV, and Charles Laroche of Unilever who presented the acceptable face of an industry many have grown to mistrust. There are practical steps now to be taken. In particular the authorisation procedures for new testing methods must be accelerated. Pressure to develop alternatives must now be put on the chemicals and pharmaceuticals industries, which use the same tests. The cosmetics industry should recognise the strength of feeling in this Parliament. The directive permits no postponement of the deadlines, and the Commission must understand that if it comes back in a few years' time with proposals for new legislation to extend the time limits yet again it will meet with a very hostile response.

Political group: ELDR
Mr President, after three long years, we are, at last, nearing the end of the process of revising Directive 90/220/EEC. Anyone who has watched the progress made, step by step, towards this goal, as I have, cannot fail to agree that we are providing the European Union with legislation on genetically modified organisms which, in addition to improving upon the previous legislation, also places us at the forefront on an international level. Just one example is the procedures for granting authorisations, particularly in terms of transparency and accessibility to the public, which is an essential condition for the necessary research trials to be able to proceed in a favourable climate. Further examples are the assessment and monitoring of the cumulative effects on the environment, and the phasing out of antibiotic-resistant marker genes. The lion's share of the praise for this progress must certainly go to our rapporteur, Mr David Bowe, who has succeeded in combining decisiveness with flexibility. It is certainly the fault of the Commission, rather than Mr Bowe, if we are still labouring under the burden of being unable, at present, to adopt flanking legislation on the tracing and labelling of GMOs and GMO derivatives placed on the market and thereby present the consumer with a complete framework of certainties. The undertaking, confirmed yesterday in a letter from the Commission to the Members of the parliamentary delegation, is important in political terms but does not entirely make up for the delays in preparing a clear, well-defined proposal. For these reasons, I am convinced that we should endorse the conclusions of the conciliation procedure, but with one explicit reservation: the moratorium on commercial approvals must remain in place until the gap has been filled.

Political group: PSE
Madam President, Mr President-in-Office, Mr President of the Commission, ladies and gentlemen, today is the day for saying some very, very warm words of thanks to our President, Nicole Fontaine, who is from our group, for discharging her duties over the last two and a half years – as she herself has just said – with such passion. Madam President, you are one of a distinguished line which includes Louise Weiss and Simone Veil. Louise Weiss, Simone Veil and Nicole Fontaine: these are three great Presidents of our European Parliament. Today we ask ourselves the following question: what were the outstanding qualities of your Presidency? The first is that you have always put the concept of the Community, action by the European institutions, at the centre of your policy, and indeed you continue to do so; this means first and foremost the European Parliament, which you – and this is my second comment – have consistently represented with great dignity, both in public and at the summits. The fact that the Laeken photograph shows you between the King of Belgium and the President of the French Republic is testimony to your powers of persuasion. Thirdly – and here you were an example amongst so few – you spoke out against any form of terrorism, obviously in particular against the terrorism in Spain, but also throughout the world. Extending an invitation to Commander Massoud was one of your great decisions and in so doing you, as it were, anticipated subsequent events in Afghanistan. That is why we have every reason to thank you so warmly today! You were of course always a full Member of our group, even as President, but now, when you stand down as President in January, you will be coming back into the fold of our group and you will then take your seat alongside another former President of the European Parliament – whom we hold in equally high esteem – José María Gil-Robles Gil-Delgado. We will be delighted to have you, as well as Mr Gil-Robles Gil-Delgado, working alongside us on a day-to-day basis. We welcome you very warmly back into our group and we thank you most sincerely for your convincing work, our dear President, Nicole Fontaine. (Applause)

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, it is important that this debate today is also touching on industrial aspects of European defence policy. We should remind ourselves that the founding fathers of the European Union did not create it because they wanted economic cooperation, but because its prime task was to ensure peace, so that there was a plan for a European defence policy as far back as the period between 1952 and 1954. It is a good thing that we are picking up where we left off then. Commissioner Patten has presented us with a challenge. He has asked us this question: would we be willing to demand that 14% should be spent on defence, as is the case in the United States? However, I would first like to make another demand, and that is the demand that the money we are already spending on defence should be spent more sensibly, instead of having 15 different policies in this area. We need to take advantage of the synergy that can be achieved if we work together in this field. Part of this is that the rules of Europe's internal market need to be applied more in this field. There are some sensible exceptions here, but these exceptions are applied too widely, and we therefore need to make sure that these rules are applied more fully. For 15 different nations finally to work together implies a certain standardisation in this area, as otherwise there will be enormous problems of incompatibility. We have already developed standardisation procedures in the civilian world that could be helpful here, especially as regards dual use. Lastly, we should not lose sight of the fact that the most important pilot project in this field is the crisis management force agreed upon in Helsinki. The question is this: should the European Union actually take over the leading role in Macedonia in the foreseeable future? I believe that we need to consider that very carefully. We should not put the cart before the horse here. We should not let ourselves get into a situation in which we can be blackmailed by either side, because this first European intervention will be of the utmost importance for us.

Political group: PPE-DE
Madam President, I wish to raise a point of order under Rule 179 dealing with relations with the Ombudsman. On 29 July this year the Ombudsman wrote to this Parliament on an own-initiative inquiry on his part calling for a code of good administrative behaviour and asking for a response by 30 November. Up to yesterday, he had not had a reply. I understand that you have today written to the Ombudsman but I wish to know when the Members of this Parliament are going to have the opportunity to respond to the Ombudsman’s request for comments in his own-initiative inquiry.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, Commissioner, the White Paper has been the catalyst for a stimulating debate which has produced a strategic vision allowing us to focus on the goal of creating the conditions for free movement of goods and persons, which are essential if we are to achieve the genuine integration of the enlarged Europe and pursue territorial cohesion, avoiding any land wastage and reducing undesirable effects on the environment, security or public health. This is a hugely ambitious goal and 2010 seems a long way away but, considering the time frames for the various changes to structure and infrastructure, we can say that we are already extremely behind. From this point of view, the delay to the progress of the strategic dossier – and other dossiers too – imposed by the Transport Council is cause for concern, while we can only welcome with great enthusiasm the impetus being given by the Commission to all these issues. It is in this direction, with this aim that I feel it is worth continuing to explore what appear to be as yet theoretical, unrefined concepts, such as decoupling or the endeavour to reduce the impact of transport on development, which certainly nobody wants to limit, for in that way we will be exploring collateral policies in the field of land-use planning and in the area of optimising infrastructure through the use of new technologies. It is equally important that we help to balance the choice of mode of transport by internationalising external costs and exploiting the differences in internal charges and costs for coordination of more compatible modes of transport too. These are pressing, problematic matters and we are in danger of getting bogged down in them, but they are crucial and decisive for the issues we are addressing. I hope that, as has been said, the Commission communication on the methodology for charging for external costs which will allow us to establish a system of apportioning transport costs which is fairer than at present, replacing the generic charges we are currently paying with appropriate, specific charges, will not be long in coming.

Political group: ELDR
Mr President, I should firstly like to congratulate the rapporteur, our fellow MEP Mr Mauro. I remember the time 20 or 30 years ago when we were asked at school to outline what we thought the twenty-first century would be like, and we all imagined Martians, UFOs and flying saucers and ultra-modern trains and cars, including electric cars, yet no one was able to guess what would be the real revolution of this century: the advances in information and communications technology. Even though it is very difficult to keep up with changes that are taking place at such a dizzying pace, we are obliged to ensure that the citizens of the European Union, especially children and young people, are able to be educated in current technology. This presupposes a cost, since they need computers, multi-media equipment, Internet connections, plus one other very important thing, namely qualified teachers. Ladies and gentlemen, we cannot skimp on matters of such vital importance. We need to bear in mind that if, tomorrow when they have reached adulthood, the children of today are unable to use the new technologies, they will be almost like children of our own time who are illiterate, and that is something we cannot allow. By that, I mean I am totally in agreement with the rapporteur that it is necessary, as a priority, to train teachers to be able to give classes in new technologies. I also entirely agree with him that the budget should be more than the EUR 36 million proposed by the European Commission, since it would be truly absurd to spend more money on the preparatory action for a programme than on the programme itself. I also wish to support e-twinning of European schools since that seems to me to be an excellent way of bringing about cooperation between schools from every corner of Europe. What is more, it will help us promote intercultural dialogue and language learning and will also facilitate exchanges between children who have got to know each other through the new technologies and who would like to meet face to face.

Political group: PPE-DE