ddrg/super_eurlex huggingface dataset:
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having regard to the EU environmental legislation relevant to the development of shale gas, including: Council Directive 85/337/EEC of 27 June 1985 on the assessment of the effects of certain public and private projects on the environment (5); Directive 2001/42/EC on the assessment of the effects of certain plans and programmes on the environment (6); Directive 2006/21/EC on the management of waste from extractive industries (7); Directive 2000/60/EC establishing a framework for Community action in the field of water policy (8); Regulation (EC) No. 1907/2006 on the registration, evaluation and authorisation of chemicals (9); Directive 98/8/EC on the placing of biocidal products on the market (10); Directive 96/82/EC on the control of major-accident hazards involving dangerous substances (11); Directive 2004/35/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 21 April 2004 on environmental liability with regard to the prevention and remedying of environmental damage (12); Directive 2010/75/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 November 2010 on industrial emissions (integrated pollution prevention and control) (13); Directive 2003/87/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 October 2003 establishing a scheme for greenhouse gas emission allowance trading within The Community (14); and Decision No 406/2009/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 April 2009 on the effort of Member States to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to meet the Community’s greenhouse gas emission reduction commitments up to 2020 (15),
25.

Calls on the Heads of State and Government of the Great Lakes region to work to bring about the actual implementation of existing regional peace and development instruments and calls on all states which are signatories to the Pact on Security, Stability and Development in the Great Lakes region to implement it fully in order to establish and consolidate the necessary basis for peace and security in the region; calls on the UN, the EU and the AU and friends of the Great Lakes region to strongly and actively support efforts to implement the Pact;
10.

Draws attention to the importance of the Madrid criteria (defined by the Madrid European Council of December 1995), which emphasised the ability of candidate countries to put EU rules and procedures into effect; also takes the view that the principle of strict conditionality requires that the progress of a candidate and/or potential candidate country in adopting and implementing reforms be effectively assessed on the basis of a clear set of criteria at every stage of the process, and that countries wishing to join the EU should be able to proceed from one stage to the next only once all the conditions have been met at each stage; stresses that, in order to enhance the credibility and effectiveness of the enlargement strategy, the Copenhagen criteria must be fully respected and complied with by Member States as well, in order to avoid requiring applicant countries to meet higher standards than those applying in some EU Member States; stresses the importance of defining the different stages more clearly, setting transparent and fair benchmarks throughout the process that translate the general membership criteria into concrete steps towards accession, and measuring whether the necessary requirements have been met, as well as of avoiding fixing or promising an accession date if negotiations have not yet been finalised; stresses that it should also be clear that a benchmark, once attained, should be sustained and that backsliding should elicit an appropriate response on the part of those setting the benchmarks;
7.

Stresses that more efforts are needed to control the use of antimicrobials in human and veterinary medicine; strongly disapproves of the regular prophylactic use of antimicrobials in animal husbandry; endorses the Council conclusions of 22 June 2012 which call on the Member States to limit the prophylactic use of antimicrobials to cases with defined clinical needs and to limit the prescription and use of antimicrobials for herd treatment of animals to cases where a veterinarian has assessed that there is a clear clinical and, where appropriate, epidemiological justification to treat all animals; stresses that livestock farming and aquaculture should focus on disease prevention through good hygiene, housing and animal husbandry, as well as through strict bio-security measures, rather than through the prophylactic use of antimicrobials; believes that controls on food imports from non-Member States should be enhanced, in particular in light of the risk that such imports contain irregular traces of antimicrobials;
S.

whereas, as stated in the Commission communication entitled ‘Towards a Single Market Act’, ‘the sense of disillusionment felt by some towards the internal market may also be the result of the perception that successive liberalisations have been carried out at the expense of the social rights acquired by various economic operators.’; ‘The Lisbon Treaty, and the affirmation of the concept of a “highly competitive social market economy” as one of its key objectives, require “the Union” to adopt a more all-embracing view of the single market. Economic freedoms and freedoms of collective action must be reconciled. New life must be breathed into the social dialogue, making it more likely to lead to legislation “by and for” the social partners, as explicitly provided for by the Lisbon Treaty.’; ‘Beyond purely reactive approaches to the economic and financial crisis, pre-emptive strategies have allowed businesses and their employees to ward off industrial disputes through the proactive management of restructuring operations. This is a precondition for economic success and is a social requirement, since it enables resources to be redistributed to emerging sectors and opens new windows of opportunity for workers when their jobs are at risk.’; whereas a Union act for restructuring exercises would make for an environment based on mutual trust;
34.

Calls on the European Union and the EU Member States to oppose the following: — the proposed change to the CITES Strategic Vision Statement, requiring CITES to contribute to other globally agreed goals instead of the current goal ‘to contribute to significantly reduce the rate of biodiversity loss’; — the disposal or sale of illegally traded and confiscated specimens of Appendix I, II and III species, as proposed by Indonesia; — the transfer of three crocodile species (Crocodylus acutus, C. porosus, and C. siamensis) from CITES Appendix I to Appendix II, as proposed by Colombia and Thailand; — the downlisting of Attwater’s Greater Prairie Chicken (Tympanuchus cupido attwateri) from Appendix I to Appendix II, as requested by the Animals Committee, on the grounds that, although the last single seized illegal shipment occurred in 1998, wild populations of this subspecies declined in 2012 by 58 % to only 46 birds in the wild; — the deletion of Sonnerat’s Junglefowl (Gallus sonnerati) and blood pheasants (Ithaginis cruentus) from Appendix II, as requested by the Animals Committee, as wild populations of both species are in gradual decline, there is considerable international trade in Gallus sonnerati for pet markets, some of the subspecies of Ithaginis cruentus are distributed in a narrow range, with a very limited population, and China, as a range state, is opposed to deleting Blood Pheasants; — the deletion of the Imperial Woodpecker (Campephilus imperialis) from Appendix I, on the grounds that, although this species is regarded as ‘possibly extinct’, anecdotal reports of sightings are regularly pursued; — the deletion of Gastric-Brooding Frogs (Rheobatrachus silus and Rheobatrachus vitellinus) from CITES Appendix II, as proposed by Australia, as these species may not yet be extinct, and field studies are currently being conducted to identify remaining populations;
11.

Welcomes the mediation efforts of regional organisations, such as the African Union and ECCAS, and especially the negotiations between the parties that took place in Libreville; stresses the importance of the new follow-up mechanism to be established in order to ensure full implementation of the agreements reached; calls, in this context, on the EU to support ECCAS in overseeing the implementation of the recent accords; calls on the international community to engage more actively with the CAR in order to address the country’s long-standing problems and to achieve a sustainable political solution;
40.

Calls on the Member States to promote the active inclusion or reintegration of women in the labour market and to encourage their employment in strategic development sectors, by adopting specific measures relating to flexible working hours, equal pay, and reform of taxation and pension schemes, as well as measures for lifelong learning aimed at ensuring the skills and qualifications that are needed in the light of the EU 2020 targets; stresses the importance of high-level training to encourage women to enter sectors where they are underrepresented, for example scientific research and technological development, especially now that Europe needs more researchers to foster innovation and strengthen its economy; invites the Commission to consider a further adaptation of the Structural Funds so as to ensure additional support for areas of women’s employment likely to be affected by the crisis, as well as support for childcare, training and access to employment;
H.

whereas the Pakistani Government has declared polio a national emergency and is currently undertaking a polio vaccination campaign in an effort to eradicate the disease within its borders; whereas this campaign is supported internationally by the WHO, Unicef and others and is part of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative; whereas the campaign is targeting 33 million children for vaccination, with several hundred thousand health workers, many of them women, carrying out vaccinations nationwide;
57.

Calls for stronger EU efforts in relation to tax havens and capital flight, which undermine revenues of both EU and developing countries and work against poverty alleviation and wealth creation in poor countries; highlights that illegal capital flight from developing countries represents between six and 8,7 per cent of their GDP and 10 times the total development assistance for these countries; calls therefore on the Commission to proactively seek further opportunities for cooperation with developing countries on this issue; calls in particular for an international convention with the purpose of eliminating harmful tax structures (on the model of a multilateral mechanism for automatic tax-information exchange) that would include sanctions both for non-cooperative jurisdictions and for financial institutions that operate within tax havens (i.e. by considering the possibility of withdrawing banking licences from financial institutions that operate with tax havens along the lines of the US Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act);
13.

Considers that there are different national approaches to assessing the effects of aircraft crashes on the safety of NPPs; notes that ‘aircraft crashes have not been considered explicitly as an initiating event in the safety assessments’, and that only their effects have been outlined in the stress test specifications; regrets, however, the fact that only four Member States have included such assessments in their stress test reports; notes, nonetheless, that the stress test specifications state that ‘the assessment of consequences of loss of safety functions is relevant also if the situation is provoked by indirect initiating events for instance (…) airplane crash’; also notes that, given that this risk falls primarily within the area of Member States’ national security concerns and, therefore, sovereignty, an Ad Hoc Group on Nuclear Security (AHGNS) has been set up with the task of examining the issue in detail and publishing its conclusions; is aware that further exchanges between Member States are planned on that subject within appropriate forums such as the European Nuclear Security Regulators Association (ENSRA); asks all interested stakeholders, including Member States, the Commission, ENSREG, ENSRA and NPP operators, to work together in order to anticipate and agree a common approach to dealing with the risk of aircraft crashes, while recognising that this risk falls within the area of Member States’ national security concerns and sovereignty;
76.

Welcomes the Commission’s declared intention to draw up guidelines on good practice and the reform of national support arrangements; calls on the Commission to produce the guidelines as soon as possible to ensure that the different national schemes do not distort competition or create barriers to trade and investment within the EU, in order to encourage predictability and cost-effectiveness and avoid excessive subsidies; urges the Commission, in this connection, to ensure that the internal market acquis is fully respected by the Member States; is convinced that good practice guidelines are an important step to ensure a functioning single market for energy and believes the guidelines could be supplemented with an evaluation of the cost-effectiveness of current national support systems, taking into account the different technologies they cover in order to ensure better comparability and coordination for the gradual and progressive convergence of national support mechanisms; is also convinced that implementation of these guidelines at Member State level will be crucial as they can help to avoid national support schemes being retrospectively amended or cancelled, which would send out disastrous signals to investors, as well as potentially causing severe economic distress to private citizens having invested in RES on the basis of such schemes; stresses that the implementation of these guidelines should be ensured by the Member States, and that special support arrangements for the development of local and regional resources should be allowed;
5.

Reaffirms that governance in the EU must not infringe on the prerogatives of the European Parliament and the national parliaments, especially whenever any transfer of sovereignty is envisaged; stresses that proper legitimacy and accountability require democratic decisions and must be ensured at national and EU levels by national parliaments and the European Parliament respectively; recalls the principle set out in the conclusions of the December 2012 European Council that ‘throughout the process, the general objective remains to ensure democratic legitimacy and accountability at the level at which decisions are taken and implemented’; stresses that the mechanisms for ex-ante coordination, and convergence and competitiveness instruments (CCIs), should apply to all Member States which have adopted the euro as their currency, with the possibility for other Member States to join on a permanent basis; calls on the Commission to provide for such compulsory validation by national parliaments in forthcoming legislative proposals, as well as to ensure greater involvement of the two sides of industry in economic coordination;
12.

Considers that more wide-ranging measures are needed and urges the Commission, firstly, to take firm action against those Member States which are not correctly implementing the EU legislation, and, secondly, to undertake without delay a review of all available studies on the subject so as to provide a clear basis for different options for action in both the medium and the long term, including charging for road use via technologies such as GPS/GNSS, in order to prevent and reduce traffic congestion caused by physical barriers, and urges it to present this overview by the end of 2013;
47.

Calls on the Commission to consider how the basic requirements of the AVMSD applicable to non-linear services can be extended to other online content and services which are currently out of its scope, and what steps need to be taken to create a level playing field for all operators; calls on the Commission to present to Parliament the results of its considerations no later than 31 December 2013;
9.

Calls on the Russian authorities to guarantee political pluralism, media freedom, the rule of law, the independence and impartiality of the judiciary, freedom of speech and assembly, including on the internet, effective and independent trade unions, and non-discrimination, as a necessary precondition for Russia’s further development and modernisation in such a way as to recognises and protect the individual and collective rights of all its citizens; recalls that, under international law, states have an obligation to support, directly or indirectly, the funding of civil society activities, in particular by creating a favourable environment, without interfering in their independence;
62.

Calls on the Commission to ensure through the revised employment guidelines in 2014 that employment and social policies must play an active role in the response to the crisis; urges the Commission, in this regard, to help the Member States to develop strategies for building new skills and helping unemployed persons find their way into the labour market as soon as possible; highlights, nevertheless, the fact that a major effort should be made through the Youth Employment Initiative to provide support in the Union’s most seriously affected regions to vulnerable groups, and to young people not in employment, education or training (NEETs), who are unemployed or inactive, by accelerating the delivery of activities supported by ESF funding;
8.

Acknowledges that the Commission needs to be able to assess whether the export credit activities of the Member States are in compliance with the external action goals of the Union, and recommends, therefore, that the test of compliance should be on whether or not officially supported ECAs have policies in place that are effective in ensuring that their activities are in accordance with the foreign policy objectives of the Union;
3.

Deplores the fact that to date the Commission has not launched a proposal for a directive on either work-related musculoskeletal disorders or the review of Directive 2004/37/EC on the protection of workers from the risks related to exposure to carcinogens or mutagens at work, although these were already announced in its work programme for 2011;
9.

Recalls that combating trafficking in human beings is a necessary and crucial step, as minors, especially girls, are particularly confronted with and vulnerable to this trafficking, gender-specific violence, and exploitation, in particular labour and sexual exploitation and abuses; highlights the fact that effective mechanisms must be put in place for the prevention, identification, reporting, referral, investigation, treatment and follow-up of incidents relating to trafficking and labour and sexual exploitation and abuses, and that action should also be taken in third countries to tackle the root causes of trafficking; calls, in this regard, on the Commission and the Member States to be very vigilant and to implement effectively Directive 2011/36/EU on preventing and combating trafficking in human beings and protecting its victims, Directive 2011/93/EU on combating the sexual abuse and sexual exploitation of children and child pornography and Directive 2012/29/UE establishing minimum standards on the rights, support and protection of victims of crime; calls also on the Member States and the EU to strengthen police and judiciary cooperation and to cooperate with the EU-Anti-Trafficking Coordinator to detect potential victims, sensitise the public and combat trafficking in human beings; welcomes, finally, the adoption of the EU Strategy towards the Eradication of Trafficking in Human Beings (2012-2016), in particular the provisions on financing the elaboration of guidelines on child protection systems and the exchange of best practices; reminds the Member States of Article 11 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which calls on states to take measures to combat the illicit transfer of children; calls on the Member States to work collaboratively with third countries to address the growing problem of child smuggling; urges the Member States to prosecute smugglers, where possible with appropriate and commensurable sanctions; is concerned about the situation of many unaccompanied minors who live in hiding in the EU and who are particularly vulnerable to exploitation and abuse; calls on Member States’ authorities and civil society organisations to work together and take all the necessary measures to ensure their protection and dignity;
22.

Notes with concern that dispute resolution processes have proven inefficient, lengthy and costly, and that they offer no guarantee of adequate and timely compensation for the damage caused; stresses the need to remedy this state of affairs, and thus enable victims to obtain fair compensation; calls on the Member States to introduce, where applicable, national laws making it possible for the victims of misleading marketing practices to act collectively in a case against a rogue company, in line with the recently published Commission Recommendation C(2013)3539 and Commission Communication COM(2013)0401; stresses that, in order to avoid abusive litigation, the victims should be represented by a qualified entity, as outlined in the Commission documents;
73.

Stresses its serious concerns about the work carried out within the Council of Europe’s Cybercrime Convention Committee with a view to developing an additional protocol on the interpretation of Article 32 of the Convention on Cybercrime of 23 November 2001 on ‘trans-border access to stored computer data with consent or where publicly available’ (8) in order to ‘facilitate its effective use and implementation in the light of legal, policy and technological developments’; calls on the Commission and the Member States, in view of the forthcoming consideration by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, to ensure the compatibility of the provision of Article 32 of the Convention on Cybercrime, and its interpretation in the Member States, with fundamental rights, including data protection and, in particular, the provisions on trans-border flows of personal data, as enshrined in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, the EU data protection acquis, the European Convention of Human Rights and the Council of Europe Convention on the Protection of Individuals with Regard to Automatic Processing (‘Convention 108’), which are legally binding upon the Member States; calls on the Commission and the Member States to reject firmly any measure that would put the application of these rights at risk; is alarmed by the fact that should such an additional protocol be endorsed, its implementation could result in unfettered remote access by law enforcement authorities on servers and computer systems located in other jurisdictions, without recourse to MLA agreements and other instruments of judicial cooperation put in place to guarantee the fundamental rights of the individual, including data protection and due process;
F.

whereas over the years both the BNP and the Awami League have held contradictory and changing views on the merits of a caretaker government, while in May 2011 the Supreme Court declared illegal the 15-year-old constitutional provision mandating an elected government to transfer power on completion of its term to an appointed non-partisan caretaker administration which would oversee a new parliamentary election; whereas, however, the Supreme Court stated that the voided system could be continued for another two parliamentary terms for the sake of the ‘safety of the state and its people’; whereas the system was discredited by the last military-backed caretaker government in 2007-2008, when it refused to hold elections for nearly two years and sent the leaders of the two main parties, Sheikh Hasina and Begum Khaleda Zia (along with her son Tarique Rahman), to jail;