GwendalTsang/DEFT09-parquet huggingface dataset:
Mr President, given the fact that there are so few of us left and given the concerns for tomorrow morning’s vote, we should perhaps think about the significance of Fridays and their future. Unlike my colleagues from the Netherlands, Mr Wiebenga and Mr Blokland, I am proud of the Dutch policy. A hard-line approach on hard drugs, including XTC, is, at the same time, an effective way of lifting victims from the criminal circuit via a health-care approach and is also a policy which, fortunately, is attracting more and more followers elsewhere in Europe. What is the logic behind it? The rationale? One may well wonder following this discussion. What we have before us is the product of a long and emotionally-laden process and we have not finished by a long way because we are about to vote on this, that is tomorrow morning at 9.00 a.m. What is the issue? The Commission has made an announcement regarding a European Union plan of action concerning drug control for the years 2000 to 2004. Compared with a previous plan of action, this document is clearly a step forward. We are now on track for a kind of mainstreaming of the drugs policy with the emphasis on prevention, but hardly any guiding choices are being made. Instead of making choices, we have mainly looked at the fantasy image of what avenues would be open to us once the war against drugs is over. Until such time, until we have won this war and our society is free from drugs, we are conducting an uncompromising battle against not only the drugs Mafia but also the poor coca farmers in Latin America and also the poppy planters in Asia. The militarisation of these societies, together with the fact that these poor people are not being given any effective help, means there are no truly sustainable prospects for the future. Is it not about time we drew up a cost-benefit analysis of what we are doing, which is in fact at the insistence of the US war on drugs? Are drugs really at least as important as human rights, as suggested by the rapporteur, and why do we not learn from an effective approach as adopted in the Netherlands, for example? Luckily, further to the Commission’s communication, we are making some room for users and some more room for potential users, young people, by pointing out the harmful effects. All in all this still has very little bearing on reality. After all, the Commission has repeatedly highlighted that the plan of action in this respect is merely a supplement. Perhaps it is so that the call made to the Presidency for an inter-pillar council could be seen as signalling a new opportunity, because this document still feels like a missed opportunity to me.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, we are discussing an important matter. Every year 100 000 women die of complications during or following pregnancy, the overwhelming majority of them in developing countries. Very much larger numbers are involved when you include people suffering from sexually-transmitted diseases such as HIV and AIDS. This programme is about the whole range of problems. The EU wants to do something about this urgent state of affairs. The programme is geared, therefore, to the treatment and prevention of disease and infection, the reduction of maternal mortality and the prevention of abortion. In the considerations you can read and I quote: 'schemes to promote sterilisation or abortion and improper methods for testing contraceptives in developing countries will not be eligible for support under this regulation'. Commissioner Nielson guaranteed to the Commission once again in a letter that these are not included in the policy of the Commission. Some fear misuse of the scheme but I cannot read the report as promoting abortion. It may not be possible to give a watertight guarantee that it will never happen but it can be stated with certainty that the regulation itself is aimed at prevention – prevention of sexually-transmitted diseases, prevention of unwanted pregnancies and prevention of abortion. It is a sensitive issue, with opinions divided even in our group, and the text that has been produced is a compromise. It is not exactly as our group would have drawn it up ourselves but we have managed to reach a reasonable compromise, based on the action programmes signed in Cairo by all the Member States of the European Union. Examination of the problem clearly shows that it cannot be solved solely by emphasising rights, provisions and resources. An important part of it has to do with mentality and taking responsibility, which is why I am pleased that the point of view of our group has been given a much better place in the text to be voted on tomorrow and by that I mean that there is more emphasis on the importance of education, information, counselling and personal responsibility and the special role of the family. The text clearly states that there will be no support for the promotion of sterilisation and abortion. We have negotiated to reach a solution quickly so as not to have to stop programmes unnecessarily. It is unfortunate that the Commission was rather late with its proposal, which meant that we had to complete the whole process so quickly. That did not make it easier. As far as the budget is concerned, I am pleased with the compromises reached on the amendments and I hope that they can also be accepted tomorrow in order to give the budgetary authority the last word. I assume that we can count on the full support of the Council and the Commission after this long process of negotiation. I would like to thank all those who cooperated with us in such a constructive way.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, I would first of all like to thank the rapporteur and the Commissioner for the debate they have both facilitated. I think that this European Parliament should be proud that every point of view has been heard and every point of view considered. The original text was, quite rightly, heavily opposed and indeed heavily amended. It looked at ports through the wrong end of the telescope. Rather than competition between the ports it focused on competition within the ports – a little like single market legislation to increase competition within a supermarket rather than between supermarkets. It failed to tackle unfair state aids or the lack of transparency of accounts. In particular it threatened the successful United Kingdom model of ports, some of which, in my region, are amongst the busiest and indeed I would say the most successful anywhere in the world. To be fair, some of these deficiencies have been addressed, but conciliation failed to successfully address many key concerns. It failed to exclude self-handling or to ensure compulsory authorisations – the 'must or may' issue – and it failed, in particular, to exclude marine pilots from the scope of the directive. However, this is not about what is in it but rather what is not in it. There was no real action, in my view, to tackle transparency or unfair state aids. This Parliament should also be concerned that there is no consensus either within Parliament or with society outside. I am aware of the wide range of views, both for and against. However, I am concerned in particular that we do not have the support of port workers themselves. British Labour MEPs are also very concerned that important British groups are objecting to this proposal, and we should all be concerned when British marine pilots and, in particular, British ships' officers are recommending that this proposal be voted down on safety grounds alone. I said at the beginning of the process in 2001 that this proposal should be rejected and sent back to the Commission. Given that our key concerns remain, British Labour MEPs are going to be consistent. We owe it to British jobs, the future of investment in our ports and above all safety to reject this proposal.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, like the previous speakers, I was going to start by welcoming this initiative from the Finnish Presidency. It is therefore a pity that the President-in-Office of the Council left in the middle of the debate. It does not seem right that we cannot have a proper debate when such an important document is presented. All we are going to get now is a continuous monologue without any response from the other party. In that respect, my words are rather pointless. However, following on from what was said by the two speakers who came before me – and with whom I disagree – I must say that the fact that Europe, and the European Union in particular, is making human rights its banner – in fact its only banner – is a marvellous thing. This does not mean that everything is perfect and that there is nothing to correct; indeed, the report says as much. The text could be improved upon in many respects – from the internal point of view, for instance –and certain paragraphs concerned with racism and xenophobia provide perfect examples of this. An improvement could also be made by including in the text the EU’s contribution to the fight for human rights in the international sphere. We are faced with a number of challenges and all of this is mentioned in this document which, I must repeat, is an excellent initiative and constitutes a remarkable inventory. I am only sorry that the President-in-Office of the Council is not present to hear this. There are various initiatives which we could comment on if we had the time. I will mention just one in which I think the European Union should be actively involved, namely the establishment of the International Criminal Court which would end the current situation in which the judicial instruments available to us are quite incapable of dealing with international requests for legal proceedings. IN THE CHAIR: GERHARD SCHMIDVice-President

Political group: PPE-DE
Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I have just arrived and I am delighted to speak on the biofuels dossier, which I worked on for the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development. It seems that the debate on biofuels has, in a way, put the cart before the horse, in the sense that this is, first and foremost, an agricultural problem and that it would have been more sensible to wait for the assessment of the Berlin agenda to be completed, in other words, to complete the mid-term review, so that we know exactly which direction to take for the biofuels policy. The quality of biofuel production will primarily be determined by the way in which agriculture will be managed and this is what we must bear in mind, above all else, in dealing with this subject. The biofuels in question can be manufactured using a production-based approach, with GMOs, with per-hectare inputs, but the overall ecological impact would then be negative. On the other hand, if we take the logical approach, the one which the common agricultural policy has followed for some time now, in other words, if we practise greater crop rotation and if we respect the environment as we should, then biofuels and biofuel production could become a valuable extra activity for farmers involved in direct production. It is better to produce pure biodiesel, pure oil or use biomass to produce hydrogen rather than to follow an approach whereby a small percentage of fuel of agricultural origin is blended with fuels which are themselves still fossil fuels and are therefore still products that produce a great deal of pollution during production. This line of thinking leads to an approach, which, in our view, is heading in the right direction. And since the proposed approach seems satisfactory, we shall study in detail the final decision that is taken.

Political group: Verts-ALE
Mr President, despite the flashy title of this report – ‘How the international monetary system can be made to work better’ – these insipid formulae are certainly not going to prevent future crises. The only purpose of this report is to justify an economic system which is irrational, anarchic and socially unjust. You, the defenders of capitalism, are totally incapable of regulating this economy which is based on the quest for profit and competition. Because it cannot be regulated. The only imaginable regulation is that which the most powerful impose on others, but they do so to their own benefit. The desire to democratise the IMF, which is controlled by the United States, is also ridiculous. The rapporteur recognises that the risk of financial instability is inherent to the operation of the economy. This is undoubtedly the case for your capitalist economy, but the seizure of social wealth and the means of production by a limited number of financial and industrial groups, their rivalry and their speculation, will come to an end. For future generations, the immense wastage and patent stupidity of your economy will serve as a demonstration that, in relation to the control of its collective life, humanity had not yet moved beyond barbarism.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, we already mentioned some of the priorities of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Human Rights, Common Security and Defence Policy for the 2003 Budget in our debate two weeks ago. Today, I should like to concentrate on making a number of comments on the text that we have agreed with the Council on future cooperation in the Common Foreign and Security Policy. In future negotiations with the Council, the Committee on Budgets is proposing to introduce an institutional mechanism providing for greater parliamentary involvement before the Council makes decisions on foreign policy spending commitments. As you know, in recent years we have been repeatedly confronted with the problem – particularly because of the crises in the nineties – of the Council making spending pledges and then Parliament having to find emergency funds from somewhere by cutting the amounts allocated to other foreign policy priorities. That is why we want to have a mechanism whereby the Council involves Parliament at an earlier stage, and here we are proposing firstly that Parliament be consulted when possible joint actions are being examined, if necessary on a confidential basis. Secondly, we are asking for Parliament to be informed by the chair or representative of the chair of the Political and Security Committee about any mandate and above all about the financial impact of a joint action. Thirdly, a joint work plan should be drawn up by the Commission and Parliament setting out priorities for the coming period. This is an offer to the Council and only if the outcome is satisfactory will we authorise the funds for the policing mission in Bosnia at second reading. Initial indications are very positive and I believe that this is a very important step towards also subjecting the Common Foreign and Security Policy to parliamentary scrutiny in the future.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the attainment of a real internal market for services will afford the small and medium-sized enterprises added incentive for innovation – as was already underlined in the debate, in fact. It will also improve the competitiveness of European industry and will provide more benefits to the consumers who will be offered a whole series of high-quality competitive services. I am therefore of the opinion that it is of crucial importance for the internal market strategy to build on the strength of the e-commerce directive and the principle of mutual recognition. Mutual recognition forms the keystone of the European Union and the European internal market, in particular. Mutual recognition is only possible if the consumer enjoys equivalent protection right across the Union. This means that harmonisation is only required if this equivalent protection does not exist. Furthermore, a business based in the Union is guaranteed completely free cross-border trade in services. I therefore believe that the report, as it has now been approved by the Committee on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market, after inserting, inter alia, a number of amendments which I myself tabled, reflects and supports the Commission’s balanced approach. Finally, I am delighted to find out that the Commission adopted a regulation on sales stimulation yesterday. This shows that the Commission is really serious about further developing the internal market. In the current economic climate, we cannot afford to lose momentum in the direction of a real internal market.

Political group: ELDR
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the Water Framework Directive contains many positive initiatives in favour of comprehensive and integrated water protection. Yet the objectives are timid, vague and extremely long term. We cannot wait 30 years for the European Court of Justice to decide whether or not the environmental objectives are in fact legally binding. The Member States have been called upon to improve the quality of our water quickly in order to achieve the objectives in 15 years’ time. Where groundwater protection is concerned, Parliament has unfortunately bowed to the interests of industrial agriculture and recognised its right to go on polluting the environment to the same degree. It is now also the responsibility of the Member States to ensure that existing standards are not undermined, the yardstick by which the success of the Water Framework Directive will be measured. Any more kow-towing to industrial agriculture would lead in the longer term to our most important drinking water resources being destroyed once and for all. We are pleased, however, that the have achieved a great breakthrough when it comes to emissions of dangerous substances, which now have to be identified on the list of priority substances. In this area, we must make genuine efforts to meet the OSPAR objectives as well and to avoid what is an incalculably serious risk to health and the environment.

Political group: Verts-ALE
Mr President, I should like to congratulate Mrs Gill on her report. If we want Europe to be a knowledge society, then we need to use the European digital content programme as our central reference point and as the main platform on which we base our design of this knowledge and information society. The European digital content is not wishful thinking or pie in the sky, which is why numerous suitors are currently wooing this dark object of their desire. The conflict between the Committee on Industry, External Trade, Research and Energy and the Committee on Culture, Youth, Education, the Media and Sport over the acceptance of this report bears witness to the truth of what I say. Why has this happened? Is it perhaps just a typical clash of powers? Certainly, to a degree; however, beneath it lies the nub of a serious problem. The problem, in my view, takes the form of a clash waiting to erupt. On the one hand, we have the content and its traditional producers, whose ambition is to bring their platform into the digital age, without their content losing its importance or independence, i.e. without their losing ownership of their production, which they naturally wish to renovate and extend. On the other hand, we have the communications networks which need a constant supply of content in order to fill their web pages and which see nothing wrong in subordinating the content, in ransoming it and using it without paying any particular attention to the rules of production. The networks have cast themselves in the role of protagonist and are using the content without any discretion and often without any respect. Parliament must handle this clash very carefully. It is not in the European Union's interests to destroy the traditional structures and rules governing the production of the content. On the contrary, these structures and rules need to be upgraded, they need a renewed digital profile if they are to be put to better use and distributed more widely. It is important that we promote content in this direction. Cultural content in particular is in danger of waking up in a new environment in which literally nothing of the old environment remains. Music and the publication of books, for example, obey certain production and distribution rules. If we fail to renovate them, we shall end up in a cannibalistic situation in which authors and their works are the victims. A Europe of knowledge must not excite competition with the United States and thereby destroy the important structures of its symbolic capital, because this is what differentiates it, this is where its wealth, quality and pluralism lie.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, the three reports being debated today have a common subject: the application of European Union policy to immigrants. They respond to demands by the Member States of the European Union either for greater flexibility as regards the period of residency of immigrants and a more lenient Community institutional framework, as in the case of Portugal, or for faster action on the decisions taken at Tampere on mutual recognition by all the Member States of decisions on the expulsion of third-country nationals, as in the case of France. All three reports have been rejected by the competent committee on formal grounds. The MEPs of the Communist Party of Greece will be abstaining from the vote on the Deprez and Frahm reports and voting in favour of the Nassauer report, which rejects France’s initiative, because we, of course, disagree with the content, not the form of the initiative. The question which arises is why this constant preoccupation with immigrants? Perhaps there is no institutional framework? On the contrary. Both Union and national legislation have transformed the European Union into a well-guarded fortress in which there is no place for humanitarian values or solidarity, let alone the European Convention on Human Rights. My country, Greece, is currently discussing a bill along these lines on so-called immigration policy which, to put it bluntly, treats immigration as a crime and anyone who fails to denounce or who assists an immigrant as an accessory to the crime. The causes of immigration stem, in our view, from the very policies of developed capitalist countries and the European Union, which plunder the wealth and rob the people of the fruits of their labour in the immigrants’ countries of origin, condemning them to a life of under-development and poverty. This is what causes mass immigration. Another cause of immigration is imperialist intervention, which foments national and local wars, causing huge waves of refugees. These current waves of immigrants, this modern slave trade suits big business in the countries in which the immigrants end up just fine. Can there by any doubt that what we have here is an inhumane interplay of the interests of slave traders, immigrants, war-mongering imperialists and those who exploit immigrants in the so-called host countries who, basically, as modern-day slave-masters, encourage unemployment and illegal immigration in order to attack the interests and rights of local workers in the coarsest manner? That is why protecting the rights of immigrants, both legal and illegal, must be one of the first and most urgent duties of the popular movement... (The President cut the speaker off)

Political group: GUE-NGL
Madam President, I should like to say on behalf of my group that we welcome the fact that this announcement was made first in this House and not to the media or elsewhere.

Political group: ELDR