GwendalTsang/DEFT09-parquet huggingface dataset:
Mr President, we must have a clear timetable for enlargement post-Nice. The group of the is calling for negotiations with the first group of countries to be completed by the end of 2002, so that the first accessions can take place before the next European elections in 2004. I must say, in all honesty, that I am rather astonished, Mr Verheugen. Was it not your suggestion to set clear timetables with interim and target dates after Nice on the basis of the progress reports, in order to motivate rather than delay reforms? We know ourselves from monetary union how important that was. There is another reason. Common environmental standards and social rules can only be implemented if these countries are full members. We know that from Temelin. As far as I am concerned, it is out of the question to have to use additional resources from category 8 from 2002 as part of the pre-accession strategy here. Mr Verheugen, in my view it is pie in the sky to believe that the liberalisation of trade alone can modernise agricultural production and strengthen rural development. In truth, it needs far more measures, which should be much more financially focussed and improved under the SAPARD regulation.

Political group: Verts-ALE
To put things in a less black-and-white way, Mr President, a state of emergency has been decreed, and it is correct that the Maoists have sabotaged the negotiations, but the rule of law is meanwhile being undermined. We do not know how many victims are being claimed. The helicopters shoot from the air and the press has been muzzled, In Nepal there is both terror and counter-terror. Child soldiers are being recruited, and I wonder whether this will provide a solution in a country that wishes to avoid civil war but where 12% of the population owns 95% of the property and holds 70% of the power and where, furthermore, corruption reigns supreme. The Maoists have meanwhile occupied part of the country. Real political, yet peaceful, change is required, and that end requires the consent not only of the rebels, but also of hard-liners in the regime. On behalf our group we should like to ask the Commission to address itself to its paper on conflict prevention together with the Lagendijk report that we have approved only today. We must be able to bring about peace negotiations and to that end exert pressure on all parties at home and abroad.

Political group: Verts-ALE
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, at the death of Louis XIV, King of France, the French people showered their devotion on his successor, Louis XV. We too wish to shower our devotion on Mr Trichet and will be voting for him, although there are no more objective reasons for supporting him than there were for feeling devotion in advance for Louis XV. The main reason behind our enthusiasm for Mr Trichet is the lethargy of his predecessor. Mr Trichet will tell us that, throughout his mandate as vice-president, although it was his task to provide secondary support for the European Union’s objectives – the Lisbon and Gothenburg objectives, which are full employment and sustainable development – he personally considered that pursuing the first objective: price stability, would be support enough. Consequently, during the three and a half years of his mandate, whilst achieving the same rate of inflation as the United States, we have done infinitely less well than the Americans in the field of investment and stability. I hope that Mr Trichet will not say: ‘this could last as long as I do, after me, the deluge’.

Political group: Verts-ALE
I should like to thank the President-in-Office for such a detailed reply. However, my specific question perhaps got lost in the detail, because the Council does not appear to be quite as unanimous as she would have us believe. For example, the Greek government protested to the Italian government that dozens of Greek nationals were unable to enter Italy and were sent back on the same boat prior to the meeting in Genoa. My question, which I would like the President-in-Office to answer, is this: were the plans to set up teams of policemen or intelligence service officers to operate as links between the Fifteen and were the plans to exchange information in files on people classified as troublemakers implemented before Genoa or not? Did the Fifteen cooperate in this regard?

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, I would like to congratulate the President of the Court of Auditors, Mr Fabra Vallés, on the report he has presented to us. It is a rigorous, clear and very focused report, which provides us with precise information on how the budget has been implemented. The most striking aspect of this report is, once again, the significant budgetary surplus for 2001: 16%. It is a very high percentage, as the previous speakers have been repeating, especially if we analyse it in detail and realise that, of the Structural Funds, just 70% has been implemented and that the SAPARD budget has barely been implemented at all, despite the fact that it is an enormously important instrument for the new countries of the European Union. A similar thing is also happening in the case of agricultural policy. With regard to the reliability of the accounts that the Commission has presented, the Court’s report considers them to be adequate and, amongst the recommendations it makes, I would like to stress the one relating to the accounting system. As in previous years, the Court believes that actions should be taken to modify the current system in order to improve it. And given that this issue has led to some controversy – excessive controversy in my opinion – it would be desirable for the Commission to take very good account of the recommendations for modernisation of the accounting system and to make it as transparent as possible as soon as possible. I believe it is also necessary to point out the reference to the internal reform of the Commission and the slowness with which it is taking place. This is no doubt due to the fact that it is a complicated and ambitious process, but we should also remember that it is a necessary reform, and we therefore hope that the Commission will take very good account of the recommendations made to it. I do not wish to elaborate on the previous speeches. Practically all the Members who are speaking agree on the concerns in this report and the clarity with which they have been presented and I therefore believe that the ball is in the Commission’s court. I would like to congratulate Mr Fabra Vallés once again. There is absolutely no doubt that his experience as a former member of the Committee on Budgetary Control has been a great help to him in carrying out his work.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, the Commission is now to be granted discharge for 1999, but Parliament has, in actual fact, achieved a lot by postponing the discharge first time around. The Commission has been pressed to take initiatives it would not otherwise have wished to take. I think the rapporteur has delivered a splendid piece of work, but I also think the Commission deserves to be warmly congratulated when it makes progress – as, I believe, it has in fact done. I would therefore recommend, on behalf of the Group of the , that we grant discharge for the development fund. At the same time, I want to assure the Commission that all the outstanding problems will be followed up in the discharge for the year 2000. The Commission has carried out a major investigation of the counterpart funds and of the roles and responsibilities of the delegations. An investigation has been carried out into whether the delegations have complied with their responsibilities, and it would appear that they have done so, for disciplinary enquiries are not to be carried out. I can, of course, ask Mr Nielson if the Commission will confirm that disciplinary enquiries will not be carried out on the basis of its investigations. I can also – perhaps rather teasingly – ask if the Commission will confirm this report, which will not be sent to Parliament. The internal audit service has done good work from the start with its investigations of the counterpart funds. It is a good report which is critical about the way in which the system operates. The counterpart funds amount to direct budgetary support, and neither the Commission nor the delegations in the beneficiary countries have any direct control over the money. The report emphasises that direct budgetary support is risky, irrespective of what is done. Mr Nielson has said that that form of subsidy should nonetheless be maintained. How, though, does he think that control over the funds can be improved? The Commission must also be praised for sending this report to Parliament immediately. It shows it has learned something from this whole course of events. Discharge was postponed primarily because there were problems with the supply of information. Reports were sent to the wrong people, were seriously delayed or never arrived. I think, however, that it is a good result we have achieved, and I therefore recommend discharge for the Commission.

Political group: PSE
This report and the Commission communication to which it responds makes two major contributions to progress in seeking to reduce sexual exploitation of children through so-called sex tourism. The first is in contributing to the construction of an international human rights community: in all kinds of ways there has been increasing recognition that Europe must promote international standards of respect for human rights, for instance in the international criminal tribunals on Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the agreement on the statute of the international criminal court, the Pinochet case, the intervention in Kosovo to stop ethnic cleansing – all these things have been developing momentum. Saying that we will not allow our citizens to sexually exploit children abroad fits into that pattern, and the part of Mrs Klamt’s report that talks of how we must insist that double standards are unacceptable is very well put and particularly valuable. It is not acceptable that our citizens should behave abroad in a way that they would not behave at home. Secondly, this report makes a contribution to police and judicial cooperation in the European Union. This is a strong example where those Euro-sceptics who resist cooperation in this field are wrong. It is only by joint across-the-board action that we can tackle this issue, not least by agreeing to extra-territorial application of criminal laws. Approximation and mutual recognition of national criminal provisions, which is not the same as harmonisation, will be of the utmost utility, as will cooperation through police forces and Europol, insisting all the time, as the Parliament does, on adequate parliamentary and judicial scrutiny. So I congratulate Mrs Klamt for a very valuable report and I hope it will continue to be built on in future.

Political group: ELDR
Madam President, in this resolution, we have expressed our views on the issue of Macedonia, and I would just like to say that I welcome the European Union’s active commitment in Macedonia. However, we should not proceed in a didactic way, but on the basis of respect for the people and nations there. Macedonia has an all-party government in which all the nations are also represented. It has a pro-European prime minister and an outstanding pro-European president. If we continually talk about minority rights, we must acknowledge for once that the European standards on minority rights which we constantly refer to actually do not exist, unfortunately, in the EU itself. We really would be well-advised, therefore, to approach the matter with some measure of humility. We can offer our services, but we should be careful not to adopt a didactic approach all the time. Above all, we should strengthen the government by making it clear that countries such as Macedonia which work with the European Union will also receive massive political and financial support from us. This was why I thought it was regrettable that Commissioner Patten, who is unfortunately no longer present, said that if we were to provide funds, the money would simply be used for bombs. This was a most inappropriate statement towards this democratically elected all-party government. I hope that our Macedonian friends, represented by their President, will visit us here in Strasbourg soon, and that the visit by Boris Trajkovski can be rescheduled. We must tackle the signs of disintegration, but we can only do so by strengthening the country’s democratic authorities.

Political group: PPE-DE
Madam President, in addition to what the leader of our group, Barón Crespo, said, I should like to make some observations in the context of the equal transatlantic dialogue on matters of international security. Firstly, our Socialist group is concerned about, and opposed to, the unilateral plans of President Bush to invest trillions in the high-tech weapons industry via a missile defence system, hence both jeopardising the ABM Treaty and possibly provoking a new arms race. It is of fundamental importance that we should oppose the arms race. We want multilateral cooperation and agreements, and support for a reformed UN. We want Europe and America to work together to that end. Unilateral action by either Europe or the US is an anachronism in an age when we are jointly responsible in our global village. It is precisely that joint responsibility which will lead us in Europe to share and take responsibility within NATO, via the rapid intervention force, via the payment of some 80% of the costs of reconstruction in the Balkans. Conversely we therefore ask the US to cooperate in conflict prevention and development aid, and to pay its contributions to the UN, because as Social-Democrats we see that some 100 conflicts in our global village are being caused by poverty, underdevelopment and ethnicity. The best security shield is the battle against poverty. That battle is the best guarantee of security against fundamentalist terror of an ethnic or religious nature, warlords and rogue states. We need a new, wide-ranging attitude to security and we hope that at the forthcoming meeting in Gothenburg, the Commission and the Council will make that attitude a central item on the agenda, in the open, frank, free and confident dialogue with President Bush. That is the route we should like to take.

Political group: PSE
I wholeheartedly support this report by Mr Dover which aims to improve working conditions for young people in Britain. It supports the view that the UK falls into line with a 1994 directive which limits the working hours of young people to eight hours a day or 40 hours a week and bans night work, although it provides for exceptions in special circumstances and for certain kinds of work. Employment, particularly youth employment, is of course extremely important for both our young people and our economy. We must not do anything to harm the job prospects of young people in Britain. Sometimes, however, employers take advantage of our young workers and force them to work unnecessarily long hours. Long hours and difficult working conditions are extremely dangerous and can be harmful to the health and productivity of our young people. It is therefore vital that working hours are monitored and that employers are prevented from exploiting youngsters at work. Exploitation is harmful and irresponsible. We must act to curb it and ensure that our young people are protected from exploitation and its destructive effects by hard-pressed or greedy employers. The legislation for reducing the working hours for young people already exists. We just need to make sure that it is used. The sensible measures put forward by the Commission should encourage the utilisation of these measures. I find it ironic that the Tories who constantly argue against Brussels bureaucrats interfering and who opposed this legislation, do in fact support this report on social policy. This illustrates their totally schizophrenic attitude towards Europe. The Labour Government is at the forefront of providing jobs for our young people and also measures to protect them at work. I strongly urge the House to show its support for the protection of young people in Britain and to vote in favour of this report. - Savary report (A5-0016/2001)

Political group: PSE
Madam President, a point of order. It is kind of Mr Corbett to raise the points under Annex III of our Rules of Procedure. Given that this is a fiftieth anniversary, we could take this at any part-session, rather than at this particular one. Therefore we could put it under a motion for debate at some point in the future.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, Mr Patten has defined these agreements with two words: ‘strategy’ and ‘transitional’. I must thank him for his frankness, because in a way the two concepts are contradictory. The debate on the Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreements between the European Union and Central America and the Andean Community are a good example of the current situation of our relations with these countries, which I, in addition to the words you have used, would say is currently unsatisfactory. This is a Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement, but we are not making progress with our commercial relations. In reality, over recent years our relations with these areas of the world have not progressed in the way this Parliament would have liked. The crisis facing the Andean countries as a whole and in each one of them individually has not been helpful in terms of improving these relations. Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia are experiencing very difficult times which have hindered their processes of sub-regional integration, and this has not made it easy to make progress on our relations with them. The same can be said of Central America, where huge swathes of the population, young people in particular, who are increasingly marginalised and turning to crime as a result of their social marginalisation, are becoming an urgent problem for these small Central American States. I hope that the agreement with Mercosur, which is on the point of being signed, if things go ahead as planned, will be added to those in force with Chile and with Mexico and that these two regions can benefit from more ambitious agreements, the results of which will not be seen by the current Commission and Parliament, but by our successors.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, successive food scandals have undermined consumer confidence. Furthermore, food safety will be a burning political issue from now on, becoming an integral element in the overall safety of citizens. As a result, it is considered essential to provide extensive information on the ingredients of foodstuffs. Precise and relevant labelling, then, is indispensable, especially for ingredients which may cause allergies. The problem is relatively simple for those allergens actually present in the final product. Is it reasonable, on the other hand, to demand the inclusion on labels of ingredients such as technological aids, used especially in the production of alcoholic drinks, which constitute part of the production process but are not present in the finished product? Since the best is always the enemy of the good, are we not in danger, in our commendable desire to protect allergy sufferers, of weakening traditional production methods through such measures, even causing markets to go bust, with no scientific proof of the harmful character of these aids? One can well imagine the horror of consumers when they discover that sulphites and other unappetising ingredients are used in the production of wines as prestigious as champagne, or those of this beautiful region, Alsace, to name but a few. I am therefore glad that a balanced compromise has been found on this controversial question. The compromise states that it will be possible to withdraw certain ingredients from the list of allergens on the evidence of a scientifically-researched dossier, pending a full scientific study. Coming from a wine-producing region, of course, I would have preferred it if the burden of proof – in other words, the production of the technical dossier – did not fall on the shoulders of producers who are sometimes small operators. I am aware, however, that if we did not accept this compromise, we would have to ratify the Council’s common position, which makes no provision for a procedure for exempting ingredients from the list of allergens. For these reasons, although my feelings are mixed, I believe that it is advisable to adopt this compromise. At the same time, I express the hope that the Commission will allow small - and medium-sized producers the flexibility they need in order to make their arguments heard.

Political group: PSE
I have voted against this report because, as a doctor by profession, I think that the excessive working hours that it proposes for junior doctors are unacceptable.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, I have to start by making a statement in addition to my speaking time as acting chairman of the responsible committee. The voting lists for Wednesday that have been circulating here so far are wrong, or at least misleading. Let me say, referring to my own report, that Amendments Nos 1 to 5, are not the compromises they are described as in the lists. The Committee officially withdrew them. Amendments Nos 7 to 10 are compromise amendments, but Amendment No 6 is not, contrary to what is stated on the prepared voting list. Amendment No 6 is not part of the compromise; indeed, as I see it, it is out of order. I ask the Bureau to check whether it is out of order, so that Wednesday’s vote can proceed in a correct manner. Mr President, please do not include this in my speaking time. (Applause)

Political group: PPE-DE
Madam President, Mrs Gutiérrez-Cortines’ excellent report is a milestone, for this is the first report tabled before Parliament to be so comprehensive and well-structured. There has been talk, particularly in recent years, following Lisbon, of the need to develop a knowledge-based Europe, but this has in many respects thus far remained just a good intention. Those like myself who have experienced the effects of the Erasmus and Socrates programmes in universities know, despite the frequently limited scale of the programmes caused by lack of funding, how much impact they have had both in terms of widening the horizons of students and lecturers and in terms of creating extensive European awareness among the citizens, starting with the families of those who have benefited from the programmes. Our task is now to extend the Union’s attention and action to a large number of other aspects of higher education, most importantly encouraging the dissemination of the good practices of some countries in all the other countries of the Union, promoting the right of all the citizens to study irrespective of their financial situation, and this can be achieved by expanding public higher education, which is the only form of education which attracts investments that are not subject to the mindset of quick profits and which is therefore able to guarantee all the citizens access to higher education, which is necessary for the renewal of the ruling classes. We must not disregard the fact that the supremacy of public universities in some countries of the Union is currently under threat from alarming privatisation trends, which are in danger of irreparably reducing the freedom of study and diminishing the quality of research and teaching, placing greater emphasis on income than on merit and ability. The Gutiérrez-Cortines report takes this situation into account and contains a number of important proposals. I would like, inter alia, to point out that it calls upon the Commission to set up a ‘European University House’ providing the academic world – including students, lecturers and the various agencies operating in the sector – with an autonomous way of asserting their needs and making proposals. This would be an interesting example of the application of the principle of subsidiarity to a sector of European culture which is crucial to all our work.

Political group: PSE