GwendalTsang/DEFT09-parquet huggingface dataset:
Mr President, my group has grave concerns about the agreement that the Council wishes to conclude with the United States. Problems arising as a result of greater police and judicial cooperation are being glossed over for political reasons. Greater cooperation does of course enable us to catch wrongdoers more effectively, and that is a good thing. However, this cooperation has to be subject to strict conditions regarding the rights of suspects, because, otherwise, people’s trust in the authorities is undermined. We must make sure that we do not shoot great holes in our rule of law in order to please the Wild West. My concerns regarding the legal system of the United States extend beyond excrescences such as the death penalty and Guantánamo Bay. My concerns go to the heart of the US system. Upwards of 92% of all convictions are based on plea bargains. This means that, in more than 92% of cases, evidence is not examined, but, rather, punishments are negotiated with suspects driven by the fear of absurdly severe sentences. That is not a fair process, and indeed I welcome the reference in the resolution to the European Convention on Human Rights, because that prescribes a fair process. Another positive aspect of the report by Mr Hernández Mollar is that it emphasises that there are alternatives to the extradition of European nationals to the United States, particularly with regard to crimes committed on European soil. The United States just passes the evidence against a suspect on to the competent EU Member State, then we can try our citizens according to our own traditions, with our own guarantees, and people can serve their time close to home. That is what I would call a testament to constructive cooperation between equal partners.

Political group: Verts-ALE
I am indignant at the conclusions of our rapporteur that these scientific exchanges cannot be affected by political considerations! This is denying the political dimension of human rights under Article 2 of the Euro-Mediterranean agreement and contradicting the Barcelona process based on respect for fundamental rights. Israel systematically violates human rights in territories occupied by colonisation and occupation, violates democratic principles with regard to thousands of Palestinians, Israeli citizens, victims of discrimination. Israel is violating the Geneva Convention, international law, the United Nations Charter and the Vienna Convention by not respecting the trade clauses of its association agreement. This is a real human, ecological and political disaster. It is an annexation, undermining the creation of a Palestinian State, ghettoising Palestinians and ruining all hopes of peace. The EU cannot have trade or scientific relations with a third country without taking into consideration the abuses of international law that it is guilty of. Given that the EU reacted in the former Yugoslavia and in Africa, refusing to be complicit or complacent in the face of violations of humanitarian law, why should it keep silent in the case of Israel?

Political group: Verts-ALE
Mr President, I should like to thank Mr Bayona de Perogordo for a constructive and comprehensive report. It contains a series of criticisms, and it is only right that these areas should have been pointed out. In that connection, I should like to draw attention to the entire reform of the accounting system. A lot has happened in the last twelve to eighteen months. I think it good that, last year, we had a regulation introduced to the effect that, in future, the Commission should report on a quarterly basis to the Committee on Budgetary Control. What is quite excellent is that we have now had the opportunity to evaluate the progress made, but there are still major issues and problems to be solved by the Commission concerning the accounting system. We shall not have the final test of whether these have been solved successfully until we move over to the new system on 1 January. I hope that, here in Parliament today, Commissioner Schreyer will promise to go on giving impetus to the reform process, even if it takes place in the middle of the changeover to a new Commission. Otherwise, I would draw attention to Mr van Hulten’s report. I think he has prepared a constructive report. It now gives us the opportunity to obtain some clearer rules governing Parliament’s activity, administration and Members. I think it will be good if we can put together a majority establishing that our travel expenses should be calculated as per account rendered. I also think it might be good to have it established that Parliament itself must have the ability to determine the place and times at which it assembles, and I would in any case call for this part of the report to be supported. Finally, I should like to conclude with a couple of words about political accountability. A number of matters have now been raised, or proposals made, with a view to debating political accountability. I think it is at the consultations that are to take place when the new Parliament assembles that we should put our energies into getting some principles governing Commissioners’ political accountability adopted. We should not put our energies into debating a matter that, in a way, has now been concluded.

Political group: ELDR
Madam President, I just wanted to make the German Members aware of the fact that the old version contains a translation error. I do not know whether it has been corrected or not. It concerns paragraph 5. The budgetary year concerned is 1999, but the old German version states 1997. I wanted to make it clear, and I have not seen the most recent German version, that the text should read as follows: “declares to be unable to close the accounts for implementing the budget for the budgetary year 1999 before the Commission has rectified the bookkeeping errors which have been detected by the Court of Auditors”. (Parliament adopted the two decisions and the resolution in successive votes) *** Report (A5-0001/2000) by Mr van Hulten, on behalf of the Committee on Budgetary Control, on action to be taken on the second report of the Committee of Independent Experts on reform of the Commission - Relating to paragraph 48

Political group: ELDR
The eContent programme is intended to encourage the development and the use of European digital content in the global networks and to promote linguistic diversity in the information society. This programme is part of the e-Europe initiative, “an information society for all” by the European Union (EU), launched by the Commission in December 1999. It will cover a period of five years, from 2001 to 2005. The four main objectives of this initiative are: firstly, to create favourable conditions for the commercialisation, distribution and use of European digital content in the global networks in order to encourage economic activity and to increase prospects for employment. Secondly, to encourage the exploitation of the potential of European digital content and particularly of public sector information. Thirdly, to promote multilingualism in digital content on the global networks and to increase export opportunities for European content companies, particularly the SMEs, through linguistic customisation. Finally and most importantly, to contribute to the professional, social and cultural development of the European Union’s citizens and to facilitate the economic and social integration of the citizens of the candidate countries into the information society. We can only be delighted at such an initiative knowing as we do that the value of European digital content represents 5% of the European GDP and provides four million jobs. Furthermore, the digital media sector could achieve 20% annual growth over the next decade. Our businesses must be able to benefit from this growth. We must put them in a position where they can compete with the United States, which dominates this sector. I must reiterate the fourth objective, which is designed to ensure that the information society benefits everyone, both men and women. The danger of a digital divide being created is indeed considerable, but even though the truth of this statement cannot be denied, the European Commission is not proposing any measures to prevent this divide being created. I find this unacceptable. I therefore backed the amendments that seek the adoption of specific actions. As rapporteur on universal service and the new communication networks, I think it is crucial to guarantee all our citizens access to the new information and communications technologies. I shall personally do my best to ensure that this happens in the report that I have been asked to produce.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, through the disgraceful policies being pursued today in Chechnya, the Russian Government is rigidly following the example set by the governments of the United States and of the Member States of the European Union just a few months back. It is continuing to use excessive violence and to bomb civilians, both indiscriminately and with impunity, because it has neither the patience nor the stamina to find a political solution to the existing problems. Just as the others did! We are not convinced by the criticism being levelled at them either. We are even less convinced by you saying that you cannot safeguard the rights of minorities in Kosovo, and that you cannot guarantee the integrity of Yugoslavia. How will you go about convincing Russia that you can guarantee its integrity and how will you persuade it to respect human rights? The whole thing is a shambles, blind hypocrisy. Only those who uphold the rights and respect the integrity of the states of both the Yugoslavian and Russian Federations can convince us of the rights of those persecuted Chechens who are suffering greatly today. Only them! Nobody else!

Political group: GUE-NGL
Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, for many months the Group of the has been calling for an adaptation of the Stability and Growth Pact to the economic cycles. On different occasions, I have been able to develop, on behalf of my group, specific proposals to reform the Pact in order to turn it into the instrument of a European policy of growth and stability. Thus, we recommend greater stringency when the economic climate is good. It would be a case of, for example, requiring the Member States to have a balanced budget when growth exceeds, let us say, 3%, even if it allows them greater infrastructural spending flexibility at the time of an economic turnaround. Our objective is the transposition of the British golden rule to European level. The Christian Social Prime Minister of Luxembourg, Mr Jean-Claude Juncker, has just taken up the Socialist proposals again. In an interview for the newspaper Le Monde, he recommends that the Pact should be more flexible when the economic climate is poor and stricter when the economic climate is good. At the recent Ecofin Council, the theory that it would be necessary to reform the Pact in 2005 gained ground. The Socialists will bring their constructive participation to this necessary reform, but Mr Juncker will have difficulty persuading his colleagues in the European People’s Party , who demonstrate almost religious dogmatism in relation to the Stability and Growth Pact. In fact, stability without growth will only increase the economic and social problems of the European Union. In this respect, I recommend that you read the paper of Professor Jean-Paul Fitoussi for the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs. This paper broadly demonstrates that the Stability and Growth Pact has slowed, and continues to slow, growth in Europe. The Pact is particularly harmful to the large European economies, whose economic activity depends more on internal stimulation than that of the small countries, who depend more on external demand. This certainly explains the fact that the small countries seem more virtuous in relation to stability than the large countries, whether the large countries are governed by the left or the right. Stability and Growth Pact reform is, therefore, not a question of politicking, but rather a vital necessity for a Europe that is losing the fight for growth and employment. Madam President, allow me to address a final word of thanks to Mrs Randzio-Plath. Mrs Randzio-Plath will no longer be part of the next Parliament, which saddens me greatly. With her, we will lose a woman who was committed to the euro, to a social Europe and to a Europe of growth and employment. I think that I speak on behalf of all our fellow Members in thanking her publicly for her work at the head of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs. (Applause)

Political group: PSE
Mr President, as Mrs Junker has just said, Haiti has been independent for 200 years, and, when the terrible Duvalier dynasty of Papa and Baby Doc came to a belated end over ten years ago, we thought that things could only get better, and, indeed, at first they did to some extent. Mr Aristide carried the hopes of many, but we can all see what has happened in the meantime. It is not only we Europeans who must ask ourselves where we went wrong with our policy over many decades, what we did or failed to do: the Americans certainly must, for they are closer to hand geographically speaking. Why did the western half of Hispaniola – which is a large island – turn out like this? Of course not everything is ideal in the Dominican Republic on the other side of the border, but, all the same, the fact that millions of Europeans and Americans go there as tourists and at least bring some money into the country is an indicator that things cannot be that terrible. The situation is not yet ideal, but this does show that you can stay in the place with some degree of safety. It is certain that we must look to ourselves for answers as to what we did wrong. This House has been making very concrete demands of Haiti; political murders must be stopped; members of the ruling party must be compelled to uphold justice and maintain the law; the militias, the armed brigades and the so-called special brigades of the police must be disbanded and disarmed, and a start must be made on a national dialogue between the government and the opposition, so that the caravan of hope can reach its destination. What would be best – and what we demand – is that this should be done through the mediation of the United Nations, and that the UN Mission must be re-established to work together with the Haitian police. The conditions have to be created under which the suspension of the Cotonou agreement in accordance with its Article 96 can again be lifted, for our support is urgently necessary, especially in the areas of education and health.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, the proposed working time directive for specific categories of worker such as doctors in training, offshore workers or mobile workers, is typical of the slow and derisory nature of social Europe. The recitals of the proposal, nonetheless, stress the specific importance of this file, the first major file on social issues, adding, even, that it is a matter of the health and safety of 7 million workers. In France, for example, a number of strikes by junior doctors recently drew the attention of public opinion to the intolerable length of the working day for this category of worker, harmful to the doctors in training themselves, but also to the quality of the care they are providing their patients with. The same question arises, with at least as much urgency, for other categories such as offshore workers or transport workers. What we should have had was a quick decision and an appropriate reduction in working hours. Well, the proposal does intend to cut hours, but by phasing in the cuts. For the first three years, 58-hour working weeks are permitted. We have to wait 5 years for the maximum working week to be reduced to 48 hours, and the Commission is cynical enough to cite technical reasons in order to grant a further 2-year delay in application. Who are they trying to kid that these measures could not come into force almost immediately if there was any political will to act in favour of the interests of the workers concerned rather than favouring the claims of management? Some restriction, even a derisory cut, in working hours is better than no restriction at all. We shall not vote against this text, but we shall conclude from this experience that workers can have no expectations of social Europe and that, decidedly, nothing can replace the collective strength of the workers when it comes to amending legislation in favour of the workers.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, I congratulate Mr Herzog on an excellent report. I hope that tomorrow Parliament will rectify matters by overturning the rejection of the framework directive proposal by the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs. This is not the end of the debate: this is a debate on a Green Paper and is the beginning of what I think will be a fairly long debate. Parliament is seeking, in this debate at least, to give some guidance to the Commission as to how it should proceed with regard to services of general interest, both economic and non-economic. For me the issue of general-interest services – both economic and non-economic – is a line in the sand between those who favour a social market economy model and those who favour a neo-liberal market economy. It is not acceptable that we should move by stealth to denying citizens their rights as citizens, which citizenship grants them in Europe, by making competition the only measure of service provision. The OECD has estimated that in the 1990s governments in Europe transferred about EUR 300 billion of public-service property to private operators, in some cases with disastrous results in terms of both service provision and, indeed, loss of life. As a Union and a Parliament we have to stand by access for all to high-quality, affordable services, and we must recognise that those services dictate the quality of life of our citizens. We have made progress in Amsterdam, in the Charter of Fundamental Rights and in the new draft Constitution on re-establishing the rights of citizens to public services. We must defend those rights. It is not a question of defending an ancien régime, but of looking to see how high-quality services to our citizens can be guaranteed across the board in what are new circumstances. In particular, we must defend the advances we have made in the constitution on this matter.

Political group: PSE
Madam President, ten years ago this week, our Sakharov prize winner, Aung San Suu Kyi, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. This Saturday, all living Laureates will go to Oslo to commemorate 100 years of the Nobel Peace Prize – she will not be there. She has been kept under house arrest since September 2000 and has not been allowed to move about freely for 13 years. Will you please, Madam President, send her a message of support from this Parliament and also urge the Norwegian Nobel Institute to express their deep concern about the fact that she is not able to join them on Saturday in Oslo. Would you also ask the Nobel Institute to urge the military junta in Rangoon, Burma, to give Aung San Suu Kyi her freedom forthwith. (Applause)

Political group: PSE
We were happy to vote for the Markov report. At a time when efforts are being made both at European and national level to adopt measures to reduce the number of road accident victims – an area in which Portugal unfortunately tops the list – it would be very hard not to agree with a report which aims to improve the social and working conditions of drivers engaged in road transport. The report we have now approved considers measures that are undeniably positive: removing the proposal for a flexible week; imposing limits on driving time and working hours; setting a minimum age for drivers engaged in the carriage of goods; limiting possible derogations; increasing the involvement of Europe's social partners; and encouraging the extension of these regulations to cover all drivers on the EU's roads. These measures deserve our approval, given that they will make a serious contribution to improving road safety. However, we very much regret that a majority of Members of this House did not support the rapporteur's proposal to reduce weekly driving time to 45 hours. We nevertheless hope that the Commission and the Council will be sufficiently open-minded towards the amendments that have now been adopted. - Napolitano report (A5-0427/2002)

Political group: GUE-NGL
Ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner, I wish to begin my speech on Trans-European Networks in the energy sector by reminding you once again and quite forcefully, that energy is not a product like any other and that the market cannot be the main force regulating it. Security of supply is a prerequisite for the political independence of our countries and of Europe. This security requires a diversification of energy sources and will involve major long term, not to say extremely long-term investment. Energy is, furthermore, an important factor in land-use planning and falls entirely within the field of public services in the truest sense of the word. I would add that we must always bear in mind that when we talk about energy and about transport networks that, whereas new infrastructures must be created, existing infrastructures must also be reorganised in order to make better use of them. Lastly, there must be – and I wish to express this forcefully – an obsession with the environment in all its dimensions: the visual dimension, pollution, and the despoliation of resources, not forgetting the issue of waste. Incidentally, with regard to the report by Mr Beysen, whom I congratulate on his work, I can state my broad agreement with the proposals that have been made. We must in fact improve and extend the energy transport networks and, by means of studies and investment, support the implementation of the least profitable ones where they are needed. The internal market in energy is necessary but what it needs more than deregulation is investment throughout the Union, especially in the least accessible and least densely populated regions. No one would deny that the interlinking of networks is necessary. Let us not forget, however, that we need energy to put into these networks and a number of conditions must be met if we are to achieve that. Lastly, I wish to confirm the importance to us of renewable energies, of research in this field and of the public investment needed for its development. I must also admit that I do not fully understand the connection that some people wish to make between this aim of developing renewable energies and a liberal approach that often leads to a quest for the lowest cost in the short term, without worrying about the consequences in the medium and long term. To conclude, whilst remaining critical of the liberal principles that I believe are dangerous for Europe’s energy independence and for small consumers, not forgetting the least-favoured regions, I believe that the Commission guidelines on the Trans-European Networks are a step in the right direction and, as they stand, I thank you for them, Commissioner.

Political group: GUE-NGL