GwendalTsang/DEFT09-parquet huggingface dataset:
Mr President, within a free market with unrestricted competition, the business that produces the cheapest product has the best chance of survival, even if the product can only be cheap on account of bad working conditions, poor wages, environmental pollution or cruelty to animals. We can see this on a large scale in the fight for new agreements in the World Trade Organisation and on a small scale in the fight over working hours within the EU Member States. Employers would like to think that workers are always available, even after more than 8 consecutive hours or in the evenings, at nights, Saturdays and Sundays. Paid work is still seen as a commodity. Safety and conditions at work, despite improved legislation, still leave a great deal to be desired. In fact, the efforts required are invariably more demanding than before. Working has increasingly become a type of top-class sport. Only few will sustain it in the long term. Many burn out long before their pensionable age due to overworking. This is why we desperately need to protect all workers against wear-and-tear, accidents, overworking and lack of consecutive time off which can be spent as one chooses. This should be a right for everybody, without exceptions. Employers, however, keep pressing for exemptions: exemptions for weak industries which have grown big on the back of production costs kept too low and their nineteenth-century industrial relations. As long as we tolerate this, there will be groups of workers who are discriminated against. In the case of industries which rely on this, there is something wrong. This applies especially to road transport which is far too cheap and passes an increasing amount of business risks onto the transport operators by forcing them to join the ranks of the vulnerable self-employed. It is not a coincidence that the exceptions largely relate to mobile workers and people who earn their living at sea in either the fishing or oil industry. After all, it is more difficult for them than their colleagues in other industries to stand up against discrimination, especially as they are not constantly together with their colleagues at a fixed place of work which is easily accessible for the trade-union representatives. Only in the case of people with special responsibilities and high rewards commensurate with these could it be justified to require, if necessary, working hours that deviate from the norm. If, on the other hand, workers in the weakest positions have to work longer hours, then there is something amiss. This then only happens for the benefit of the competitive battle between companies that work at prices which are too low or that are aiming for profits which are too high. I therefore urge that we do not refer the solutions to this problem back to the consultation between the trade union and employers’ organisations since it is precisely the position of parts of these groups of workers that is still too weak. Negotiations do not solve their problems fast enough. This is why exceptions must be deleted, transitional periods must be short and the traditional rights to Sunday rest actively protected and maintained.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, to begin with, I should like to protest against the fact that the offices did not actually consider our opinion as such, for the reason that it mainly consists of amendments. They apparently considered our opinion as individual amendments tabled by the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs. I hope that this kind of procedure will run more transparently in future. With regard to the budget, thanks partly to a tremendous effort by our rapporteur, this has become a budget of consolidation. There are, of course, always disagreements about all kinds of sections of the budget, but we have been through worse. I also have to say that there are clearly fewer disagreements at the level of our committee, the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs. Also, the Council has made far fewer attempts at scrapping sections than has previously been the case, so, as far as that is concerned, my congratulations to the Council. In my view, the problems that remain are at the level of open coordination. The Council is still tempted to say that that should be financed from the coffers of Parliament. However, Parliament must rubber-stamp this budget, yet it is not allowed to let its voice be heard fully on that score. We will need to hold extensive discussions on this matter once again in the years to come. We have a number of differences of opinion on this, and I hope that those can be settled in the next couple of years. There is another problem concerning EQUAL, one of the components of the Social Fund. Once again, the Council has made some serious cutbacks in that area too. Despite this, I hope that it is possible to restore the Commission’s preliminary draft in this respect. That seems extremely important to me. I gather that the Commission has thought very carefully about how precisely that proposal should be structured.

Political group: PPE-DE
Authorisation for smoke flavourings in food is at the moment totally deregulated in the European Union – some Member States have restrictions in place and others have no legislation at all in this area. A definition of legislation was therefore needed, so that the authorisation procedure could be harmonised. I also welcome the definition of a positive list produced by the European Food Safety Authority and based on the latest scientific knowledge. It is therefore to be hoped that the precautionary principle – the basis for every European food policy – will also apply whenever a new application for a smoke flavouring is made.

Political group: PPE-DE
Madam President, on a point of order. I would like your advice about Rule 143 concerning inadmissibility. My question relates to something that will come up on Thursday and which I will then raise again. The Cunha report on multiannual guidance programmes comes before Parliament on Thursday and contains a proposal in paragraph 6 that a form of quota penalties should be introduced for countries which fail to meet their fleet reduction targets annually. It says that this should be done despite the principle of relative stability. I believe that the principle of relative stability is a fundamental legal principle of the common fisheries policy and a proposal to subvert it would be legally inadmissible. I want to know whether one can raise an objection of that kind to what is merely a report, not a legislative proposal, and whether that is something I can competently do on Thursday.

Political group: Verts-ALE
Mr President, it makes a nice change in this Parliament to be able to reflect on positive developments in south-eastern Europe, and very often the subject is Macedonia where, despite all the problems this country has to deal with, the two largest groups of the population co-exist in peace, even form a coalition government and have now adopted a new act on higher education. That is a breakthrough on an issue which has caused a great deal of problems for a long time. At long last, the Albanians now have the opportunity to attend university courses in their own language and within the official education system of Macedonia. That is a real step forward for Macedonia. As far as I am concerned, it proves to all neighbouring countries that education does not only have to spread hatred, as is often the case these days, but that it can also serve as a cradle for a peaceful, multi-ethnic society. That is a development which, in my view, deserves unqualified support from the European Union. Finally, I would like to spend a moment on something which, normally speaking, I do not think belongs in a European Parliament, namely the role of a fellow countryman. I am proud of the fact, that this time round, the role of Mr Max van der Stoel, the High Representative for minorities of the OSCE, has proved crucial in this issue.

Political group: Verts-ALE
I want the original version with 'European' in between – regional and lesser-used European languages.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, we are now in a situation in which we can really say that steps are being taken in the direction we have wanted for many years, and the principles of which were agreed in the Treaty of Amsterdam. Transparency must become a founding pillar of all the work of the European Union, but the right to access documents is still not enough in itself to establish transparency. We must see to it that the work of all the institutions is based on transparency, clarity and intelligibility, and that means that the decision-making structures are clearly visible. Bureaucracy has also to be avoided here. The times being proposed for the release of documents must be absolute deadlines, because in normal circumstances documents are readily available to the public. I also think it is very important that this report proposes a yearly review as, then, lists of documents that have not been able to be made public, can justifiably be gone through. At this stage we would also then have the chance to examine, on political grounds, whether the suppression of documents has been judged entirely appropriately. I hope that this report is received favourably here in Parliament.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, now that the European Union is to be enlarged by ten new Member States, it is not only an historic moment for the EU, it is a fact that also raises the issue of what our common core values are. I venture to state before this Parliament that our common core values in actual fact found expression through the way in which Communism and dictatorship in the former Eastern European countries were done away with. In the end, they were actually disbanded without violence, demonstrating the fact that, as Europeans, we do not need military solutions to unite us. We have a common culture and community of values, based upon a Jewish and Christian spiritual inheritance and a culture of humanism. These core values are indispensable to our joint construction of an EU that is to be enlarged to include 25 Member States. I want to say something about Cyprus, which is the country to which I had a special commitment when it came to enlargement towards the east. I wish to protest against the fact that the Turkish occupation of northern Cyprus, or 37% of the island, in actual fact threatens the EU as a peace project. We must never lose sight of how unreasonable it would be for Turkey to be allowed to become a member of the European Union while it continued to occupy a new Member State, in the form of Cyprus. We must not forget Cyprus, and we must realise the absolute necessity of Turkish troops’ withdrawing from northern Cyprus if the Helsinki decision on Turkey’s candidacy is to become a reality. It is important for us now to help realise the desire of the Turkish Cypriot majority for a reunited and unified Cyprus, as expressed in this year’s large demonstrations in Nicosia. Germany and Berlin were divided for 28 years. Cyprus and Nicosia have been divided for 29 years. Let there be an end to this.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, I am sorry, I have been trying to catch your attention but you are going very fast, on which I congratulate you. On Mrs Jackson’s report, I just want to say that I did not take part in the vote for similar reasons to Mrs Lienemann. I believe respect for Community law must be general and cannot be based on selective, and therefore necessarily arbitrary, interpretations. I ask for it to be recorded in the Minutes that I did not take part in the vote. *** Annual report (A5-0050/2000) by Mr Haarder, on behalf of the Committee on Citizens' Freedoms and Rights, Justice and Home Affairs, on respect for human rights in the European Union (1988-1999) (11350/1999 – C5-0265/1999 – 1999/2001(INI)) Concerning paragraph 45:

Political group: PPE-DE
I thought this had been explained in plenary yesterday. These are technical readjustments, on legal advice. Amendment No 5 from the Commission was a commitology amendment and we reworded it. The Commission has already indicated that they need some rewording, so we have replaced, on legal advice, Amendment No 5 with Amendment No 13 and I would request your patience with this. If you want to vote Amendment No 5 through that is fine but we have had indications that the legal position is that we should reword it somewhat. So Amendment No 13 replaces Amendment No 5 and Amendment No 12 replaces Amendment No 11, on legal advice. If you could sort that out please, Madam President, because we really need to get a clear legal text.

Political group: Verts-ALE
We have chosen to vote against Mr Stevenson’s report in its entirety. There is no justification for the committee’s taking the ban on processing animal protein in animal feed as a pretext for demanding EU subsidies for lupins – would you believe – and other protein-rich crops. Equally unjustified is the demand for a ‘safety net’ or income-insurance scheme to benefit producers of oilseed and protein crops. According to the committee, the Commission’s solution of using the world market almost exclusively, would make the EU vulnerable, ‘particularly to climate change, harvest failures and even price increases from the main global suppliers (USA, Argentina and Brazil)’. We see nothing wrong or unnatural about that. On the contrary. As liberals, we believe in globalisation, free trade and international solidarity. We cannot therefore support Mr Stevenson’s report.

Political group: ELDR
Mr President, I welcomed the reference made by the Council representative in his speech to a calm, pragmatic position, and I am thinking, in particular, of the need for pragmatic action to call strongly, for example, for ratification of all the international conventions, which are the tools available for the States and the citizens to use to protect their human rights. I would like to mention two, in particular, which are considered to be of particularly minor importance: the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. I then feel that we should continue to call strongly for a moratorium on the death penalty, not least in that it has become clear that, resisting any fatalistic tendencies or ideas of inevitable destiny, it is actually possible to persuade some US governors of the worthlessness of this barbaric practice: the fact that the governor of Illinois commuted 167 sentences shows that this is a battle that it is actually possible to win. We call upon the European Union, first and foremost, to fight to ensure that there are no off-limits zones in the protection of human rights. One such off-limits zone could be the fight against terrorism, which should be based firmly on respect for international humanitarian law. Another free zone could be the fact that the Rome Treaty establishing the International Criminal Court continues to be treated by some countries, particularly the United States, as extremely insignificant. The authority and effectiveness of this Treaty are in danger of being increasingly diminished by the attitude of the United States and its decision to adopt bilateral agreements with some countries. Lastly, Mr President, I would like us to go to Geneva with a conviction which I hope we all share – that the first and highest form of defence of human rights is to avoid the destruction, ignominy and violence of war.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I wholeheartedly concur with the Lisbon objectives. I consider it a thoroughly positive thing that we live in a performance-oriented society, one which wants to become the most competitive, the most dynamic and also the most reliant on knowledge. That being so, it is of course quite deplorable that we see society actually disintegrating and that we have in our society a new grouping which is weak in social and educational terms. In view of this, I support the report and am of the opinion that there is a need to address these documents that have been mentioned several times today in the context of the Green Paper and that the amendment on the monitoring centre tabled by Mr Pronk and Mrs Stauner should be adopted. I wish to address a second aspect of this topic, the issue of to what extent it is possible to compensate for differences between the various Member States in education, training, schooling, and the current state of knowledge. The idea of States retaining their own competences in this area is, after all, pretty obsolete. This is where we should be reorienting ourselves and also accepting a degree of harmonisation, even if that were to lead to substantial restructuring in certain countries. It is not fair to tell the citizens of this EU of ours that there is freedom of movement and of establishment when differing school systems and recognition of training standards mean that there are significant differences, and therefore discrimination, when it comes to actually putting it into practice. We should, for this reason, be taking this report as an opportunity to take steps towards harmonisation in the cultural sphere. (Applause)

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, I want to congratulate Mr Brok on the vigorously pan-European approach he has adopted both in his intervention and in his report. I concur with his arguments about enlargement. He notes that the accession negotiations involving twelve new Member States have proved to be the most effective instrument for stabilising the Mediterranean area, together with Central and Eastern Europe. The priority now is to do all we can to strengthen the conditions for freedom and peace in Europe. Mr Brok’s report also discusses the post of High Representative for the CFSP. I think that the present ‘relationship’ is unsustainable in the long term. It is an exciting debate we are having this evening. I welcome the unanimity and frankness with which, as MEPs, we are now discussing the Lalumière report on the European Union’s security and defence policy. If they are to be credible, I believe it is important for the Members of the Council to say the same thing in Brussels and the EU as they do in their own countries. In my country, Sweden, there is a Foreign Minister who demands that there should be a UN mandate for EU operations. The debate in Sweden is very much about the extent to which Sweden, as a Member of the EU, is a neutral country. Astounding, but true. I also believe it is extremely important for those ambitions which the EU is now expressing to be backed by practical resources. Otherwise, they are in danger of becoming nothing but empty words. Finally, I want to point out how important it is for the political leaders of the European Union to involve the people of Europe in these important and far-reaching plans by making it clear to them how very ambitious the plans now are.

Political group: PPE-DE
Since the disaster in New York on 11 September 2001, attempts have been made to make the international financing of terrorist activities impossible. People and organisations have been put on lists and suddenly forbidden to travel abroad. It has also been made impossible for these same people and organisations to receive or spend money through bank payments. This has even meant that people have lost all their income with which they support themselves and their families, without being locked up for a criminal offence against which they can legally defend themselves. Once they are on a list, no matter how much of a mistake that may be, it is extremely difficult to get off again. Generally it is not the real terrorists who are affected by this, as they have developed illegal routes that cannot be touched by it. They are refugees and democratic oppositions in exile, who are hated by the regime in power in their country of origin. I have asked for attention to be given to this problem before in written questions on organisations of people from the former state of Somalia and of the left-wing opposition driven out of the Philippines. What is now being proposed is moving in the right direction. The people affected are now able to pay for their food, accommodation, medical care and legal representation and it is no longer impossible to get names scrapped from the list. - Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (B5-0157/2003)

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, I would merely like to suggest that we have an oral amendment as a first indent, stating: ‘having regard to the United Nations Security Council resolution 1457 to extend the mandate for a panel of experts investigating the legal exploitation of natural resources and other forms of wealth in the Democratic Republic of the Congo for another six months’. (The President established that there were no objections to the oral amendment) (Parliament adopted the resolution) *** Report (A5-0002/2003) by John Joseph McCartin, on behalf of the Committee on Budgetary Control, on the action taken by the Commission on the observations contained in the resolution accompanying the decision giving discharge in respect of the implementation of the general budget of the European Union for the 2000 financial year (Commission) (COM(2002) 696 – C5-0610/2002 – 2002/2189(DEC)) (Parliament adopted the resolution) *** Joint motion for a resolution(4) on world hunger and the elimination of barriers to trade with the poorest countries (Parliament adopted the joint resolution) *** President. – That concludes the vote(5). EXPLANATIONS OF VOTE - Report Mulder (A5-0447/2002)

Political group: PPE-DE
The time when political movements, pressure groups and governments denied the existence of environmental problems is over. Despite this, new cases of environmental pollution keep appearing and old cases are not being addressed adequately. Many of the existing environmental problems are the result of secrecy. Companies keep their production processes secret, and with it, the production of waste substances which end up in the atmosphere, water or soil. Disclosure could cost them money. Under pressure from businesses, governments also act mysteriously about their permits and checks. Files are drafted, but nobody knows what is in them, except for the officials involved. Under those circumstances, the true risks often remain unknown to those living in the vicinity, workers, environmental activities and those controlling disasters. Only when something major goes wrong does immense indignation arise and everyone wants to know that went wrong. Environmental problems can only really be solved when there is disclosure at the highest level. The Korhola proposal is a step in the right direction and superior to what the Commission proposes, even if it still regrettably provides for exemptions and secrecy at some level.

Political group: GUE-NGL