GwendalTsang/DEFT09-parquet huggingface dataset:
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, as we have already heard, this is a very good report. It covers all the key points as regards promoting a risk capital culture in Europe. This is particularly necessary given that efficient risk capital markets play a very important role in creating jobs on the one hand, and on the other, in increasing productivity, in financing rapidly growing companies and in creating new businesses. The report indicates that 66% of all jobs in the Community are in SMEs and that 80% to 90% of funding secured through venture capital is used to hire staff. We therefore need more capital for investment in job-creating, growth-intensive SMEs, and also for research and development and for business start-ups. These are the key points. Precisely because we are way behind the United States in this field, we are also calling on the Member States and the Commission to support more money – that is more risk capital – to provide start-up capital and capital for the early part of a company's life. We want to cut down on red-tape: the one-stop shop model should be the rule in all countries, and we should take advantage of the new media here. We also want to see a tax system which at the same time promotes innovation and encourages private individuals to invest capital in businesses. I therefore also welcome the agreement reached in Lisbon to introduce a benchmarking system so as to promote the best of the many ways of encouraging risk capital and to make further progress in this area.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, Commissioner, all those present here today seem to agree that the products under discussion are of significant social importance. That much is obvious to Parliament, the Commission and to those affected. When all is said and done, the fundamental objective of agricultural aid is to provide people in rural areas with a reasonable income. They will then be deterred from leaving their land and flocking to the cities or to richer parts of Europe. It should be borne in mind that we are striving to attain two of the Union’s fundamental ambitions. These are to achieve territorial balance within Europe and to prevent the depopulation and desertification of rural areas. Sadly, there is considerable experience of the latter in Aragon, the region I represent. Commissioner, this is what the common agricultural policy should be aiming at, especially in the case of crops with such social importance. It is essential to encourage people in rural areas to remain on the land in their regions in order to prevent the desertification of parts of Europe.

Political group: Verts-ALE
Earlier on today we were debating the budget for next year and the difficulty of the European Union finding sufficient finance to fund the operation in Kosovo. I therefore ask the Commission if it has done any analysis on what the cost would be if there was to be instability in Macedonia; and to what extent – to take him up on his last point – it is true that we need to ensure there is stability in Albania in order to maintain stability in FYROM.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, may I jump the queue and ask Mr Posselt a question? I have listened to his history lesson most attentively but was somewhat surprised by his criticism of Mr Mahathir, as Professor Rinsche has always taught us that Mr Mahathir was the greatest of all Asian statesmen. Do the German know something we do not? You said, Mr Posselt, that Karl IV was a Luxembourgois like Mrs Lulling. I had always assumed that Mrs Lulling was a Luxembourgoise. If I have misunderstood, please do enlighten me. Afghanistan

Political group: PSE
Mr President, I would first like to thank the rapporteur and the draftsperson for their report and opinion. I would also like to say on behalf of my Group that we fully support the proposal to refer this initiative back. We did not come to this conclusion because we wanted to make things easy for ourselves and not table any amendments, but because – as emerges from the explanatory statement, which is very comprehensive and convincing – too many fundamental requirements have simply not been met. We have heard about these shortcomings in the debate as well as reading about them in the reports. However, it is not because of these shortcomings that we are recommending that this specific initiative should be rejected. What is at stake here is whether it makes sense for the Member States to have the right of initiative in these areas of competence. The proposals on which Parliament has been consulted up to now under this right of initiative have not, on the whole, been very convincing – including an Austrian proposal that had both technical shortcomings and problems in terms of content. What these proposals have had in common has been a failure to fit in with a coherent set of measures. Something else they had in common was that they either conflicted with existing legal instruments or duplicated them. The advantage of the Commission alone having the right of initiative is surely that this ensures a systematic approach and guarantees that we have documents that are more precise and free from technical and legal contradictions. This applies in particular to matters for which Commissioner Vitorino is responsible. Another clear indication of the shortcomings of Member States’ right of initiative is that they are seldom received with very much enthusiasm, even by other Member States. This also applies to the initiative before us today, which the Portuguese Presidency is no longer treating as a priority. So, as a Parliament, we have more reason than ever before to be sceptical about this right of initiative on the part of Member States. This is not only because this right skews the balance between the institutions but also because, up to now, it has never really been convincingly exercised. I would also like to touch upon another problem connected with this, which might perhaps warrant a joint initiative by the Member States. Officials working at the Schengen external borders are constantly telling us that the residence permits presented by third country nationals and issued by other EU Member States still vary widely and are often difficult to identify as such. This does not seem to fit in with the Joint Action concerning a uniform format for residence permits. The Member States should take the initiative here and act in compliance with the EU format in their own administrative area.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, Commissioner Barnier, Mr President-in-Office, the Treaty of Nice fails to go far enough not only in institutional matters but in a number of important spheres. Take the very topical example of the common European trade policy. It is based on common principles and there is in principle majority voting. The small extension now being made in Article 113, Services and Intellectual Property, is counteracted by six exceptions and three proposals to the Council itself not to go beyond the spheres assigned to it. At the same time, the consultation of the European Parliament provided for up until now is eliminated with the result that today, unlike in the USA, there is no possibility for Parliament to play a formal part in Europe, either at national or European level, in broad areas of trade policy. We therefore demand, as clearly formulated in item 27 of the Méndez de Vigo/Seguro report, that the European Parliament be fully involved in the common trade and external economic relations policy, both in the framing of policy and in the negotiation and conclusion of agreements – and here with codecision – because if the national parliaments no longer have any powers over common trade policy it is urgently necessary for the European Parliament to take their place as an element of democratic control and that formal provision be made for it to do so. Otherwise, when it comes to negotiations with the World Trade Organisation we as the European Parliament will be faced with an American Congress with full powers to act and able to give guidance to its administration whereas the European Parliament still has no formal powers in this respect. I therefore call on the Swedish Presidency to show the way forward so that the Belgian Presidency can get an effective revision of Article 133 adopted by the Council in Laeken when it comes to rectifying the Treaty of Nice.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, many things have been said. For my part, I am going to concentrate on the energy issues that are really vital. Today there are two billion people in the world who do not have access to energy. My question is to Commissioner Wallström: I know that the European Union was quite ambitious with regard to a specific objective concerning renewable energy. Perhaps you could tell us who is opposed to this and how we can make progress in this area. The European Commission’s lack of consistency over energy as well as farming subsidies is also regrettable. EUR 300 billion have now been allocated world-wide to nuclear and fossil fuels. If these subsidies were to be reduced, we would have substantial sums available to support investment in renewable energy and help the two billion people who do not have access to energy. I wonder if the position adopted by the European Union at Gothenburg to phase out energy subsidies still applies now. In conclusion, a word to the Spanish Presidency. If you put as much effort into helping countries that need help to develop enough to support their population as you are into building a wall around Europe, if you channelled this energy into becoming involved once again in the Johannesburg process, then I think your Presidency would be seen in a better light.

Political group: Verts-ALE
Mr President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, Mr President of the Commission, in this Parliament, ladies and gentlemen, and in European society, there is a profound distrust of the Italian Presidency. Not because of Italy, of course, the foundation of our culture, of many of our languages and of the very idea of Europe, but because of the political personality of President Berlusconi. You, Mr Berlusconi, are one of the main representatives of the authoritarian right of our day, protagonist in the battle between the classes, internally and globally, between the rich and the poor and the workers. You even call people such as President Prodi, critical journalists and the judges who judge you ‘communists’. You use antiquated language, even troglodyte language, forgetting which century you are in. You are a friend of Sharon against Arafat. This distrust was ratified by certain key elements in your speech today. You subordinate the constitution of the European Union to relations with the United States. You are unaware of the chaotic and tragic situation in Iraq, caused by governments friendly to you. You forget the Prestige disaster, which was suffered principally by my nation, Galicia. You underplayed the constant deaths of immigrants, off both our coasts and in your island of Sicily. You said nothing about the social Europe, about social and territorial cohesion, not even in view of the prospect of enlargement. You did not expressly defend the draft constitution. In Italy, Mr President, you were granted immunity. Here, as President-in-Office of the Council, you will not have it.

Political group: Verts-ALE
On the pretext of helping Kosovo, this report proposes helping to privatise that country’s economy, which means, according to the examples given in the text itself, putting it into the hands of Western banks. Our vote against the report expresses our indignation at the entire policy maintained by the Western powers, particularly those from the European Union. This policy consists, having littered Kosovo with bombs as it did with Serbia, of making the very ruins of those countries into an additional outlet for Western capital. The Western powers must realise that repairing what they destroyed is the least of the matter. Only a fraction of the money spent during the war, only a part of the resources and equipment that were used, would be enough to repair infrastructures, to rebuild roads, railway and telephone lines and to rebuild the buildings and business that were destroyed. This should be paid for by the Western powers, or more precisely, out of their military budgets, without generating private profit in the West. For the moment, despite all the self-congratulating that is taking place, the economic balance sheet of the European Union’s action is reduced to carving up what remains of Kosovo’s economy and to putting it into the hands of Western banks and the grip of the mafias. - Report Martínez Martínez (A5-0195/2001) and (A5-0197/2001)

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, may I thank Mr Watson on behalf of our committee for bringing this report to plenary. I listened carefully to what Mr Watson and Mr Schmitt just said. Mr Schmitt spoke a lot about unjustified applications and, of course, we need to look at all applications properly. Mr Schmitt said, and I wholeheartedly agree with him, that Member States have to do more to address the root causes that are forcing people to migrate across Europe and across the world, but it is not easy to address the root causes in the countries from where many asylum seekers come. The highest number of asylum seekers in Europe come from Afghanistan, Iran and Sri Lanka and at the moment, as we know only too well, it will not be easy to address quickly the situation in Afghanistan: we watch that situation with some terror. Nearer to home, we are affected, at the moment by the lack of a common working asylum system for Europe and the separate issue of a common immigration policy, which will come later. But we see on our television screens, certainly in Britain and France nightly, and colleagues in Spain have a similar problem, the way that the lack of a proper system manifests itself in tragedy. Asylum seekers are desperate people escaping in many cases war, violence and torture. Yes, Mr Schmitt, some of them are just escaping poverty, but we should not knock them for that. We need to give them respect and make certain that they are treated fairly. This report calls for high standards for reception of asylum seekers, to recognise that they are not criminals while their cases are being heard. People escaping from the worst situations do not need to be detained in prisons, detention centres and I agree with Mr Watson on this. Those escaping from war and torture do not need to be welcomed by barbed wire and armed guards. They need to have their cases heard properly, they need a fair system and they need a system that puts the individual at the heart of the process. This report goes some way towards that, but it is part of a much wider picture working towards a common European asylum system with a separate immigration system alongside it. I hope that we can get this through as amended and continue the vast amount of work still to be done in this area. IN THE CHAIR: MRS LALUMIÈREVice-President

Political group: PSE
Mr President, Commissioner, paradox it may be, but the Menrad report has again brought unemployment to the fore within the European arena. This is a bad time for employment in Europe, with seventeen million unemployed and sixty million people living in poverty. If employment levels have remained identical to the 1994 levels within the Community, this is principally due to the massive loss of job security. We are really far short of the target. The Union needs to be ambitious in its employment policies, it needs voluntarist and binding policies, breaking away from the destructive rationale that is currently at work. At a time when money should be used to meet the needs of men and women, the needs of society, the Michelin case is a symbol of the tyranny of the law of filthy lucre over the economy and over individuals. The citizens of Europe are waiting for clear signals from Parliament. In order to be effective, then, the guidelines should include quantifiable objectives enforcing job creation. Reduction of working hours without reducing wages, without job flexibility or insecurity, should be the order of the day as we approach the year 2000. The Union should be ambitious in using money in favour of employment, monitoring public funds awarded to businesses, with a credit policy which penalises destructive practices and promotes job creation. Finally, declaring equal opportunities means that we must reject any form of discrimination against women, particularly with regard to wages. Mr Menrad has done a good job in difficult conditions, to be sure. The report includes many good points, but it does not, in my opinion, live up to our demands and expectations, despite taking a series of amendments debated in the Commission into account. It is not surprising, therefore, that a series of crucial amendments have again been proposed here by my own group and others. Whether these amendments are taken on board by this House will demonstrate the real will of Parliament.

Political group: GUE-NGL
I would like to ask the Commissioner a supplementary question as an MEP who actually attended the summit in Geneva and was therefore able to see the extensive engagement on the floor of the conference by members of civil society, which I thought was very helpful. I would also welcome an invitation to Mr Staes' meeting. Although I went to the summit, I was entirely unaware of his interest, so maybe we could get together later. One of the points I made when we had a debate on this issue, Commissioner, was that I felt that parliamentarians need to be much better engaged in the process. We only had a small meeting with the interparliamentary union. Would he work with the European Parliament so that we can get a better engagement, both of European and national parliamentarians, as part of the Tunis agenda and in the run-up to Tunis?

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, if you lose, you lose. I will, of course, have to accept the decision if that is how it turns out. But, Commissioner, you stressed several times today that you have to propose an equivalent solution. You have not proposed an equivalent solution, that much is clear. In that respect you are legally off base. (Applause)

Political group: PSE
Mr President, I think it is a good principle to try to avoid unnecessary work and unnecessary confusion. I believe that those present in the House are representative. I therefore propose that we immediately vote on referral back to committee.

Political group: ELDR
Mr President, I believe it would be right to correct the record as regards Mr Titford's contribution. I would point out to him that the report is about the adoption of measures concerning the repatriation of mortal remains. It is about barriers to movement rather than the conditions of the corpse. I want the principle to be accepted. Mr Titford could, at any time, have suggested amendments to me. Despite discussions in Strasbourg on my report, he subsequently offered no amendments. I am deeply saddened. I always deal honestly and openly with all my colleagues, but he flattered me privately and failed to act publicly. I need to correct the record in this regard.

Political group: PSE
I have abstained from voting in the final vote on this report. I have done so because Denmark has a reservation in this area and not because I disagree with the intention behind the report or the directive. I would emphasise that I am in favour of giving rights to third-country nationals when they accept work in another EU country. Rapport Kessler (A5-0455/2001)

Political group: PSE
Mr President, I would like to thank the rapporteur, Mr Laschet, for his report. I believe that it is no exaggeration whatsoever to state that, today, history is blending with the present, and that in this historic present which we are living in, the European Union and United Nations are two principal actors. Commissioner Patten told us clearly that the European Union is seeking to confirm its presence on the international stage and become a factor for stability, moderation and normalisation within a world order under shared leadership. The United Nations must, moreover, operate better and become more efficient in order to adapt to the new circumstances. From the founding spirit of the San Francisco Charter to the twenty-first century, from 60 nations to 190, from colonial regimes to independence and from the fall of the system of blocs to today’s globalised world. Today, following the lessons of 11 September, it is clear that notions of security, defence policy, trade, conflict prevention, crisis management, humanitarian aid, culture and even civilisation are notions which are mixed up with each other and that it must accepted in the common conscience that, in view of the dangers and threats which affect us all equally, our response must also be equal amongst all of us. This response, the European Union's response, must not, however, be a fragmented, contradictory or ineffective response: it must be a unified response. Therefore, Mr President, moving beyond the Parliamentary dimension of relations between the European Union and the United Nations – which is necessary and correct – it is important that we act in an agreed manner, in a complementary manner, and that the European Union demonstrate clearly that its strength lies in its unity and its weakness in its fragmentation. We are therefore moving towards spheres of shared sovereignty between the Member States, otherwise we will be forced to concede them to other powers which are fully aware of the advantages of unity and size. Moreover, either we stop voting in the United Nations differently 60 times out of every 100, or we will have to abandon once and for all the European Union's aspirations to be on the path to shared world leadership. I will end, Mr President, by saying that I agree with the indignation expressed by Mr Ribeiro e Castro at the enforced absence from this Parliament of Sakharov Prize winner, Oswaldo Payá.

Political group: PPE-DE