GwendalTsang/DEFT09-parquet huggingface dataset:
Mr President, the Commission has given us a good basis for discussion. However, I should also like to thank the rapporteur for substantially improving and enriching the original ideas. The ideas themselves, in fact, are not new. We have been talking about them for the last ten or fifteen years. There have been reports and studies – we already know everything we really want to know. The question is how we can implement it all. How can the technology, which is already available, be combined with the money, which is also available? And here I wonder whether the European Investment Bank could play a bigger part. The second problem I should like to address concerns administrative matters. Let me cite one small example in the federal State from which I come. Our State has a number of universities, but let us just take one of them as an example. Some of the university buildings were to be better insulated and have better energy systems installed. It took many years before the buildings were refurbished. Why? Because the buildings belonged to the Ministry of Finance, but the Ministry of Science was their user. In other words, one ministry would have had to invest, but another would have benefited from the investment. Because each of them has its own separate accounting system, they did not sit down together. It took many years until they were able to agree – and it took an EU study to bring them together, incidentally. Absurd it may seem, but that is how things are! By the way, in my home town, cars with extremely high petrol consumption are going for a song at the moment, whereas dealers are finding it difficult to sell cars with low fuel consumption. This is a third problem, a question of consumer behaviour. Consumers bear responsibility too, not only legislators. If administrators, consumers and legislators get their act together, we can achieve something, and I eagerly await the Commission’s proposals. I can assure you, Commissioner, that we shall support you in these efforts, and we shall also present initiatives of our own to that end.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, I would very much like to ask those who proposed Amendment No 9 to withdraw it. I will explain why. Many of us in this House, probably all of us, want the neighbouring countries of Macedonia and Greece to reach agreement on the name – whether it is going to be FYROM or Macedonia. If a vote on this takes place today, I am afraid that it will not turn out positively, or at least with a very small majority, which would not be in line with what the proposers intended. I would therefore like to ask that this proposed amendment be withdrawn. The proposers’ feelings have been expressed, and these are the feelings of many of us in this House, but I believe that the amendment as it stands should not be presented today, especially since Greece and Macedonia/FYROM are on the brink of an agreement. (Applause)

Political group: PSE
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, in recent years South Africa has made a historic leap forward by abolishing the apartheid system and establishing a new political order based on the rule of law, respect for human rights and democracy. If the people of South Africa have regained their freedom, this is, of course, for the most part thanks to their persistence and courage, as well as to that of their leaders, but also, it must be said, to the political and financial support provided by European Union Member States for the reform process in South Africa. Quite clearly, the cooperation agreement signed on 10 October 1994 was a strong message that we sent this people treated so badly by history. I must confess that the slow progress in Council negotiations for its renewal leaves me rather puzzled. Our duty to show this country legitimate solidarity must not and cannot be sacrificed on the altar of national trading interests. On the trade agreement, which, need I remind you, we endorsed by a large majority in this very Chamber last October, we must avoid disagreements which obstruct the adoption of this cooperation regulation. Such an attitude would be tantamount to appalling blackmail on the part of Europe and would not be true to the spirit behind the new development and cooperation agreements with the ACP countries, i.e. establishing contracts which respect the identity, culture and dignity of each partner. With regard to the regional cooperation aspect of this regulation, I should like, in turn, to draw the Council and the Commission’s attention to the risks of economic destabilisation which may be engendered by the regulation, and even more so by the trade agreement with South Africa. We shall have to be particular attentive to the effects that these agreements may have on the ever vulnerable balance within the Southern African Customs Union. I am also thinking of Namibia and Swaziland, and even Lesotho and Botswana, which are a long way from receiving the same amount of aid from Europe. I feel that the European Union must, as a matter of urgency, take steps to arrive at an agreement with the authorities of these countries in order to compensate for any losses. Finally, in conclusion, acknowledging our rapporteur for his clear-sightedness and for his talents as a negotiator, I should like to express my complete agreement with him on the need to remedy the existing legal vacuum to enable these agreements to come into force. We must put an end, as a matter of urgency, to these long months of hesitation and delay, seen as so many negative signs by South Africa’s fledgling democracy, which expects more from Europe than narrow calculations in order to safeguard limited interests.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, the European Union’s commitment to human rights and vigilance in their defence must shape all our Community policies. As the world’s leading economic entity, the Union can exert a powerful diplomatic influence on human progress, especially in the poorest countries that most frequently breach these rights, but which are most often victims as well. In fact, these countries, which have suffered unbalanced and desperate economic and commercial foundations for far too long, are fertile breeding grounds for human rights violations when a cultural or religious wall of silence which single-handedly seeks to justify tradition or customs condemns more than half the population, namely women, to innate and eternal inferiority. We speak of ‘the rights of man’. We should in fact say ‘right of the human person’, since we must be aware that when men are persecuted, women are always treated even worse. We only have to cast our minds back to the barbaric events not so long ago, when two Nigerian women, in a parody of justice, were condemned to death by stoning for adultery. These cases, which received extensive media coverage and had fortunate outcomes, must not hide the extreme distress of other women, a whole population of which, in the Islamic Republic of Iran, for example, are held prisoner by laws and customs that are based on the inequality of the sexes. Segregation and genuine State terrorism govern and shape the lives of women, if they do not decree their death through savage practices such as stoning. Human rights also grant this recognition of individuals, sexes and peoples. Parliament would do credit to these rights and its democratic ambition by recognising aboriginal peoples, as has been possible since a United Nations permanent body on aboriginal issues was set up, and by establishing a delegation to deal with these issues, which is what we voted for in 1992. We need more than declarations and resolutions, we need practical action which must promote human rights.

Political group: Verts-ALE
Mr President, Commissioner, if our aim is to produce both legislation providing full legal certainty and, at the same time, rules which will allow the citizens to derive maximum benefits from the internal market, then the regulation before us is certainly a step in the right direction. We have worked hard on this regulation, and the number of amendments cited by my colleagues and the debate in the Committee on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market too are evidence of the importance of what we consider to be a road that Europe must take without fail and which we want to build. The internal market needs rules, and the rules must be evaluated in the context of everyday life. The regulation broaches a number of extremely important issues. I will not go back over those which have already been mentioned by my colleagues. There is one point, for example, on which we would like there to be greater reflection and that is the settlement of disputes. We would also like to try experimenting with self-regulation in this new world in which consumers enter into dialogue with the market. Still on the subject of the disputes which are never absent from commercial relations, we call upon the Commission to expand this pilot stage of the European Extra-judicial Network. Moreover, once again as my colleagues have recommended, we would like to see an increase in the activity of the Expert Group on Commercial Communications. This group, set up in the dim and distant past in 1998, now needs to be adapted to deal with the increasingly urgent development of the internal market. Then there are a whole series of points already mentioned which we fully support. In conclusion, we feel that this is the right way to promote our ideal of Europe through the internal market.

Political group: PPE-DE
Mr President, the Group of the supports both this Commission proposal and the report by Mr Vatanen, who, having already demonstrated his adventures as a driver on roads throughout the world, now amazes us with his knowledge of a subject as difficult as maritime transport and the certificates that have to be completed when ships arrive at, or depart from, our ports. Very gradually, people like ourselves, here, today, in this House, Mr Vatanen, myself, and all of you, are building a common Europe. We are now eighteen, it is true, years behind with regard to 1 January 1983, which already seems like such a long time ago, when the Community institutions and the then ten Member States approved the Single European Act. The standardisation of reporting formalities will, without a doubt, contribute to an improvement in maritime transport between ports situated in Member States, encouraging the promotion of short sea shipping. By encouraging the transportation of goods by sea we will free up, to a certain extent, the amount of heavy traffic on our already saturated roads. We can only regret that this proposal, as noted by Mr Vatanen in his explanatory statement, does not cover dangerous goods. We ask the Commission not to limit this standardisation of reporting formalities to the Community. The Community should press for this type of information to be common to the whole international community, promoting the International Maritime Organisation's Convention on the Facilitation of Maritime Traffic. We would also invite those Member States who have not done so, to ratify this Convention, although the Commission proposal does not oblige them to do so. I would like to finish by congratulating Mr Vatanen on his excellent work.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, I think it is a great achievement in human rights terms that we have succeeded in giving a signal with this resolution – a signal that it is not acceptable for embryos to be deliberately created for research purposes. And I think that this resolution makes it clear that human life must not become a kind of consumer item. But I, too, am unhappy about the small majority in favour of this motion for a resolution. I hope that this is just because of tactical games on the part of the Socialist Group. I have to say that I think their behaviour here has been shameful. There have been calls for a temporary committee without it being made clear that Tony Blair is delaying his decision until this committee comes to a conclusion. This smacks of contradiction. It is shameful, to say the least, to ditch all your principles out of loyalty to Blair. I would like to stress once again that we have always said that this is about ‘therapeutic cloning’. We have the alternative of using human stem cells to achieve the same result. But I also hope that the Commission will now have the courage to act on the demands we have made in this resolution, by refusing to grant research funding to establishments which use these means directly or indirectly.

Political group: Verts-ALE
Thank you, Mr President. What the Commissioner is saying all sounds encouraging. I should like to pose a very brief question: how does she view cooperation between the proposed Prosecutor and OLAF?

Political group: ELDR
Last Friday, 13 December, I went to the cinema to see Roman Polanski's film, ‘The Pianist’, the story of a Jewish musician from Warsaw who survived the Second World War in a miraculous way. At the beginning of the film we see how his family reacts with relief to the news that the British and the French have announced that they will be coming to help the Poles following the invasion of Poland by the Germans. We all know that nothing came of that help until last Friday, the thirteenth. On that day the outcome at Copenhagen paid off an old debt. The success of Copenhagen is success for everyone – including for this Parliament, which has been so intensively involved in this process. We can be proud of this result. To paraphrase the words of the great social democrat Willy Brandt, something that belongs together is now really being given the opportunity to grow more closely together. What started with Brandt’s historic genuflection in that self-same Warsaw has now been completed in Copenhagen. The credit for this new historic moment goes mainly to those who brought about the momentous changes in 1989 and 1990 and who were astute enough to make the most of the opportunity to turn the new democracies into fully-fledged EU candidate countries. Many of those who were leaders at the time have now disappeared from the political stage, but the outcome of Copenhagen is also a tribute to them. Of course, our own European Union also deserves to be congratulated, as it may well have taken a long time to formulate the starting points and preconditions for accession, but it has subsequently maintained the agreed scenario and adhered to the agreed timetable consistently and efficiently. In this context I would like to pay particular tribute to Mr Verheugen's efforts. The candidate countries are also deserving of praise. Their staying power has really been put to the test. As rapporteur for this Parliament for Slovakia, I myself have experienced the efforts made by the Slovaks to meet the EU’s conditions at close hand. They were far-reaching, and there was very little time. The emphasis in the reports from the end of last week about the results of the Copenhagen Summit was on the financial arrangements for the negotiations and the Turkey question. Both aspects are important, but they are not the only weighty matters. Other problems also play a role in the European Parliament's final assessment that we have to issue for each candidate country. It is enough in this case to remember our earlier concerns on matters like the battle against corruption, the lack of administrative capacity in the accession countries and the discrimination against the Roma.

Political group: PSE
There are aspects of the Eurostat affair – nepotism, conflicts of interest, secret accounts – that are redolent of the situation that led to the resignation of the previous Commission. Fraud and irregularities exceeded EUR 6 million, which in some cases is probably only the tip of the iceberg. This affair has also shed light on serious problems and irregularities in working methods and internal monitoring, on the part of both the Commission and OLAF, such as the lack of effective enforcement of existing rules. The Commissioners directly involved must not be allowed to get away scot-free. It is appalling that the Commissioner responsible for Eurostat has not accepted political responsibility and that the Commission President has not asked him to resign. This fresh case shows, among other things, how the outsourcing of services by the Commission readily lends itself to such situations. The very least we can hope for, once again, is that the Commission learns its lessons and tells us how it proposes to avoid a repeat of this type of problem in the future.

Political group: GUE-NGL
Mr President, various amendments were worthy of consideration, but any amendment would have resulted in a conciliation procedure which would definitely have entailed the risk of a fundamental reassessment and would also have meant equally serious delays. This is why I could not support any amendment, but this is not the case with the proposed link between Italy and Sicily, which I supported.

Political group: PSE
Mr President, Mr President-in-Office, Mr President of the Commission, a brief word on the Kashmir conflict. This conflict over one of the most beautiful mountain regions in the world now needs to be addressed on a long-term basis. The need for a solution has never been greater or more promising that it is now; but this dialogue between India and Pakistan will only get started if everyone on the sidelines, the EU, the USA, Russia and the UN, treats both countries on the same footing. The explosive force of the Kashmir conflict, which is rooted in historic events – already three wars in the region, terrorism, propaganda, rampant nationalism and Al Qaeda – could be disastrous, but it could also be restrained with the help of moderate forces in the area and a policy from outside which respects both sides. I warn you – and this is very important today, especially following the war in Afghanistan – not to take sides.

Political group: Verts-ALE
Mr President, first of all I want to say to the previous speaker, Mr Fatuzzo, that I am sorry that we in the Group of the are unable to support his amendments, for they simply do not fit into this context. Back to the report, however. First of all, I want to congratulate the rapporteur. There is reason for doing so, for this is Mrs Jensen’s first report, and it is also a very good piece of work she has done. As we all know, the report was, of course, adopted by a very large majority of the committee. That is gratifying, for this is a very important piece of work. This decision must ensure that the employment policy we talk so much about is not just a matter of fine words, but that these are in actual fact backed by vigorous action. Nor must there be any doubt that we in the Group of the support open coordination whenever this is the most effective tool for achieving the desired objectives. Employment policy is so important because it is the test run for the open coordination method, and it is of the very greatest importance to show that this method is being taken seriously and is producing the desired results. Employment policy will simply be a model for many of the other areas – which are already part of the ambitious plan adopted in Lisbon last spring – in which we should also like to use the open coordination method. And in the next few weeks, when Heads of State and Government take the Commission’s telling-off seriously and give some impetus to the many outstanding initiatives in the wake of the Lisbon Summit, we shall hopefully also have it confirmed that the open coordination method can be used. The incentive measures must support employment policy, and that is why the incentive measures are important. I am therefore very pleased that we in the committees were able to reach agreement on a series of amendments and improvements to the Commission’s proposal. These amendments relate to five different points. First of all, information must be provided about employment policy. Secondly, the parties in the labour market, together with the relevant local and regional authorities, must be involved. Thirdly, the focus must be placed upon equal opportunities for men and women, in which connection I should like to thank the Committee on Women’s Rights and Equal Opportunities. Fourthly, an assessment and revision of the open coordination method must be set in motion. And fifthly, the programme must be extended to include pilot projects as well. What, in other words, we are concerned with here is a quite extensive alteration to the incentive measures which, in a way, were good enough originally. In this way, we have extended their area of application, and I therefore also hope that, together, we can increase the financial resources we have for implementing the measures so that it will not in any case be possible to accuse Parliament of only producing fine words and not backing them up with genuine action. I hope that the Commission and the Council are ready to demonstrate the same drive that we have tried to demonstrate here in Parliament.

Political group: PSE
Madam President, we are debating an extremely serious issue. We are debating nothing less than the presence in a Member State’s government of a political force whose doctrine and principles are incompatible with the conceptual and moral bases of the Union enshrined in its founding Treaties. A simple reading of chapter 4, article 1 of the Austrian Freedom Party’s manifesto is enough to make any democratic conscience shudder. The view that ethnicity is the defining factor of a nation and the claim that one ethnic group has superiority over others, as is written here, revives old ghosts of the century which we have just left behind, which some historians have described as the century of horrors; horrors which the unacceptable philosophy behind Mr Haider’s manifesto has stirred up once again, to our amazement. Of course Austria is a sovereign nation and of course we must respect the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of a Member State. However, that is not the problem. The question is whether the Union can remain indifferent to the formation of a government in a Member State which includes such a party. Our answer to this crucial question is no. (Applause) Leaving aside strategic and tactical considerations, leaving aside possible exonerations based on other people’s behaviour and above and beyond party and electoral interests, the Spanish delegation of the People’s Group of this Parliament, in full agreement with the Spanish People’s Party and the Spanish Government, clearly expresses its full agreement with the statement of 31 January by the Portuguese Presidency of the Council. We agree with its substance, its tone and its scope. (Applause) Konrad Adenauer once said – and he knew what he was saying – that the surest way to pacify a tiger was to allow it to devour you. History is a compendium of events which could have been avoided. Therefore, Madam President, the Union and the Assembly must send an unequivocal message, rejecting of the tiger of intolerance, xenophobia and totalitarianism, so as not to add one more mistake to the long list of abdications, renunciations and opportunism which mark Europe’s past and for which we have paid such a heavy price. (Loud applause)

Political group: PPE-DE