GwendalTsang/DEFT09-parquet huggingface dataset:
Mr President, may I offer you my congratulations and best wishes; I know that you will continue to be as efficient as ever in the performance of your duties. The battle for social and environmental criteria, which was won mainly thanks to the proposal of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs, proves that the European Parliament still basically supports the European social model and sustainable development, which is the only way to make Europe competitive in a global environment. The amendments to the social and environmental criteria, which have to be evaluated in tandem, do not impose any new obligations or costs on companies; they merely state the obvious, i.e. that we need to respect the acquis communautaire when it comes to protecting work and the environment. In the same vein, the position taken by the Committee on Legal Affairs, to the effect that contracts could contain terms to encourage the recruitment of minorities or excluded persons and combat employment, should be adopted unanimously. Now it has been agreed that employment policy needs to be mainstreamed, adopting this position would confirm that we believe and mean what we say. I am also encouraged by the new paragraph in Article 7 calling not just for a legal framework for protecting work to be defined, but for it to be aligned with Convention No. 94 of the International Labour Organisation and the directive on the secondment of employees. Meeting minimum labour standards in international conventions is one of the fundamental obligations of the developed countries in the European Union. Another question which we addressed was the question of thresholds. I think that, in doing away with thresholds, we really have warded off the danger of excluding small and medium-sized enterprises from the market, which is, of course, what would happen if they had to compete, with the complex procedures in the directive, with large companies at Community level. This amendment therefore helps employment and helps companies to remain viable. Finally, I call on the Commission to include other means in procurement by electronic means, not just the electronic auctions which are held on the market. By which I mean certain models of public procurement, such as electronic catalogues, electronic government purchasing methods and a series of corresponding electronic means used by companies.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, the van der Laan report gives a clear overview of the measures which the European Commission has taken further to observations made by Parliament in the context of the 1997 discharge. From that point of view, my group will support the report, and I would congratulate Mrs van der Laan on her achievement. However, I would like to point out – and that is also mentioned in the report – that although some progress has been made in five areas, they have a long way to go yet. This applies to the closure of accounts, improving institutional management and control problems, the technical assistance offices and the fight against fraud and corruption. I will not go into all these areas but highlight a few. I believe it is of utmost importance for the Commission, in its attempts to reduce the unacceptably high percentage of error, to identify the Member States which fail to achieve any improvement in the percentage of error in the case of the biggest expense items, for example. The Member States will obviously not like this, but why could we not keep a scoreboard for this, just as we do for the Member States’ performance rating in terms of implementing European legislation? The more transparency, the better. An added benefit is that the national parliaments can bring their governments to book. In the fight against fraud and the careless handling of European monies, we must rely far more on cooperation with national parliaments. The trust of the citizen in the powers that be, and specifically in the European Union, is at stake. It cannot be that we here in Europe get the blame for the negligence and carelessness of national governments. In the near future, the Commission will need to pull out all the stops in order to set up an efficient management and control system. We will soon be discussing the new Financial Regulation which, I hope, will better accommodate the requirements of modern management. Continuity, transparency and clear competences are vital parameters in this. We must avoid a situation where different bodies responsible for fighting fraud and corruption, such as OLAF and the financial irregularities panel, cancel each other out in their efforts. There is nothing worse than having investigation offices putting all their energy into mutual competence-based squabbles. Finally, we set great store by the Court of Auditors systematically examining the annual reports to see how the Commission has acted upon critical remarks made previously. Control without referring back to errors detected previously is a job half-done.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, I am grateful to have the opportunity to respond at the end of the debate. Members have raised very interesting points. I hope that the President-in-Office of the Council will have taken careful note and will be keen to take on board as many of them as he can. Until recently relations between Parliament and the Council were not extensive, but a combination of an increase in the powers of this House and the prospect of an increase in the number of Member States has had the effect of bringing our two institutions much closer together. On behalf of the I welcome this closer working relationship between Parliament and the Council. We see it very publicly, particularly in the Convention, and also in the number of very successful negotiations through the codecision process. I welcome the approach taken, first by the Danish Presidency and now continued by the Greek Presidency, to much closer working relations with this House, shown in the President-in-Office's concern that a statute for Members should form part of the successful reform of the European Union institutions. We look forward to working closely with you.

Political group: ELDR
Mr President, Mr Wuermeling is right. The confusion arises from two different versions of the original having been circulated. If we take the corrected version of the original then indeed the three amendments are identical and can be voted as one which would be the best solution. Concerning amendment 179: , rapporteur. – Mr President, you are about to put the second part of Amendment No 179 to the vote and we have just not adopted the first part of it. I am happy for the second part to be put to the vote and indeed adopted if that is the will of the House, but in that case the final words, where it says: 'Rule 121 falls' should not necessarily fall in view of the vote on the first half of the amendments, which we failed to adopt. That was the part which replaced some of Rule 121. I am happy that we are voting for this second half, but it should not mean that Rule 121 falls. Concerning amendment 74 :

Political group: PSE
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the reports we are discussing confirm some of my concerns regarding the execution of the Structural Funds for the 1993-1999 period but, alas, also regarding the new programming period which will end in 2006. The most striking example is the vast sum of resources which were not spent during the 1993-1999 period and must be used before 31 December this year. I feel that it is right and important to send out a clear warning two months or so before the expiry date. We need enthusiastic commitment but, instead, there are regions and States who are irresponsibly disregarding the impending danger of wasting these funds. Then there is the fact that it would be useful – so to speak – to learn from the errors and delays which occurred during the 1993-1999 period and avoid repeating them. Mr Mastorakis has already quoted some Greek to you and I am going to quote some Latin: errare humanum est, perseverare autem diabolicum. This is a well-known saying but many appear to have forgotten it. The statistics for the year 2000, with which Commissioner Barnier is familiar, do nothing to allay our fears. Despite the increasing endeavours of the Commissioner himself, the innovations contained in the reform of the Structural Funds are being incorporated slowly and laboriously. Parliament must seize this opportunity too to reaffirm its right and responsibility to act. Parliament, which is the body directly elected by the citizens, cannot remain silent if a fundamental instrument for the development of the Communities and their cohesion is not being properly implemented. We must therefore work shoulder to shoulder – Commission, Parliament, Council and regional and local players – to bring about rapid acceleration and to finalise the payments to projects which enhance the competitiveness of regions, particularly those which are most disadvantaged and underdeveloped. We must make it clear to everybody that the quality and size of the expenditure, the profitability of the various objectives and the results achieved by the different beneficiaries will be the crucial factors for defining the European Union’s future cohesion strategy.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, I thank the rapporteur and the Commissioner. The regional fisheries organisations and the Community's participation in them is an important issue. Covering nearly all the high seas these organisations provide an instrument to ensure active conservation and management of the fisheries resource. It is this precious resource that I should like to turn to. We face a depletion of stocks already which puts fishing into a crisis situation. There is over-fishing, pollution of our seas, the climate is changing – we see that at the conference at the Hague at the moment – and the physical alteration of the environment puts increasing pressure on these finite resources. Reform of the CFP will be critical but getting the right reforms will be even more important. In Scotland the Scottish Fishermen's Federation and the World Wildlife Fund have got together to propose the concept of zonal regional management. The fisheries management scheme would involve all interest groups in a particular region. Although initially merely advisory in its recommendations, it is hoped that by illustrating efficiency and effectiveness over time it would earn a management role. The development of a regionalisation of the CFP will be critical in ensuring local action. Regional fisheries organisations provided a role on an international scale and regional or zonal management can make the global become local. It will truly make for sustainable fisheries.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, Commissioner, Minister, I am taking the floor in order to reiterate some of the points that have already been made here by several of my colleagues from the Group of the , to the effect that we are in favour of a round of negotiations, but not just any old round of negotiations. This can be expressed through our philosophy: we are in favour of a market economy, but we are opposed to a market society. And this philosophical train of thought is causing us to diverge from two opposing visions that are in play at this Seattle Summit. The first is held by those who think that the market does not create wealth: we, on the other hand, think that the market does create wealth. We also disagree with those who think that the market solves all problems. It is we s who uphold the idea that the market helps to create wealth, but that there must be regulation for there to be a redistribution of this wealth which is equitable and which respects sustainable development from which we should all benefit. This is a different vision that is far ahead of the two I have mentioned. It is a demanding and critical vision that is at the root of the way we are acting with regard to the forthcoming WTO negotiations. And this is why we are against sectorial negotiations and are in favour of all-encompassing negotiations. This is why we are in favour of seeing the WTO and its respective negotiations as an instrument for the creation of a fairer society, of a more sustained development, in which mankind is actually the focus of all decision making. And from this point of view, we state here once again the need to respect environmental matters, the need to respect the consumer and the need to respect human as well as social rights. And from this point of view, Mr President, and to end my intervention, we would like to offer all our support and all our cooperation to Commissioner Lamy on the objectives and the strategic viewpoints that he is well aware he needs to uphold in Seattle.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, I too would like to welcome Mr Holmes' report and hope he makes a speedy recovery. When the Commission's proposals first appeared, we, in the Green Party, welcomed them. It was high time that these newly-developed fisheries for deepwater species were brought under some sort of control. We are all aware of why these species are particularly vulnerable to over-exploitation, as Mr Stevenson pointed out in his introduction. As the stocks in EU waters which were the traditional target of EU vessels were becoming depleted, the result was the development of these new fisheries. At the same time, we feel that the conclusions of the negotiations over the detail of the management regime put in place are much too weak. They are also too dependent upon TACs and quotas which have proved such a disaster elsewhere, as Mr Stevenson pointed out. We hope that now that a management regime is put in place, the Commission will act quickly to strengthen it – for instance by other means, such as much stronger technical measures and more restrictive effort controls. This is what will be effective in the long term.

Political group: Verts-ALE
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the Council has accepted most of the proposals approved by Parliament during the first reading. We have succeeded in getting the most important issues of principle through, for example, that the user stage, that is, those who feed the animals, is also to be covered by the controls. This is a success, since approximately two-thirds of all animal feed in the European Union is produced on farms. However, what the Council – and possibly also the Commission – has not taken note of is the fact that we have replaced the word ‘contaminated’ with ‘contain undesirable substances’. We are not, in fact, playing with words here. The term ‘contaminated’ must be defined in purely scientific terms with reference to substances and/or bacteria that have been added from outside, whereas ‘contain undesirable substances’ also includes those substances that are formed naturally, e.g. in the course of storage, when fat oxidises and mycotoxins are formed. There are lots of substances that are clearly inappropriate in feed, but which do not come from outside. They have arisen in natural processes which really should not have taken place. Hay should not be allowed to go mouldy, since this makes it downright dangerous. I have reintroduced all the amendments to the effect that ‘contaminated’ should be replaced by ‘contain dangerous substances’. We have also reintroduced Amendment 24 from the first reading, which deals with Community controls. In this case, the Council referred to a conciliation made with Mr Staes after we had started working on the report in the first reading. I have now changed the amendment to include the wording of the TSE regulation that was approved at the first plenary session in Brussels. We should endeavour to create legislation that is clear, consistent and easy to grasp. That is why I have chosen to copy the wording of the TSE regulation on Community controls word for word. It is easier for those who have to deal with the laws and who have to comply with them if at least the standard provisions that recur in directive after directive are worded the same. I think that this is very important. Mr Staes will submit an oral amendment in this area which involves a certain expansion, and which I am able to approve. It is of crucial importance that we get a comprehensive control system throughout the Union. Creating good laws throughout this food safety chain that we are now working on does not involve particularly great difficulties, but it does involve hard work. The big problem comes with control and compliance. Good laws are all very well, but they are just words on paper unless we have effective control and compliance.

Political group: ELDR
Mr President, I agree with Mr Bullmann when he emphasises a number of positive signals from the Lisbon Summit. I am thinking particularly of the demand for full employment, but also the emphasis on dynamic growth, innovation and lifelong learning. However, I wonder how this links up with the Maastricht model’s emphasis on stability, inflation control, low wage policy and social savings. Has this belt-tightening policy been abolished on the basis of the Lisbon decisions? No, clearly not. The Commission’s current action against Ireland shows that the Maastricht model lives on, for in many ways, Ireland is a prime example of the growth policy which has been promoted as a result of the Lisbon European Council and which is now being punished by the EU. My conclusion is therefore that the EU has two contradictory economic models: one which is, for the time being, political reality and another which is a matter of dreams and visions about what is to succeed it. There is a ‘dream of the left’ and a ‘dream of the right’, which both seem to be covered by the Lisbon concept. I naturally hope that, at the Stockholm European Council, the Swedish Government will highlight and prioritise the left-wing model which stresses the importance of full employment and a socially responsible development policy and rejects the trend towards liberalisation, deregulation, flexibility, etc. But we will have to wait and see what happens when we get to Stockholm.

Political group: GUE-NGL
I shall not be voting in favour of the joint resolution on EU-Turkish relations as it contains contradictory policies and arguments as well as a dose of hypocrisy which does not become such a serious political body as our Parliament. Even in its first article, the resolution calls for Turkey to be considered eligible for candidate status with a view to eventual Union membership. Yet, immediately on from that, there is a series of articles which explain why Turkey does not fulfil the Copenhagen criteria for recognition as a candidate country! If that is not a contradiction, then the draftsmen of this resolution obviously mean that recognising Turkey unconditionally as a candidate country will help it to make better headway towards the political reform necessary to satisfy the Copenhagen criteria. In which case, why can we not say this in our resolution? Why can we not make it clear to Turkey that its recognition as a candidate country is an exception to what we demanded from other countries (such as Slovakia), and that this exception is being made for special reasons (which must be clearly stipulated) so as to facilitate its progression towards the necessary reforms? It should stipulate that Turkey’s progress will be monitored by the EC and only then will it consider its actual application for accession into the EU. The fact that we did not do this in this resolution can only mean that either we do not take the Copenhagen decisions seriously, or that we cannot explain publicly, i.e. politically, why we are making an exception for Turkey. Alternatively, it may mean that we do not take Turkey seriously in the sense that we recognise it as a candidate country for reasons we cannot make public, but in any case, we have absolutely no serious intention of even helping it to ever become a Member! From what I have heard of other speakers who pointed to certain differences which generally rule out rapprochement with Turkey, this last interpretation seems the most likely. I am also totally against such standpoints, which even border on being racist in some cases. Europe has everything to play for with Turkey’s accession, and should not mock or underestimate it but should set clear preconditions for a stable and long-term relationship with it with a view to eventual accession into the Union. But this will not happen with micropolitical and opportunist sophistry or with endless pirouetting, which favour neither the Union nor Turkey.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, the Council, Commission and Parliament are well aware of the situation in Zimbabwe. No one can claim they knew nothing about it. In taking a passive line, the Council of Ministers is guilty of aiding and abetting. It is outrageous that, yet again, the Council's ‘Africa’ working party failed to pass a resolution at its meeting in Brussels yesterday. Obviously the presidency is only paying lip service to Africa, despite advertising it as a priority. Unfortunately, France is the ringleader of a group of Member States that obviously has a different agenda. How else are we to explain the fact that, while everyone else is either stopping or drastically cutting back on funding, France is increasing it. I call on the Member States of the European Union who want to take a more active line to step up their collaboration, even before the Treaty of Nice takes effect, and to remind France and the rest that they are surely backing the wrong horse in taking this de facto passive line. I think, my dear Mrs Kinnock, that Mr Mugabe will have no need of our resolutions or demands if he decides to impose a state of emergency. He will do so anyway because, even if the elections are held, he will lose.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, I share your and Mr Aparicio Sánchez’s concerns regarding the fact that we are discussing such a fundamental proposal so late. I would also like to thank Mr Bayona de Perogordo and congratulate him on the report on which we are now finally adopting a position. It is a comprehensive report, and I know from experience that the work involved in such a report is fairly demanding. The report takes us a good step closer to our goal of a comprehensive coordinated and decentralised information and communication policy, or in Commissioner Vitorino’s words in the ‘Friends of Europe’ debate: ‘the fight against apathy and ignorance regarding the EU’. I would also like to thank you, Commissioner Vitorino, for your great commitment to this issue. I would also express my regret at the form of debate that we are having here in Parliament, since it excludes you from being able to answer questions here and now. Although we have made some great progress, many questions remain unanswered, and I will mention some of them and will happily send them to you as well, for it is important that we do not rest on our laurels in the information and communication strategy at a time when so much is at stake concerning enlargement and the future of the EU and when we are also coming up to elections to the European Parliament. That is why I ask: how far has the feasibility study got and the opportunities for a European ‘C-SPAN’ that the Commission is to implement? How far have we progressed in the work on the ‘Channel Europe’ concept? How far have we got with establishing a common visitor centre for the institutions in Brussels? How far have we got with calculations and costs for the initiatives proposed previously? How far have we got in our efforts to get the information offices of the Commission and of Parliament under the same roof in the capitals? I know that nothing has happened in Copenhagen. Allow me finally to ask the Presidency of Parliament: would it not be an idea, Mr President, for us to hold a debate in plenary on Parliament’s role in the information strategy up until the 2004 elections?

Political group: ELDR