GwendalTsang/DEFT09-parquet huggingface dataset:
Madam President, the previous speaker finished by saying that nature and human beings are being exploited. I can agree with him. The new millennium simply represents the free trade ideology. We have experience of the free trade in capital. It is called globalisation. It is electronic capitalism. In fact, it is not free trade, as the IMF has given American investors guarantees regarding the risks they take, and paid them damages that have been incurred by the free trade in capital. There are no rules in the capital game and politicians can no longer become referees. However, it is now possible to negotiate rules for the trade in goods and services, and it is possible to act in such a way that capital freedoms do not spread their exploitative power on such a broad global scale as electronic capitalism. I defend green protectionism because I want us to eat healthy food and I want it to be produced in a sustainable way. That cannot be called protectionism, as it is a question of survival. I also defend red protectionism, which tries to safeguard workers’ rights and prevent malpractice, such as the use of child labour. In this respect also this type of protectionism is, from the point of view of social security, a question of survival.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, as we now know, what is happening in East Timor is both a crime and a tragedy. This has been said several times here. A crime, because Indonesian colonial occupation has lasted for 24 years. On-going human rights violations, terror inflicted on a people that is peace-loving, unhappy and defenceless have become widespread, but have existed there for 24 years, as I myself have seen. The UN organised a referendum: there was 98% participation, with more than 78% in favour of independence. This was a perfectly transparent democratic vote. Well, far from finding peace again, the Timorese are now suffering a real tragedy. We are witnessing serious violation of East Timorese sovereignty by a state of siege imposed by Indonesia. In international law, from the point when the Timorese people chose independence, it became effectively sovereign on its own territory. It becomes sovereign in law as soon as it sets up representative institutions which it has chosen. There is only one sovereign authority today in East Timor, and that is the people of East Timor. You are aware of the facts which flout this law: the deportation of more than 80,000 people to West Timor, where they are held in pens, starved, beaten and held hostage by the Indonesian army. Mass terror everywhere else. The people responsible have been identified: the militia, the army and the civil authority of Indonesia. We are told that Mr Habibie’s government is the prisoner of the army in Djakarta, that the Army High Command no longer has any control over the troops of East Timor and that the militia are getting out of hand everywhere. But I ask you, friends, who then is responsible? If it is not the civil government, then we should denounce a bloodless coup in Indonesia. If it is not the army, we should denounce the disappearance of any representative institution in this country. It is clear what action must be taken. The UN must intervene under Chapter 7. The UN must define the composition of the intervention force. The Indonesian army must withdraw from East Timor. The militia must be disarmed. And the Indonesian State must be held clearly responsible for its present prevarication. An international commission must be set up to look into the acts of violence in East Timor and the people responsible for these crimes must be brought before the International Criminal Court. All trade with Indonesia must be conditional upon the definitive restoration of peace in Timor. The Timorese must be given the means to establish themselves as an independent state and to be recognised. In this tragedy, Mr President, there is no question as to our right to interfere. It is a matter of respect for international law.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, we live in the same world as the women of Afghanistan. I should like to recall their Declaration of the Essential Rights of Afghan Women, which they adopted in Dushanbe on 28 June 2000. These were women issuing a call to action and not only victims. I should also like to recall, as Mrs Gröner has just done, the Afghan Women's Summit, which concluded on 6 December 2001, last week, and which issued a proclamation which it is important to be familiar with. This proclamation says: Afghan women want their rights now, not tomorrow, not later on. All these rights have been returned to them; we therefore need to restore these rights now. That is why I have tabled an amendment which I would ask you to support, calling for these rights to be re-established as quickly as possible. We need to give them the means to travel and to receive education and healthcare because ultimately we, the women of the same world as them, are a little anxious. We are a little anxious and we call on the European institutions and the UN institutions to be vigilant. Paragraph 5 of the resolution calls for the UN to focus particularly on establishing equality between men and women in Afghanistan, because these women have really been the symbols of many things. They have been the symbols of their own oppression, but they have also been the symbols of famine. Six months ago, when we were debating the situation in Afghanistan, they were the symbols of the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddha statues, and even of their own oppression. It is not therefore a question of discarding the symbol once it has served its purpose. It is a question of acting in such a way that the women are able to rediscover their rights and, for those who feel able to fight actively as representatives of all of the people, to participate in the government. These women are active participants in this process and we live in the same world as they do. They are demanding the freedom to travel and the recognition of habeas corpus; I believe that these freedoms are the same as those enjoyed by Westerners and that we should not seek to draw a distinction between them. That is why there is no secondary issue here, just one thing which I am asking you and that is, if possible, as an institution, to work to ensure that these freedoms are respected, because we are not sure that tomorrow will be any better than yesterday for these women.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Although some sceptics still doubt the phenomenon of global warming, nobody can doubt the cooling of relations between the EU and the US over its refusal to recommend ratification of the Kyoto Protocol. The intergovernmental panel on climate change has no doubt that there is global warming taking place and that greenhouse gases, in particular CO2 emissions, are largely responsible. Even the US National Academy of Sciences advising President Bush largely concurs with this finding. The EU is now determined to go it alone, but the biggest culprit, the US, with 4% of the world’s population and 25% of global emissions, still will not co-operate. Sadly, to date, only Romania has ratified the Protocol. Japan and Canada are now getting cold feet without US involvement. In my country, the UK, under a Conservative Government, we made a dash for gas, since natural gas produces far less CO2 than coal. We went on to see it rapidly reversed by the new Labour Government, anxious to preserve jobs in the mining industry. Mercifully the UK is still online to meet its Kyoto commitments. We are already witnessing in European winter resorts in the mountains the effects of the rising snow line, but the long-term prospects are far more frightening. At some point, there is a danger of thermal runaway as the polar caps melt, reflect less sunshine and cause a rapid increase in atmospheric warming. This threatens flooding around the globe and other climatic changes causing economic devastation with huge migratory pressures on peoples, not to mention potential wars over water supplies. What is the solution? I believe that all nations must subscribe to policies of sustainable economic development and invest in renewable energy sources. This also means reopening the controversial nuclear power debate, which I support. We must also look at using market-based mechanisms, such as tradeable emission permits. The Kyoto 5% targeted reduction by 2010 from 1990 levels may not go far enough. We may also have to look again at carbon sinks. I believe that the US must reconsider its position and come back to Bonn with some really good proposals. I congratulate my colleague, Mrs Jackson on her continuing interest in this critical area for the future of mankind.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, I absolutely agree with Mr Deprez. This is a really important issue which goes to the whole heart of why we have the European Union. The fundamental principles of the Union are freedom, respect for democracy, human rights, and if you remove freedom of movement, if you stigmatise people because they have applied for a visa or they hold a particular type of visa, I believe you undermine the fundamental principles of the Union. That is why I welcome the broad thrust of Mr Deprez's report. It is a well-considered report and, as he said quite rightly, it is relevant to thousands of people. But even if it was relevant to only one person, we would still be acting, I am afraid, years, decades, after the time when we should have acted. It is, as he said, a means to achieve a goal and I welcome his legal basis of Article 62(3). I share Mr Deprez's concerns and his amendments afford freedom of movement for those awaiting a definitive visa. I welcome his refinement of the French proposals. There is a real need for these proposals. We must treat people fairly and with dignity and remove the stigma of visa stays. Some Member States will have reservations, but we must recognise that change is essential and that people must not be penalised in terms of their freedom of movement by unjustifiable and cumbersome administrative procedures. I congratulate Mr Deprez on an intelligent and reasoned approach, with measures that facilitate freedom of movement for third-country nationals on Member State territories for a maximum period of three months. This is a guarantee. We should welcome it and therefore welcome his report. Finally, perhaps this report will at some time enable us in this Chamber and in the Union to have a rational and reasonable debate on immigration and visa issues, decoupled from the ugliness of nationalism and xenophobia. I welcome Mr Deprez's report.

Political group: PSE
draftsman of the opinion of the Committee on Budgets. – Mr President, I would like to thank Mr Caudron, the general rapporteur, for his work on this very important report. It sets up a new fund for a new project, but it is designed to be tied together with the existing work which is already going on in the participating Member States and Norway as regards research into these diseases. The statistics are quite horrifying – 90% of the world's HIV virus carriers live in developing countries and 95% of TB sufferers are in developing countries. So clearly, a significant amount of work is required to be done to tackle these problems. The Committee on Budgets – without dissent – approved the proposed EUR 200 million contribution from the EU which, of course, is in addition to the EUR 60 million which the EU has pledged to the global health fund. The global health fund, of course, is not available for research. It is important that any new work – or the consolidation and coordination of existing work – in the field of research into these diseases must be focused upon the needs and conditions existing in developing countries. That is the idea behind the proposal. I am glad to see that Parliament, at various stages, has spelled out how this project could and should be managed and how the progress can and will – I hope – be reported. If we have to apply a total of EUR 600 million as this project envisages – EUR 200 million from the EU, EUR 200 million from existing Member State funds and, hopefully, EUR 200 million from other donors and industry – then it is important that it be spent wisely and successfully. I would hope that since a significant proportion of that is public funding – taxpayer's money – the ownership of new procedures can remain with the public sector and be made available cheaply to the people who really need it most.

Political group: Verts-ALE
Mr President, the Commissioner said that Turkey has signed the non-proliferation treaty, it has signed the nuclear safety treaties: why should there be any doubt at all but that Turkey's nuclear plant should not be just as safe as any in the Community, and would the Commissioner be prepared to take a rather more robust position with Mr Souladakis on this matter?

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, I read today in the Minutes for yesterday's sitting that the statement which I made about the situation in the Baltic States and flagrant violations of human rights was made in response to Mr Tannock's intervention. That is not correct. I started my statement yesterday before the order of business with a word about what Mr Tannock had said, which I qualified, and then I immediately went into the main point of my intervention, which was the situation in the Baltic States. I should therefore like to ask for the Minutes to be corrected. My intervention was not in response to Mr Tannock's intervention.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, on a point of order, I want to make a complaint about my colleague, Mr Helmer. He produces an electronic newsletter called ‘Straight Talking’ and in that he has written what I consider to be a very serious insult to Mrs Nicole Fontaine. He describes her views as verging on Marxist – which I think would come as a surprise to Mrs Fontaine, as well as to others in this House – but the most serious thing he says is that the title of her memoirs should be ‘Mein Kampf’. That is a serious matter and I would like to invite Mr Helmer, through you, Mr President, either to apologise and retract these remarks, or alternatively to explain them.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, people have a right to know how their representatives in government have acted and voted in the Council. It is entirely unacceptable in a democracy for laws to be made behind closed and bolted doors on behalf of 380 million people and without there being any public scrutiny. The most important position adopted in the European Parliament’s report on Council reform is therefore to be found in Paragraph 26, concerning the need for openness and stating the European Parliament’s request that, when the Council acts as legislator, both the deliberations and the votes should be in the public domain, as well as Parliament’s particular request that, at the beginning and end of all legislative procedures, public debates be held in accordance with Rule 8 of the Council’s Rules of Procedure and that Rule 9(1) of the Council’s Rules of Procedure be implemented. It also states that the results of votes and the explanations of vote referring to legislative texts must be published. Through this future openness, the European Union will be democratised. It will lead to greater pressure being exercised by electorates and to greater supervision of the Council by national parliaments. It is about time! In turn, that will lead to growing demands for a concentration of the EU’s tasks and the need to limit the EU’s powers of decision-making. In other words, the report we are adopting today will have long-term consequences. I believe that we are thus coming significantly nearer the objective formulated by former Commission President Jacques Santer in 1995: Do fewer things, but do them better.

Political group: PPE-DE
According to my calculation, unless there are new members of the Conservative Party, the proportion of Members from our side and their side are almost the same.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, will the United Nations Millennium Summit which took place this week be the last chance summit? I see it rather as yet one more chance for peace in the Middle East. Six weeks after talks broke down at Camp David, Bill Clinton is due to meet Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat in New York tomorrow, after a month of intensive, albeit less media-attracting negotiation. So hope of saving the peace process is not lost, even if it means setting aside the original timetable and, hence, avoiding at all costs any unilateral provocation which would ruin months of effort. Everyone has his or her own interpretation of the outcome of Camp David and of the responsibilities incumbent upon either side. Discussions have certainly never progressed this far before. The gulf is still wide, although certain historical taboos have been broken. But that is not enough. We must now accept in our hearts what our heads have known and been dictating for a long time. This is the price for peace. To rely on the strength of symbols, on either side, is to hold on to a myth. As for Europe, which intends to support the process, not to take sides, it hopes to be more, much more, than the region’s banker. It is our historical and moral duty as well as our desire to become a full political partner very quickly, tomorrow if possible, and the simultaneous presence here of Avraham Burg, the Speaker of the Knesset, and Ahmed Qurie, the Speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council, both of whom I welcome, cannot but augur well in this respect.

Political group: ELDR
In the Commission communication to the Council and Parliament dated 29 November 2000, on the prevention of crime in the European Union, problems such as crime, delinquency, violence and lack of public spirit are all grouped together. This is an extremely dangerous approach. This is not surprising given that the proposal to create a European prevention network is structured not only around public and judicial authorities but also the private sector, with links to Europol, OLAF and the European Drugs Observatory. The creation of this information exchange network, which purports to be a pilot project and whose priorities are juvenile delinquency, urban crime and drug-related crime, apart from running the risk of the establishment of European files, cannot but contribute to the criminalisation of young people who are already victims of the security policies adopted in the guise of the fight against the feeling of insecurity. As far as prevention is concerned, no concrete proposal has been formulated other than the award of a European Crime Prevention Prize! At a time when European policies on employment more often than not condemn young people to unemployment or to insecure employment, and when entire neighbourhoods of towns are places of economic and social exclusion, a genuine policy of prevention must be introduced with social workers and public services. For all these reasons, I voted against the report.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, I rise with a heavy heart because it is never a pleasant duty to speak about human rights abuses. It reminds us that individuals throughout the world, because they are different, because of where they were born, to whom they were born, are not given those universal freedoms that we so often take for granted. The heavy heart is also because I am a friend of Egypt. I recognise the importance of Egypt and hold the Egyptian Government, President Mubarak and the Ambassador to the European Union in the highest regard. But when it comes to human rights abuses, if we are selective in the application of principle, then we lay this House open to the charge of hypocrisy. What do we ask? We ask for simple human rights: the right to a fair trial, the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, the right to freedom from torture and cruel or inhuman treatment, the right to privacy, the right to equality before the law and we reaffirm also Article 14.7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which has been mentioned today. Let me say personally – I am not speaking on behalf of my group – that, as a gay man, if I had been born in Egypt or somewhere else, because I was different, because of the people with whom I associated, or because I declared myself publicly, I could have every single one of the human rights I have mentioned taken away from me. Look at me. I am human. I bleed. I laugh. I cry. We are each of us exactly the same, but strangely others find a difference to deprive us of our human rights. Therefore to do nothing is to condone human rights abuses wherever they occur. To look the other way is to throw away our own rights and our claim to call ourselves civilised. I call upon the Egyptian President and the Egyptian Government to do the right, just and proper thing and to release the men in question.

Political group: PSE
Mr President-in-Office, will the Italian Presidency succeed at this historic time for the Constitution and European integration? My hope, right up to the last, will be that the fruits of the Convention mature and are harvested in the interests of Europe. I would like to consult you on two political considerations as you approach the final two months of your presidency. The first consideration is radical, practical and symbolic all at once: we expect the Italian Presidency, together with the Commission, to lay the foundations for genuine-level European financing, controls and sanctions in the field of immigration. We expect more than just general intentions now; we expect progress to be made at last by one of the very countries which is most affected by the situation. Mr President-in-Office, I also expect an initiative from the Council you head on the situation in Iraq. The unanimous vote in the Security Council may lead to a new way forward. The European members of the Security Council have, at last, come to an agreement, and now the Council has to turn that compromise into an initiative: there can and must be a return to multilateralism, we can work together in the field of reconstruction, the humanitarian crisis, security and the democratic transition to Iraqi sovereignty in Iraq under the mandate and guidance of the United Nations. Mr President-in-Office, as a European, I cannot fail to express my deep concern at the way the Intergovernmental Conference is being conducted. You have confirmed the intention to conclude the work before December, remaining as faithful as possible to the Convention’s text without substantial compromises. However, it would appear that, thus far, the Italian Presidency has limited itself to taking note of and recording the positive and negative opinions of the various delegations on the different issues, with the danger, not least, that debates will be reopened on matters which were considered settled. Europe, however, as Mr Watson pointed out, does not need a Presidency which is content merely to rubber-stamp initiatives or act as a referee; it does not need pedantic lists of the different demands. Now is the time for leadership which will provide farsighted, wise guidance. President Prodi is right: an inflexible Constitution would inevitably fail. I therefore hope that precisely Italy, which, in 1985, succeeded with the IGC that led to the Single Act in achieving the impossible, will, in 2003, live up to its Europeanist traditions and help to launch a constitutional text which is flexible enough to be workable and convincing enough to be a reference point for European development over the next 50 years. (Applause)

Political group: ELDR