GwendalTsang/DEFT09-parquet huggingface dataset:
Mr President, the media have portrayed a distorted image of the disaster which struck Mozambique. Whilst the world witnessed scenes of desperate people on rooftops and in trees, aid had already got under way off camera. At least gripping images have a mobilising effect on public opinion and provide a strong base for aid. But the other side of the coin is that disasters which do not reach the news, to all intents and purposes, do not exist. This is why it is essential that international aid is not led by the media but only by the people in need. According to the organisations involved, despite everything, aid has got under way relatively quickly. This may be true, but this does not apply to the primary rescue operations. It was not the Commission which was responsible for this, but the governments. Aircraft, helicopters, food and medicine must be available on demand and at a moment’s notice. And I mean literally at a moment’s notice. The waiting period should only be determined by the distance involved, not the red tape. There is a need for much better cooperation between the aid organisations and the armed forces to this end. It is commendable that Commissioner Nielson travelled to Mozambique so quickly. I would be interested to hear about his trip and what he thinks of the criticism of the government? And what about the criticism concerning coordination? The 25 million aid package is sufficient for now, but will need to be increased at a later date. Mozambique has now entered an extremely difficult phase. Diseases must be kept at bay, the landmines littering the area must be cleared and re-housing schemes must be established. For many Mozambicans, the misery is only just starting, now that the media have packed up and moved on. It is therefore up to us, Parliament, the Council and the Commission, to closely monitor the victims ourselves. (Applause)

Political group: ELDR
Mr President, it looks as if, on 1 January 2004, we are going to be given a European Network and Information Security Agency. I welcome that. The agency is an important factor in securing the networks and the information society. We must hope that, on this occasion, the ends justify the means because there are, unfortunately, a number of things to complain about in the outcome. The fact that Parliament and the Council have reached an agreement in the course of the first reading entails, in this case, losses for both Parliament and the industry. The agency’s management board has become too large, with a representative for each Member State, and the industry has had to give way, together with other areas of civil society. My amendment, which was aimed at bringing about transparency in the application and appointment procedure, will no doubt acquire significance in the longer term. The Committee on Citizens’ Freedoms and Rights, Justice and Home Affairs was united in supporting it, but it disappeared in the course of discussion through an administrative mistake by the Committee on Industry, External Trade, Research and Energy. In other words, the Council’s wheeling and dealing with authorities that infringe legislation, and vice versa, continues without any democratic scrutiny. I have a couple of messages for the Commission and the Council prior to the joint declaration that is now to be drawn up. Guarantee long-term transparency in the application procedure. Exploit and develop the EU’s cooperation with the United States and other third countries. Ensure that network security is achieved in accordance with the common guidelines that have already been approved in a Council resolution and that have been signed by ten of the Member States, together with six other countries. Develop the EU guidelines around what individual Member States are already applying. Last week, a delegation from Parliament visited Washington and experienced on the spot what should become our future style. An EU singing from the same hymn sheet should facilitate our foreign relations, especially with the United States. Through this agency, we can now jointly develop data protection in all its different dimensions, and that is good.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner, we must indeed do something, and we can go even further than what has already been agreed. I am therefore pleased that the two biggest groups here in Parliament support our proposals for a European coastguard and a European civil ‘rapid reaction force’. Firstly for prevention. We need a European coastguard to watch over European interests and to prevent ships in distress from being passed from pillar to post by Member States who put their own interests first and in doing so make the wrong decisions. The coastguard must be the strong arm of the agency for maritime safety. Secondly, the European civil protection intervention corps must be able to turn out immediately in an emergency and arrive with its own equipment. These ‘Green Helmets’ will then be able to step in anywhere in the European Union, as not all Member States have the equipment and expertise needed to tackle disasters. I witnessed what was happening in Galicia a week after the disaster, and I saw what a difficult job our Belgian civil protection intervention corps had to do and how long an action of this kind takes to get under way. I have been told that big construction companies are now having to be called in. This is of course unacceptable. Finally I would like to ask the Council to urgently direct its attention to the liability directive, as this lies at the heart of the problem of maritime transport, both in Europe and worldwide. Commissioner, perhaps you could pass this message on to the next presidency: ‘Nunca mais' [never again].

Political group: Verts-ALE
Mr President, this proposed set of amendments to our Rules of Procedure that has been so ably drafted by our rapporteur is intended to resolve a contradiction. In one sense it is a very simple matter: we either resolve it one way or we resolve it the other way. In the view of myself and many in my group, it is not absolutely crucial whether it be resolved this way or that. There are arguments in favour of either solution. Some of these arguments have been put with great clarity in this short debate. But resolved it must be, one way or the other. As is so often the case when things are relatively simple, everybody has an opinion and these opinions do not entirely coincide. Some people have a preference for the solution that has been put forward by the committee. Others prefer the solution that has been tabled in an amendment signed by several political groups. The vote tomorrow will determine which way we go. Either way, it is crucial that we settle this tomorrow. It needs to be sorted out before the constituent sitting in January. I concur with our rapporteur that it is somewhat of a scandal that this report has been sat on for over a year since it was adopted in the committee and is only coming now, almost at the last minute, to plenary to be settled. It should have been settled a long time ago. I congratulate the rapporteur on his patience. I am glad he was still able to remember the crucial arguments underpinning his report a whole year after he steered it through the committee.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, yesterday afternoon there was a demonstration in front of Parliament. The demonstrators used powerful public address systems, that is, loudspeakers. This unbearably noisy spectacle hampered both me and other members in the exercise of our mandate. Please ensure that, first, demonstrators have no cause to enter the grounds of Parliament, as happened yesterday and, secondly, that they are prohibited from using public address systems in the vicinity of the European Parliament. So as to avoid any misunderstanding, may I point out that I am an advocate of the right to demonstrate and am delighted when groups of musicians visiting members entertain us in Parliament and the inner courtyard with their musical renditions.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, this proposal, which we hope will, by means of a Community regulation, resolve the difficulties experienced by our citizens and their families due to failure to recognise judgements on ending the bond of matrimony and parental responsibility, deserves our applause and our sympathy. Of course because on this important subject of family law, the very broad area not regulated by the law due to the way judgements cease to be effective across borders has had a legal and moral effect on thousands of our citizens, damaging families’ social and psychological stability and particularly affecting the weakest members, that is, women and children. We have all at some time been confronted with the tragedies and paradoxes that occur when there is no free movement of judgements, a situation which has resulted in justice being denied to individuals and the obvious absence and omission of obligatory and crucial European instruments, which, in terms of a common area, would eliminate the inconsistencies caused by the legal fragmentation that is the natural consequence of national legal systems. This regulation is a sign of the creative development of the Community legal system and represents the introduction of a new series of common rules. Rules which are able to protect European citizens’ civil relationships, turning a European area which is fragmented in terms of the protection of rights and the enforcement of obligations into a more organised and structured area in which all citizens will be able to avail themselves, not only of their own national laws, but also now of a common European law which will apply to families in all areas of the Union, unless that area has asked that an exception be made in this matter. Mr President, the path that we are taking in the area of judicial and civil cooperation is the right one. I therefore urge my friend, Commissioner António Vitorino, to continue along this path. There is no formal European citizenship, but there will be when in the most relevant branch of law, civil law, Europe has the legitimacy and the strength to guarantee our citizens’ rights and to enforce justice.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, to borrow from Hamlet, it is by no means just in the state of Denmark that there is something rotten with regard to car taxation. Many Member States still illegally tax removal vans, which impedes the movement of the workforce in the EU. Furthermore, however, when a car is sold for transfer to another Member State there are actually a good number of problems. Ten years ago the Court of Justice of the European Communities stated in the famous Nunes Tadeu case that in no single case may the tax levied on a car be more than the proportion that car tax makes up of the market price of a similar used car. In Finland especially, and you will be well aware of this, Mr Bolkenstein, this has fallen on deaf ears. I myself brought an old Citroën van into Finland a few years ago and I paid EUR 17 000 – this was for bringing my own vehicle into one Member State from another. Later the Court of Justice called on Finland to amend its Act relating to motor vehicles tax at the start of this year. I just rang a certain Finnish person who brought a Mercedes, registered in 1995 and bought in Germany, into Finland. He paid EUR 7 000 for it in Germany and in Finland just a month ago he paid EUR 12 000 in tax. That means that in Finland you pay an additional EUR 12 000 on a car bought for EUR 7 000. This, moreover, is an eight year old Mercedes! This is how the internal market works in Europe. Mr Bolkenstein, we still have a lot of work to do regarding this matter before the people of Europe see that the EU actually works for the good of them, the private citizens of Europe. In general I support the Commission’s basic position that registration and circulation tax should be reimbursed when a car is bought for transfer to another country. Furthermore, removal vans should not now be taxed more than the equivalent of the administrative costs incurred, although the situation in Finland, for example, is totally different. In the longer term we also have to say goodbye to registration tax. Only in this way can we guarantee that the internal market will function properly and that people can buy a car in the country they wish and vote with their feet. Only in this way can consumers force the government in each country to change its ossified systems. Let circulation tax, however, be considered nationally, as it does not upset the functioning of the market. I would furthermore like to say something about Mrs Honeyball’s report, which, in itself, is excellent. I disagree on the question of safety. We do, however, need safety-based tax concessions without delay. The annual European death toll of 40 000 is the indisputable reason for that. Finally I would like to say that motoring is taxed much too highly in Europe compared to other forms of transport. The EU is certainly no tax haven but reasonable motoring costs should be permitted in Europe.

Political group: PPE-DE
Thank you, Commissioner. I can see that you are tackling the task of bringing in the framework between 2002 and 2006 in a very efficient and workmanlike way. You say that you intend to concentrate on projects where there is considerable European added value and that you will therefore be applying criteria. Could you tell us a little bit more about what those criteria might be? Could you also say how you envisage the role of the Joint Research Centre in undertaking an evaluation of technological foresight programmes which might indicate to us the sorts of areas where this European added value might be most useful?

Political group: PSE
The Santer Commission was forced to resign following suspicions of fraud which I will not go into again. During the hearings of the present Commissioners, all of them, led by Mr Prodi, promised to reform their departments and to establish a genuine European Anti-Fraud Office which would be independent and would have the necessary resources to carry out its tasks to the best of its ability. OLAF is now a reality but we must keep going along this excellent path. We still have to define certain operating procedures and to guarantee the full independence of the Office. The report presented by Mr Bösch clearly highlights the problems which remain and ways of solving them. So we insist that the OLAF reports are sent to the competent committee of the European Parliament. More importantly, however, the report launches an urgent appeal for the establishment of a genuine European Public Prosecutor’s Office charged with scrutinising every case of fraud perpetrated against the financial interests of the European Communities. This is an essential element in the necessary fight against fraud which, together with the Commission, we must see through to a successful conclusion in the shortest possible time. The credibility and the image of the European Union are at stake. Finally, in his explanatory statement, Mr Bösch floated the idea of inviting the future Belgian Presidency to do everything in its power to ensure that serious progress is made in the establishment of a European Public Prosecutor’s Office. I fully subscribe to this idea. The report by Mr Bösch is ambitious, resolute and realistic. I therefore voted for this report in the fervent hope that the Belgian Presidency might set the European Union on the path chosen by the European Parliament.

Political group: ELDR
Mr President, the aim of this report – to establish common rules in Europe on takeover bids – relates only to a tiny minority of large corporations and their major shareholders, who dominate company ownership. In the legal wrangling between the Council and Parliament, there was not even any mention of the workers, technicians and employees who actually turn the wheels of these companies which the large financial groups are fighting over. The European institutions care little about the job losses and closures caused by almost every company takeover or merger. Personally speaking, I have no interest in the legal problems these large shareholders may have, and I will vote against this report. However, I would like to express my solidarity with the people exploited by these companies, and if Parliament had any respect whatsoever for the workers, it would at least prevent takeovers causing redundancies.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, the representatives of the Lutte ouvrière object to the term ‘service of general interest’, for using it to replace the term ‘public service’ means abandoning public services and leaving services which are useful to the people to be governed solely by market forces. You, yourselves are forced in some cases to provide for some compensatory funding, otherwise known as state aid, for you know that market forces are stupid and inegalitarian and that they only meet financial needs. You cannot but be aware that the race for profit in public transport leads to disasters. By handing public services over to private interests, you are removing or restricting the access of those in the lowest income bands to education, healthcare, postal services and proper transport. We therefore object to both the form and the content of your communication, and we demand that public services be preserved and, where necessary, reestablished in all sectors which are useful to the majority of the people. We reject any privatisation of public services and any introduction of the concept of profit or profitability.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the proposal for a directive on environmental liability provides for a balanced approach which will apply pressure on operators to avoid contamination and to remediate damage whilst suggesting only a light regulatory touch in order to achieve this. Any fundamental changes to this proposal for a directive would have produced an unworkable and impractical solution to what is already a complicated subject, and I feel that the work carried out by Mr Manders and others in committee represents the great possible convergence in view of this constraint. In fact, the Committee on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market has not made any fundamental changes to the Commission’s approach, but it has clarified a number of essential principles. The directive does not apply retroactively. The permit and 'state of the art' exceptions should be retained. There should be mandatory liability but not compulsory insurance – the guiding principle of the directive is that the polluter must pay for environmental damage caused by their actions. An awareness of the financial implications of such damage will also lead to greater efforts to prevent environmental damage occurring. The polluter pays principle therefore aims to address remediation and incentivise prevention. A mandatory financial security regime might destabilise this relationship: operators would know that their financial liabilities are covered by an insurance policy, fund or levy and, as a consequence, the incentive to prevent damage is removed. A mandatory system of financial security might well be described as the 'insurer pays principle' in that the risk of liability has been transferred from operator to financial security provider. We all must be socially responsible about protecting the environment because it is inherently a finite resource. Operators need to recognise that there are consequences to their actions and that they will pay for any damage that they cause with intent or by way of being reckless. The 'polluter pays principle' is acceptable on these terms. Thanks to the reasonable approach advocated by the Committee on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market, a Directive will have been created that reflects the interests of both industry and the environment.

Political group: PPE-DE
Madam President, Sweden has a different alcohol policy from the rest of Europe. Social policy on alcohol springs from a history of serious heavy drinking. For a long time, this policy successfully held its own against influence from outside. That is not the case today. Globalisation, an increasingly mobile population and EU membership have caused conditions to change. The current derogation regarding imports of alcohol and tobacco into Sweden was not going to last forever. The new agreement now in the offing between the Swedish Government and the EU would involve a gradual increase in import quotas. This is a good compromise which would give Sweden the opportunity to adapt to the new situation. Mr Maaten has prepared a good report. It is no panegyric to the view that alcohol is merely an agricultural matter, a view expressed in certain parts of Europe. On the contrary, Mr Maaten makes it perfectly clear that alcohol must also begin to be dealt with as a public health issue. Sweden’s alcohol policy has led to a situation in which both total consumption and alcohol-related illnesses have been kept at low levels. At the same time, the system, with its monopoly on sales and very high taxes, has been put under heavy pressure in a Europe with open borders. At present, a large proportion of the alcohol consumed in Sweden consists of smuggled and illicitly distilled spirits. Border trade between Sweden and its neighbours is flourishing. The increase in import quotas will give Sweden a chance progressively to adjust both its alcohol policy and level of tax in accordance with the policy that is being pursued in other European countries. Lower taxes are required in Sweden, but higher taxes may also perhaps be required in some other EU countries. Sweden cannot conduct an alcohol policy with the aid of border controls and of tax levels higher than those of our neighbours. Now is the time to find new solutions. I believe that what is required is cooperation with other countries, together with a future alcohol policy characterised by a proactive information strategy. What is required is a sensible alcohol policy marked by social responsibility and increased responsibility on the part of the individual. A greater European input is needed in Sweden, but perhaps also a greater Swedish input in Europe.

Political group: ELDR
Mr President, many NGOs have signed the declaration opposing the Millennium Round, the WTO and Seattle. We are no longer in a position to leave the concerns of citizens and various organisations off the Seattle agenda, which means that the European Parliament and the Socialist Group also have an important role to play here. This role must be focused on making a positive contribution during the negotiations. A contribution that has due respect both for trade interests and the interests of citizens. We must succeed in having the best of both worlds, even when it comes to the sensitive area of consumer and environmental protection. The political question is always about the division of responsibilities between the WTO, the European Union, national governments and the consumer. There are various answers to this question. In the United States, more responsibility rests with the consumer. Here in Europe, the government tends to bear the responsibility and we rely on legislation. Many conflicts over environmental and consumer protection could be avoided by the effective application of the precautionary principle. According to the Rio Declaration of 1992, it must be scientifically proven that a new product will have no damaging effects. This evidence must then be provided before the product can come onto the market.

Political group: PSE