GwendalTsang/DEFT09-parquet huggingface dataset:
I applaud the innovative approach of the EQUAL programme and the aim of integrating discriminated groups into the labour market. The development partnerships are a very clever idea, even though they are experimental. I have two major concerns, however, about the development partnerships. They should be accessible to smaller groups, accessible for them to be able to devise, implement and monitor the programmes. We need to have a wide element of flexibility within the programme. I have also expressed concern in the past about the use of simple language and not using jargon, so that it becomes accessible to everyone. I am glad to see that this was accepted into the report, but I cannot agree with Amendment No 9 because that amendment really is not expressed in simple language at all. My second concern was that some discriminated groups have specific problems, for example, disabled people’s access to the workplace. Projects should also specifically address this problem. These concerns must be looked at while setting up the programmes. I certainly intend to do that with organisations and groups in my constituency in the West Midlands. I now turn to the controversial issue of asylum-seekers and refugees. Although I am not in favour of those refugees who have been refused refugee status and threatened with repatriation, having access to EQUAL, I would support the possibility of access for all other asylum-seekers and refugees. It is only fair and right for them to be able to access EQUAL in the same way as everyone else.

Political group: ELDR
Mr President, I thank the rapporteur, Mr Glante, for what was a considerable task. Increased CHP is one of the best means to improve the efficiency of the energy economy and reduce greenhouse gases that result from this sort of generation. Let us combat emissions with science, efficiency and moderation. We in Finland have a lot of good things to say about cogeneration. We are pioneers in this field. Cogeneration now accounts for a third of the electricity produced in Finland. I support the directive, as it will provide an impetus for increased generation of this type throughout Europe. The Union really must set an example in this area. It is to be hoped that initiatives of this kind will also be adopted by our new neighbours as speedily as possible, so that production might also be increased in this way in the Union’s neighbouring regions. In our national strategy this path has almost reached its end and district heating plants and industrial sites have on the whole already exploited cogeneration. Our energy economy is very diverse, versatile and efficient. The price of electricity should be lowered, and on that point I agree with the previous speaker. We realise that it is important that it should remain within the powers of decision of the Member States as to what means are used to increase common targets. We are out of step with one another within the Union in this regard. I would like to mention one detail. I am in favour of the Council’s support for the amendment in the report which states that it would be the Commission’s task to assess the effects of a harmonised calculation method and propose further action to promote harmonisation. I support this approach because it must be the long-term aim to harmonise definitions employed in national objectives.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, esteemed gentlemen from Portugal, especially the Council representatives, you face great expectations on our part. I should like to give you an example of one way in which you can meet these expectations relatively quickly in at least one small segment. I refer to Eurodac. You will remember that we decided with great expectations here in the European Parliament in December that Eurodac would become a reality as a regulation and as a system, as a Community instrument which we urgently need in order to prevent multiple asylum applications, in order to have an instrument to fight illegality and, above all, in order to set out clearly which Member State was responsible for implementing the asylum procedure. We voted clearly in favour of the introduction of this instrument, together with an implementation committee, which would be attached to the Commission in just the same way that a corresponding database would be. We were of the opinion that EURODAC was becoming a reality. Even in Tampere, we were of the opinion that Eurodac was becoming a reality. However, the Council then took another direction at the very next summit in December and took a huge step backwards by deciding what we had absolutely rejected, i.e. that the Council should continue to be responsible for implementation, that the regulatory committee would be attached to the Council and that, where possible, Gibraltar would still be used to exert pressure. This is a perfect example of the sort of work we do not want to see. My urgent request on behalf of the Group is that you do everything to ensure that Eurodac is implemented immediately as an instrument to fight asylum abuse and illegality and as an instrument to speed up asylum procedures. If you tell us today how you wish to proceed, you will be doing us a great service. (Applause)

Political group: PPE-DE
In 2003, a new Protocol was agreed with Greenland, covering the period from 1 January 2004 to 31 December 2006, within the scope of the mid-term review of the Fourth Protocol, which lays down conditions provided for in the Fisheries Agreement between Greenland and the European Community. This review introduces a range of adjustments, but does not alter the level of financial compensation, which remains at EUR 42 820 000 per year. The review does, however, make a clearer distinction between amounts set aside to compensate fisheries possibilities and support for structural reform. We welcome the increase in halibut quotas, which means that national fleets may now catch 800 tonnes of Greenland halibut. It should be noted, however, that, at the time of the decision, Portugal was excluded from this agreement, despite its historical fishing rights in the area. Given the extent to which quotas are under-used, we must ensure that the principle of good financial management is applied, in other words, that the fisheries possibilities offered by the international fisheries agreements are used effectively, without undermining the principle of relative stability. The report and the Commission proposal open up the possibility of redistributing quotas that are not fully used in a given year. We feel, however, that the wording of Amendment No 5 is more acceptable, and that this Amendment should, accordingly, be approved in plenary.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, it is important that not only Spaniards take part in this debate. The Group of the European Liberal, Democrat and Reform Party welcomes the effort to improve relations between the EU and Latin America. It is incredibly important to develop cooperation further. We have much in common, not only from an historical perspective but also with a view to the future. As President Fox said in this Chamber not so long ago, many Latin American countries see the EU as a role model where human rights are concerned. The attitude to international conventions such as the Kyoto Protocol and to the International War Crimes Tribunal is considerably more constructive in Latin America than in North America. This is an important alliance to build on. The fight against organised crime and drugs also requires us to work together to a greater extent. Much remains to be done in the area of trade. The EU must open its markets to Latin America, especially when it comes to agriculture. We are always quick to criticise others for protectionism, often with good reason, but what is our food market if not protectionist? We Liberals would also like to highlight the issue of Cuba and regret that there was no room for it in Parliament’s joint resolution. We are pleased that a resolution on Cuba was adopted in Geneva. A significantly stronger commitment is required in this area than is currently the case. We agree that the US embargo must be lifted. We need to do more to strengthen the democrats in Cuba, however. At the moment, the opposition is more coordinated and more willing to enter into discussion than ever before. The referendum project, the Varela project, is worthy of all our support. The free libraries play an important role in providing Cubans with literature other than the collected speeches of Fidel Castro. Cuba is still a dictatorship, but there are democratic forces there which are strong and organised and which desperately need support from the EU and from Latin America. We must not let them down.

Political group: ELDR
Mr President, can I first of all, on behalf of the , welcome the Commissioner's initiative. We share her objectives, we support her aims. However, we do perhaps regret the lack of integration with other initiatives that she is pursuing, which is apparent if one reads her communication. We also note the lack of political will that exists within both the Commission and the Council, although it is worth perhaps reminding ourselves that this initiative started with the Council in June last year when it requested the Commissioner to bring forward this communication. Indeed in March of this year, the Council in Lisbon sought further progress, progress which I am sure we would all endorse. The also supports and indeed welcomes the rapporteur's carefully judged position. It is subsidiarity in action: European where necessary, national where possible. I would like to thank him personally for taking on board many of our concerns, not least in the area of safety, which I acknowledge is now the number one priority for him in his report. The key concerns of the include a regret at the lack of analysis of the real cause of air traffic delays. Airports' runway capacity, airline planning, passenger behaviour, airport infrastructure, as well as the shortage of controllers which was mentioned by the rapporteurs. A second concern of ours is this key principle, which we support and which needs to be developed further, namely the separation of regulation from service providers. That has to be a key building block of our new approach. Eurocontrol too must be reformed and revamped and relaunched. The third principle we support is liberalisation but not privatisation; and fourth and finally we want to see these proposals developed in conjunction with the proposed European Aviation Safety Authority. Indeed, above all, safety first should be our guiding rule, and I am sure it will be our guiding principle in the months to come. Between 1986 and 1996 air traffic in Europe doubled. It will double again in the coming ten years. We need to tackle this issue urgently and swiftly but in a coherent way. What we want to hear perhaps from the Commissioner today is a clear timetable from her as to the speed at which she will be acting in the months to come. We all know there will be people waiting in airport lounges this summer asking, why their plane is delayed, not for minutes but for hours. Hopefully the Commissioner today can bring forward a timetable for when those delays will cease. I look forward to her comments, particularly bringing this Parliament up to date on the conclusions last week of the Council which received the interim report of the high level group. I urge colleagues to back the rapporteur's proposal and I urge the Commissioner to bring forward a very clear timetable.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, Madam Vice-President, I wanted to reply to my Bavarian colleague, but he has left the chamber. So I shall say it for the record. It is ludicrous that somebody always cries out to the Commission for help when the Austrians close the Alps. Yet when we do something really sensible, like imposing standard rules for traffic restrictions, he questions whether the Community is competent to do so. I would take this opportunity to remind him that you cannot take a stand on more than one platform at once. The whole thing is quite logical. We are discussing traffic across borders, the trans-European networks, and our desire, expressed in the White Paper, for an efficient system for utilising them, and along comes an MEP and says that Europe has no competence in this area. I can only say that such a thing is laughable, absolutely laughable. Even though I am from Germany, a country battered by transit traffic, with lorries crossing it from north to south and west to east, I nonetheless take the view that we need European regulation. We must have rules to sort out the conflict of objectives between the interests of the local citizens – who are opposed to noise and to clogged roads – and the interest of the economy in getting traffic through. We complain about high unemployment, but if we want to deal with unemployment, we need economic growth. You cannot get economic growth off the Internet. You can order goods that way, but, as you have to have them delivered, jobs in industry depend on the efficient utilisation of the trans-European network. The assertion that this has nothing to do with Europe, and that every country can do as it likes, is positively absurd, and our being on the threshold of EU enlargement makes it all the more so. We should be giving the countries that are about to join us a sheaf of unambiguous and harmonised regulations that they know they can stick to and be guided by. There is a general need for European regulation. We simply have to declare that nobody, not even the Commission, wants to use the system of efficient reporting and monitoring of supplementary restrictions to change the Member States' public holidays. That is just nonsense. This is primarily about weekend journeys. That is the issue. Any haulier or employer has to know when and where they can pass through and when and where they have to stop. Then, of course, there have to be proper parking places with sanitary facilities. So, Commissioner, Madam Vice-President, there is just one question to which I would like you to give me an answer. Mr Savary, who was a very good rapporteur, has proposed this European apparatus for road traffic information. Are you prepared to support it? If you are, then I would tell Mr Ferber that, if we want an efficient information system, we have to lay it down in a directive, in order to require the Member States to play their part. We know that Member States do not supply up-to-date data if systems are voluntary. So that is what we need. Commissioner, Madam Vice-President, are you ready to support Mr Savary's great idea for such a mechanism? (Applause) IN THE CHAIR: MRS CERSCHIÖLDVice-President

Political group: PPE-DE
Madam President, a great deal has been said this evening on this subject. Each speaker has explained his position calmly and resolutely, and, indeed, I do not even want to use all the time available to me for fear of repeating what has already been said. Directive 86/609 laid down provisions which reflected the – as yet quite limited – understanding of that time. Over 15 years have passed since that directive, during which time I would say it has had hardly any effect at all, for every day we receive news not of progressive alignment with the directive but of ill-treatment of animals and unlawful behaviour. The States have to a large degree failed to comply with the directive; the whole of society – human society as well as, of course, the animal kingdom – has not felt protected. The report contains a number of very specific provisions on the behaviour of what are, indeed, major countries – Austria, Belgium, France, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom – which have behaved in different ways but, in any case, in such a manner as to justify the assertion that almost all the States have failed to comply with the directive for a long time. This failure to comply has taken different forms but it is still failure to comply. Few countries in the European Union have escaped criticism, and that may well be because they were not yet part of the European Union at the time in question and have therefore not been assessed. I believe that there must be an undertaking in this regard. The report’s proposals are certainly sound, the recommendations made by the Commissioner – although I feel she is a little overoptimistic – are certainly sound, but the important thing is for the legislation to be implemented, and so we need inspectors, we need monitoring, we need all possible endeavours to ensure that the directive is respected, even before we start to revise it.

Political group: PPE-DE
Madam President, you have quite rightly said that we should never have to vote a second time, yet this is precisely what we did yesterday. There were certain reasons for this as the roll call vote had been forgotten. However, yesterday afternoon, we had another attempt to take a vote for a second time. I call upon you, Madam President, and your colleagues, to reiterate the fact that once we have taken a vote, then that should, in principle, be the end of the matter and we should not keep on engaging in further debate as to whether to take a second vote. This principle, which you have made reference to here, should be stringently observed.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, I note with some surprise that I am bringing up the rear, despite having been the first to request the floor Secondly, I should also like to note that, broadly speaking, my Group supports the Haarder report and expressly highlights the fact that there was excellent cooperation with the rapporteur. At last we have before us a report which duly deals with the subject, the stated period and enforceable rights. Hence our support in principle. We voted against it, however, because two points were accepted by the majority of the House; I refer to points 53 and 54, which tackle the issue of the family and the excessive support or special support for all alternative types of partnership. We in the European People’s Party see the family as a value per se, as the cornerstone of society, if you like, as the heart of society, and cannot accept that alternative life styles should be specially fostered and set above the family, which we see as the nucleus of our society. However, with these points and the majority decision by Parliament, we now have a situation in points 53 and 54 in which alternative lifestyles enjoy special favour and are placed above the family, as a result of which we find it impossible to vote for the report as a whole. (Applause)

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, the discussion on labelling beef has reached a point at which it is crucial to restore confidence among producers and consumers. The report focuses on the traceability of beef, i.e. knowing its exact origins, but at the same time, this cannot be detached from consumer confidence, as consumers want information. It strikes me that this Parliament insists on also making national labelling possible and obligatory, while the Commission places the emphasis on labelling which states “originates from the EU”. I am convinced that one day, we will be proud again of a label which states: produced in the EU, and that we will have a food safety bureau in the European Union with a forceful, supranational mandate which can act promptly as and when problems arise. This must be our ultimate goal. We will then be where we need to be. Until such time, we need to be able to find out exactly what is happening, we need to be able to give the consumer sound information and until such time, we will need to use stop-gap measures to do this. One of these measures is most definitely the use of a label indicating the Member State. This is good, because in this way we can start restoring confidence in the producer, especially at a time when food safety is so much in the public eye. We simply need this. Another positive step is if it could also be pointed out that there can be a time when confidence will be restored. In this sense, I have to say that my delegation and some in my group support Amendment No 61 tabled by Mr Maaten and Mr de Roo, in which the times are indicated when assurances can be given with regard to BSE inspections and other matters and which states that there can also be a time when the EU label will be applicable. I consider this to be an interim step, and ultimately I can see one key goal: to restore confidence, to produce a forceful EU label and ultimately a forceful food safety bureau, because these discussions are interconnected.

Political group: PPE-DE
Rich Europe has Africa, the poorest continent, on its doorstep. This continent, with its many fatal diseases, poorly-developed industry, desertification and battle for minerals, is selling its agricultural products and mining products to the rich world. In the past, during colonial supremacy, this was done under duress. Nowadays, it appears to be done voluntarily, although they are hardly given any alternatives. Politically speaking, colonialism has died out, but economically speaking, it is still thriving. This also applies to fishing, and increasingly so. The European Union leases fishing areas in the territorial waters and economic coastal zones of African countries on behalf of its own fishing fleets, particularly those from Spain and Portugal. For the poor countries, this is one way of making a fast buck, but offers no solutions in the long run. If the seas in those areas soon run out of fish stocks, as the North Sea is doing, those countries will be left with an insoluble problem. They, in fact, desperately need food from the sea for their own undernourished population, and they could export any surpluses. Instead of this, they confine themselves to primitive coastal fishing and sell their fishing rights to others. This situation should end without delay. This is the reason why I am increasingly averse to endorsing the extension of agreements such as those for Senegal and Angola today. Resolution on the Statute of Members (B5-0620/2002)

Political group: GUE-NGL