kfajdsl/voxpopuli huggingface dataset:
it is a good agreement but it is a little ambiguous in certain parts.
i met a person who has hiv as a result of a needle stick injury.
all of these things are necessary not just one or two all of those things are necessary.
studies have also demonstrated that failure to implement any one of these three elements results in a significantly reduced impact.
i have met people during the six years that we have worked on this subject who have suffered needle stick injuries and i would really emphasise that trauma.
so that is the ambiguity in clause six that we are seeking to overcome through the publication of guidance.
it is for this reason that we are requesting that the commission produce implementation guidelines to aid employers' understanding of the risks and necessary preventative measures to ensure a consistent application of the directive.
we fully support the commission's proposal for a directive and we understand that the agreement from the social partners cannot be touched. we cannot amend it. council cannot amend it. it is their agreement. however the most important part of the agreement clause six which covers elimination prevention and protection unfortunately includes some ambiguity regarding risk assessment and precisely which preventative elements need to be implemented by employers and when.
if this ambiguity is not clarified then we risk seeing dramatic variability in the application of the directive.
this is why i have tabled an amendment which has been agreed in the employment committee to seek the publication by the commission of guidance to accompany the directive to ensure the smooth and uniform transposition of this directive into law in all member states.
i have also met garbage collectors and prison officers who have suffered needle stick injuries.
liz has mentioned the trauma that people affected by needle stick injuries face.
there is a huge body of independent evidence that has proven that the introduction of improved training safer working practices and the use of medical devices incorporating safety engineered protection mechanisms will prevent the majority of needle stick injuries.
similarly attempts to implement safety engineered medical devices only in certain areas or on certain patients would be neither practical nor effective.
i met a doctor who gave up medical practice because of a needle stick injury.
needle stick injuries are the most common and most dangerous form of medical sharp injuries.
i am glad that they have.
that is another area that we need to think about for the future.
i have met people who turned out not to be infected but only after months of uncertainty as to whether they were infected or not.
they formulated that agreement.
we needed specific legislation to address this problem as they have in the united states and in parts of spain and it works there very effectively. eventually the commissioner agreed to act and in two thousand and eight as liz has said did draft an amendment to the two thousand directive but then hospeem and
i regret that the process lasted longer than many of you expected but i would like to say that i am absolutely convinced that social dialogue has to play a role we have to respect the opinion of the social partners.
i would like to draw your attention to the text which says that the signatory parties shall review the application of this agreement five years after the date of the council decision if requested by one of the parties to the agreement.
the healthcare sector is clearly an important sector;
cyprus would create a momentum for the accession negotiations. i also agree with those who indicated that the rules of the game should not be changed in the middle of the game.
for me this is not a game;
but as many of you underlined if turkey indeed fulfils all relevant accession obligations and we remain committed and serious then we will be able to avoid most of the frustration some of you referred to and move forward.
of expression in line with the european convention on human rights and the european court of human rights and to make it absolutely clear that turkey urgently needs to amend its legal framework to improve the exercise of freedom of the press both in practice and in a significant manner.
i strongly believe that at the end of this process most european union and turkish citizens will see clearly the benefits of a new and modern turkey being a member of the european union. my second remark would be
for me this is a serious process.
we regret the stalling of the accession process and while turkey must bear part of the blame the bad faith of certain member states as revealed by wikileaks is an embarrassment to our union.
mr sarkozy no more speaks for europe on turkey than he does on his union for the mediterranean. his visit to ankara was inflammatory and it is a pity that german christian democrats do not take max fischer's advice and look in the mirror because the akp today is the mirror image of the german cdu in one thousand nine hundred and fifty not christian democrat but islamic democrat and that is no doubt why the commissioner says that he understands and shares turkey's frustrations.
turkey has much to achieve but we have much to lose if we do not welcome and work with islamic democracies like turkey and indonesia.
i would ask our greek cypriot and greek friends in particular to give up their unilateral approach to the cyprus problem to be more even handed and to reach a comprehensive settlement with the turks before it is too late.
we criticise turkey over the additional protocol we have heard the same again this afternoon from the presidency in office yet no mention is made of the failure to implement the eu council decision of twenty six april.
of course there are concerns but i would say that given the turbulence we are now seeing in north africa and the middle east and against the background of a continuing threat from islamist terrorism never has it been more important for us to send a positive signal to turkey that she is welcome in the club of the european democracies.
getting the laws right is important. however only objective and impartial implementation of the new laws will ensure the success of the constitutional reforms.
the events in tunisia and egypt have highlighted turkey's stability prosperity and democracy.
turkey and the european union have a shared interest in working closely together in this area.
the european union stands ready to intensify its existing dialogue with turkey on foreign policy issues of mutual interest.
the commission is following with concern the recent actions against journalists. independence and freedom of the press is of utmost importance for democracy.
the process should be as inclusive and transparent as possible with the active participation of different political parties civil society non governmental organisations and the general public.
this agreement is beneficial for the eu member states as turkey is an important transit country for migration flows to the eu. the development on the readmission agreement also opens up for the first time new and concrete perspectives for further cooperation
the european union efficiently contributes to turkey's modernisation through technology transfers turkey's participation in eu education and research programmes and our pre accession financial support.
this is the occasion for turkey to move even closer towards implementing fully the european union political criteria.
freedom of the press entails that dissent and opposing points of view need to be heard and more importantly tolerated.
the european parliament's draft resolution rightly underlines these issues. as for the right to freedom of religion we welcome the initiatives taken in favour of non muslim religious communities in turkey.
let me turn now to the reforms in turkey.
positive steps on the implementation of the additional protocol to the ankara agreement or in the settlement talks would have a positive impact on the accession negotiations.
citizens in these countries look at turkey as they look at the european union as examples to follow. they watch turkey advocating standards and values that they are now fighting for themselves and that are associated with europe.
this debate and your resolution come at an important time for eu turkey relations and the draft resolution underlines a number of issues of great importance for the commission.
to enhance eu turkey trade to the benefit of both european union and turkish businesses and to give a much needed boost to our cooperation with turkey.
the government has a very important responsibility to uphold such a privileged position and to lead by example for the benefit of its own citizens but also for the region as a whole.
to do. many of these challenges ahead are outlined in your report.
freedom of the press means guaranteeing a public space for free debate including on the internet.
however further and systematic efforts are needed to address the problems of non muslims and the alevis. let me turn to the issue of migration. two weeks ago the council endorsed the eu turkey readmission agreement.
in its two thousand and ten progress report the commission has already highlighted the high number of court cases against journalists and undue pressure on the media which undermine this fundamental right in practice.
turkey should continue with the constitutional reform.
with turkey in the area of visa and migration policies with a view to improving mobility and contacts amongst our citizens and businesses.
i welcome last year's constitutional reform and the subsequent legislative amendments as a step in the right direction.
speaking about turkey today we cannot ignore the major developments in its wider region.
there are many good reasons to increase the ability of turkish citizens businessmen and students to travel to europe to familiarise themselves further with european standards;
the enlargement process encourages political and economic reform in the country.
moreover the negotiating chapters that turkey can aim to open under the present circumstances require significant reforms and adjustments.
turkey's active foreign policy is a strong potential asset for the european union provided it is developed within the framework of turkey's eu accession process.
ban ki moon urged all international actors to focus on the efforts for such a settlement.
voting in favour of amendments like the one on direct trade of twenty six april in a divided cyprus unnecessary though in a united one encourages intransigence the failure of efforts for a solution and perpetuates the freezing of chapters. picking on cyprus
i am also concerned by its increasing hostility to israel our ally as witnessed by the gaza flotilla episode and turkey's officially published findings.
there can be no doubt in my mind that turkey must now redouble its efforts if it wants to make further progress towards the eu and its values.
the refusal by the turkish government to open its ports and airports to trade from the republic of cyprus is unacceptable but i would also like to mention the fact that they could also have a more constructive approach towards their neighbour armenia including the reopening of the shared border with armenia and an acknowledgement of the deliberate mass killing of armenians in.
madam president turkey's momentum towards eu accession continues to falter. one reason of course is the non compliance with the ankara additional protocols and non recognition and continued occupation of cyprus.
turkey continues to maintain the greek orthodox monastery at halki closed for no apparent reason and to deny its ancient syriac christians full community rights.
what we need to be doing is to devote two thousand and eleven to a genuine new partnership built on a radical reappraisal of where the true interests of both parties
i believe it is very important that the union does not give way on any of the issues or open any more of the chapters of negotiations until such time as we see that turkey is a willing partner in this discussion.
the author orhan pamuk escaped prosecution for a heretical view of turkish history only because of his international fame.
the law is still in place.
could the eu possibly tolerate the suppression of heretical academic opinion in a member state?
later the report says that there is no progress towards normalisation of relations with cyprus.
in plain language this means that turkey still occupies with force of arms the northern part of that country expropriating the property of greek cypriots and desecrating and plundering their places of worship and burial.
until turkey withdraws its troops unconditionally returns property and repairs damage there should be no relations with turkey at all let alone negotiation for its eu membership.
we can take a narrow populist view or we can show leadership and vision.
that leadership and vision is to bring turkey into the eu where it belongs.
i will offer some constructive suggestions. there needs to be more done to combat discrimination and to promote equality on the base of sex gender racial or ethnic origin religion or belief age and sexual orientation.
this should be guaranteed by law.
i could speak about this issue for a long time. it is worthwhile recalling that turkey is a modern secular country and that in turkey women got the vote long before women got the vote in some parts of the eu something we should remember as we look back over one hundred years of feminism.
madam president the continued consolidation of democracy and respect for human rights in turkey which should lead to full membership of our european union becomes even more important as arab and middle eastern countries just beyond europe's borders stand in crisis.
we should welcome the fact that momentum has returned to the reform process in turkey and recognising the controversies of last september's referendum call for it to be a platform for fundamental constitutional reform with all party support in the future.
but i also ask the commissioner to make progress on the visa issue particularly for businesspeople and on holding turkey to its promises for the draft trade union law.
our socialist and democrat group believes that the accession talks are threatened not by a train crash but by death through strangulation.
just as momentum is needed in the reform process for turkey momentum is needed in its membership talks with the european union too.
promoting equal economic independence for women and men including by closing the income gap is a crucial element necessary to ensure de facto gender equality.
finally we must ensure that both sexes can benefit from the opportunities offered by the digital economy the green revolution robotics and by the many other transformative developments in the labour market.
that groundbreaking european court ruling more than forty years ago opened the way for the first european directives on gender equality.
jobs should be classified mutually and fairly. also we must focus on the quality of jobs while flexibility is important it should not be forcibly imposed on workers for example in the form of precariousness or involve involuntary part time work.
gender equality policies are essential instruments in economic terms.
in this context ministers will also consider further measures aimed at addressing the gender pay gap. moreover in the context of the european semester the council will adapt recommendations to improve women's labour market outcomes and to reduce the gender pay
the council has in particular in the last two years worked on the gender pay and pensions and on women in poverty.
the it sector of course is another area where women are under represented and where their talents are needed.
however an important underlying problem is that society seems to value women's work paid or unpaid less than the work of men.
i believe this is an issue on which our two institutions have much common ground.
we should encourage more girls to study science engineering technology and maths.
she demanded equal treatment and won her case in the european court of justice.
they also lead to greater prosperity competitiveness and employment.
this is why the actions that need to be taken in order to address this complex issue of the gender pay gap vary accordingly.
secondly women tend to be employed in more junior positions compared to men a phenomenon we call the glass ceiling.
however as we all know equality on paper does not always translate into factual equality.
the principle of equal pay for work of equal value has long been enshrined in european law.
we also need to take a closer look at the concept of a correct work life balance.
to achieve this we should start with education as gender stereotyping starts very early in our lives.
it is clear that during some period of time people might need to use the working arrangement to better reconcile work and private duties.
we pay for projects to get more girls and women into this sector.
it is our intention to support both women and men to go for the less and non traditional jobs.
this is as you know one of our initiatives for two thousand and seventeen and this is also an initiative related directly to the european pillar of social rights.
this is not acceptable all talents must be properly valued and recognised;
we proposed a package of measures which could be adopted by member states to effectively fight the direct discrimination in pay for work of equal value and we work with the member states to assess how these measures were implemented and how it works in practice.
i already said in one of the plenary sessions when we discussed the pay gap and work life balance initiative that it is our duty to remove the barriers for working parents to combine better work and family duties and it will be the free choice of people to use these opportunities.
we witness the horizontal segregation of the labour market.
discrimination which means different pay for the same work is already prohibited by eu law so we are pushing for better enforcement of the legislation in force.
and a better work life balance should be sought for both men and women.
talking of structural funds there will be a very rich chapter in the new package on work life balance to encourage the member states to use better and more intensively the eu structural funds for creating more and better and affordable
it is one of the provisions we intend to promote in the package of measures to improve conditions for working parents and carers the so called work life balance package' which is a joint initiative with commissioner thyssen.
one of the big challenges is the unequal sharing of care responsibilities between women and men.
compared to men women are also less likely to be in paid employment to sign permanent and stable work contracts and they tend to work fewer hours.
we know the gender pay gap has various root causes and my aim is to have a set of different measures to effectively tackle these roots.
the treaty of rome whose sixtieth anniversary we will remember in a few days already included a provision on equal pay opening the way for a broader gender equality policy in europe later on.
in two thousand and fourteen we adopted a recommendation on strengthening the principle of equal pay between men and women through transparency.
the glass ceiling still exists although women have made inroads into economic decision making positions less than five of company leaders in the eu are women. so it is clear that to finally erase the gender pay gap we have to do much more.
over the last sixty years women have reaped the benefits of education and massively entered into the labour market.
women tend to be grouped in sectoral jobs which are under paid and valued less such as the social care sector for instance.
we encourage the exchange of best practices among member states and we co finance member state initiatives through the structural funds and actions by civil society.
when providing parents with choice and opportunities we also aim to eradicate the negative lifelong effect of no choice available' on women's careers earnings and pensions.
the commission is also undertaking a number of policy and awareness raising actions to address the gender pay gap.
all this shrinks their economic independence.
ladies and gentlemen i can only share with you that our assessment is that transparency is very important but it does not do magic.
there is also an issue of part time jobs.
and yes education is the way to solve this problem as well.
among the working population women spend on average twenty one hours a week on caring and household activities compared to nine hours spent by men.
yes we heard here from several men and the one who offended all of us reminded me of a discussion i had last year in new york with an african minister who had very similar opinions and i realised how happy i am to live in europe
maybe we could discuss further whether there is a need for bigger sanctions whether there is a need to encourage victims of discrimination to complain more often and so on.
i could continue.
this is a telling figure.
this is the cost of violence against women.
it is so short sighted not to help women to use their education in better jobs.
when combined all these serve to reinforce gender inequality on a much broader scale.
it is time that we took real action.
the at risk of poverty rate is around twenty two for women over sixty five reflecting the inequality of pay.
we must create a more effective policy on shared parental leave with fathers getting at least three months' paid leave and we must provide a mandatory scheme that includes funded training for women over the age of forty who have done their duty in society as they see it to get back to work.
what can we do?
absolutely no doubt at all in my mind that the gender pay gap is caused by direct discrimination segregation in the labour market traditional gender stereotypes and work life balance issues.
the impact of the pay gap extends even beyond retirement as we have heard.
member states have to ensure that women have equal career opportunities in all fields and this includes care facilities for children and a culture of shared family responsibility between men and women to facilitate and encourage women entrepreneurship and to fight discrimination.
there is no one size fits all solution.
it is a structural problem that needs to be dealt with from different angles and nationally.
crucially that gap has widened by eighty since two thousand and twelve when it stood at.
it has shown once again the complex but pressing nature of this problem.
each measure we take in each policy area is a part of the puzzle.
the presidency had decided to focus in particular on the issue of skills. on friday the council will adopt a set of conclusions on enhancing the skills of women and men on the european union's labour market.
improving the skills of women will improve their situation on the job market and later on in retirement.
it is a necessary step on the road towards equal economic independence.
in its conclusions in the context of the european semester on the annual growth survey and the joint employment report the council will note that more visibility should be given to the gender pay gap and the gender gap in coverage of pensions and that more efforts
should be made to reduce them.
them for long periods to particular providers.
i just want to give you a sense of what we have achieved and what we are looking for.
all. we want to give consumers that power to make choices and that is what will open services.
there are substantial improvements that parliament has made in this second reading.
all of those are included in this proposal. i think it is very important to emphasise that this is an enabling and empowering proposal.
i mention that because i think many people outside do not realise the extent and engagement that we have in delivering these complex texts.
we have a thriving and dynamic communications sector with active consumers in the marketplace.
it is not a proposal that is any way restrictive of people's rights on the internet or restrictive of services at
we will hear more about that later.
i look forward to your support for this tomorrow because it is so important for all our futures.