GwendalTsang/DEFT09-parquet huggingface dataset:
Mr President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, Mr President of the Commission, I sincerely welcome the Italian Presidency’s programme and believe that, with the necessary caution, with the humility that marks the Italian people and with the almost unique ability to place our inspiration and intelligence at the service of the many, we shall be able to make port in the new Europe. The true aim of politics must be the noble government of people’s needs, in a society that is constantly changing at an ever-increasing rate. To do this one needs great political sensitivity to manage the technostructure and oppose technocracy. The society governed in this way consists, in simple terms, of a vast majority of ordinary, good, simple people: men, women, young, old, children, of varying abilities, who work and live anonymously but are driven by good and simple feelings of solidarity and love. This is the important Europe that we have to address, by moulding the economic structure to the growth of these ordinary people, who should not have to live with the insecurity and instability in which the globalised economy would trap them. The Euro-Atlantic partnership with all the Americas is not just an economic and political need or choice; it is a cultural fact that arises from our common roots and shared values. It should be strengthened, it must grow, not least through the transformation of NATO into a tool of international policing at the service of a reformed United Nations, going beyond the rationale of Yalta. A last thought concerns world poverty. There is too much poverty, and it requires aid. Therefore, in the discussion on the Union’s financial perspective, we should boldly and decisively set ourselves the target of increasing our contribution to 2% of GDP, because opening up our markets and reforming our institutions is not enough for the international agencies. Mr President-in-Office, I hope our Italian Presidency will have a very great ability to listen, because that is the only way it will be able to celebrate the Constitution of the new Europe, and also to satisfy the Commission under Romano Prodi, a staunch champion of the Community method and of the Europe we want.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, I want to raise a different matter – the subject of Zimbabwe. I would like to first of all express my condolences to the much-afflicted people of Zimbabwe at the awful bus crash that took place near Masvingo in Zimbabwe last night, when over 30 trainee teachers were killed. I would also like to express my concern at the rather hypocritical presence, or likely presence, of President Mugabe in Rome this week at the United Nations World Food Summit. I say 'hypocritical' because, of course, there are millions of people in Zimbabwe now who are suffering from food shortages and starvation, much of it as a result of the misguided land policies of President Mugabe. But of course it is also of concern to us that we are supposed to have a travel ban on President Mugabe and his associates. There are supposed to be sanctions against them and the fact that he can travel to conferences like this makes something of a mockery of those sanctions. Last month he was in New York at the United Nations World Children's Summit. A final point: we have heard nothing about the results of the EU troika that went to southern Africa in the middle of last month. I specifically asked the members of the troika to take certain measures and to report back to us. Could I ask, in the light of all these points that I have raised, for the Council to make a full statement on the situation in Zimbabwe and the action that it intends to take?

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, I would like to thank the rapporteur for this report. Electronic commerce is growing rapidly, which we find very positive. However, we still often fail to understand the cultural and political significance of the Internet. In the future, we shall obviously need a movement to uphold civil rights in electronic commerce. Electronic signatures ensure the security of electronic commerce, and that is important. We need growing trade, for example, so that we can improve our competitiveness with the United States. Our use of the Internet is only one third of that in the U.S. Even though three passwords would be needed for one transaction, and two of them would be changed each time, the system is not completely secure. If hackers can access Pentagon files, then obviously they can also access electronic commerce networks. In retail trade, where losses due to theft might be about 1% of sales, it is the retail trade that suffers. In electronic commerce the customer suffers too, and very often just the customer. For this reason, the importance of security cannot be sufficiently emphasised. We need international cooperation, as has been proposed here already earlier this evening. To secure extensive cooperation we should set up an Internet police force comparable to the traffic police. But imagine how much higher the speed is and how much longer the roads are than in ordinary road traffic. It is also important that surveillance take place where the action is. This will require international cooperation and much effort from our negotiators at the WTO round of talks. We also want to protect minorities, and the largest minority in all countries is the poor. I await the time when they too can access the Internet, and I hope that the Commission will take action to that effect.

Political group: PSE
In line with the Community instruments adopted recently to increase safety in civil aviation, the Parliament and Council proposal for a directive on occurrence reporting in civil aviation aims to guarantee the reporting of any situation specifically endangering an aircraft or its occupants. The data that is collected will facilitate information sharing, enabling lessons to be learnt in order to prevent accidents. I congratulate Mr Collins on the excellent report that he has drafted on this matter, which I fully support, in particular on the issue of confidentiality in the mandatory reporting of incidents, the only way of ensuring that human error is revealed in the potential occurrence of accidents, which rarely comes to light spontaneously, unlike technical faults, for example. I also wish to highlight the need to support the creation of reporting systems on a regional basis that would be linked to the integrated network of national incident reporting systems, thereby providing an entire region with information about various situations.

Political group: PPE-DE
The Minister has pointed out that this is a court of the Council of Europe, not a court of the European Union. However, we are all well aware of the relations between the European Parliament and the supreme court of the Council of Europe. Secondly, she said, and she repeated, that she does not have a list of the Court rulings which Turkey may have failed to observe. Apart from the rulings on Leyla Zana and the other three Members of Parliament in prison, there is the famous ruling on Titina Loizidou, the Greek Cypriot still waiting for Turkey to pay the compensation awarded to her in a ruling by the supreme court, which Turkey has provocatively said it has no intention of observing. I repeat I am surprised because the Minister has served as a Member of the European Parliament and as a member of her national parliament and she should at least have thought about it and if she did not have a list, she had all the time in the world to ask for one rather than coming here today, if I may say so, without having done her homework.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, I cannot but regret that the attempt to remove this report from the agenda this evening has been so thoroughly misunderstood. We have no intention whatsoever of pulling a fast one on the House. Listening to David Bowe, from a fairly significant parliamentary group, one is made particularly aware that it is not at all easy to rein in the airport operators to such a degree that the people who live close to our European airports, and for whom I have every sympathy, would actually notice any improvement. I have certainly been astounded to hear one or two speakers say that we need daughter directives. Now daughter directives are a fine thing – don't get me wrong. The only thing is that we have been fighting for such directives for twenty years. We need an instrument if we are to establish daughter directives. That, in principle, was the idea behind Amendment No 36, although I believe the idea has not been fully developed yet. That is why we needed breathing space to work on this idea so that it could be implemented. One thing is crystal-clear, Mrs Scheele: you are still very young, but however many years you spend in Parliament, you will never get a daughter directive on aviation noise! They will always find a way, be it to right, to left, down the middle or wherever, to wriggle out of it. They have economic interests too, and of course I understand that. So what we need are parameters. We have to establish them here in Parliament. That was the idea behind our desire to obtain ten more days or another fortnight. At the end of the day, it is not so much a matter of the wishes we might have but rather of the wishes we manage to turn into policies. Once a football match is over, only the goals count. In that respect I am by no means overconfident. I am still quite curious to see how the dice will fall tomorrow. But to my great regret, Mr de Roo, I have to say that your good intention is probably dead in the water already.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, for eight months now, Greek and Filipino sailors have been held by the Pakistani authorities. Their tanker ran aground outside the port of Karachi, causing the greatest environmental disaster in the history of Pakistan. Thirty thousand tonnes of crude oil spilled into the sea, contaminating the coastline and destroying the livelihood of fishermen. In the view of the Pakistani Government, the disaster was caused by incompetence and negligence on the part of the crew. As Mr Hatzidakis and the previous speakers have pointed out, however, the tanker was incontestably under the command of a local pilot at the time of the accident. There can therefore be no clear-cut apportionment of guilt. The Pakistani Ambassador has informed me that judicial proceedings will shortly be instituted against the sailors. Shortly? According to media reports, they have been under house arrest since October 2003 and are not allowed to leave Pakistan. Government sources have assured me that the sailors have unrestricted freedom of movement within the country. That will have to be verified. International law actually covers unresolved compensation issues. In the domain of oil pollution there is an International Convention on Civil Liability for Oil Pollution Damage, to which 124 nations have now acceded. I hope that Pakistan will soon do likewise. On both humanitarian and legal grounds, the Group of the European People’s Party appeals to the Pakistani Government to allow the crew members to return to their homes and families, subject to a pledge to return to Pakistan when the judicial proceedings take place. Such pledges are made on word of honour and must be redeemed. (Applause)

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, I would also like to pay tribute to the work of Commissioner Vitorino over the last five years. He really has been a splendid Commissioner for Justice and Home Affairs. I hope we will see more of him, not least because he would help us achieve in justice and home affairs the equivalent of the Lisbon objective to make Europe the most dynamic and competitive economy in the world. Why do we not have a parallel formal objective, perhaps the Tampere objective, to make the enlarged European Union the international beacon of human rights, protection of civil liberties and keeping people safe? In justice and home affairs there is not the same sense of zeal from ministers about promoting freedom as about promoting security. Security is an aspect of freedom because no-one who is unsafe is free, but freedom is also an element in security and no-one is secure if their privacy is invaded or they are wrongly imprisoned or subject to discrimination. But the Council has failed to speak out against Guantanamo Bay internment and is trying to impose an agreement with the US on air passenger data transfers in breach of European data protection laws. It has also allowed restrictions on freedom of movement, as my Hungarian colleague has said. In the accession treaties there is a JHA safeguard clause, but it is focused exclusively on monitoring implementation of mutual recognition measures and framework decisions in criminal law. There is no clause which will check whether asylum seekers are being left destitute, equal rights are being denied to gay and lesbian people, or ethnic minority people are being abused. We must have a mechanism of ongoing peer review whereby we have mutual monitoring of the quality of Member States' justice systems. On immigration we need much better management in the future. Member States have agreed most of the common asylum policy, but have lowered standards of protection to do so. Very little is agreed for streamlining the red tape for legal migrants and there is an alarming absence of progressive and active engagement in how to respect diversity and have imaginative integration policies. The ceremony of raising the ten new flags yesterday was wonderful and moving, but the image it presented was exclusively white. In my city, one-third of the population is from ethnic minorities. We have to do better to serve our whole population with just and inclusive policies.

Political group: ELDR
The circumstances in which enlargement is currently proposed are disastrous. Promises given have not been honoured. The Union’s structures have not been adjusted to allow for smooth functioning with 25 Member States in the near future. It will be even more difficult to function in the more distant future when there are 40 Member States. To make things worse, the necessary finance for enlargement as provided for in the treaty is not guaranteed. This contravenes the agreement reached at the Berlin Summit. Consequently, the Community will soon stall. The chances of creating the social Europe we sorely need will therefore be reduced. Territorial cohesion will also be threatened, when it is now more essential than ever. Moreover, the Community we longed for and worked towards for 50 years will not survive this enlargement, but will be replaced by a bland and featureless Union. We set out to build a cathedral and ended up in a department store. We are actually being urged to maximise the danger of stalling the Union at the very time when essential international mechanisms are disintegrating, starting with the United Nations. This is why I shall vote against the resolutions on assent, even though I endorse the resolution accompanying the Brok report following the improvements made in the House.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, Commissioner, this own-initiative report, which we should welcome, concerning the specific subject of illiteracy sheds light on two particular approaches recently implemented by the European Union in adopting the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights on the one hand and the action programme combating social exclusion on the other. As Marie-Thérèse Hermange, our rapporteur, reminded us, the right of each individual to know how to read, write and count is the practical basis that enables these individuals to exercise their rights as citizens. This right must be guaranteed by practical measures wherever the scourge of illiteracy is present; it is therefore enlightening to be reminded of the figures. In practical terms, I believe it must be possible to develop these actions in two directions. We need to make the connection between illiteracy and unemployment, on the one hand – for example there are the proposed actions targeting illiteracy in the workplace – in order to ensure the coherent implementation of the decisions made in Lisbon, and between illiteracy and social inclusion on the other. We should devise actions for social inclusion that are independent of the professional situation of the people concerned, and I am thinking of women in particular. I believe the case of migrant women must be considered in this respect. The report also calls for the creation of a monitoring centre, and I think it is realistic to plan this within an existing tool, Cedefop, since compatible indicators and benchmarks between Member States are the basis of any coherent Community policy. In conclusion, I believe that this report must be seen as a tool to facilitate the drawing-up of a measure involving local, national and Community levels, each with their own specific responsibilities. Today, the handling of these issues requires Community initiatives and the impetus to encourage the Member States to make decisions that are essential for their people.

Political group: PSE
Commissioner, you will forgive me for finding the situation unsatisfactory, as I am sure you do too. We were assured, at the time the European arrest warrant was introduced, that effective common minimum standards would follow hot on its heels. We now discover that they are not going to. Those of us who suggested building a European habeas corpus into the arrest warrant find ourselves reinforced in our belief that this would have been wise. Can you concede, Commissioner, as one who has been a doughty fighter in this regard that, if the new Constitution were to come into force, the Member States would in future find themselves subject to the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union when executing European arrest warrants, and that this would be binding law because in implementing European arrest warrants they would be implementing European law?

Political group: Verts-ALE
Mr President, the European Parliament took a positive view at the start of the week of extending the agreement between the EU and ASEAN to include Laos. Parliament’s report states that the protocol can be seen as part of a broader process in which the Union aims to encourage political, economic and social growth as well as stability in the country. There is much room for improvement when it comes to the situation regarding human rights in Laos. It is appropriate that human rights there should be discussed at the same time as increased cooperation. We have given a lot of attention in Parliament to the question of Burma. But things are hardly any better in neighbouring countries. Laos is one of the world’s poorest countries. All the negative features of a one-party system are manifest there. There are barely any signs of greater freedom of speech or the liberalisation of political life there. In October 1999, a demonstration was organised in front of the presidential palace against the ruling powers. Those who took part in it have not been seen since. Amnesty says that they were arrested and have been languishing in prison camps without trial. Meanwhile, Mr Thongsouk Saysangkhi, who died in prison in 1998, belonged to a group of three ministers and a high official who had been attempting to change the administrative machine from within. They were convicted of treason. The international community has tried to aid the development of Laos, despite the human rights problems. The EU has given EUR 120 million in aid to the country; the United States has given 23 million, and Japan 132 million dollars. The Laotian people, who live in dire poverty, need help, but the country’s internal situation gives cause for asking just who is really benefiting from the aid being given. There are regrettable examples of projects where the army and the government have reaped the benefit instead of the local inhabitants. Laos is rich in natural resources and, were there democracy there, would have real potential for development. In a parliamentary statement Laos is being urged to sign, ratify and enforce the UN’s conventions on human rights, to free prisoners of conscience, and to guarantee freedom of the press. The importance of these objectives should really be clearly emphasised.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, I too wish to begin by thanking the Commission for its proposal and Mr Sjöstedt for his splendid and sterling work on confirming and clarifying what this matter is really about. The Cartagena Protocol is designed to create a framework for international trade involving GMOs. It is based on two important principles, firstly the precautionary principle and secondly the principle according to which countries that want stricter rules are entitled to have them. Certain speakers here today seem to believe that the Cartagena Protocol is something quite different, aimed at facilitating trade as much as possible. The Cartagena Protocol is, however, an agreement on biosafety. The precautionary principle must be the guiding principle. There is no other way. It is therefore crucial for the European Parliament to vote in favour of Amendment No 52, which is also supported by the rapporteur. This states that transboundary movement of genetically modified organisms should proceed ‘in every case and at each stage on the basis of the precautionary principle’. That is something we must not go and lose. My colleague, Mrs Evans addressed another important point, namely the ethic that permeates the Cartagena Protocol and that is based on the requirement for countries that do not want to produce or consume GMOs in any form to be entitled to refuse them. Aid consignments containing GMOs, as discussed at the Johannesburg Summit, must not take place. We must help bring about a situation in which no compulsion is felt to receive such consignments. Mrs Wallström explained that there is no doubt that the EU must fully comply with the Protocol. In this situation, I doubt if it would further the Cartagena Protocol if the European Parliament were to accept Amendment Nos 50 and 51, or if the content of these were to be complied with for, in that case, it would not be possible for the Protocol’s intentions to be put into practice. I therefore recommend that these amendments be rejected, for their purpose is to ensure that trade is impeded as little as possible. The reason that the Cartagena Protocol came about is that GMOs and trade require special precautionary measures. We can never have too much safety. On the other hand, we can have too little. There must be no doubt that, in Community legislation, it is the precautionary principle that applies and that it applies in full. I support this report in its entirety.

Political group: Verts-ALE