GwendalTsang/DEFT09-parquet huggingface dataset:
Mr President, it is now ten years since Burma witnessed a political drama. After a period of uncertainty and conflict, open and fair elections were held in 1990 and Mrs Aung San Suu Kyi was voted President with an overwhelming majority. In the parliamentary elections, the NLD won most of the parliamentary seats. Shortly after this, the military once again seized power. Mrs Aung San Suu Kyi was imprisoned. Parliament was dissolved and many MPs were murdered, imprisoned or driven out of the country. Since then, Burma has been the scene of unprecedented repression. Thousands of people have been killed and hundreds of thousands of people have fled the country and are living in camps in Thailand, Malaysia and India. In the country itself, entire population groups have been displaced in order to break up the minority groups. There is talk of forced labour. According to the Financial Times this week, Burma has more child soldiers than anywhere else in the world. Burma can be compared with South Africa and Chile in the Eighties. What action would we like the Commission and Council to take? First of all, we would ask you not to accept that the military regime in Burma should represent the Burmese people at the Euro-Asian Summit. We also ask you to take a hard economic line against Burma. We advocate economic isolation and an absolute investment ban by all EU Member States, as proposed several times already by the United States. Moreover, EU citizens should be dissuaded by their governments from travelling to Burma for their holidays. Many of these new facilities have been built using forced labour. This is the core of our request. Burma should not receive any better treatment from the international community than South Africa and Chile did back in the Eighties. If it does, then we are using double standards. Mrs Aung San Suu Kyi should at long last receive an effective response to her peaceful protest. What would she otherwise gain from a Nobel Prize and Sakharov Prize if she does not actually receive support in order to free herself and her country from this terrible plight? Football: “Euro 2000” and preventing hooliganism

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, I would like to restrict my contribution to the link between development cooperation and agriculture. Over the past couple of years, a considerable share of the funds has been channelled towards the development of agriculture and cattle breeding in the developing countries and, more especially, the Lomé countries. The results are certainly not what we expected. What could be the cause of this? I think that the cause should first and foremost be sought in the lack of clear agricultural policy in the various developing countries, barring a few exceptions. I think that the Commission could do a great deal there to help this develop. No farmer, anywhere in the world, will produce something if prices are too low. The governments in the developing countries are always faced with a difficult dilemma: whom should they support, the farmers or the people in the large cities who want cheap food? This fine balance must be struck in conjunction with the Commission, and not by the Commission on its own. In most countries where the Commission is active, development aid is also granted by the Member States themselves. It should not be the case that the policy of the Member States contravenes that of the Commission. It is up to the Commission’s delegations in the developing countries to assume a leading role in the development of this political dialogue and to ensure that all countries follow this line of approach. Special attention is also required for the costs of the means of production. Far too often, artificial fertiliser, veterinary medication and a host of other items are provided to farmers free of charge. Once the project comes to an end after five years, the policy of free gifts also ends. I think, therefore, that the cost element should be built in right from the outset in the policy of all projects, and as far as I know, this is not the case by any stretch of the imagination. Finally, I wonder whether the funds could not be put to better use. Every year, I notice in the budget of the Commission and in the European Development Fund, that they are far behind in spending the funds.

Political group: ELDR
Madam President, I think that today’s debate is extremely important for the simple reason that it is about how we can put our house in order. Allow me to start by congratulating Mr Marinho on his work and to say that, although we need to support efforts to combat financial crime, we also need to be careful. The problem of financial crime is extremely complex: first it is a convoluted attempt to launder the proceeds of illegal activity and, secondly, it presupposes a series of other crimes which generated the illegal proceeds in the first place. I think that European society today is being crushed by organised crime, in all its manifestations. Financial crime, and first and foremost, perhaps, money laundering, is right at the epicentre of the organised crime plaguing Europe. Without doubt, the initiative of the French Presidency, on which Mr Marinho has taken a stance, is the right initiative; however, the same holds true of Mr Marinho’s attempt to introduce stricter rules. Of course, if we want results, we need to get right to the heart, right to the key of the tool which will help us fight these crimes. In my view, the key to fighting these crimes is to improve judicial cooperation. As I was reading the explanatory statements attached to Mr Marinho’s amendments, one, in particular, caught my eye. It says that economic Europe has reached a highly advanced stage. Political Europe is progressing slowly but, unfortunately, 15 internal borders continue to exist wherever judges and magistrates, legal proceedings and court decisions are concerned. This phrase troubled me greatly because I think it is the key to the problem. And I think – and I too fervently propose – that we need to take a great many steps, a great many fundamental steps, if we are to achieve judicial cooperation at European level and be able to fight crimes such as financial crime.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, as the rapporteur’s fine report points out, the figures recently published by the European Agency for Health and Safety at Work, whose headquarters are in Bilbao, indicate very differing results in relation to work accidents between the various Member States, owing to the fact that the States are not applying uniform statistical criteria. It is therefore urgent that we establish harmonised standards at Community level so that we can have comparable data and assess the results of preventive policies in each European State, community or region. We must do this to ensure that we do not have first- or second-class workers, or lower, but that all workers are protected by safety regulations and requirements of the same quality. It is also the case that we need more site inspectors so that companies will sufficiently respect the regulations, but it is just as true that the public institutions and companies must begin by setting an example in all of this. Nevertheless, even today, many activities and workplaces of public bodies do not have the required plans for prevention of work-related risk that are laid down in Community directives. I would therefore like to call on all the European public managers to make an effort to be the first to comply with the regulations, so that managers in the private sector cannot use institutional laziness as an excuse.

Political group: Verts-ALE
Mr President, I abstained during the various votes and voted against the Brok report. I did not therefore vote for assent concerning the Accession Treaty for 10 new Member States to the Union. This was a painful decision for me, in both emotional and political terms. For over a decade I have worked tirelessly in the European Parliament, in France and across Europe so that enlargement could take place on the date planned and on the terms needed to ensure its success. I voted as I did because I have become convinced that separating the process of the geographical enlargement of the Union from that of deepening its institutions is the unfortunate result of current and future Member States becoming resigned to a weaker Europe with a fossilised institutional system. Sadly, divisions within Europe have become more marked in recent months. Sadly also, the Convention has failed to make progress during that period. It is now resigned to achieving no more than cosmetic changes to the current system. All are resigned to the signature of the constitutional treaty not taking place in December 2003 as originally planned. There is no mistaking the signs. The enlarged European Union will be obliged to operate under the provisions of the Treaty of Nice. It will therefore be fatally flawed and condemned to failure. I did not vote for assent because I want enlargement to succeed.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, industrial policy is very much on the agenda today: we have had the Commission communication, Mr Prodi’s conference, the joint letter from Mr Chirac, Mr Schröder and Mr Blair, and the deliberations of the last European Council. I can only say, it was about time. Our compatriots are worried. They have the feeling that our industrial fabric is unravelling day after day. They note bitterly that too many businesses are closing or moving elsewhere, often to the Far East, to neighbouring Member States or to the future Member States sometimes. What is Europe doing, they ask us, what are you doing? I believe this concern is justified and the question is a legitimate one: do we not speak of a social market economy, of social cohesion? They therefore judge the situation in the light of our laudable objectives. That is why Mrs Zrihen should be congratulated for writing her own-initiative report: it is a difficult subject. The rapporteur has included most of the opinions of the committees consulted, in particular our own, that of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs. I cannot criticise her for doing that, but it has sometimes resulted in something like a Prévert-style inventory and the poor Commission is sometimes asked to work miracles. Especially as there are many obstacles to an effective industrial policy and some of those obstacles are outside its competence. The first obstacle seems to me to be that the Union puts too much faith in market mechanisms. Moderate protectionism, a greater acceptance of public intervention and a distinction between competition and predation ought to be enough to correct the mysterious hand’s perverse effects. A second obstacle is fiscal and social differences. Sadly, social and fiscal dumping hang over the Union. But essentially that is a question where the Member States retain full sovereignty; competition will not be fair until there is harmonisation. A third obstacle is the low level of expenditure on research and investment: we spend 1.07% of GDP while the Japanese, it appears, spend 3%. Finally, I am not convinced that enlargement is the answer to all our ills. Perhaps we talk about it too optimistically. In the face of all these obstacles and difficulties, I can only wish the Commission and ourselves good luck and good courage.

Political group: Verts-ALE
When we recently discussed the research White Paper, we all took the view that it was vital to move forward on this topic because it was important not only to do very good research in Europe, but also to optimise the conditions for its industrial exploitation. So on that account I welcome Commissioner Bolkenstein's statement. The word 'centralisation' is unfortunate in this context because it suggests a single centre of what is already a polycentric community. I take it his real meaning is that there will be one court for the whole Community, not that it will necessarily be in a place which will be geographically central. Finally, I gather that it is proposed that software might be patented. My Group would be very unhappy about such a proposal. It seems to us that copyright is the right way to protect software and that introducing patents in this sphere would be unhelpful and contrary to good legal principle.

Political group: Verts-ALE
Mr President, in our debate on the mandate for the forthcoming IGC, I would firstly like to say a few words on an issue which is not on this Conference’s agenda but that, I think, our Chamber will have to consider, when the day comes, in order to study and evaluate the results of the whole exercise. This is the issue of the reform of the Council, of the whole package of reforms which, we have been told, must and can take place in addition to a reform of the Treaties. Fine. Let us set out on this path, but let us do so with a reasonable timetable that is the same timetable that the IGC has. My group has tabled an amendment to this effect and I hope that, tomorrow, our Chamber will be able to vote for it. With regard to the three “left-over” questions, do we think today that we are in a position to answer the question to which the Amsterdam Summit could not find a solution? What is this question? We must have the courage to ask it. It is perhaps less a question of how to function than of what it is that we want to do together when there are sixteen or twenty-seven of us. If we do not answer this question, we will not find a solution to the three questions “left over” from Amsterdam. At any event, preparing the Union for the forthcoming enlargement opens up a question outstanding from Amsterdam, and that is the question of strengthened cooperation. Because, apart from the three institutional questions, which are already part of the IGC’s mandate, nobody in the context of the Amsterdam assessment has been able to tell us if the solutions that we had arrived at concerning the operation of this strengthened cooperation were satisfactory. We must work towards a reform of this strengthened cooperation which will allow the Union to establish a real vanguard, open within the Union, in order to continue to make progress towards the security, democracy and stability of our continent.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, I am neither a member of the Legal Affairs Committee nor a lawyer, but like almost all of us, I understand the need for this Single Economic Area of Europe to have its parallel in a single area of freedom, security and justice. In that sense, the issues of judicial cooperation in matters of criminal law are important. What did I understand on reading the related texts? That it is dangerous to rely on the provisions made by the Council. The many contradictions and conflicting views over what Europe is and the many different legal systems could not only lead to confusion and inefficiency but also create dangerous situations. For example, the situation proposed by Article 18, to which many speakers have drawn attention, where each country, each large country if you will, each country with the technical ability, can enter another country and monitor its telecommunications without even securing the second country’s approval. In my opinion, the Legal Affairs Committee and the rapporteur Mr Di Pietro have produced some very interesting work. It is a pity that this very well constructed explanatory statement by Mr Di Pietro could not be conveyed in the telegrammatic five minutes he had here today. Nevertheless, it is a move towards protecting the rights of countries, defendants and citizens, a path which I think must be pursued much more completely and much more boldly. I should like, however, to draw your attention to the fact that all this is taking place in a framework in which there is confusion and a schizophrenic attitude about criminal law. A child, a student or a pupil who smokes hashish in one country is dealt with in an educational way, while in another country he is treated as a criminal and locked up in the universities of crime constituted by the corrective system and the prisons. How can there be any cooperation on criminal matters on that basis? For that reason, in conclusion, I believe we should do something, particularly in the area of harmonisation of laws, not those relating to organised criminal activity, but those concerning punishable activities by the people which are more in the nature of social phenomena.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, I also want to thank the Commissioner for his answer and, in common with other women, request the figures showing how posts are distributed between men and women. Since the Commission delved into the details on 27 April, perhaps we can be told how many men and women there are in category A posts, not in category A posts generally, but broken down by grade, i.e. A1, A2, A3 and so on, for what is interesting is to see the figures broken down in that way. More often than not, it turns out that there are no women at all in top posts. And, in this connection, we could perhaps be informed about the composition of the panel – which should be an objective panel – in terms of gender. Perhaps in terms of country of origin, too, but in any case in terms of gender. Who, in the end, is to evaluate the shortlist that has been mentioned? More often than not, it is exclusively men who carry out the final evaluation.

Political group: ELDR
Mr President, Commissioner, the Committee on Foreign Affairs has examined the Commission proposal and basically agrees with its approach. However, it notes that the CFSP is dealt with as an economic and development issue rather than as a defence and safety issue, with all that implies for Europe. This is in all probability due to the fact that the CFSP is still under development. In this sense, I suppose that this proposal will mature at the next stage, as far as foreign policy and defence systems are concerned. As far as the content is concerned, I have several comments to make. First, there is a medley of policies in the Member States, which need to be more or less unified. Secondly, on the question of the strategic use of space: the strategic use of space is unavoidable de facto, but it must be used for peaceful purposes such as Petersberg-type tasks. In all events, our committee is opposed to the type of strategic mentioned in the famous Star Wars policy. It will, nonetheless, need to be used for missile interception installations in space and during wars, which destroy satellites. Having said that, I believe that we need to push forward with this policy, on which we agree, our criteria being that these methods must be used for peaceful applications, policies must be unified and any action taken must be integrated into a single European policy because, in the final analysis, Europe must not be dependent for its safety, communications and security on the satellite systems of either the United States of America or Russia. In this sense, quite apart from the fact that this initiative is of interest from a development point of view, it will also be of political interest and must therefore be considered crucial to the common foreign defence and security policy of Europe.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, Commissioner Nielson, on the first anniversary of the mass imprisonments on political grounds, carried out by Castro, we from Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Spain, Portugal, the Czech Republic and Slovakia made a joint appeal in a letter addressed to the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan. We wished to draw attention to the fact that, on 18 March 2003 in the shadow of the Iraq war, Fidel Castro instituted a wave of repression in which 75 advocates of democracy were falsely imprisoned following summary trials. They were each sentenced to between 15 and 27 years’ imprisonment. A total of 1 456 years’ imprisonment was thus imposed upon these 75 constitutional activists. Their fate must not be ignored by the surrounding world. It is therefore a matter of extreme urgency that we in the European Parliament make this statement today. As Members of the European Parliament, we believe that the judgments must be overturned inasmuch as the trials in Cuba were clearly conducted without legal rights for the accused, who were sentenced on exclusively political grounds. We ask for these 75 human rights activists to be released, and for them to be so without delay. Their so-called crime is that, in accordance with the Cuban Constitution, they collected approximately 10 000 signatures calling for a referendum on a more pluralistic and more democratic Cuba. For that, they were given extremely long sentences. The majority of those advocating democracy belong to the Christian and Christian Democratic human rights movement, Movimento Cristiano Liberación. I, together with Mr Ribeiro e Castro and 206 other MEPs, took the initiative of inviting Sakharov prizewinner Osvaldo Payà Sardiñas to visit us here in Europe. Commissioner Nielson, let this invitation bear fruit by putting pressure on the Cuban regime to enable Osvaldo Payà Sardiñas to visit us.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the Group of the supports this compromise resolution on the human rights situation in Guatemala. I am very glad that this issue is on today's agenda. I worked, for a time, as a doctor in Guatemala, and myself became familiar with the situation in that country. The greatest problem in Guatemala was then – and still is – the extreme disparity between wealth and poverty. Being a Christian Democrat, I certainly am not among those who leap to the defence of tax increases. In Europe and in my own country too, taxes are certainly too high, but the situation in Guatemala is that the rich simply do not see themselves as being under any obligation to contribute to the country's development. That is why we have incorporated into the Joint Resolution a passage intended to ensure that the necessary adjustments are made, as it is necessary also to draw upon the financial resources of the wealthy in a given country for such purposes as the improvement of its educational systems. The issue of land and of the way in which it is shared out is without doubt a key to future development in Guatemala and in its neighbouring countries, and, at the end of 2002, MEPs belonging to different groups organised a conference on the subject. What I learned from this conference was that it is possible to reach the same objective without resorting to inflammatory language, and for that reason, the Group of the has not used the term ‘agricultural reform’, opting instead for an expression that, although rather more unwieldy, has found its way into the Joint Resolution, simply in order to avoid provoking counter-reactions that would then get us no nearer our objective. Something else that is very important – and I am glad that it has been incorporated into the Joint Resolution – is that any policy must have education and training as one of its basic components. It is no use simply giving people a plot of land; they also have to know how to cultivate it. Taken as a whole, the Joint Resolution is an even-handed compromise, and it is out of conviction that we support it. (Applause)

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I should like to inform the House that the European Court of Human Rights recently issued a ruling in connection with the trial of the Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan. In its ruling, the Court of Human Rights accepted that Mr Οcalan had not been tried by an independent, impartial court and had not had adequate time or facilities for the preparation of his defence. At the same time, Mr Ocalan has been kept in more or less solitary confinement for some three months or more. He has even been prevented from communicating with his lawyers or communicating with his family and I think that the European Parliament should protest to the Turkish Government – remember that Turkey is a candidate country – and call for Mr Ocalan to be guaranteed the basic rights to which every prisoner is entitled.

Political group: GUE-NGL