GwendalTsang/DEFT09-parquet huggingface dataset:
Madam President, Commissioner Monti, President Maystadt, please allow me to congratulate the rapporteur on her calls for the EIB to attain higher targets in terms of support provided for the Member States’ economies. This Bank performs a special task: the distribution not of all funds, but only of funds intended to contribute to the achievement of the Union’s objectives. This institutional task has helped to create new wealth and to support entrepreneurial initiatives in the regions of the Union which are most lagging behind. The Bank’s efforts to support certain sectors, such as the environment sector, where EUR 5.9 billion has been allocated to environmental protection projects, are certainly commendable. The most important aspect for territorial development is still support for SMEs. In this case, partner banks which also distribute funds need to provide detailed information about the investments. It has therefore been suggested that a credit ceiling is set in advance for SMEs and that, at the end of the financial year, a report is submitted to the European Parliament on the actual use of the pre-established ceiling and on any reasons or difficulties encountered which caused it not to be used, or only to be used in part. I certainly support the major undertaking of the EIB in the candidate countries, but objective 1 regions should not be forgotten: even after they no longer have this status, they should be monitored as appropriate and given substantial credit support so that they can conclude their development process – certainly not fully completed – by 2006. We should pay special attention to the Bank’s Statute, which can only be amended in accordance with the procedure for amending and revising the Treaties laid down in Article 48 of the Treaty on European Union. In particular, Article 5, which provides for 6% to be paid in by the signatory Member States, should be amended. An increase in this percentage would lead to higher loans and, consequently, greater support for the areas concerned, and greater profitability for the Bank or, alternatively, with the same amount of revenue, a reduction in the applicable rates.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, I should above all like to congratulate Mr Staes on a most outstanding report. His conditions of work were not the best. It is unfair that we in Parliament should have to deal with a report from the Court of Auditors concerning events going back many years, but the fact is that Mr Staes has done his homework and gone out into the field. Now, it is not that I do not trust Mr Staes, on the contrary, but I too happened to be in Bosnia last week, and he is right in his assessment. The history of the Commission’s delegations in Bosnia has become a success story. The Court of Auditors’ report concludes that the Commission’s control over funds for the High Representative’s Office and the UN, for example, has not, by any means, been good enough. Many of the problems are due to the projects having previously been administered centrally from Brussels. Now, the EU delegations on the spot have been given more powers and more staff. This shows that the idea of giving the delegations more duties and more responsibility does, in actual fact, work in practice. The Court of Auditors proposes that, in future, the EU should give organisations such as the UN, the OSCE and the High Representative’s Office a sum of money which they can administer themselves. At the same time, the Court of Auditors would like to see tighter control. I really do not think that this adds up. If we simply give money as a direct form of budget aid to the organisation, then the Commission will completely lose track of things and no longer have any control. The issue of cooperation between the EU and the organisations will become part of the 1999 discharge. The Commission is calling for clear guidelines from the Council and Parliament. That is something I can well understand. We cannot demand both better control and more of a free hand. We merely need to retain a certain degree of control over taxpayers’ money. The UN system is unfortunately becoming more and more bureaucratic, inefficient and corrupt so, in spite of everything, I have much more confidence in our own EU system.

Political group: PSE
I believe this directive is an unacceptable assault on the right of citizens to choose how they look after their health and well-being. Huge numbers of EU citizens choose to take supplements to reduce the possibility of their falling ill and needing to seek medical advice to obtain prescribed drugs. People should have the right to opt for a healthy approach, rather than waiting for disease to set in and then having to resort to pharmaceutical drugs, many of which have dangerous side effects. I am not surprised that the pharmaceutical industry is supporting this directive, since it plays right into their hands and means more business for them. Products which have been widely and safely used for many years in several EU Member States are being restricted without any health and safety justifications. I believe this is lawnmower harmonisation at its best, where everything is chopped down to the lowest common denominator. Consumers should be free to choose their own level of potency and nutrients, provided that they are safe and appropriately labelled. Availability of supplements should not be restricted for any reason other than safety. This proposal is profoundly flawed, in that it is based on the old-fashioned research which relies on RDAs of vitamins and minerals. For the past fifty years, RDAs have formed the basis of conventional nutritional wisdom. However, according to many reports which I have read on this issue, RDAs are set far too low and should be revised upwards. Instead, legislators should rely on the upper safe limits, which are a much better device. For example, the RDA for vitamin B6 is just 2 mg while the upper safe limit is 200 mg. Two studies published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1993 demonstrated that taking supplements containing 100 IU of vitamin E for at least two years reduced the risk of heart disease in both men and women by approximately 40%. Despite this, the RDA for Vitamin E remains a measly 10 IU. I believe that countries with a restrictive policy should relax it, but not on the condition that we tighten our system and restrict the access of our consumers in our countries to vitamin and food supplements. (Applause)

Political group: Verts-ALE
Mr President, I would like to congratulate Mr Méndez de Vigo and Mrs Seguro on their joint report and the work involved, and the Constitutional Committee and the other committees who worked towards this debate. We have had the work in committee and now we have to make a choice in plenary. Conservative MEPs will be opposing this report, not as a verdict on the Treaty of Nice, but rather to initiate a change of procedure in preparations for the next IGC and to raise the subject of galvanising public awareness and participation in the post-Nice debate. The hallmark of the report is its proposal for the formation of a convention to prepare for the next Intergovernmental Conference This convention would consist of representatives from the Commission, national governments, the European Parliament and national parliaments and it would prepare the agenda and the proposals for the next IGC. We are not convinced this is the right course. Moreover there are a number of clauses that we Conservatives are unable to support in this report, such as the inclusion in the Treaty of the Charter of Fundamental Human Rights or the extension of QMV to cover taxation. However, despite the connotations surrounding the subject of this report, there is no explicit 'yes' or 'no' given to the Treaty of Nice itself. It raises however the important points of increased democracy and transparency for the next IGC. We believe that there should be an early IGC. I agree with that part of the report, which calls for this, because this would place the main choices before the European public, including I hope by then some enlargement countries, so that they could make their choices at the next European election. I look forward to the debate at that time.

Political group: PPE-DE
Madam President, I should like to repeat once again that there was a proposal for an amendment by the . There was an oral explanation by Mr Chichester, that against the amendment he wished to keep the words “free and fair” in any case and that we should take a vote on that. The third question is “socially-balanced”, “yes” or “no”? We should vote on that. I have now understood what Mr Chichester said to me.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, like Mr Blokland and some other speakers, I want to speak on behalf of the accession states. When I was chairing the debates on Mrs Grossetête's and Mrs Müller's reports in the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy, I was presented with a petition, which I have with me here tonight. It was signed by a large number of members of the observer teams from the accession states. Almost all the accession states are there represented. Certainly a very large number of Polish observers are very worried about this proposal. I support the Grossetête and Müller reports. I congratulate both our rapporteurs, and I imagine that they will be very glad to see the back of these three proposals. They have done very good work. However, I also support the ten-year data exclusivity period for the present 15 Member States. But I am very aware that the accession states have recently negotiated legislation in their own countries to put the acquis communautaire on to their statute book, and that included a period of data exclusivity of six years. We are in danger here tonight of glossing over something very important, and I cannot understand why, given that the accession states were able to ask for derogation periods, we are not already hearing exactly what derogation periods they are asking for. Part of the trouble may be the responsibility of the accession states themselves: they have not yet asked the Commission the Commissioner can tell us this for delays, temporary derogations, extensions, etc. It would be far better, however, and in the interests of transparency, if, before we adopted this legislation - and I know that it is almost too late - we had a list of the derogations requested from the accession states in order to build these into the preamble to the existing directives before us. Mr Liikanen may say that is impossible. If he does, he is wrong, because that is precisely what we have done in the draft directive on packaging, which we have almost concluded. The accession states asked for certain derogations. We asked what the dates were. They gave us the dates. The Commission said that these dates were fairly acceptable. We then built into the packaging directive preamble reference to the dates of derogations that the accession states requested. If we adopt the legislation before us now without specific reference to the negotiations and to the deadlines requested by the accession states, then we are in danger of producing legislation which is not transparent, because nothing will appear in the Official Journal alongside these directives drawing attention to the deadlines available to the accession states before they need to implement them. This is a very bad way of proceeding. I have some sympathy with the Poles and others who are worried about this. I can see that it is necessary for the health of the western European pharmaceutical industry for us to go for the ten-year data exclusivity period, but we need to be fair to the accession states and, above all, we need to be transparent about the arrangements that we reach with them.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, the success of the US operation in Iraq and the speed with which the objective of liberating the country from the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein was achieved, with a relatively low toll of victims, are confirmation of what many had thought, namely that the war was going to be the least difficult part of this operation. The attack in Riyadh – which is already giving some people, not least in this House, a perverse, ill-concealed sense of satisfaction because they now feel justified in saying ‘We knew there was no point in attacking Iraq’ – is proof that the real war against terrorism is only just starting. Now starts the phase of reconstructing the country, which has been destroyed and laid waste, and of mending the alliances compromised by the war. With the help of the 10 countries which we have just welcomed into our midst, the European Union must show that is capable of genuine unity. Of course, it is exciting to see that, after this war which some people still persist in describing as unnecessary, pamphlets, books and newspapers are being sold on the streets of Baghdad which would have led to a prison sentence and torture under Saddam Hussein – or, elsewhere, under Communism. We will soon be listening to the President of Poland, Mr Kwasniewski, speaking in this House. He and I belong to different political wings, but he has shown himself to be a courageous leader, giving his country’s support for the intervention in Iraq, and this has earned him the criticism of those Heads of State and Government which made the wrong political decision and now find it hard to admit their error. In his meeting with Mr Chirac and Mr Schröder last week, President Kwasniewski asked for Poland not to be forced to choose between Europe and the United States: it is possible to be the friend of both. We in Parliament must endeavour to be the friends of both as well.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the desire of each and every party to defend its own position means that it is not an easy matter for Parliament, the Council and the Commission to set about rearranging their relationship. Nor is it easy for a parliament to express its willingness to surrender part of its legislative competence. It is relatively easy if this surrender is coupled with a call-back-position, that is, with the right of recall should it become apparent that the implementing or secondary legislation does not reflect the objectives and intentions of the legislator, that is, of Parliament. That is why we concentrated on this issue and the rapporteur, Mrs Frassoni, is one among the many who have pointed out its importance; Mr Medina Ortega, too, has pointed out that, at the end of the day, the Members of this House are elected to pass laws. They are not elected to be spectators or observers at a trial, but to be legislators, and that is what the public expect us to do. We must, however, bear in mind that we do not possess the expert knowledge that some institutions or groups have, and such expertise needs to be used – by which I mean not only the giving of advice, but also having the opportunity to co-determine implementing legislation on the basis of laws passed by this House. I would like, though, to re-emphasise the importance of having the facility of right of recall, and that is something we have achieved. Much in the same way as with self-regulation, it was evident to us from the outset that we neither want nor are able to prevent it, but it must be clear that self-regulation must not nullify this House’s legislative competence, but, as Mrs Frassoni has made very clear, we must be firm in taking action to deal with any threat to curtail our legislative competence. At the end of the day, the Commission, as guardian of the treaties, is obliged to take appropriate action. Many other things are important, including improvements to the mutual information requirements, and to the information given to the European public. The Commission and the Council took it in turns to put up a great deal of resistance to Parliament’s demands in this area, especially where the call-back position is concerned, but we got our way in the end. The Commission and the Council had probably not reckoned on what I might call an unbeatable team working on this, chaired by Mr Gargani, whose composure was impregnable; Mr Clegg, whose actions were characterised by British reserve, but were nonetheless effective; and Mrs Frassoni, whose combination of toughness and charm was vital in softening up somewhat the Vice-Presidents of the Commission, something that we know is not exactly easy. That being so, I believe that we have come up with a very good solution. I recommend that the House bear this in mind and adopt the Frassoni report accordingly.

Political group: PSE
Commissioner, Mr Böge has helped me prepare this speech, for he has already indicated the best way to deal with the issue. I would like to make three brief points. Firstly, the animal health policy adopted by the European Union during the 1990s appears to have been a good one. What we are witnessing during these initial months of 2001 is a quite extraordinary phenomenon, but one which requires careful analysis. We thought that foot-and-mouth disease was a minor problem, but the response from all over the world is forcing us to think again: there is a complex situation in Mongolia, specific situations in Africa and Argentina. This will probably mean the need for a rethink and the introduction of a World Trade Organisation regulation. The second point relates to the agricultural sector. The agricultural sector is, in any case, constantly the focus of traumatic events which are causing – I would say – a sharp, frightening drop in farmers' incomes. Thirdly, we need flexible policies. There should be separate measures for foot-and-mouth issues relating to zoos and rare animals. IN THE CHAIR: MR PUERTAVice-President

Political group: PPE-DE
Madam President, I feel it my duty to stress that we are being called upon to regulate, through the Paciotti report and other directives and regulations which will be tabled before us, a great power: the power of information technology. Data collection is not a painless operation and different types of database exist: confidential databases, CID databases, services databases – in short, there is an enormous amount of power. I would stress that in entrusting this huge power of monitoring the European databases to a monocratic body – notwithstanding the total respect and confidence which we have in the Guarantor – we would appear to have momentarily shifted our focus from the central concern of the human person which, in respect of the power of information technology, must be provided with a reference framework of guaranteed rights and freedoms. In my opinion, the proposal to establish a collegiate body would have responded better to this need. However, when we come to discuss the power of information in the future, we must realise that more widespread control, and the consequent provision of a greater guarantee for the human person, is a necessity.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, education is a crucial weapon in the fight against poverty. This might be common sense, but it is also a choice in terms of development strategies. It is a question of priorities. Some people claim that education is an optional extra and that what is really needed is work, even low paid work requiring no qualifications. I believe that the low cost option tends to create perverse self-perpetuating mechanisms and that education is not an optional extra. Education and training involve an effort to provide opportunities to all individuals, in order to give the greatest number of people the ability to form part of society and to participate in shaping that society. The European Union has distinguished itself internationally for its adherence to this approach, both in Europe and with regard to those countries whose development we support. We therefore welcome the Commission communication, the content of which fully warrants Parliament’s support. We also congratulate the rapporteur on his excellent work. I simply wish to emphasise some points: the importance of the balance between quality and quantity in education, with a decisive commitment to eradicating illiteracy; the importance of involving local actors in the programmes we support, strengthening the practice of decentralised cooperation; a commitment to achieving gender balance – the education and vocational training of girls and women not only have a direct impact on the economy, but also in the medium term, on changing minds and even on liberating societies; the commitment to protecting education, even in times of conflict and following conflicts and the priority to normalise and improve education and training. I would also add the need for further efforts with regard to training for the purpose of reintegrating ex-combatants.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, I wish to ask you about the fate that awaits the Laotian companions of Thierry Falise and Vincent Reynaud who, as we know, have fortunately been released after being arrested and sentenced to more than twenty years in prison. We know nothing, however, about the fate of the Laotians who were travelling with them. I should like to know whether it would be possible to obtain any information about them because logic would dictate that the men accompanying the journalists should also be released. They appear not to have been fortunate enough to benefit from the action taken by Foreign Affairs Ministers and Ambassadors to ensure the journalists’ release.

Political group: ELDR
Madam President-in-Office of the Council, as we have come to expect of you, you are being extremely polite to the European Parliament. It is very considerate of you to refer to Article 308. We all know that Article 308 concerns a unanimous decision taken by the Council following a recommendation from Parliament. So that is why you are waiting before adopting a clear stance. I can understand that, but despite this, we must all realise that there appears to be only a few Member States, including Portugal, Spain, Greece, Finland and Italy, which are strongly opposed to the exclusive use of French, English and German. All the other Member States, including my own country, unfortunately, agree to the very limited application of this language regime. I would now like to ask you whether it would not be preferable to guarantee that the key elements of such a patent, namely the conclusions, which hardly take up two to three pages, are at least made available in all the languages. That would considerably enhance the legal certainty of the citizens and business people in the European Union. There would then be no need to translate twenty or thirty pages, rather only the conclusions. I believe that we would thus bring Europe a little closer to the citizen.

Political group: Verts-ALE