GwendalTsang/DEFT09-parquet huggingface dataset:
Mr President, Mrs de Palacio, ladies and gentlemen, and Mr Cocilovo, whom I thank for an excellent presentation. It is only reasonable that we should have common rules for the financing of roads and charges for heavy goods traffic. We cannot go it alone; the Member States cannot go it alone. The report says that we are moving towards a fair system of charging, but this morning we have been listening to what is pure demagogy, particularly in the last speech. This cannot be measured with political arguments. The European consumer will pay the price if transport systems do not function in Europe. If the EU does not function as a whole, who will pay the price? Again, it will be the European consumer who earns a thousand euros a month. Of course traffic emissions will increase, because it is by far the most effective way of transporting people and goods. The road network cannot be beaten. The road network is like someone’s veins, while the railway network, with all due respect, is like someone’s skeleton, and unfortunately it has all the signs of osteoporosis. We need an efficient, cost-effective way of running a transport system. In Finland recently 23 people died in just one crash involving a lorry and a bus. It is not at all the lorry that is to blame, but the fact that we are using taxpayers’ money, like in France where SNCF’s losses stand at EUR 27 billion. Consider yourselves what that means. Your money has been put into a loss-making operation, which can only account for a fraction of transport requirements. Finland is one of the richest countries in Europe. We still do not even have any motorways, though, and that is why accidents happen. We owe it to the European taxpayers that transport in Europe works rationally and efficiently; otherwise the China Syndrome will become an even greater threat.

Political group: PPE-DE
I am opposed to nuclear reprocessing and I believe that all reprocessing plants in the UK and elsewhere should be closed. I have voted for this report although I have reservations about some aspects of it. In particular, I believe that safety has to override all other considerations. Nuclear waste should never be transported through densely populated areas. The ‘shortest route principal’ should be secondary to the ‘safest route principle’. Irish People, along with all Europeans live with the constant concern that an accident in the UK or France or a collision in the Irish Sea, could have devastating and immediate effects on us all.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, my reaction will indicate how much work I put into this report. The draft oral amendment tabled relates to the second part of Amendment No 335, ‘new or improved races’, and I feel it is indeed more appropriate to use ‘or’ rather than ‘and’, because the human race could not really be subsumed under ‘new and improved races’.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, I respected your authority at all times, since I did not know whether or not I could ask a supplementary question. I wish the President-in-Office of the Council luck and success during this six-month Presidency, and I would like to raise the issue of the Prestige from a European point of view. Do you believe that a disaster of this nature, which now affects more than one Member State, whose outcome nobody knows, since we still have a sunken wreck containing 55 000 tonnes of oil, with consequences which are truly tragic for areas of very great ecological value for the whole of the EU, for the heritage of the whole of Europe, and with repercussions for all aspects of maritime law etc., should be dealt with from a European point of view, through the creation of a temporary committee or a committee of inquiry in this Parliament to examine all points of view and to coordinate all types of effort, so that events of this type can never happen again?

Political group: PSE
Mr President, I will concentrate on the issue of civil aviation safety. I start by offering, on behalf of my Group, our condolences to the relatives and friends of all victims of aviation accidents, not just the recent one in Sharm el-Sheikh. I firmly believe, however, that aviation safety has to be put into perspective. The industry is the most regulated and has the best safety record of any mode of public transport. When you compare the record of aviation with the carnage that occurs on our roads, and when you consider that the number of air accidents is going down, whilst the number of road accidents is going up, then any discussion on aviation safety must take these facts into account. However, civil aviation must carry on improving its safety record. I wish to highlight four areas where improvements could be made. First there is a danger that a system similar to maritime transport's flags of convenience could creep into civil aviation. I hope EASA, the new safety agency, will urgently examine this. Member States need to increase their ramp inspections to weed out those airlines which are based in one country but register in another and have lower standards than we would expect within the European Union. Second, there is an urgent need for a Europe-wide harmonised system of operations by way of an EU-ops. This particular issue is all the more urgent with the impending enlargement of the European Union and would include matters such as flight and duty time for cockpit and cabin crew. Third, the whole issue of cabin safety needs to be addressed, particularly the number of emergency exits, the amount of cabin baggage – try getting on the Air France flight today from Paris, for example! – and the use of sky marshals. Fourth, there is a need to reform the existing package travel directive which is now not only outdated, but ineffectual and allows some airlines to offer packages without being covered by the directive. This Parliament, with the help of the Commission, has worked long and hard to improve aviation safety and we have had some success. There are still areas where more progress needs to be made. However, I repeat that aviation is the safest form of public transport and accidents, however tragic, are thankfully rare. The House would do well to await the results of any official investigations before jumping to conclusions that can often be misguided and wrong.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, Commissioner, rapporteur, ladies and gentlemen, in my contribution to this debate I should like to clarify a few points which, I believe, are in need of clarification. First of all, Karl von Wogau’s report is not a school report card on the progress of the Member States’ economic policies. This report by Karl von Wogau is a report on the economic guidelines for the future and an analysis of the status quo. I am therefore very grateful that Karl von Wogau chose the term ‘home market’ in connection with the introduction of euro notes and coins, because the single currency is the greatest integration project of the present-day European Union. The introduction of euro notes and coins will be a clearly visible reminder of our European home, a reminder that will be given to all the people of the euro zone whenever they handle the single currency. It is also positive that this concept of a home market will also remind the public so tangibly of the political integration project that underlies the introduction of the euro, since this could provide an extremely powerful impetus for the political pursuit of economic progress, employment and European integration. A second point is that I fail to understand how, in this day and age, the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs can still try to present capital and growth as the enemies of employment, which came across to some extent in Mrs Weiler’s speech. This is why it was necessary once again to put the concept of a socially committed market economy at the heart of this report. I should like to extend the concept into that of a socially and environmentally committed market economy. What do we mean by that? We mean that we are opposed to the treatment of growth and employment as two completely separate issues. That is why we have pledged ourselves to the Stability Pact and to growth and employment. A socially committed market economy encourages social responsibility, ecological sustainability and an education policy rooted in the principle of lifelong learning. Let me finish with an appeal to the Council. The Broad Economic Policy Guidelines require us all to work together. Since the report says that the EU market in financial services must become an integrated, efficient market, and since we are forever stressing the important role played by pensions and by accelerated procedures, I have to say to the Council that the Ecofin Council, at its last meeting, certainly paid further lip service to the principles that are involved here but, when it came to company pensions and the Lamfalussy report, betrayed those selfsame principles. The Broad Economic Policy Guidelines can be implemented with the active support of the Council. Now is the time for it to act. (Applause)

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, I think the Commission did well to stress in its communication, the important point that what we are going to open in Seattle is a round of world talks. It will mean difficult and complex talks, during which we must always keep at the forefront of our minds the strategic interest that is fundamental for the European Community. We are the largest exporter in the world and so we are involved more than any other area on the planet with the push towards the abolition of barriers which hinder development of international trade. Developing international trade means making a substantial contribution to European economic growth, which the countries of the Community really need. I think that this is an irrefutable situation which Mr Pasqua’s anti-American arguments, which are at least 30 years old, cannot bring into question. Naturally, we have to defend the values and principles which are fundamental for the countries of the Community, but we have to do it in a shrewd and flexible way. We must also keep in mind that first of all, we need to develop that strategic interest that is fundamental to the liberalisation of international trade which I spoke of a short while ago. I therefore think that this is neither the place nor the time to be erecting barriers. I think that Parliament’s involvement in the course of the talks and its cooperation with Commissioner Lamy will bring about results that are appropriate for this objective.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, Commissioner Fischler, in view of all the decisions being made during this key phase of the enlargement process, I would like to support you in your call for us to continue with the reform of the common agricultural policy. However, and this is an important distinction, we are now talking about reforming the common agricultural policy as from 2007, which means that we will continue with the present policy up to 2006 and that Europe's agricultural sector will move forward on the basis of a reformed policy as from 2007. Commissioner Fischler, I think you need to assume that neither the timing nor the content of your proposals will be viable if we have correctly interpreted the compromise on direct agricultural payments negotiated in Brussels by the Heads of State and Government. In other words, it is now clear that the agreements reached at the Berlin Summit will remain in force until 2006, and that the most recent decisions provide a firm basis for planning by the EU's farmers up to 2013. This means that the candidate countries can certainly rely on increases in direct payments as from 2004. That, incidentally, formed part of the proposals presented by the Commission back in December 2001 on the financing of direct agricultural payments for the enlargement countries. The only difference, and this was already clear to us back then, is that the 100% compensation payments for all EU Member States in 2013 will no longer be matched by 100% financing capacity as in 2006. I think it must be clear to everyone that this will be lower by then. Every farmer in the enlarged European Union must be aware of that. In order to prevent mistakes, we in the Group of the and the are, in a motion for a resolution tabled by all the groups in the European Parliament, requesting, for this reason among others, that unlimited budget rights and full codecision should be transferred to this House for agricultural matters.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, Mr Solana, Mr Vice-President of the Commission, I will begin with a quotation, one which sums up like no other statement our position on the war against Iraq: ‘A preventive war is an act of aggression, and cannot be described as a just war in self-defence. For the right to self-defence presupposes not merely the possibility of an attack, but that an attack is actually happening or is imminent. Warfare with the aim of averting danger would nullify international law's prohibition of force, promote political instability and, in the final analysis, shatter the foundations of the whole system of an international community of states.’ And elsewhere in the same statement: ‘Any security strategy committing itself to preventive warfare is in defiance both of Catholic teaching and of international law.’ These quotations are from the statement on the Iraq conflict issued, on 20 January of this year, by the Conference of German Bishops. As my Christian Democrat opposite number has not made reference to the Conference of Catholic Bishops, I have to do so, and do not think that these statements require anything to be added to them. All the time I have known you, Mr Solana, I have regarded you as a great optimist, so when you say, as you have done today, that the political situation is bad, then the political situation is very bad. Donald Rumsfeld, the American minister for war, spoke of ‘old Europe’. All of us who have spoken here today have declared that we belong to this old Europe, and that would not be cause for any further excitement on our part, had he not drawn the distinction between us and the ‘new Europe’ – those whose opinions are identical with Mr Rumsfeld's and who think along the same lines as he does. President Kwasniewski of Poland said in an interview last week, ‘If it is President Bush's vision, it is mine!’ The Polish President is of course entitled to as narrow a field of vision as he may choose, but there is no doubt that the Polish government – like all the governments of the other candidate countries – is under an obligation to act in solidarity with the European Union, to which they want to belong. The candidate countries have decided of their own free will to belong to the European Union, and we wish to welcome them, but, when it comes to issues of war and peace, preventive warfare and the setting-aside of international law, we expect them to be solidly alongside us. (Applause)

Political group: PSE
Mr President, Commissioner, this is a very positive Thursday for the European regions in general and for the outermost regions in particular, since this Parliament is dealing with reports as thought-provoking and important as those of Mr Turco and Mr Ripoll, which refer to the Structural Funds and the Cohesion Fund respectively, as well as the assessment of the transparency of their implementation. It is therefore worth remembering that regional and structural policy in the European Union as a whole is a response to the specific disadvantages confronting certain European regions and, in particular, the outermost regions such as Madeira, the Azores, the Canary Islands and the French overseas departments. In fact, Articles 158 and 159 of the Treaty set the objectives for economic and social cohesion, giving regional policy the task of reducing the existing differences between the less developed regions and the others. It also leads to the special treatment of the outermost regions which is covered in Article 299(2) of the EC Treaty, which will allow the Union to continue, consolidate and strengthen its action in order to achieve a specific system of measures that will take account of all the limitations suffered in those regions, whose situation is special, without damaging the coherence of Community law and the internal market. For these reasons, Mr Turco’s report on the 1998 annual report on such important financial instruments as the Structural Funds is also relevant, since it opens up the possibility of strengthening the effective and decentralised application of those Funds and also because it opens the way for discussion and reflects the specific situation of these outermost regions with regard to establishing criteria for admission to the Structural Funds and their inclusion in Objective 1.

Political group: ELDR
Mr President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council – I should also have been pleased to greet the Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I should just like to concentrate on a topic that has already been mentioned, but I should like to address it in a markedly different way. I think that we, as the European Parliament, must seriously ask ourselves how we intend to deal with such an important country as Turkey in the long term. I think we have to give very serious answers to a few questions here. The first question is, do we really want to hold up a mirror to Turkey’s progress reports year after year and say to it: sorry, you’re not ready yet? Do we want to permanently tolerate a situation where the European Union’s common foreign and security policy is handicapped by being unable to make use of NATO resources because the Turks could potentially use that to blackmail us? Before Turkey becomes a member or whether or not full membership of the European Union becomes a possibility, should we not rather be looking for answers to the question of how we can even today help the European Union to build special relations with Turkey, thus enabling us to seriously address all the questions that we need to answer jointly, quite specifically in the field of foreign and security policy? I therefore call on my fellow Members to give very serious thought to this issue and then perhaps after all to accept the motion on this very subject and vote in favour of it. I am referring to Amendment No 7, which says that we must start building a special relationship with Turkey now so that we can solve all our common problems together. We should not wait until Turkey’s situation in regard to human rights, democracy, and so on, is such that it can seriously be regarded as a candidate country. I should be pleased if this House would support this urgent matter so that we can achieve good cooperation with this important part of Europe.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, a few days ago, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung published a survey which showed that an overwhelming majority of my fellow countrymen were in favour of a more common approach to judicial matters. No other area attracted nearly as much support for new initiatives at European level. Other surveys in the past have always confirmed that this applies both to Germans and to the citizens in most other Member States of the Union. We are therefore responding to the expectations of the people in tabling proposals on how to strengthen effectively the protection of the European Union against fraud. There are without doubt more pleasant topics of conversation than fraud and corruption, I grant you, but discussing them demonstrates clearly that we are not sweeping this tricky question under the carpet; on the contrary, we are setting ourselves this challenge, in precisely those cases which affect the institutions of the Union itself. This is why the Bösch report deserves particular attention and support. It was not adopted unanimously by the Committee on Budgetary Control for nothing, as I have already explained. Allow me to congratulate you on this report. It clearly illustrates that creating the European Anti-Fraud Office OLAF is an important step, but is only a step on the path towards the European prosecutor which I have called for time and again both in a personal capacity and as rapporteur. A public prosecutor’s office to protect the interests of the Union against fraud would be the only really effective instrument to counteract the threat from organised crime. Organised crime has identified the institutions of the European Union as a particularly easy target. I am delighted that both the Commission and Parliament have included this question in the Intergovernmental Conference. The Committee on Budgetary Control has gone one step further in this report. We want an even more proactive approach and are therefore waiting for the Commission to present proposals for the first stage of a European public prosecutor’s office on the basis of the current Article 280 and I really do hope, Commissioner Schreyer, that you will revise your unfortunately somewhat wait-and-see attitude and accommodate us here. Mr President, allow me to refer to what was indeed said earlier but could not be answered. My question is to Mr Dell'Alba; could the honourable Member explain what I, as chairman of the Committee on Budgetary Control, allegedly blocked for weeks. I require an answer and I should like it recorded in the minutes.

Political group: PPE-DE
I am delighted that the EP resolution before us includes two of my proposals, which I consider to be important means of supporting the textiles and clothing sector in the EU and in Portugal. The first of these is to create a specific Community programme for the sector – with appropriate support mechanisms – especially for less favoured regions that depend on the sector, aimed at boosting research, innovation, vocational training and SMEs. The second is to set up a Community programme to stimulate brand creation and to encourage product promotion further afield, such as at international trade fairs. I regret the fact, however, that other proposals were not accepted, such as the need for a genuine action plan that is specific, cohesive and clear, with regard to instruments, financial means and a timetable; the need for a production chain mentality; and the need for a sectoral approach in negotiations with the WTO, so that the sector does not simply become a bargaining chip. I also deplore the fact that the liberalisation approach has not been called into question and I am gravely concerned about the risks of relocation in the sector. A thorough evaluation must be carried out into the impact of unbridled liberalisation in the sector, especially now that the Textiles and Clothing Agreement has come to an end and that China has joined the WTO.

Political group: GUE-NGL