GwendalTsang/DEFT09-parquet huggingface dataset:
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, we have three closely connected items on our agenda today. But the problem is that media interest will focus not so much on the Mennea and Zabell reports as on the Commissioner's announcement. I think that is a pity. We are now more worried about the apple of Germany's eye, football, than about what is really at stake today. I have no hesitation in supporting the two Commissioners whose task it is to implement the Bosman judgment. If FIFA had done its job, the Commission would not have needed to get involved in this. I hope that FIFA recognises that and will now finally come up with something that the Commission can include in its proposals, as long as they do not run counter to the Bosman judgment. So I think that everyone has a job to do here. As regards the reports, I would like to say that, in view of the big business sport has become, the social and educational importance of popular sport needs to be highlighted. There is a danger that sport as a whole will sooner or later be badly hit by rules on competition. We would like to prevent that, which is why the Mennea report quite rightly calls for a reference to sport in Article 151 of the Treaty as an aspect of culture. I, myself, called for this in my report back in 1996. That resulted in a declaration at Amsterdam, which was by no means enough. That is why I am supporting the fact that this is finally being introduced now. That report also called for the Commission to declare a European Year of Sport. A European Year of Sport would be an important stimulus, and I hope that the new Commissioner will now take this up. I am delighted that Mrs Zabell has covered some broader ground in her report on doping and that she has also stressed the abuse of young sportsmen and women, and has given an impetus to jointly tackling doping. I would like to congratulate the Commission on having joined this Anti-Doping Agency now, so that it can genuinely give an impetus to a harmonised approach towards combating doping on behalf of the Community of Fifteen. I wish it every luck.

Political group: PPE-DE
Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, first I wish to thank the rapporteurs for drafting these reports. The amendments to directives have improved some, if I may say so, rather poor proposals by the Commission. The amendments adopted by the committee, however, do not as yet go far enough, as has been said here in a good number of speeches. Responsibility for maintaining security of energy supply lies mainly with national energy policy. To improve security of supply we also have to conclude agreements with other countries. Member States must be able to decide freely on the organisation of security stocks. Some Member States of the Union have abandoned the use of public stockholding bodies. They have succeeded in organising matters efficiently and cost-effectively by other means. That is why Member States should be able to determine and decide when it is permissible to site oil stocks in another Member State without jeopardising security of supply. Siting security stocks abroad must, however, be carried out on the basis of contracts between the countries and in compliance with current practice. The special circumstances obtaining in each Member State have to be taken into account to ensure supplies of energy. To improve security of supply it is also important to ensure that there is a diversity of energy sources and an even distribution of energy providers. I also wish to remind everyone that promoting the use of local renewable energy increases security of supply, reduces dependence on imports of energy and also creates employment.

Political group: ELDR
Mr President, the announcement by Mr Cox is very important for Members of the European Parliament in one particular regard. Members will have noticed that he mentioned the idea of impact assessments on amendments proposed by Members of this Parliament. That is a very good idea, but it will come into operation as of January 2004. What we need to know is who is going to do these impact assessments and how the system will work. I invite the President to set up a working party which must, I suspect, work over the Christmas period to produce some proposals as to how this system will work. Having had this great signing ceremony, it is up to us to make the agreement work. (Applause)

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, as you know, the Group of the supports your decision. From a legal point of view, whether or not we have lost influence in the co-decision procedure is debatable. My group – as Mr Medina Ortega has already stated – thinks not and that also, from a political point of view, the decision we have taken is the right one. As we approach the Barcelona Summit, I would ask you to not only defend our position with regard to the implications of this decision for the European business world, but also, given its importance, from the point of view of consolidating economic democracy and workers’ rights.

Political group: PSE
I voted for the Damião report, Mr President, partly because I voted for the amendment which stipulated that women on maternity leave should receive a full allowance. Maternity is not an illness. This morning, the Italian newspapers contained the news that medical treatment for dogs and cats will be tax deductible. If there is enough money to spend on dogs and cats, there ought to be enough for women on maternity leave, who are not ill but people who have the right to a full allowance.

Political group: PPE-DE
Madam President, in deference to your international linguistic approach, Commissioner, I will refrain from speaking in my national language and use the lingua franca of our epoch – English. I pay tribute to your valiant rendering, not only of the English language – in which you have no problem – but also of the specialised terminology of the financial markets, which probably caused you more throatache than the language itself. You paid tribute to the modernising efforts of the financial services programme. Indeed it is a remarkable programme, which has to succeed if we are going to have a unified and integrated capital market in Europe – a great competitive advantage for an economy. However, the word 'modernise' can be such a terrible weasel word at the same time. Many things can be cloaked in modernism. In this particular case there is an upside, insofar as the integration of capital markets is helped; at the same time, however, the increasing leverage of financial institutions, inter alia, has already given rise to various risks will do so in the future. There have to be ways of strengthening control of those risk-management models which banks will use in order to assume control. Such models are very costly and hard to control. When I say 'control' I do not mean control in the old-fashioned bureaucratic sense. New methods have to be invented for checking on these models so that they perform in a way that helps the banks perhaps to leverage more while at the same time keeping them in check. If they are not kept in check the risks could be very substantially increased. The other risk in this area is that we create a risk-management divide where big banks and big financial institutions will have all the means at their disposal to engage in modern risk management. Meanwhile, small banks will become more and more marginalised in this respect and be increasingly burdened with costs which the bigger institutions have managed to shrug off. If indeed a way out is to be sought through partial application to small banks, this may exacerbate the lack of transparency in the whole area. The recent Enron debacle offers a sobering lesson in what a lack of transparency could provoke. Therefore our advice would be to temper a little the enthusiasm for surrendering control to the markets, while building up the official control side a bit more and applying it in a modern way using modern methods. Such methods might, in the short term, limit profitability, but if they are to spare us a couple of Enron-type disasters in the long run, they will more than compensate for any reduction in short term profit.

Political group: PSE
I have been sitting here for almost half an hour waiting for my name to be called because I was informed by the services that I had to be present in order for my explanation of vote to be taken as written. I do not understand the problem. Why is it that our services cannot give us simple and straightforward information? I indicated that I wanted to make my explanation of vote in writing and I was told that I would have to be here for the vote in the first instance and that I would have to wait until I was called to indicate that I wanted to make it Why have I had to waste half an hour here?

Political group: PSE
Mr President, it is a question to the Commissioner. My question to the Commissioner was crystal clear, and I should like a little bit more clarification on this. Just to make sure we are all singing from the same hymn sheet: the Doha amendment serves to enable manufacture for developing countries lacking that capacity themselves. Am I to understand from your answer that we are sending unauthorised medicinal products to developing countries? If so, those developing countries must then authorise them themselves, but how can they do this if they ...

Political group: PSE
Mr President, it is interesting to hear this discussion because this House is in unusual agreement about the situation of the European economy. In almost every speech, we hear about the low growth rate, falling investments, increasing unemployment and the disappearance of capital and of highly qualified labour etc. It is a tone quite different to that we heard three or four years ago when there was a lot of optimism. I believe that this set of problems has to be taken very seriously. My own view is that a long-term growth policy is needed, with the emphasis upon infrastructure, the environment, technological development, the development of human capital and such matters as have been addressed by many of the speakers. The issue is, which of the prior conditions are the most important. I believe that responsibility for this new policy must lie with the Member States. My impression is that the EU does not have the political strength, unity and economic prospects needed to lead such a policy and to put Europe back on the right road. The Member States must produce the growth package in the form of national policies based on large-scale public-private cooperation. In my own country of Sweden, the strongest periods of growth have in general emerged from national ventures in which public policies have combined with trade and industry to succeed in creating especially favourable effects. I wish especially to indicate the importance and significance of the public sector’s playing an active role in such contexts, both because it is important for employment and because it consumes large portions of resources.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Chairman of the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy. – Mr President, the Committee on the Environment believes that this is a measure that should be dealt with by my committee for three reasons. Firstly, it is based on a part of the Treaty dealing with environmental protection. It will be dealt with by the Environment Council. The Committee on the Environment is responsible for environmental policy; the Committee on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market is responsible for civil liability law. In fact, this directive creates an entirely new instrument to combat general environmental damage to biodiversity, water and land, and puts an administrative burden on the public authorities in the Member States to help prevent and restore such damage. It is misleading shorthand to refer to it as an environmental liability directive. The proposal should be referred to instead as the directive on the prevention and remedying of environmental damage. (Applause) Secondly, three Vice-Presidents – whom we spent one and a half days electing two and a half years ago – decided unanimously that this report should be drawn up by the Committee on the Environment. I have nothing to do with two of those Vice-Presidents as they come from groups which are miles away from the British Conservatives. The third was Mr Provan who, for all we know, still has a hotline to Mrs Thatcher's handbag. (Laughter) The Committee on the Environment therefore voted to sustain its objections to the assignment to the Committee on Legal Affairs although, I have to confess, that it voted by a narrow majority. Thirdly, our rapporteur, Mr Papayannakis, is already hard at work on this directive. We appreciate the work Mr Manders has done on the opinion on behalf of the Committee on Legal Affairs. However, I have to say to the that it has no chance of persuading Mr Papayannakis to give up his rapporteurship in favour of a Liberal. (Laughter) There is one simple reason for this: if the wishes to take over the rapporteurship in the Committee on the Environment, it is bottom of the list. The following groups have first choice: the UEN, the , the EDD, even the non-attached, and the PPE are higher up the list than the Liberals. There is one other possibility that nobody has thought of: what happens if there is a tie when we vote? I suggest that, in the event of a tie, we assign it to the Committee on Women's Rights and Equal Opportunities which is looking for things to do. (Laughter and applause) (Parliament accepted the proposal of the Conference of Presidents) ***

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, I also wish to express my thanks to Mr Chichester, the rapporteur, for his significant work in preparing this matter. As has already been stated here on previous occasions, the EU has only limited possibilities to interfere with the terms and conditions of energy supply. Its chances of influencing the matter are restricted to the demand, and hence to the promotion of energy saving in the construction and transport industries. The most important things, therefore, are to ensure the diversity of energy sources and an even distribution of suppliers of energy. The availability of energy on a local level enhances the reliability of energy supplies, reduces dependence on imported energy and provides employment opportunities. In particular, research into and the use of renewable energy sources must be promoted. Responsibility for assuring the reliability of energy supplies is primarily a matter for national energy policies. In order to enhance the reliability of supplies, it is also necessary to enter into agreements with other countries. Also, energy projects that serve common European objectives are an excellent way of putting into specific terms the EU’s policies on the Northern Dimension.

Political group: ELDR
Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, if we are going to talk about topicality then all I can say is that you cannot get more topical than Kosovo and Serbia. The Committee on Budgets and the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Human Rights, Common Security and Defence Policy have just got back from a joint trip to Kosovo. While we were there we promised that we would do our best to adopt a motion of this kind this week. I urge the honourable members to support this motion for a resolution. We must bring pressure to bear on Serbia, and also on the Albanians in Kosovo, so as to make them put things to rights. We can only do this using the modest means at our disposal, namely a motion for a resolution. The Balkans region is a little nearer to us than Fiji as matters stand, and if it is money we are worried about then I am bound to say that we are footing the bill rather a lot in Kosovo!

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, the protection of fundamental rights is undoubtedly one of the driving forces of the current evolution of the European Union. Therefore the proclamation of the Charter of Fundamental Rights, in December 2000, was an unprecedented event in terms of the recognition of a Union which is increasingly close to the citizens and sensitive to their needs. The European Parliament, an institution which is particularly sensitive to the issue of protecting our citizens, had no hesitation in making it the key element of its annual report on respect for fundamental rights in the Union, the aim of which is to assess the degree of compliance with the rights contained in the Charter in any particular year. In this context, I believe that this annual resolution is a wonderful opportunity for the European Parliament to demonstrate its interest in safeguarding fundamental rights, as well as controlling their application, especially with the invaluable support of the network of experts which the Commissioner referred to and whose work I had the honour of inaugurating together with him. Furthermore, so that we are not hindered in this task, I believe it essential that the European Parliament tries to achieve the greatest possible degree of consensus, seeking to bring together the positions of the political groups and thereby becoming a genuine institution for controlling compliance with the fundamental rights of the Union. Nevertheless, I must unfortunately acknowledge that this has not been the situation, quite the opposite. Opting to include party-oriented versions on issues such as the family or the treatment foreigners must receive within European territory simply overshadow the other extremely important issues referred to in the text, such as the fight against terrorism or against torture. In fact, the report which we are to vote on in the plenary goes much further than its own objective and diverts attention from the important thing – assessing whether or not rights have been respected – towards party political issues, which consists of adopting positions on certain issues which are still under discussion within the framework of other reports and which also reflect positions which are different from that which the government of the colour of the rapporteur maintains in the Council. I must therefore unfortunately say that my group will be obliged to vote against the report, since it is impossible to support a text which is not suited to its purpose or the continuity set by its predecessors.

Political group: PPE-DE
My initial comment on the new agricultural policy announced by Commissioner Fischler on 10 July 2002 was: ‘An appropriate break with the past, but not a solution for the victims by a long chalk’. The reform was announced as a reward for quality and food safety, aimed at better protection of the consumer and the environment. Maintaining and improving the countryside would be less dependent on chasing after ever more intensive production. My party, the Dutch Socialist Party, has always striven to achieve just such a reversal. Agricultural organisations and farmers’ representatives in the European Parliament were furious. This is understandable, as there is unfortunately a major risk of more large groups of farmers going out of business. Not only the small farmers in France, Spain and Greece, but even the bigger farmers in the Netherlands, who are currently highly dependent on the money they have borrowed from the banks. Compared with the amount of work and money they have invested, their income is disappointing, and that income may drop even further for some. Farmers can only get socio-economic security if we have the courage to break away from the logic of the free market and instead are rewarded for countryside management, environmental protection and healthy food. Otherwise there will still be pressure to supply food even more cheaply than the Americans and other competitors outside the EU by further intensification, further exploitation of the soil and export subsidies.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, the relationship between the United States and the EU is not one of equals. I am not referring to political, economic or military power; I mean that the EU and the United States are not equal. They do not have the same level of awareness, they do not have the same definition of security and of their role in the world. Do not get me wrong, I welcome this difference. The world does not need two United States, the original and a copy. The European Union differs, deviates and should continue to do so. Needless to say, there are common values, common roots and common goals, but there is also a difference in terms of insight into how these goals can best be achieved. In this area, a European model of some kind is certainly taking shape. Let me spell it out quite clearly: there is no room for a sense of moral superiority. The EU is not always right, and the United States does not always come up with the worst response. Despite this, the EU would do well to highlight this response, this difference, with confidence and force in a discussion, a debate with the United States. Also because the United States is no monolith. Debate is most definitely taking place in the United States, and Europe can influence this debate. What does this mean in concrete terms? In my view, this specifically means three things. One: the EU must consistently adhere to multilateral agreements in the area of security, the environment and international criminal law. This is different from multilateralism à la carte, as is sometimes displayed by the United States, for example their behaviour in NATO. Two: the EU should further develop its strong points in areas where it has been successful in the past. As I have already said, these include talking, diplomacy, mediating, conflict prevention and, once conflicts have arisen, tackling reconstruction. This is not a poor apology, this is increasingly the real thing in international relations. Third point: the EU must – more so than in the past – be able to solve the problems in its own region, using military means if necessary. But this does not mean, and I am particularly addressing the rapporteur here, that the EU should spend more on defence, but that it should spend more efficiently. I often get impatient when I see the silly mistakes the United States is making, for example in Iraq or Iran. I also get impatient, however, when I notice that the EU is unable to come up with alternatives. It manages to do so occasionally, for example in the Balkans. Let us continue along this path, with growing confidence, criticising the United States if necessary. If this could be done, I am hopeful of a better future for the world.

Political group: Verts-ALE
With your permission, in the debate I made specific reference to share fishermen and sought specific assurances about the position of share fishermen. I detected no reference whatsoever to share fishermen and their position in the answers. I wonder if you would permit a specific answer to be given. In a previous debate on the subject when I made similar comments, the then Commissioner made it very clear in the summing up that share fishermen were not included in the proposals. Can the Commissioner confirm whether that is or is not still the case?

Political group: Verts-ALE