kfajdsl/voxpopuli huggingface dataset:
given the stricter levels that are being imposed in japan we the commission have decided that it would be correct to amend the present levels in force since twenty five march as an additional safeguard measure pending further scientific analysis of the levels established under euratom regulation.
i should emphasise again that this is a purely precautionary measure which allows initiating the necessary scientific assessments of current permitted levels throughout the world so that the european union can demonstrate it is once again applying the highest standards.
these will then enter into force as of next week.
to the best of my knowledge based on the scientific expertise i receive we believe that these matters and this approach are safe.
he also said that the action in libya could not have happened without the european union and that france and germany could not have taken military action without first getting the support of the european council.
i got a letter on one april from the noble baroness ashton telling me that the eu had provided more than eur seventy five million in humanitarian assistance and that although the situation remains uncertain the eu has offered to assist in fostering dialogue.
so we have two big chiefs within the european union directly contradicting each other.
article one hundred and forty of the treaty states that member states with a derogation will be examined every two years on the progress being made in achieving economic and monetary union.
mr president can the president of the commission foresee any circumstances in which all member states including the united kingdom are forced to adopt the euro against the wishes of their peoples possibly expressed in a referendum and even against the professed wishes of their governments?
the levels permitted are lower which means that their standards are higher. we are going to implement this for japan.
in the meantime we are going to consult the committee of experts at national level and at european level so that we can if appropriate establish common uniform rules for all imports.
i believe this is the best most proportionate scientific based approach.
they have our greatest respect and admiration for their courage and their generosity.
a message of respect and admiration to the japanese people and specifically to those heroes who are sacrificing their lives for the good of all japanese people.
i wonder whether mr barroso would agree with me that appointing as head of your new foreign office and in charge of external security a woman who has been an extreme left wing life long passivist the former treasurer of the campaign for nuclear disarmament somebody who has proved to be incompetent in the job was not in fact one of the better decisions of the european union. i can only say thank god for baroness ashton without her i suspect all of us would be very much deeper into libya.
the european commission is sometimes a bit of a difficult animal to run.
mr president we know that the united kingdom is protected by the protocol but the validity of protocols is a question that goes beyond the subject of a single currency.
there is a protocol providing the uk and two other countries with opt outs from the charter of fundamental rights but the commission's own legal service has suggested that the opt out is at best of limited application.
might the protocol providing the uk with an opt out from the single currency also be of limited value?
are you satisfied by the degree of operational coordination between the eu and member states in the recent emergencies especially in japan?
what has happened since the commission communication of three years ago on reinforcing the union's disaster response capacity which said that we needed greater coherence and effectiveness for a more integrated eu disaster response capacity?
regarding the trade issue last year's european union japan summit agreed to examine the options for how to best to improve our relations.
one of the options on the economic side is the possibility of a european union japan fda. this option will require a considerable degree of ambition on both sides and a willingness to tackle inter alia non tariff measures and the removal of obstacles that hamper european union companies' access to japan's market for public procurement.
first of all to know the result of the test we must make the test before.
should any installation fail the test the question of remedial actions remains open.
however it is possible to envisage situations where safety upgrades are economically meaningful and technically feasible so this is what we can commit to at this stage.
we are going to do this for all the nuclear sites in europe.
this is already allowed today under the type approval legislation. however aerodynamic performance improves continuously up to two metres.
i am not at all linking these two issues by saying that we should just put this off until; two thousand and sixteen i am actually separating them.
we do not want to undermine the whole proposal. finally i would like to ask the commission whether the rumours about the scrapping of the safety requirements from this proposal are untrue.
mr president i was speaking just yesterday with a very brave mother back in my constituency nazan fennell who lost her daughter in an accident because the lorry driver was unable to see her.
they have far too many blind spots and a front that can push pedestrians and cyclists underneath the wheels.
the liberal democrats in the united kingdom and in the european parliament have been fighting for changes to make our streets safer.
tomorrow we will have a once in a generation opportunity to change that and to make lorries of the future safer and more environmentally friendly.
the lorries we see on our roads have been shaped like an upturned shoebox for decades.
now i for one strongly oppose mega trucks becoming the norm in europe but at the moment we have to think about the fragile compromise.
she told me that saving parents the pain of the sudden and violent death of their child is priceless'.
it would be terribly wrong to undermine changes that are significant to european citizens.
i hope that parliament will vote massively in favour of these rules tomorrow and i strongly hope that our conservatives who abstained on this file in committee will reconsider and support the proposals tomorrow.
but there is a key issue for the conservative meps about the possible limitations that could be placed on british and irish hauliers in terms of the height of vehicles and we need to address that.
we are also concerned that the current text which is calling for the commission to provide a review by two thousand and sixteen on the issue of cross border use is really too premature. longer trucks have been used in countries such as sweden finland holland and germany for a number of years. whilst we certainly do not agree with the introduction of these so called sixty tonne mega trucks on british roads i believe that those member states involved who wish to introduce them have the right to do so.
people have referred and rightly so to the need for full digitalisation of the public sector development of e health e commerce and particularly to making high speed broadband available right across europe.
a special mention concerning e commerce trust has been mentioned and that is absolutely vital. we need to encourage people to trade online and smes to trade online but we have to put the tools there to give them confidence to do so.
mr president the completion of the digital single market will unlock the potential of the single market and this must be a key strategic priority for the eu.
the ecr will vote to reject this paragraph as there is a severe lack of evidence on the need for or benefits of a common european sales law for businesses and consumers.
a number of specific actions are proposed in order to complete the digital single market such as investment in fixed and mobile networks a review of the intellectual property rules and improved e payment and delivery services.
when it comes to the digital single market certainly we must move mountains of barriers to unlock the hundreds of billions of euros in value that we can add to the eu's economy.
the priorities for the mff stand in stark contrast to what is needed in order to make the eu the world's most competitive digital market. that should be our ambition but it requires resources for the next century not the last.
we have also been eagerly awaiting substantial proposals by the commission to reform and harmonise intellectual property rights.
the current fragmented system that looks at copyright through the lens of the printing press in a time of hyper connectivity is not relevant any more.
the reforms must reflect the public interest of access to knowledge culture and information and the need to stop disproportionately protecting incumbents in the market.
we need innovation and competition.
that is why it is also high time that the commission enshrines net neutrality in law.
we must ensure a level playing field online and should respect and protect the open internet.
citizens expect more from governments and rightfully so.
i particularly want to thank the other committees who submitted points for the resolution.
however we think it does need a political framework to move it forward in the same way that we have encouraged and you have picked up the whole idea of a single market act.
i think the whole idea of our resolution was to encourage you to do that before the summit and to actually put all that together but maybe that will happen.
that is the thrust of the message from us this morning and i invite colleagues to look at the detail of the resolution which i am pleased has got complete support across this house.
there are no amendments to this resolution which indicates the engagement that everyone has had. i would just like to conclude by again picking up ms hall's theme about jobs. i was at the digital agenda assembly last week where i chaired a session on completing the digital single market.
again there were many examples of the kind that she mentioned with her coffee shop in berwick upon tweed of people transforming their businesses by going online into the digital single market. this house has been absolutely behind a youth employment initiative and investing in it.
we know there is a huge gap in digital skills.
i commend that to you as part of our work on the digital single market.
mr president we should celebrate the progress towards the digital single market because this is an area where the eu has delivered tangible results for its citizens.
it has become the annual good news story at the start of the holiday season but we need to take the final steps and put in place a fully competitive single market in which roaming charges are obsolete.
the commission has the support of the alde group in driving this forward.
i would like to be able to tell my constituents that there will be an end to roaming charges not in five years time but next year.
i also hope that by next summer we will have other good news on the digital agenda.
i hope businesses especially rural businesses will have better access to the latest technologies including superfast broadband. i hope that more initiatives will be underway to ensure that older people and people with disabilities are not excluded from the benefits that the digital age can offer and indeed that they are able to seize the opportunities which are there.
i hope that i will be able to reassure businesses that european action is tackling cyber crime and removing the barriers to cross border trading such as the cross border delivery problems mentioned by the commissioner.
i also hope that our small businesses will be able to benefit from this initiative not just the high tech companies but the high street traders as well.
i would love to take the commissioner to see a very small business in the town of berwick upon tweed where a caf has gone into online trade and is now delivering food hampers across the world.
this is an area which is delivering growth and jobs across europe and there could not be anything more important at the present time given the need that we have for those jobs so i hope that we can move as quickly as possible to the completion of the digital single market.
at the same time i hope this will help authorities to better assess the likelihood of tax evasion being committed and in some cases stop unnecessary investigations.
the answer is that we know a lot less than we need to in order to be able to develop policies that reassure our citizens that corporations are paying the taxes they should.
as we approach the anniversary of the luxleaks scandal i wish to focus on a key issue of this debate the question of who should know what about tax.
i was the rapporteur on this repeal and i undertook a thorough investigation of the risk that it might open up loopholes to facilitate further tax avoidance.
the directive on administrative cooperation is now being extended to call for automatic exchange of information on tax rulings.
in march this year the commission presented a tax transparency package which included the files that we are focussing on today.
very few of the people i represent think that deltour is the guilty party on the issue of tax avoidance. the first real sign that the commission means business came last week with the announcement of the results of the inquiries into the tax affairs of starbucks and fiat and the demand for tax to be recovered.
this is extremely disappointing as we have made some significant improvements on the commission proposal notably extending the scope of tax rulings considered.
last november people across europe were horrified to find out that the commission president himself had been the architect of a secret system of sweetheart tax deals for some of the world's most powerful corporations. yet without the actions of the brave whistleblower antoine deltour they would have known nothing about this.
it is for this reason that the greens in parliament will settle for nothing less than full publication of tax information.
madam president the green group believes that we are in a tax crisis. we see governments not just of remote tropical islands but within our very own union agreeing bargain deals with multinational corporations.
this call for public information will be reintroduced as an amendment before plenary as we believe it is what the people of europe wish to see.
so how can it be right that it is deltour who is facing legal action whereas the architects of the dodgy tax deals do not face redress?
senior politicians tax accountants and corporate bosses knew exactly what was going on in the cosy world of what they call tax rulings but as a parliamentarian i knew nothing and those i represent knew nothing.
our citizens pay the price for this seeing the public sector starved of investment and our smes losing out because they simply cannot compete with the low rates of tax that multinationals can arrange for themselves. taxation and more importantly tax justice is of the utmost importance for european citizens.
as i said at the start of my speech the central issue of the luxleaks scandal was the lack of public information.
they proposed the repeal of the two thousand and three savings tax directive which provided tax authorities with the information they needed to ensure tax was not avoided but has now been superseded by a new directive that has wider scope.
such inquiries still have a long way to go and while i congratulate commissioner vestager on her activities so far i would encourage her to widen and deepen her investigation.
however returning to my central point we do not believe parliament has been ambitious enough on how information will be made available. as greens we call for the commission's central directory of rulings to be made public not only to the commission and other member states but for european citizens as well.
i had excellent support from my shadows and we agreed jointly that we would support the repeal.
so important was this piece of the package that the council in a break with tradition proceeded without hearing parliament's position.
as an elected representative and member of the taxe committee there are still a great many vital documents that i do not have access to.
so how much do we know?
it is only when politicians know that their deals with corporations may become known to their electors that they will act in the interest of those electors and it is only when corporate lawyers consider the reputational damage that might follow shady tax deals that they will stop spending so much time devising these elaborate webs of tax avoidance.
madam president let us be clear it is the existence of the eu itself which has facilitated multinational corporations in aggressively avoiding the potential tax liabilities that would be justified by their turnover in large european countries.
under eu rules corporations have been able to choose to pay their taxes in any eu jurisdiction rather than the one where economic activity has taken place.
this has given smaller eu nations an incentive to strike sweetheart deals with very large multinational businesses and gives micro states such as luxembourg the opportunity to enrich themselves while also offering a path for huge businesses to avoid paying a fair share of tax in countries where they record the bulk of their sales.
so it would be perverse indeed to accept any proposed solution that involves more europe or more power to the european commission.
i hope that the council members will take decisions that are good for the future of europe and european citizens.
instead of going for the most extensive regulations and decisions we should try to get the best and the most efficient.
thank you and good evening to you.
i listened with great interest to your speech especially the first part.
would you agree with me then that if you have these feelings about mr juncker and therefore his commission surely anything that comes forward from there is something we should all treat with extreme suspicion and caution and really there is nothing that can be said or done by that commission or this house on this subject that any of us should have any faith in?
there has also i have noted been quite a lot of movement amongst members of this house on the issue of tax partly as a result of citizen outrage at multinational tax avoidance but also as they have learned more as they have gathered more information as a result of the taxe committee and in my mind that is one of the main achievements of the taxe committee.
to do our job properly we need information and we need evidence.
how else can we make good policy?
i welcome the statement from the commissioner that more documents have been made available but i am afraid that having documents in a reading room where they are effectively behind lock and key is simply not good enough.
it does not feel like transparency and we need to have better access to information than that.
we also need to protect whistleblowers who are acting in the common good.
we do not always see eye to eye across the different political groups in this parliament but we have cooperated to protect public tax revenue and to ensure that there is a level playing field between the corporations who can arrange to reduce their tax contributions and the smes that are the backbone of our european economy.
thank you very much for that rather challenging question.
i have not brought the data with me today and i realise that you do not have a chance to blue card the commissioner but the commission has actually prepared information.
i again congratulate commissioner vestager as she has made an estimate of how much has not been paid by those two corporations and i think we need further investigations of that type in order to have a real sense of the scale of this problem and the loss to the public exchequers of our member states.
this verdict sends a strong signal not only to companies trying to exploit loopholes in tax systems and mismatches between national rules to avoid paying their fair share of taxes but also to eu member states which also have their share of responsibility when it comes to tax fairness.
i think this investigation proves once again that it is essential to give the commission a central role in the process of automatic exchange of information so that it can ensure full compliance with eu law.
i really hope member states will draw the lesson from these cases and agree to give the commission access to the documents it needs to ensure european companies are treated on a true level playing field.
although i can understand some people would like full access to the rulings i think what matters is to have the key information made available to the commission.
i would like to thank the rapporteur and other shadows for the work done.
it resulted in a good report in my opinion with a fairly limited number of amendments to be voted and i am glad that it goes against the sort of current trend when we often vote separately on almost every point.
the work and the commitment of the high representative and the external action service and member states' diplomats are outstanding.
they are the real examples of what discrimination does.
this is not cultural imperialism because human rights know no boundaries and no borders.
they are universal and indivisible. therefore the parliament is equally respectful of the ongoing progress at the un and does not seek to dictate to it or influence its process.
it is to demand that your unique place in the world is respected.
i am pleased with the lead that both south africa and brazil have given in their sponsoring and their promotion of the resolution at the united nations human rights commission in geneva.
we need to depathologise their right to health we need to end the fact that being trans is to be seen to be suffering from an illness or a sickness.
it is always a pleasure to follow michle striffler who equally has been outspoken in the defence of people who have been discriminated against because of their difference.
the parliament is aware of this and has made it clear in the resolution which lists outstanding issues within the eu.
the three iranian men who only days ago were hanged by their neck until they were dead because they were gay;
sexual orientation and gender identity are at last increasingly understood to deserve equal protection.
you rightly vice president mentioned david kato a man who because he sought to end discrimination in uganda against lesbian gay bisexual and transgender people was ultimately murdered;
the eu does not have a perfect track record on human rights in relation to sexual orientation and gender identity.
it is ground breaking work we need to do more to support them but equally can i please give a plea on behalf of trans people.
to be yourself is no illness and no sickness.
but with this resolution this house wishes to encourage positive developments for universal and indivisible human rights both at home and in the world.
it was shameful that our cotonou partners would not accept our definition a wider definition and it is a wonderful example that sixty three years after the universal declaration in one thousand nine hundred and forty eight people still feel that we can find others to discriminate against in order to reinforce our position in society.
this is vital because if we are to be taken seriously in the defence and the promotion of human rights we must hold the same mirror up to ourselves and examine our own record.
cathy may i also thank you for your personal committment to this issue of non discrimination.
those who speak out using either their belief or their religion or their politics on behalf of such discrimination support those who would murder and those who would discriminate and by so doing they demean themselves.
we already knew from other cases that you are very strong on that and support us on that.
i also agree with those who have already said that the resolution at the human rights council really was a turning point for lgbt rights worldwide with countries like brazil and south africa and others in southern countries supporting it. this is something that we have not had that many times before and it was the first time at the human rights council.