GwendalTsang/DEFT09-parquet huggingface dataset:
Mr President, Commissioner, I feel that what Mr Hatzidakis said, not least on behalf of the rapporteur, has clearly explained the technical content of this difficult conciliation and I feel that the Commissioner’s words, with which I agree, have clearly illustrated the political content of this extremely complex, extremely complicated decision, which it is difficult to describe in any other way. Taking on board the difficulties – which we understand although we cannot justify the demands – of the Austrian people, we have decided to grant another privilege – because that is what it is, as the Commissioner said – and extend it to a particularly sensitive area such as the Alpine region and to the entire Austrian territory – making it a twofold privilege – and, rather than limiting it to 2004 and then maybe seeing what to do in 2005-2006, we have automatically extended it to 2006. This is the subject of the agreement that we are now ready to support, fully aware that we are going beyond the call of duty. We also believe, however, that, for the good and the preservation of the very sense of European Community, it is right that we make this sacrifice. Any other objections would therefore be inappropriate. Overall, a compromise has been achieved, which is excellent and the best compromise possible for it strikes a balance between the right to mobility and respect for the environment: it takes a gradual approach, it punishes what might be called the improper behaviour of those who fail to renew their HGV fleets while rewarding those who do behave properly, with due respect for the specific conditions and sensitivity of a region. If anyone wants to pull out of this compromise, they are free to do so, but they would, without a doubt, be making a mistake: this is the best decision that could have been made and it must therefore be supported.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, the terrorist attack in Madrid was an attack on all of us who believe in democracy. I welcome the resolution from the spring summit to appoint a counter-terrorism coordinator. All our Member States must cooperate fully to minimise the risks for all our citizens. My Group leader, Mr Poettering, is right: we must not equate the Arab world with terrorism. We must do all in our power to work with the many leaders and spokespersons in the Arab world who feel as strongly as we do in the West about these atrocities. The key, of course, is resolution to the intractable problem of the Middle East. We must never forget that terrorism is rooted in poverty and social exclusion and, as we discuss the economic governance of the EU at the spring summit, we must realise that our economic growth depends on peace and stability which, in turn, depend on our efforts to ensure economic stability and growth in those parts of the world where poverty and social exclusion are the norm for millions of young men and women. Countering terrorism is in large measure countering poverty. As far as the Lisbon agenda is concerned, I say to our Taoiseach that we have failed yet again to deliver progress on our much-quoted ambition for the EU to become the most competitive knowledge-based economy in the world by 2010. Your words, President-in-Office, about fruitful discussions, re-focusing on key issues, sustainable growth in employment etc. etc. etc., could be those of any President-in-Office over the last four years: they have all said exactly the same. I am afraid there has been no progress on practical transposition in our Member States. You have only to look at the fact that 400 000 EU-educated researchers are working in the United States today. We educate them, we give them knowledge, and then they leave. The benefit of that knowledge is developed elsewhere in the world. President-in-Office, why did an Irish presidency choose to initiate diplomatic relations with the military dictatorship in Burma? Why now? We have avoided it for very good reasons for many years. Please answer me, but do not tell me that as President-in-Office you had no option but to negotiate on behalf of the EU. I object strongly, as I am sure do many Irish people and colleagues here, to Ireland initiating diplomatic relations with a military dictatorship that controls the Burmese against the will of its people. Finally, may I echo the words that my colleague Mr Watson used and say 'may the road rise up to meet you' – 'go ndeirig an mbóthar leat'. To all those involved in the Irish presidency, may you achieve the signing of the Constitutional Treaty in June. You have all our good wishes. Thank you for the progress on consultation you have made to date. Thank you, as Enda Kenny said recently in the Dáil, to the Permanent Representation and all the civil servants behind the scenes who made this technically a very good presidency. (Applause)

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, first of all I would like to express my gratitude to the Committee on Budgets for their sound cooperation. Secondly, the Committee on Development and Cooperation is extremely keen to radically expand its budget compared to last year, because we have 45 million children in Africa with no primary education and an increasing number of poor in the world, whilst our continent is becoming increasingly rich. But we maintain a sense of realism. We are prepared to make do with reducing spending to the 2000 level and thus cancel out the cut-backs which the Commission proposed in favour of financing Kosovo. No more, no less. We are aware of the broad support we enjoy in this Parliament. Thirdly, the issue of modernising the budget is essential. This morning, we talked about the 1998 discharge. The way this discharge is currently organised leaves a great deal to be desired. With our help, the Commission would like to change tack. The new approach involves a clear definition of goals and sectors within regional programmes, explicit grouping of sector-specific goals and a clear division of budget lines. We will, as a result, be able to deploy personnel where they are needed to carry out the activities. This results in a classification according to DAC sectors. It is a modernised budget and at the same time, it will inform us whether we have actually achieved the results projected in the budget, as will be apparent from the reports in Parliament. This budget, therefore, also accommodates the EDF budget, although we are not harmonised legally but we are in terms of content. The sum total will, as it were, show that we are clearly focussed on fighting poverty across different sectors. We very much hope that with this line of attack, namely a modernised budget, we will be able to turn the negative image, about which Commissioner Patten had every right to complain so bitterly, into a positive image of a Europe which is open to fighting poverty at world level.

Political group: PSE
I want to congratulate our rapporteur, Mr Haarder, on the quality of his report on respect for human rights in the European Union. I support the general philosophy underlying the document, which aims to consolidate European policy with regard to civil and political rights, but also to the economic, social and cultural rights of EU residents. Yet I would also like to draw my colleagues’ attention to two requests made in the report, which I find problematic. Paragraph 19 of the report, concerning the protection of national minorities, and paragraph 20, calling for the ratification of the Charter for Regional and Minority Languages, pose real problems. We certainly understand the spirit of the rapporteur’s observations on the need to protect national minorities: it sends out a strong message to some of the candidate countries, especially the Eastern European ones, whose nationals do not all enjoy fundamental rights. Parliament firmly rejects abuses of fundamental freedoms throughout Europe, as the Haarder report emphasises. But we regret that it alludes to the rights of ‘national minorities’, an expression that is far more restrictive than the universal concept of ‘human rights’. Furthermore, we support the idea of an indivisible political community, within which ethnic origin is not eclipsed but regarded as being of secondary importance. The Republic cannot recognise specific ‘minorities’ or ‘communities’: in its view there are only autonomous and free citizens with equal rights. In view of our convictions we must also express strong reservations about paragraph 20 of the report, which refers to the Charter for Regional and Minority Languages. Everyone is free to use one or several languages of his or her choice in addition to the language of the Republic and everyone has the right to learn them at school. But the fact remains that this is a choice and not an obligation. The Charter is too vague in this respect, which entails the risk of encouraging the formation of regional communities; that would pose a threat to the unity of the Republic but also, in the long run, to the cohesion of the Union. I will, nevertheless, vote for Mr Haarder’s report because of its quality and its underlying philosophy.

Political group: PSE
Madam President, allow me briefly to correct what the President-in-Office of the Council said. Two heads of government, Mr President-in-Office, have already been reprimanded by their parliaments for the steps which they initiated against Austria. You therefore had no right to speak on behalf of their countries; on the contrary, you obviously spoke as the head of a party. At most, Mr President-in-Office, you can therefore only speak of twelve countries.

Political group: PPE-DE
Madam President, if the vote records correctly how my Group voted I shall not, and cannot, object to that. If your ruling is that I cannot give an explanation of vote, I accept that but with reservations.

Political group: ELDR
Mr President, firstly, I would be pleased to invite the Commissioner to Kloster Andechs in Bavaria, a place where seven different types of beer are brewed... Secondly, I would like to make it known that next ... (The President cut the speaker off)

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, measures taken by the European Union to combat the spread of smoking go back a long way, as do the legal wrangling and the case law of the Court of Justice and I think we should make sure we learn from these experiences. The proposed directive seeks to protect public health but takes the ban on the distortion of competition as its legal basis. This ambivalent situation needs to be borne in mind by everyone championing more effective ways of protecting health from the spread in the use of tobacco which, unfortunately, does not have its own article in the Treaty. It is therefore only logical that the new proposal should be more modest when it comes to protecting public health than the annulled directive, which also included indirect advertising. The Committee on Legal Affairs felt the ban needed a cross-border dimension, not just for sponsorship, but also for the press, in order to strengthen its validity. By definition, national advertising and sponsorships do not affect the internal market. The legal basis selected only allows advertising to be regulated where it impacts on the internal market. Consequently, printed matter circulating solely within the territory of one Member State has no cross-border effects and cannot create any obstacle to the internal market or serious distortion of competition. This is clear both from the proposed arrangements for event sponsorships and from the fact that the proposal for a directive makes no reference whatsoever to outside advertising of tobacco products or advertising in cinemas. We know that the Committee on Legal Affairs has expressed reservations about certain amendments from the purely legal standpoint. Mrs Hautala, on the other hand, is operating on a different wavelength altogether and has called for health protection arrangements to be strengthened. Given that no one here is against health protection measures, the bottom line is that the two sides have to calmly decide which amendments are needed in order to rescue this as a valid directive.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, the WTO has challenged our Community regulation on bananas several times and each time we have had to redefine the content of this COM and suffer the burden of the fines imposed on us as reparations for damage caused. It is certainly not easy to find a balanced response which would satisfy our four objectives, which are: supplying consumers at reasonable prices, guaranteeing a future to our Community producers, honouring the Union’s commitments to ACP countries and, finally, at the same time, presenting a case which cannot be attacked by the WTO. However, in the light of these four concerns, Mr Dary’s proposal is entirely apt, at least that was the feeling of Parliament’s Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development in unanimously supporting it, a quite exceptional occurrence for such a sensitive subject. In fact it seems to us that the choice of maintaining the import quotas plus preferential tariffs for the ACP countries for ten years, instead of six, would make it possible to plan for the future of Community and ACP producers, who face a form of competition tantamount to social and environmental dumping. That we are seeking elimination of any automatic movement to ‘tariff only’ should not be regarded as downright rejection of the measure. Our intention is to let the situation develop in a way that is economically and socially tolerable for our producers and those of the ACP countries, without damaging the openness of our market. So the European Union certainly has arguments to present to the WTO, so that this time our approach is recognised as valid. Of course, the Union may have difficulty determining the quotas in the immediate future, but is that exercise any more difficult than agreeing on adjustments to the customs tariff in the ‘tariff only’ hypothesis? For my part I am convinced that the approaching start of the next WTO cycle should mean we can handle this issue positively in a more global context and for that I am counting on the Commission’s determination.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, on the basis of the assessment and the application of Regulation (EC) No 1221/97, two clear conclusions should be drawn: firstly, that it is necessary to increase the amount of aid in each of the lines and the percentage of subsidy; secondly, that we must prevent, as was the case in the period 1998-2000, inequalities between sectors. With regard to the corrections which should be introduced, we must achieve a reasonable balance in the cost-benefit for each of the action lines and a profound modification which transforms the current degree of co-funding, so that funding is entirely covered by the EAGGF Guarantee. With regard to future needs, we should make two recommendations. Firstly, we must establish a direct aid system which compensates for the loss of income suffered by European professional beekeepers. Furthermore, we should create a COM for honey. Secondly, we must recognise the importance of the role played by professional beekeepers by maintaining their status in the face of large bee-keeping operations, since they thereby allow the existence of a fully sustainable stock-breeding activity, which favours rural development and which, furthermore, produces healthy and high-quality products, and which is socially very beneficial, given its important contribution to environmental quality and its active role in conserving bio-diversity by means of the pollination carried out by bees. I will end by saying, Mr President, that this task of pollination, which is safeguarded by beekeepers, must be compensated for through a line for specific aid which supplements the current Regulation. I congratulate Mrs Lulling on her magnificent work.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, Commissioner, does regulating additives in feedingstuffs come under competition or consumer policy? As far the Commission and the Legal Affairs Committee are concerned, it comes under competition. Of course we have to take account of the competitiveness of the feedingstuffs industry by harmonising provisions for substances authorised before and after 1988. We want to prevent the prices of feedingstuffs from rising and Mr Doyle’s proposed Amendments Nos 4 and 5 therefore deserve our support. However, as Mr Graefe zu Baringdorf has said in his report, this is first and foremost a consumer policy matter. Food safety must take absolute priority over feedingstuffs in all our discussions. When we talk of transparency in the food chain, that applies from the hayfork to the table fork and consumer protection therefore logically starts with feedingstuffs. The antibiotics, growth promoters and genetically-modified organisms mixed in with feedingstuffs end up in the human food chain. The dioxin scandal brought home to us that we have to get out of this mess once and for all and regulating additives in feedingstuffs is a step in the right direction. According to Article 152 of the EC Treaty, we are obliged to obviate sources of danger to human health, whereby the accent is clearly on sources. Consequently, we must cut off the supply of the original source of danger, i.e. harmful additives in feedingstuffs. Otherwise, in my view, we are beavering away at the symptoms, but not the causes. People are especially wary of GMOs. We must confront increasing public awareness of GMOs by regulating their use in feedingstuffs accordingly. First, if an additive consists of or contains genetically-modified organisms, then it should only be authorised if it poses no risk to human health or the environment. Secondly, it makes sense to issue provisions for genetically-modified feedingstuff additives similar to the regulations in seed marketing legislation, as the rapporteur has said. And thirdly, if we are to have a transparent consumer policy, we need to label genetically-modified feedingstuffs. A clear declaration on feedingstuffs will allow double freedom of choice, both for the party using the feedingstuff and the subsequent consumer. Responsible citizens should, in my view, have a choice. We all talk of scandalised citizens who have lost confidence in food safety. By regulating additives in feedingstuffs consistently, we can help significantly to restore confidence. I too, therefore, can hardly wait to hear what you have to say to our proposed amendments. Consequently, we too shall also vote to reserve our right to refer the proposal back to committee if need be.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, there is no doubt that, for many countries, the easiest solution would be to incorporate the Charter with reference to Article 6 of the Treaty on European Union. That would presumably be the easiest solution for my own country too. All the same, I do think, however, that we must think longer and harder, for if the idea is that people should identify with the treaty, they must be able to consult the treaty or constitution and see outright what rights they have in relation to the EU. I therefore think that the maximum solution should be chosen whereby the EU is endowed with legal personality and accedes to the Convention of Human Rights, for this solution would give the Court of Human Rights more authority in relation to the EC Court of Justice. If we opt for the maximum solution, however, we must at the same time be open to the anxieties that might legitimately be felt by certain Member States, especially when it comes to issues of national identity. I should perhaps have liked to have seen the rapporteur insert just one simple clause to the effect that we must bear this concern in mind, for if we in actual fact listen to the legitimate concern the Member States may have and, at the same time, opt for the maximum solution, I think we shall succeed in combining the broad vision with the facts. IN THE CHAIR: MR COLOM I NAVALVice-President

Political group: PSE
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, you can hardly be surprised that I am not rising to ask you about what has been achieved as regards the constitution. Many Members have done that already. I want to refer back to what I said on 2 July, when, in this House, I asked you, as President of the European Council, ‘What do you intend to do to speed up the introduction of the European arrest warrant?’ On that occasion, demonstrating a distinct lack of charm, you declined to answer me. Then, in September, I asked again what progress had rewarded your efforts, and I can tell the House that I have received an answer. The answer to the question as to what you intend doing to speed up the introduction of the European arrest warrant is ‘nothing’. On 1 January next year, there will be no European arrest warrant. The area of security, freedom and justice is at the heart of European legal policy, a core policy of the European Union – as, indeed, you yourself said in your first statement to this House. I take the view that it would have been one of your tasks as President-in-Office of the Council to make this landmark a reality, for the fact is that the failure to introduce the European arrest warrant means that, from 1 January 2004 onwards, the position as regards criminal prosecutions in Europe will be worse than on 31 December 2003. The absence of the European arrest warrant will make it more difficult to prosecute criminals from 1 January 2004 onwards. Precisely whom this state of affairs is meant to benefit, Mr President-in-Office, I have no idea, but I know full well who is put at a disadvantage by it, namely the citizens of Europe. If we want to establish this area of security, freedom and justice, if we want to make Europe more secure, if we want to guarantee more efficient prosecution across frontiers, if we want to combat organised crime more effectively, then this landmark in the area of security, freedom and justice is what we need. I very much regret that. Back in September, I believed you were on the right track. Today, I have to say, with regret, that, on this issue – and let me repeat myself, we are talking here about the accelerated introduction of the arrest warrant, which was necessary in July – you have, lamentably, not only failed to do your homework, but have, in my opinion, proved yourself an outright failure. (Applause)

Political group: PSE