GwendalTsang/DEFT09-parquet huggingface dataset:
The Lisbon guidelines, the decisions by the Spring Summit and the guidelines in the Commission communication constitute the framework for a violent attack on the workers. In the name of competitiveness and productivity, the aim is to reduce labour costs or non-wage costs, for which read step up exploitation and overturn social security rights. Strict prudence, freezing/reducing wages/pensions and new privileges for businesses are being imposed, for the sake of the profits of big business. ΕU employment policy aims to replace full/stable work with partial and temporary employment and, at the same time, overturn basic employment, wage and social security rights under the misleading title coined in Lisbon of 'sustainable development and full employment'. The 8-hour day and collective agreements are under attack and the renting out of workers, a slave trade, unacceptably low pay and increased profits for the plutocracy are being imposed. The millions of unemployed are now being joined by millions of underemployed. These policies have not solved and cannot solve the unemployment problem, nor do they establish rights to safeguard the right to full/stable employment, because the real causes lie in the laws by which capitalism itself moves and operates. We support the workers' fight to overturn these policies and claim a different, grass-roots orientated policy with enhanced social rights and higher pay in keeping with modern requirements.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, in his report Mr Mombaur has certainly given a comprehensive coverage of the implications of the liberalization of these markets. Energy, of course, is not just any good or service. It is very basic and very essential and has to be treated differently from normal goods. The two directives were very carefully calculated to ensure that there would not be huge and sudden job losses – approximately 250,000 jobs have been lost in this sector, with more to come – and secondly to allow those Member States which had invested heavily in, for example, nuclear energy to do some strategic planning and not leave them with too much in the way of stranded costs. For that reason they were not full speed ahead directives. Nevertheless they should have been implemented on time by every Member State and they were not. Those which delayed were wrong, especially those which at the same time took advantage of the opening of markets elsewhere and we have evidence that this also applies to countries outside the European Union. I have said that the job losses were very considerable. There has also been a great deal of upheaval and restructuring and some evidence of the formation of new monopolies, something which must be combated. There has been a diminution in the amount of research and development and that is a shame. There is a lack of harmonization to date and Mr Mombaur is quite right to call for harmonization. I am fairly sceptical about allowing the regulators to do that through the Florence work. The question of public service obligations is mentioned several times in the report. The Socialist Group has put forward an amendment asking for a framework directive ensuring that in sectors like energy services of general interest are protected. I hope that will be supported. Although there are difficulties with the two directives and liberalization, it is part of creating Europe and lower prices do benefit people. However there are environmental implications which we have not taken very seriously. The Lisbon Council asked the Commission to look at the possible need for an acceleration. I do not agree, however, with preaching to Member States and telling them what they should be doing. It is up to them to decide. I am very anxious that renewable energy is supported in a liberalised market. That is not easy to do and it is something the Parliament holds dear. I am very concerned about the threat to combined heat and power in the gas directive. That needs to be rectified very quickly.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, it is customary for a speaker in my role to assure rapporteurs that we are right behind them, but in this case that would not quite be appropriate. In this case, the cart is firmly behind the horse, and she is leading us – as well as all the Members of the Committee and Parliament – in the charge. We are very grateful to Mrs Echerer for having given us that lead. As was said in the debate, there is a kind of tripod involved in relation to copyright and related rights. One leg of the tripod is the copyright legislation that has already been adopted by Parliament. The second leg is the enforcement provisions that we are currently debating, and the third leg is the issue of collecting societies and the administration of copyright in the interests of rights holders. As Commissioner Bolkestein said, these are monopolies, but they are in principle benign monopolies because of the territoriality of copyright. It may be – and perhaps Mr Harbour and Mr Karas will explain this to me one day – that collecting societies can operate in competition with each other within a given domain or within a given country, but I find it difficult to see how that would work. If I am right, the point made by the Commissioner earlier assumes tremendous importance, namely that we need to look closely and critically at the governance of these societies, which are in a position to 'rip people off' by charging unduly high fees for providing services to artists, authors and others. I am delighted to hear that the Commission is to follow up the Committee's initiative by bringing forward a proposal for a legislative instrument concerning the good governance of collecting societies. It is a proposal I await eagerly. I would like to make a point in response to what Mr Harbour said that also provides me with an opportunity to declare a minor interest. I am an academic author and a very modest part of my annual income, as anybody who reads the Declaration of Members' Interests will know, comes from rights management on behalf of myself as an academic author. Looking at it from the point of view of an author of that kind, the notion of the reader as customer is not as significant as Mr Harbour said. The critical notion – and this also applies to the arts – is surely the reader or consumer as audience. One is concerned about getting ideas across to people and getting them engaged in debate about ideas. From that point of view, it is a matter of total indifference to an author what or how much they get paid. Quite the reverse. I and authors like myself have no chance of getting ideas to a wide public unless there are effective publishing systems – that is to say publishers who get paid for their activities. In that sense, this whole business of collective rights is for us more a means to an end than an end in itself. We should not think of it simply in terms of customers, but as an essential feature of the single market. We are delighted with the Commission's proposal and, like everybody else, I am so pleased to have worked with Mrs Echerer on this.

Political group: Verts-ALE
Mr President, recent events both in the Middle East and in the heart of Europe, in the French elections, have once again made us realise how thin, fragile and under threat of danger the shell that protects democracy, human rights and the structures of the rule of law can be. As Mr Van Hecke and Mrs Malmström stated, in the fight against terrorism we have also come up against totally new dangerous pressures that make human rights work more difficult than before. In these circumstances we are also in danger of being guilty of the same thing we accuse the governments of many countries of, which is to say a rhetorical commitment to human rights that fails, however, to lead to any purposeful and coherent action being taken. It is just empty talk. We do not need the new agency that Mrs Díez González is proposing in her report; what we need instead is political will. We must find this political will in our own institutions, in Parliament, the Commission and, first and foremost, in the Council of Ministers, which has shown little but uncertainty and only now and again given a credible performance in the Human Rights Forum, which Mr Van Hecke once again reminded us of, to his credit. Instead of merely praising and filing away Mr Van Hecke’s excellent report – and that also goes for most of Mrs Díez González’s report, which I think is very worthy of our support – we should for once take our own words seriously. When we adopted the report on human rights last year we decided that we would assess the working methods of the EU’s competent bodies responsible for human rights issues and democracy. We have not done that. We are expected to hold the other EU institutions accountable regarding the implementation of the EU’s human rights policy, but we have not done that. Instead we have settled for rhetorical commitments and fine words, which have also been heard here today almost ad nauseam. For that reason I hope we shall for once take Mr Van Hecke’s report, and much of Mrs Díez González’s report also, seriously and undertake the relevant work accordingly.

Political group: Verts-ALE
Madam President, I must comment here. First of all, I can say that our colleague Barón Crespo, whom I would describe not as an accomplice, but in all our political differences as an esteemed colleague, has given a correct account of the situation, as I explained orally to him, that we also, the Group of the European People’s Party and the , wish for a vote to be taken on the Napolitano report. I gave this explanation orally to Baron Crespo, but did not sign the proposal, because just before his request that I sign it, I had a conversation with a representative of your Office. As the Group of the European People’s Party and the , we said that we could and wished to help to carry it, if the problems in the Napolitano report are resolved to a certain extent and they are indeed at the limit so that we can also vote, although in no way are we really happy with the situation. We said that we wished to conclude this tiresome business in November. And we keep to our word. But it is of course the responsibility of the President of the Parliament to ensure that the procedures run properly. We assume that the urgent procedure can be dealt with in accordance with the rules. On this basis we support the vote on Thursday, that is to say, today, so that we can bring this tiresome matter to a close. But we expect that everything is in order with regard to the formal procedure. (Applause)

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, like everyone here, I am concerned by alcohol abuse in young people and by the shift in culture, which dictates that young people, in some countries particularly, believe they have to get blind drunk at the weekend so as to be cool. I acknowledge, therefore, that the Commission’s initiative has a valid basis. Unfortunately, our competent committees, which have collectively drawn up around 50 amendments, have again sinned in their overzealous approach. If their ideas are adopted, instead of combating unsavoury alcoholism, they will have succeeded in harming, amongst others, a whole industry, in other words, the wine-producing industry. We should make a distinction between the moderate, responsible drinking of alcoholic beverages – of wine in particular, which is part of our culture – and alcohol and drug abuse. We cannot combat alcoholism by restricting supply. For instance, would you like the production of wine, beer and spirits to be banned, and to what extent? The majority of our countries have a ban on the sale of alcohol to minors and this legislation should be strictly enforced. Why, though, would we want to ban the sale of alcoholic beverages at competitions and other events? The Evin law in France, which is also inconsistent with the single market, bans all advertising of alcoholic beverages at sporting events, but does not ban their sale. We have also already held epic debates on the labelling of alcoholic beverages. We have not, until now, succeeded in reaching agreement on a directive. A recommendation on alcohol consumption in young people is certainly not the way to obstruct us, proposing to place warnings about the dangers to health on each wine bottle, for example, despite the fact that experience has shown such warnings to be totally ineffective in the United States. There is, moreover, a law on labelling wines, which actually makes it illegal to make the public aware of the benefits of drinking wine in moderation, whereas it has been scientifically proven that drinking a few glasses of wine a day is an excellent way to prevent cancer, vascular diseases and Alzheimer’s disease in particular. I shall be voting against the amendments that propose measures which are totally unrelated to combating alcoholism in young people and which show utter disregard for the principle of subsidiarity.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, the Parliamentary ushers – the Italian ones, that is – stopped me while I was coming into the Hemicycle and said to me: ‘This Casaca report, which provides for fewer scrutinies of the Guarantee Section of the European Agricultural Guidance and Guarantee Fund precisely in order to improve the quality of the scrutinies’ – fewer scrutinies means better scrutinies, as the report says – ‘reminded us Hemicycle ushers, unlike Mrs Goodwill, who will tell us she is of the opinion that Italian drivers like to drive their cars at high speed like Michael Schumacher, that what we would like is not to receive any more parking fines. We therefore hope that there will be fewer – which will mean they are better – scrutinies of illegally parked cars. That way, we will have fewer parking fines to pay.’ - Report Evans, Robert J.E. (A5-0257/2002)

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, I would just like to say that the President was practically forced to issue this ruling – for that is what it is – because an element of this Parliament sought to prevent the majority from giving its opinion. This is a situation forced on us by the stonewalling that they imposed, in the sense that this is an exceptional measure, in line with the powers given to the President of Parliament. This is the situation that we have today, a situation without precedent and one which I hope the Group of the European People’s Party – which is a large group in this Parliament – will want to give due consideration to, so that we are not forced into such a situation again. (Applause from the centre and from the left)

Political group: Verts-ALE
Mr President, the present draft directive amending Directive 80/723/EEC resolves an important issue to do with competition policy, namely the fact that the government has been obliged to disclose its links with public undertakings. That is nothing new. This directive has been in force since 1980 and it is certainly high time that it was revised, because it is out-of-date in many aspects on account of the liberalisation process. But the question is this: if this fundamental amendment is approved, are the Commission’s proposals heading in the right direction? I intend to raise several points and would ask the Commissioner to examine and take account of them once again when it comes to producing the final version of the transparency directive: Firstly, the exemption regulation for small- and medium-sized enterprises, which, since 1980, has included those businesses having a turnover of less than EUR 40 million. Since then, the turnover indices have increased many times over. It is therefore necessary, and would make good sense, to raise the threshold to EUR 100 million. Secondly, the recently introduced balance limit for public credit institutions of EUR 800 million, which did not exist before. These credit institutions were completely excluded hitherto. EUR 800 million is nothing at all! In my previous national parliament electoral constituency of 70 000 inhabitants, the savings bank, which only operates on a regional basis, actually had a balance of EUR 1.5 billion! It would not be right to create a new opportunity for the Commission to step in. Thirdly: separate accounting. Hitherto, it was only the Member States who were obliged to report on their financial activities. Now the undertakings themselves are going to have to produce separate accounts. Surely this is motivated purely by the fact that the Commission would like another instrument of control. Fourthly: the definition of services of general economic interest. These services will only be excluded – just listen to this – if the undertakings are given special or exclusive rights in an open, transparent and non-discriminatory procedure for an appropriate period of time, i.e. after a tender procedure. What about the social services? What about the traditionally evolved social activities? Professor Monti, I do not want to give the Commission carte blanche to be able to interfere in anything and everything. We trust you not to want to control everything, Professor Monti, but I very much doubt as to whether we can say the same of every last official!

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, the Treaty of Nice represents both a failure and an opportunity. It is a failure because it does not contain the necessary reforms for the Union to appropriately confront all its present and future challenges. For example, it does not include either co-decision as standard or the Charter of Fundamental Rights. Nice is also an opportunity, however, because the announcement of the next IGC leaves the door open to a new phase in European integration, whose objectives are to respond to the demands of the citizens, to put an end to the democratic deficit, to implement the European social model, to intervene, with our own ideas, in globalisation, in order to regulate it, and to complete enlargement without turning the EU into a mere free trade area. Today more than ever it is essential that we opt for a bigger and better Europe, for a more political Europe with more European policies, for an enlarged federal political Union which is more democratic and efficient. Because our present situation must not be weakened in the future, by renationalising policies such as cohesion. On the contrary, we must complement the euro with an economic government for the Union, build a social Europe and provide a realistic budget which is sufficient and progressive. The key to this new cycle must be to adopt a European constitution by means of a radically democratic process which goes way beyond Nice and is led by a convention, made up equally of the Council, the Commission and the European Parliament – whose final composition will have to be set within this framework – and national parliaments, which produces a constitutional proposal which will have to be formally adopted before the European elections. Tomorrow, on voting by a majority for this magnificent report by Mr Méndez de Vigo and Mr Seguro – who I congratulate on their work – the European Parliament, as we hope also national parliaments will do, will demand of governments that they accept this option and understand its message; Constitution and convention – not more Treaties or more intergovernmental deviation – and that they do not once again respond timidly to the great challenges facing us.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, I wish to begin by congratulating Mr Corbett on the quality of his report. In this report on the general revision of the Rules of Procedure, the rapporteur puts forward proposals that would enable us to simplify procedures and to focus parliamentary work on legislation and on topical and important political debates. In the opinion of the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs, I highlighted some issues that seek, in some way, to optimise the performance of this institution. These issues are: with regard to Question Time, the President of the sitting should have the option of referring questions for Question Time to the committee responsible, which would have the advantage of freeing up time in plenary for debates. It is also important that, under the open method of coordination, the European Parliament should not run the risk of being excluded from the debate on issues of the utmost importance. Hence, the proposal that I put forward in my opinion seeks to refer the decision on the process to be followed to the committee responsible, which may then propose that a report be drawn up. Another aspect that should not be overlooked – although it has been – is that the committee responsible may decide, in the light of reports and annual reports of the Council and the Commission, to request individual members of the Council to appear before the committee to answer questions. The purpose of this would be, once again, to increase the European Parliament’s influence under the open method of coordination, thereby making it more effective. Finally, I should like to highlight the close relationship that exists between lifelong learning and the issues that fall within the remit of the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs, which would make it logical to include this matter amongst the competences of that parliamentary committee.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, Commissioner, I sincerely believe that the report carried out by our rapporteur, Mr Cunha, is a great report and it is very timely, as this morning has illustrated. I warmly congratulate him on it. I will speak clearly and briefly. We constantly refer to the existing problem of the relationship between the size of the fishing fleet and current fishing resources. We speak of excess fishing capacity, of the overfishing of resources by an over-sized fleet. The Commission implemented the Multiannual Guidance Programmes (MAGPs), intended to rebalance this relationship. However, it is also blatantly clear that the application of the MAGPs varies considerably from State to State. Some have complied completely and have reduced their fleet by 40%, others have not complied; others even refuse to provide the data on their compliance, and the most serious thing is that the non-compliant countries expect to be treated in the same way as those which have carried out the very difficult task of reducing their fishing capacity with the subsequent economic and social sacrifices. Mr Cunha’s report is therefore important and appropriate. It points out to the Commission the basic defects: less than rigorous plans, unequal control and, above all, a lack of homogeneity in the criteria applied by the different States in measuring their fleets. As if this were not enough, the report highlights the lack of effective penalties for those who do not comply, which, to top it all, means that certain mechanisms which could be useful in terms of achieving the objective for which they were created, are simply no use. It is therefore necessary to harmonise the criteria and penalise those who do not comply, by means of effective measures, such as that proposed, by way of example, in Mr Cunha’s report, involving the reduction or suspension – at least temporary, having accepted Mr Ford’s amendment – of the quotas for non-compliant countries. We hope that Parliament will adopt this report, as the Committee on Fisheries has accepted it, with the amendments which the rapporteur has referred to, and that the Commission and the Council will take good note, so that they may give new life to a key instrument for achieving the objectives of the current common fisheries policy, based on sustainable development in the sector, which is what we in the Committee on Fisheries are defending.

Political group: PPE-DE