GwendalTsang/DEFT09-parquet huggingface dataset:
Mr President, first of all I thank the rapporteur for her splendid work on behalf of us all and also thank Mr Vatanen for his contribution, speaking on behalf of the Group. I fully endorse many of the points he made, not least in respect of blood-alcohol limits. In fact there are only two points that I wish to make this evening. They relate to safer car fronts and the very important issue of blood alcohol. On safer car fronts, I think it is worth pointing out how clearly the rapporteur has made the case for the Commissioner to come forward with a directive. In fact this Commissioner pledged to this House in January last year, a year ago, that we would have a directive on safer car fronts. A year on there is no directive. What we have in February is a hearing. More talk. No action. Meanwhile, two thousand people in the last year have needlessly, unnecessarily lost their lives because the Commission would rather talk than act. I hope tonight and tomorrow the Commission listens to the vote of this House and decides to proceed with its commitment to have a directive on safer car fronts. No more talk, please. Let us see some action. And, indeed, the same is true for blood alcohol. We have had talk on this issue, year in, year out. We all know that ten thousand people a year in Europe are killed in drink-related crashes. We must tackle that particular problem. But I find it highly ironic, and I am sure the timing is not coincidental, that on the very day that we are debating blood alcohol, drink driving, road safety, the day before this Parliament is to vote on drink driving, the Commissioner has already made her mind up. She has issued a recommendation on drink driving. It would have been nice, would it not, for the Commissioner to have at least listened to the debate, learned what the outcome of the vote was tomorrow, before she decided to pre-empt the parliamentary procedures and issue this recommendation. We know a recommendation, alas, is simply not worth the paper it is written on. Member States need and support clear guidance. We believe it is time for the Commissioner to get tough on drunk drivers and drink driving, to come forward with a directive to reduce the limit to 50 mg. In the United Kingdom, which has traditionally had a good record, we have sadly seen over the Christmas period a rise in the numbers of people drinking and driving. In my own region, in some parts of my region, 17% of drivers tested were above the UK legal limit of 80 mg. It is quite clear that we need action. Indeed the British government is asking for a solution at European level, in a European context. So all I make is a very simple request to the Commissioner tonight to listen to the debate and to heed the vote tomorrow.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, I would not normally do this at the start of business, but since it has now been confirmed that the death of the policeman in Manchester was the act of a terrorist, could I ask you, as President, to write to the family of Stephen Oake and to the Greater Manchester Police expressing our sincere regret and our absolute abhorrence of this act, because it is linked to terrorism. It is not a normal policeman's death in the course of his duty. It is an issue which concerns all of us in this House in every country. I am sure the gesture would be appreciated by the officer's family and the people of the Greater Manchester area and the United Kingdom.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, I want to refer to the part of the report which concerns the reform of state-owned enterprises. I welcome the Commission's communication and I agree with the Commissioner that we need reform of state-owned enterprises. When resources are tight, we need to ensure that they are used effectively. I also agree that we have to be sensitive to the needs of the countries involved and not adopt dogmatic solutions. If you look at our own history, public services have played a vital role in our economic development: they helped to end poverty and disease, and, by adopting the principle of universal access to public services, we managed to help eradicate poverty, raise living standards and create more equal societies. When we are looking at public services in the developing world, we must also focus on the eradication of poverty as a top priority of our reform of public services and state enterprises. There is one other key ingredient we should not miss out on and that is the principle of public accountability. That accountability should include scrutiny by elected representatives, independent regulation and the involvement of civil society and NGOs. We have some models of good practice in our own countries to show how public services can be held accountable. If we have more accountability built into the way we look at reform in these countries, I am sure we will have the kind of public services which deliver for people, make sure resources are used effectively and help us to pursue our own development goals of eradicating poverty and raising living standards.

Political group: PSE
Madam President, I shall not get into the argument between the European Parliament and the Council about the pace at which rail transport is being liberalised, because, for everyone concerned, the objectives are the same, namely to turn Europe’s railways into a commodity providing large profits for predatory capitalist businesses such as BASF, Ikea and Connex, which is a subsidiary of Vivendi. Far from learning the lessons of the liberalisation in Great Britain, Germany and elsewhere, the reports by Mr Jarzembowski and Mr Sterckx in fact propose only that liberalisation be speeded up and made the norm. Not only international and national freight but also passenger traffic is from now on to be exposed to the laws of the jungle prevailing in the market. The proposed standardisation will take place only on the basis of the lowest common denominator, to the detriment of high safety standards and in such a way as to encourage social dumping, as in the case of road transport. This ultra-liberal position must therefore be rejected. To adopt it would be, on a long-term basis, to turn our backs on the prospect of putting in place a European public rail transport service. As an MEP, I shall not wait for the next disasters to be announced before joining forces at European level with rail users and railway staff to thwart these trends.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, I agree with Mr Seppänen on the legal basis being a primary concern, i.e. it must be in place before expenditure for this kind of support is entered into. After this, the amount, type and form of support will surely be for Parliament and the Council to decide. In this context, I would like to ask what kind of plans, if any, the Council has regarding these practical arrangements. The report on Parliament’s financial administration, in which all political groups were criticised for having channelled parliamentary appropriations into European political parties also, did not take into account the fact, for example, that the office of the is situated within the European Parliament buildings, whereas my own group, the , received a great deal of criticism despite the fact that our Party office is situated away from the European Parliament’s services. I would therefore like to know whether any plans are afoot as to what might be incorporated in this support, which was jointly decided upon by Parliament and the Council, and what issues will be taken into consideration.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, the Committee on Women's Rights and Equal Opportunities requests that the Committee on Budgets incorporate the following conclusions into the motion for a resolution which it adopts: The Committee highlights the importance of appropriate training for women, moving beyond the traditional mould, promoting on-going training, specialisation and the integration of women into the phenomenon represented by new technologies, so that society may gain a large number of highly qualified women whose participation at all levels – business, political and social – results from both qualitative and quantitative criteria. It also requests that a new priority line be added to the e-Europe initiative, bearing in mind that the information society has enormous potential for women, not only with regard to training and access to knowledge, but also because of the opportunity of new jobs or new working methods which may help to reconcile family life. The Committee highlights the need for adequate appropriations to be provided and for the relevant comments to be added to the budget with regard to the strict application of the principle of mainstreaming which guarantees equal opportunities between men and women in the planning, implementation and assessment of all European Union projects and programmes. The Committee requests that the Commission support the Fifth Action Programme for equal opportunities, drawn up with the aim of overcoming the difficulties of the previous programme and asks that the principle of equal opportunities be applied in all Community policies. The Committee requests that a programme for employment be created, specifically targeting women and, to this end, requests that a budget line be created to finance it, with the fundamental aim of achieving equality between men and women in the workplace, not only by means of measures to protect that equality but also by means of special formulae, which will allow women to integrate fully in the labour market without jeopardising other aspects of their lives. The Committee stresses the importance of the collaboration between those non-governmental organisations and associations, whose activities complement the Community action programmes, to achieving the European Union’s aims with regard to equal opportunities between men and women.

Political group: PPE-DE
Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the issue of cultural diversity is one which we must constantly address. In fact, we do not need to go as far as the WTO; in this Parliament, we have repeatedly debated whether culture and the market are compatible, for example on the issue of fixing of book pricing and on the issue of copyright, and we have seen that there are widely divergent views, not only within this House but also between this House and the Commission in some cases. Within the Commission too, views have varied very widely, and I am referring especially to the previous Commission in this context. Certainly, we battled out the issue with Commissioner van Miert on several occasions. I believe that cultural diversity, as a sensible countermeasure to the melting pot, is an absolute necessity and I am most grateful to Mrs Prets for producing this very comprehensive and detailed report. I also thank Commissioner Reding for providing such a detailed overview of the work from her own perspective and for pointing out that this House is and should remain the natural ally of the Commission and especially of Commissioner Reding herself. I would like to thank Mrs Prets especially for stating, in paragraph 15, that this Parliament reaffirms its vigilance concerning the treatment of minority populations and minority languages, including indigenous languages, in the context of the enlarged Europe. This should be made a condition if this House endorses this report. I believe that in an enlarged Europe, this should apply not only to the enlargement countries but also to the current Member States. There is undoubtedly a shortcoming here, in that in the cultural field – due to what is in my view the disastrous principle of unanimity – we have been unable to launch common policies to provide minority communities and languages with sensible options for their development. Here, we have a core Europe comprising a number of countries such as Italy, where I come from, which have broken new ground, and I say this as a member of a minority which is not Italian by origin but a German-speaking Austrian minority in Italy. There are other countries where this development has, unfortunately, been very sluggish, and I think that this effort and the abolition of the unanimity principle can achieve some progress here. Above all, we must address the fears of those countries which have concerns. I think that minorities and their cultures should be regarded as bridges and not as burdens – and this is where this report can make a contribution.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, I must also thank Mr Sterckx for producing such an excellent report following the work done in the last few months in committee, with the help of experts from the various countries. The work in the MARE Committee has enabled us to look in depth at the Prestige disaster and its environmental consequences, and the need to make progress on safety at sea. My colleague Mr Sterckx has produced an excellent report following discussions with experts and the meeting with the captain. It is clear that the decision to move the Prestige away was an error, so we urgently need to create a network of ports of refuge on European coastlines, and progress has already been made on this, as the Commissioner has said. As the report says, we need to provide this network with financial compensation for problems, including environmental problems, due to providing refuge for vessels carrying dangerous cargo. The Commission needs to be quicker and stricter in applying its Directives on safety at sea to the Member States and it needs to create the right conditions in cooperation at international level. Although it is a positive report, our group abstained in the vote in committee because it does not include some matters that are fundamental for the safety of the environment and of seafarers. An environmental principle is amongst the content that we think should be adopted as part of the report: ‘the polluter pays’. It should therefore be incorporated into Amendment No 3 by the and a new paragraph be added stating: ‘Decisions need to be adopted to ensure that those responsible for disasters pay the full costs of them: owners, charterers, owners of the cargo and classification societies, and in the interests of security, to ban flags of convenience in European waters’. The amendment on dignity for seafarers, their pay and valuing their work should also be supported. Measures cannot be taken without reviewing the situation of seafarers and considering exploitation and we cannot make one hundred percent progress on safety if we do not establish the situation of seafarers and their welfare in the report. The Group considers these amendments to be fundamental in order for such a positive report to be one hundred percent positive.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, those who work on rural areas know that, of the programmes which the European Union has managed, the LEADER programme, both LEADER I and LEADER II, is one of its success stories, and I hope that the same will be true of LEADER+. One of the reasons why it has been so successful is that the basic concept of the LEADER programmes aroused substantial interest in activities amongst the population concerned. I am glad that LEADER+ is to remain true to this underlying concept. There is a problem, however, which we need to address together. Because LEAR is a kind of workshop with a bottom-up approach, a huge number of ideas have come to fruition in recent years through LEADER I and II which of course at some point will no longer be brand new or as successful as they once were. And because of the programme’s success and its basic approach they will of course at some point then be dropped from LEADER. That is why, where the good LEAR projects are concerned, we need to ensure that those which have proved to be outstanding are not suddenly discontinued; instead the ideas which have proved to be worthwhile need at some stage to be transferred into the standard programmes as a reliable, positive component of our support to rural areas. Of course this is also the basic idea. It is to take new ideas and try them out in LEADER, with the participants on the ground, with the local organisations on the ground, with many non-governmental organisations, with the churches, with all those who have helped actually to get new ideas up and running in rural communities. Here we must ensure that the good schemes, those which are really excellent, are then somehow transferred into rural development policy to safeguard the future of this laudable work. My request to the Commission is that it should make sure that the organisations and sections of the population which get involved really are accepted. There should be no attempt to have one or other organisation, which is just being formed with a view to contributing a new idea and is not yet so well known, pushed a little on to the sidelines, say because of official local or regional policy. Have faith in the successful results which LEAR has had so far. At the beginning it is sometimes a little like chasing a rainbow if we say that a plan is too idealistic. And then when the work and the action start something emerges which the official policy, including ourselves at this level, could never have imagined would suddenly have developed so well. That was the charm of LEADER, and that should please not be lost!

Political group: PSE
Mr President, European competition policy is one of the European Union's central policy instruments and that is why I would very much welcome it if the Commission were to stand alongside Parliament and also include this sector in the codecision procedure. I really do think it is important for us to make competition policy more democratic and invest it with greater legitimacy than it has had so far, because after all the decisions that the European Union makes on the internal market, the market economy and competition are justified by the fact that competition has a distributive function and is therefore said to contribute to fair income distribution, increase social welfare and act as a mechanism to ensure that the factors of production are efficiently allocated. This should improve supply to the benefit of producers and consumers and finally it should also act as an incentive to promote technical progress and maximise the national product. Obviously we all consider market power and processes of concentration to be damaging. These considerations should also play a role in our debate about a constitution and in the revision of the treaties, and I very much hope that they will also be even more visible in the application and reform of competition law. Finally, this policy must also be brought into line with the Lisbon process and its objectives. That is why the annual report is certainly a successful report and it is also positive that for the first time it addresses the issues surrounding services of general interest. Unlike Mr Langen, I expect the Green Paper to provide not only a thorough analysis of how to handle the provision of public services of general interest, but also a decision on a starting point for future legislation. In this context, I welcome the fact that you wish to put the public service guarantee on the same footing as the principle of free competition. I hope that the Commission will produce a proposal for a framework regulation or framework directive as quickly as possible and that it will take account of national specificities and traditions and in particular leave it up to the Member States to define public services. Commissioner, you were right to say how important it is to control cartels and mergers. I should like to stress once more here that there is certainly a need to analyse the individual parts of the latest court rulings in precise detail and to draw conclusions from them. But these court rulings do not in any way dent Parliament's confidence in the Commission's competence, which has been amply proven over the years. Commissioner, I should like to ask you to take greater account of workers' rights in your merger control work ... (The President cut the speaker off)

Political group: PSE
Mr President, Secretary-General, Commissioner, well done to the Council for thinking about its own reform. There is, in fact, a great deal we can do without treaty amendments and it is indeed important for us to think about efficiency and transparency as we do so. I think that splitting the Foreign Affairs Council from the General Affairs Council is, as Mr Corbett has just said, the right starting point on the administrative side. On the legislative side, we really do need public meetings. Public meetings in the sense that the Council as a whole is publicly accountable, so that our citizens know who is responsible for what and so that the public interaction between the legislators, between Parliament and the Council, can take place in public, so that our citizens can understand who is responsible for what in Europe. I think that this also has a positive side effect and will bring about a degree of improvement in that the individual specialist Councils would then become committees of the legislative Council rather than legislative bodies in their own right, with the negative, unbalanced results which that might bring. But what is also of paramount importance, I think, is that we make sure in our declarations in the run up to Seville that these endeavours, which are right and proper, do not end up stealing the Convention's thunder and we make sure that the control functions tally and that Parliament's codecision function is not undermined. What we want to avoid, when decision-making procedures are dealt out, is a situation in which the European Council becomes the supreme legislator in the European Union with no codecision ties to the European Parliament – a situation in which only the Council can legislate. I warn you, if that is what is being attempted, we should write down anything and everything which might weaken Parliament and the Commission and reduce the potential for control before the Convention reaches any conclusions, because otherwise the good image of Seville may be in serious jeopardy. Be careful not to entertain notions such as these, notions which I sometimes hear coming out of Berlin and London. (Applause)

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, I will be very brief, but this is important. Firstly, I wish to protest against the dropping of today’s debates on matters of topical and urgent importance, Tuesday’s question times and the debate on the cultural capital of Europe, even though enough time was available for them. Secondly, I wish to make a personal statement on behalf of what has been called the Friday Club. I am grateful to the Members who are present for doing their duty right into the evening. They used to do it right through to Friday lunchtime, until that was no longer possible. It is monstrous that there should be someone in this House who is attempting to make criminals of these Members, of all people, who are performing their duties in an exemplary manner. I will be working here this evening on behalf of those whom I represent, and will be doing so until tomorrow lunchtime. That I affirm; I believe it to be our duty. I rejoice to see all those here who are doing their duty rather than going about defaming and discrediting this House. (Loud applause)

Political group: PPE-DE