GwendalTsang/DEFT09-parquet huggingface dataset:
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner, on behalf of my group, I support the analysis, conclusions and considerations presented by the rapporteur, and I also share his concern about the problems highlighted by the Multidisciplinary Group. I thank Mr Ferri for his work. In the EU there are 15 different penal codes, a large number of police forces, some of them competing with each other, and 15 legal systems, all deeply marked by their own mentality, tradition and culture. Until the EU’s criminal law systems are harmonised – something which is to be desired – judicial cooperation will continue to operate through a complex and antiquated system of requests for legal assistance, an emotive term for almost all public prosecutors and judges. But European cooperation is more urgent than ever. For example, 77% of all cases of organised crime in Germany in 1998 had an international connection. There is a great need for the Council to act. In Luxembourg, for example, the Minister of Justice must give his personal authorisation whenever the banking sector is involved. The Netherlands use their own classification of urgency instead of adopting the urgency of the requesting State. The five countries have insufficient staff and inadequate technical and financial resources for dealing with requests for legal assistance. On the positive side, we can mention the Netherlands’ KRIS programme, the Irish system and Denmark’s experience with the Nordic countries. Where contact points exist within the Judicial Network, there is good experience and results, but the network has no influence over formal requests for legal assistance. The creation of contact points alone is still no guarantee of the qualitative leap needed in European cooperation. At some contact points, the willingness to make regular exchanges also left much to be desired. If the Council is serious about successfully fighting cross-border crime, which simply disregards democracy and the rules of the legal economy, the recommendations of the rapporteur and the committee must be translated into action. I do not want to go over the details of what Mr Ferri has already said, but it does mean that the candidate countries need to be fully involved in the strategy for fighting organised crime at an early stage. The Judicial Network must be further expanded, for example with internet pages about the various legal systems, with videoconferencing facilities and, finally, Eurojust should become a meaningful adjunct to EUROPOL and OLAF.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, regardless of whether there is an error in the text of Amendment No 1 presented by my Group, I would like to make it perfectly clear that the objective of this amendment is to establish a delegation within the EU-Chile Mixed Parliamentary Committee independent of the Delegation for Relations with Mercosur.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, I am very pleased about this new proposal concerning forest reproductive material because it offers new opportunities or, rather, gives the old opportunities a new lease of life, above all with a view to there being several categories of material. The expression of known origin will make it possible to maintain the genetic and biological diversity of the forest in local regions and on land given over to forests. True, our forests are certainly producers of renewable material, but they are also infinitely more than just raw materials. The forest is also home to a great diversity of biological life. It is also an important means of trapping carbon dioxide and it is perhaps the earth’s most important regulator of the climate and water supply. The forest also has a spiritual dimension. It represents peace and quiet, silence and tranquillity for stressed-out urban men and women, especially if they were born in the northern dimension. It is therefore important that forests be treated as diverse in their own right and as having a diversity of functions. I therefore repeat that I am very glad that, as the proposal now reads, there exists this opportunity to maintain the genetic and biological diversity of the forests.

Political group: ELDR
Mr President, Commissioner, are there any statistics on violent crime and, above all, on compensation payments within the European Union and, particularly, developments in recent years?

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, I would also like to wish Mr Titley luck with his report and I would like to add my support for it and for what Mr Titley said in his presentation on further work in this area. However, I have a number of problems with Mr Brok’s report. In my opinion it contains a fantastic amount of useful and important things, but the emphasis is wrong. Far too much weight has been placed on military security policy, while civil and economic security policy is left in the shadows. I consider that to be getting your priorities wrong, because in fact it is precisely this area in which the EU has a unique opportunity and some unique resources. You could say that the arena is now entirely open for us in this area. The USA is unilaterally prioritising military security policy. It is our strength to move into this field. We must use our trade agreements, our many contacts, etc. in the fight for peace, human rights and democracy. Unfortunately my own country has helped to prevent some of these opportunities, for example by not wishing to be part of renegotiating the Association Agreement with Israel. It is the Association Agreement that Israel is violating time after time. Finally, with regard to Iraq: what is the evidence that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction? I have now studied the flood of reports that have come in. I have read them in detail. The most powerful intelligence services in the world have worked towards this as their sole aim. There is not a shred of evidence. Why is that?

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, as rapporteur I would like to ask you and the House to accept my proposal to vote on Amendment No 75 before Amendments Nos 55 and 56. This is to make the sequence of amendments logical, given that Amendment No 75 can replace Amendments Nos 55 and 56. There will also be an oral amendment, which I support, to Amendment No 75, presented by Mr Lisi and Mr Santini, and an Amendment No 43, presented by Mr Tannock and Mrs Korhola, which I also support.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, I would just like to give a brief justification for this motion. As you know, we have had several timetabling problems and postponements today and not only today but also in the run up to the debate of these four reports. Everyone who attended the preliminary discussions of the von Wogau, Rapkay, Jonckheer and Langen reports in committee is aware of the importance of competition policy and of future internal market policy to the future development of the economy and to growth and employment in Europe. Our view is that, given the importance which the work of the European Union and which our relations with Member States, undertakings and workers will have in the future, all four reports should be debated in detail in plenary and substantiated vis-à-vis the public at a more convenient time. These four reports do not, primarily, represent the culmination of processes; they are important contributions to the future debate on development. I therefore move, on the grounds of timetabling problems and the importance of these four reports to competition policy, that we deal with them during the first part-session next year, i.e. in January, preferably on Tuesday in Strasbourg and I ask you on behalf of all the rapporteurs to support this motion. (Applause)

Political group: PPE-DE
The common fisheries policy is of the utmost importance to Portugal. The reform that is currently underway has extremely serious implications for my country and for the Algarve region. Implementing the reform in its current state would seriously damage Portuguese fishermen, economically, socially and in terms of their industry. Nevertheless, despite the consequences, I believe that stepping up the fight against illegal fishing is a priority that everyone accepts. Such activity prevents the effective and sustainable management of fish stocks. I therefore give my unequivocal support to the Busk report and to all measures to eradicate illegal fishing. In this context I agree with the call to close European ports to vessels flying flags of convenience or which are engaged in illegal fishing. We will thereby prevent the entry of these products onto the European market. We cannot, on the one hand, impose strict fishing quotas and, on the other, not take action to prevent illegal fishing activities. I am therefore, in favour of new control measures at Community level, specifically through: - clearer marking and identification of vessels, - compliance with the rules, to be monitored by regional organisations, - dissuasive and uniform sanctions. To this end, the Commission must make available financial resources that are appropriate to this fight. - report Zimmerling (A5-0349/2002)

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I am delighted this debate is happening at last. As the Member for the Val d’Aosta, I have been calling for a moment’s reflection in this House for many months, because I believe these issues should be resolved through institutional channels, this is the true alternative to futile protests. It is sad that this should happen on the day after the accident in the St Gotthard tunnel, which used to be referred to as one of the safest of tunnels, and, what is more, in Switzerland, which is the only European country – not yet part of the European Union – that has truly embarked on a policy of transferring freight from road to rail. Mont Blanc has always been a symbol: it has been the symbol of mountaineering and also the symbol of road transport, with this tunnel built in the 1960s, which for many years was the most important tunnel in the Alps. Nobody could ever have imagined that we would see such intense growth in road transport, and I must say that 24 March 1999 was, for those who saw it, like me, a tragic day: the sight inside the tunnel was truly appalling. I believe that all these events should serve to make it clear that extreme positions on both sides are useless. The extremist approach adopted by those who say ‘stop the HGVs’ is unrealistic. It offloads HGVs onto someone else and proposes a utopian world without transport and without mobility; naturally, however, we must also say no to those who call for ‘unlimited transport for all: the economy needs it.’ I believe this is an unsustainable position for mountain peoples like those in the Val d’Aosta, whom I represent, just as a pretence at a setting a limit would also be unsustainable. In fact, we are asking for a daily ceiling on HGV numbers – a genuinely effective serious limit. On the eve of this meeting, Società Autostrade, the motorway operator, told us that, according to the tunnel calculations, traffic will be 30 per cent lower than before the tragedy. I do not know if this will suffice, but I must say that the right approach is in the White Paper, the Alpine Convention transport protocol and the Swiss model. Under the swiss model, it was decided to agree to HGVs if they pay a tax and to invest the revenue, together with other capital, in rail tunnels. We want rail tunnels: we want the Turin-Lyon tunnel; we also want the Aosta-Martigny tunnel, this rail project that may acquire vital, decisive importance. In the meantime, however, we want real, serious limits for the sake of safety and the environment.

Political group: ELDR
Madam President, Mr President, as far as sustainability and your ambitious goals are concerned, we really are in something of a vicious circle. The forces of the market with their spontaneity and the effects of deregulation very much stand in the way of your highly ambitious goals. I have two questions. First: what do you think you can really do under these circumstances? One of your predecessors, President Delors, elaborated whole programmes on the issue of shifting modes of transport from road to rail. If you look at the situation today, however, you will see that very little has changed. Quite the contrary, in fact, the situation has worsened. We talk about alternative energy sources and yet solar energy and wind energy are hardly being promoted. The big energy companies do not want to let such things onto the grid too. Second: what form should a debate with citizens take? What do we want to talk about? About facts and figures, or also about how citizens can be involved more democratically and more actively in shaping policy? What information do they want to give us, the Members of this Parliament?

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, Mr President of the Court of Auditors, Commissioner, over the last two years the Court of Auditors has published six special reports on the subject of the common agricultural policy. In its special report on subsidies for the disposal of skimmed milk, it highlights a lack of supervisory measures, a level of falsification of milk data and fraudulent use of this data that is unparalleled in any other agricultural sector. In its report on the disposal of butter, the Court of Auditors noted that 89% of the budget is spent on subsidies to the food industry through procedures of dubious transparency and of even more dubious efficiency in terms of their impact on farmers’ incomes. In both cases, this involves a limited number of countries and a limited number of economic agents, who are the direct beneficiaries of these policies. In what has been its most important work on the common agricultural policy, the special report on arable crops, the Court concluded that, from 1993 to 1997, the Community budget paid out a sum of more than EUR 13 billion more than could reasonably have been expected. Arable crops represent 43% of the CAP budget, but only 10.7% of the end product. In 1995, almost 40% of payments went to the top 3% of beneficiaries, whilst 57%, the smaller beneficiaries, received only 4.5% of payments. The Court, therefore, quite rightly concluded that support for farmers should not be provided on the basis of price, production or area, but of support for the net income of farmers or of agricultural work units. These are excellent, high-quality documents, which are a 'drop in the ocean' in a common agricultural policy that still gives special treatment to larger farmers at the expense of the smaller ones and to countries and regions at the heart of Europe at the expense of peripheral countries and regions. It is a shame that the Court of Auditors’ annual report, which is supposedly drawn up to reflect the most relevant aspects of the work undertaken in the course of the year through the special reports, did not include these studies and decided to concentrate on other issues on which it had not undertaken specific studies.

Political group: PSE
Mr Aznar, I would like to start by congratulating the Spanish Presidency for, as Vice-President responsible for conciliation, I have to say that we have done a good job: we have adopted many problematic instruments, and all credit is due to Parliament, the Council and the Commission too for its active cooperation. I would now like to ask Mr Aznar and Mr Prodi a question. The document adopted at Seville on Council reform refers to a strategic document which the Council is to present, covering three years. In other words, the Council undertakes to present its strategic programme for the three years to come in consultation with the Commission. There is no mention of Parliament. The question is a simple one, then: firstly, why three years, given that the legislature covers a period of five years, and secondly, why is there absolutely no reference to Parliament? I also have a concern to express and a request to make. Our friend, Mr Poos, has already mentioned the distance existing between the Union, of which Spain has the Presidency, and President Bush as regards the Middle East. Could Mr Aznar inform us whether, in the next six months, the Danish Presidency will be sensitive to the development of the situation in the Middle East, in view of the fact that recent statements made by the Danish Foreign Minister are completely in line with statements made by President Bush as regards both the international conference on the Middle East and the quartet. These statements are completely unacceptable. I have one last question. Mr President-in-Office, you were in this House on 20 March. The previous day, a university professor, Marco Biagi, was assassinated in my city by the Red Brigades. You expressed your condolences on that occasion. What would you think, Mr Aznar, if one of your government ministers referred to a victim of terrorism as a pain in the ass – please would the interpreters translate that literally – who complained because he wanted his consultancy contract to be renewed? Do not call me to order, Mr President. I am not being rude: these are the words of the Italian Minister for the Interior. Do you think that statements like that will further the fight against terrorism?

Political group: PSE
Madam President, first I would like to express my deepest regret that we are debating a review of the financial perspective, and we have not even been presented with an initial written document. If an issue like this is presented to Parliament, I would have thought that we might have had something in black and white, so we would know what we were talking about. First of all, I would like to say that, not only are we faced with this bad example of administration, but that the Commission seems to take the view that wars can be waged and expenses incurred, yet the financial perspective cannot be reviewed. The only way we can bear the costs of war and its consequences would seem to be at the expense of agriculture. I would ask the Commissioner how this Commission proposal fits in with the decision of Parliament on next year’s guidelines that agriculture could not be the primary source of financing, as it appears that more would be taken out of agriculture than found, for example, by means of reallocation. On the other hand, I would ask whether the Commission believes it would again be possible to use the flexibility instrument for this financing measure, since the rules forbid the use of the flexibility instrument more than once?

Political group: ELDR
Mr President, I imagine that the vast majority of Members of this House have not even noticed the Inglewood report sitting so closely in the shadow of the two Corbett reports as it does. I must begin by congratulating Mr Corbett on the very comprehensive work that he has carried out in this wide-ranging review of the Rules. The report, like the second Corbett report, was prepared around two years ago because of initial internal inconsistencies in the Rules of this House, as then drafted, in respect of the justification of amendments. At that time it was thought it would be brought forward quite quickly, and then could be amended if necessary, as part of the more wide-ranging debate about the Rules we are currently engaged in. It did not happen. Indeed, it disappeared over the horizon more or less completely. I would just like to record my gratitude to the Fisheries Committee, which is not usually associated with these matters, for having, as far as I know, been the only other people involved in this Parliament, other than myself, and possibly Mr Corbett, who had appreciated it had not gone forward. Nevertheless, what was originally intended to be a precursor to the general revision of the Rules is now seen as something running in parallel with them and, in fact, is substantively part of the overall package. In simple terms, it is proposed that the question of whether or not amendments should be justified individually, calls for a single answer regardless of the context in which they are tabled. Secondly, it is suggested that a strict obligation to justify every amendment in this House does not really make sense. It is recognised that an individual justification can be helpful in the context of legislative procedures. Finally, in the interests of clarity and legal certainty, and also to avoid certain technical problems, the individual justifications of amendments should remain the responsibility of their authors and, consequently, should not be put to the vote. I would like to commend my report to the House. IN THE CHAIR: MR PROVANVice-president

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I feel nothing but appreciation for Mrs Palacio Vallelersundi’s clear draft report. It concisely outlines and highlights the key points from the Commission’s communication on the strategy to be followed for Europe’s internal market. I would like to highlight some of these points. The promised dialogue between the Commission on the one hand and business and citizens on the other is to be welcomed because the relationship between the Commission, the European Parliament and society should, after all, be interactive. In order to keep pace with the present breakneck speed at which technology is developing, it is not only desirable but essential to keep the dialogue going. So far, the average citizen has had insufficient insight into what drives the Union and what can be gained from European cooperation. This is why information campaigns are essential. After all, Europe cannot afford to remain a remote spectacle. Back to basics should be our motto. The e-Europe initiative praises the use and expertise of Internet and multimedia. This is very commendable indeed but, rather than just creating a frame, it is more important to give substance to education. I would like to repeat the words of the French President spoken at the official opening of this Parliament building and I quote: “We must create a citizens’ Europe in which each individual gradually comes to see that he or she has a role to play. We have a duty to build this great common house in which each individual nevertheless feels at home. A house in which everyone lives together, in a spirit of solidarity, but in which each individual retains his or her identity”. In order to meet these objectives, the residents need to get to know and get a feel for their house, or rather their home. In order to build a genuine internal market, we should, more than anything, concentrate on promoting the interests of small and medium-sized businesses. To this day, there are still too many obstacles. Companies’ competitiveness and dynamism depend directly on a regulating climate which is conducive to investment, innovation and entrepreneurship. Finally, I can only echo the need for SLIM. Legislation must become simpler and must be written in a clear language. Superfluous legislation should be withdrawn. It would therefore be beneficial to draw up a scoreboard of laws which have been abolished.

Political group: ELDR