kfajdsl/voxpopuli huggingface dataset:
in the eu the uptake of recycled plastics in new products is low;
the intention is to stimulate investment in the sector.
plastics packaging today accounts for about sixty of all plastics waste generated in europe every year.
according to the estimates only five of the value of plastic packaging materials remains in the economy the rest goes to waste after a very short first use.
the aim is that by two thousand and thirty all plastic packaging will be reusable and recyclable. this will be achieved by stimulating design for circularity boosting recycled content and stimulating better separate waste collection.
it is therefore paramount that we address this as a priority.
in other words our aim is first to create a truly well functioning single market for recyclable plastics second to improve waste collection and third promote recycled plastics.
only around.
this will create trust in the market and attract further investment and innovation in europe.
later this year the commission will develop a strategic research innovation agenda for plastics.
the annual bill accounts for up to eur one hundred and five billion.
this debate made me really happy and i do believe that we can deliver.
it's actually a good incentive for europe to find solutions sustainable solutions. how to deal with plastic waste. it puts pressure on us but it also create incentives.
i must congratulate them.
but even more money is available in private sector if the regulatory environment is right and that's why we have to concentrate on this part of our work. fourthly on china. i must say that i could not blame china at all when they decided to
it will change the market and this is what we need a sustainable market where profit is coming from more sustainable behaviour.
so we have to encourage or empower consumers.
if you are as old as i am you can remember when there was not very much plastic around and life was very different.
perhaps given where i stand in the chamber and possibly a little bit my nationality it will not come as a great surprise to you that i am not such a fan as the two previous speakers of the legislation.
that is not to say that i do not think we need any of course we do we do need a framework but i would like to make an appeal for that to be as light as possible in the sense of setting member states' targets and allowing them to use their own best efforts to meet those.
i can tell you that in the uk where we have just banned microplastics there was no resistance.
it is actually the functioning of the whole system that needs to be taken very seriously so i thank you very much.
i have spoken to both of you and i have to say i am satisfied that for the first time ever we are looking at the issue with a holistic perspective.
it could be that i come from an island in the middle of the mediterranean and that makes me much more aware of the environmental and health problems that plastic waste brings. i think this is our opportunity to actually make sure that we put environment at the forefront while also making sure that we get industry on board.
we need to make sure that we remain competitive and we do not let other continents run in front of us in the competitiveness stakes.
this is our opportunity because people are aware of the impact that plastic has not only on our environment but also on our health.
so it is great to see that commitment from the commission and leafing through the strategy i must say the analysis is very strong the language is right and the intentions are very very promising.
not only that it is the only political body that can propose legislative proposals.
i know some elements are technically difficult setting common standards for biodegradable plastics is not easy and i know there's a huge scientific debate behind that.
but there are many other elements that are much less complicated and that have already been considered by the commission for years and years even by previous commissioners.
that has been done the around the world so concluding i'm very happy with the strategy but i had expected a little bit more on the legislative part. i know that your intention is to come forward with those please do so during your mandate because if it is left to the next commission we don't know if the same two vice presidents will still be still there.
i just want to mention two issues.
on faith schools i fully support the right of parents to have their children educated within the principles of a particular faith so long as that faith itself does not propagate discriminatory and prejudicial attitudes.
the woman refused a bank loan the disabled person refused access to a building the gay man refused accommodation a black person barred from a club and so on should all be protected on the basis of similar principles.
but we must not condone the creation of ghettoes where only children of a specified faith are admitted to a school and others are excluded. the commission text allows discriminatory access and i am not persuaded that amendment fifty one resolves the problem.
it is important to be very firm about the preservation of freedom of speech which is usefully stressed through a specific mention which is added by the parliament.
somebody of a different sexual orientation should be allowed to use any hotel room that they want to and stay at any hotel when they go on holiday.
we were founded on human rights and anti discrimination.
people of a different religion should not be discriminated against.
that is why in the own initiative report last year i asked for a single directive to cover all areas that were not yet covered.
now eventually we have got to the situation where we are debating an anti discrimination directive a possibility at long last that we might push through anti discrimination legislation on all grounds not covered disability age religion or belief and sexual orientation.
let us just hope that we get that large majority.
everyone should be treated equally across the
i know you have been doing a lot of work on this yourself.
eu. a wheelchair user or a guide dog user should have free access anywhere within the european union.
please vote for it.
this is the bedrock of the european union.
i urge all of you who are thinking of voting against this please do not.
i have campaigned on disability and age for many years but i was convinced quite some time ago that we could not leave anybody behind. we could not just go forward with a disability directive and then an age directive because i thought sexual orientation and religion would be left behind.
all older people should have the right to have access to health care whatever their age.
so i urge you even now to vote in favour and allow the council of ministers to do the right thing to make sure that it is absolutely proportionate and subsidiarity is respected.
a determination that there would be no hierarchy of oppression.
and to their voters as to why you believe some people should be treated differently from others that they should not have equality.
i stand here fortunate as a gay man and if i chose to be gay is it not interesting that one obviously therefore chooses to be heterosexual?
fighting for equality not just for gay men and lesbians and bisexuals and transgender people but for people on the basis of their age their religion their belief their gender anything that is perceived to be different that could be used to take equality away from them.
i believe the litmus test of any civilised society is not how we treat a majority which interestingly is made up of so many different minorities.
the litmus test of any civilised society as people listening in the visitors' gallery will tell you is not how we treat the majority but how we treat the minorities and in that instance some member states are sadly lacking.
shakespeare said rather brilliantly the evil that men do lives on the good is oft interred with their bones'. look to yourself imagine if it were you who was different who had a different religion a different belief a different age a different sexual orientation would it be right
that you should have your human rights taken away from you?
the answer has to be no'.
now is the opportunity for the house to do that which is right and just and good.
mr president the chair of our committee mr deprez spoke for so many of us in this house when he said that this was not a report about sectional interests or a report of the left but a report by mrs buitenweg which was full of thoughtfulness sensitivity and compromise where people were concerned.
the rapporteur has created a report which does not bind business or over regulate business as we have seen in the long journey of the two previous directives the race equality directive and the employment directive which i would say to mr weber has not bound or over regulated businesses in germany or in my country.
in the united kingdom we have the equality and human rights commission who recently supported the case of a european citizen sharon coleman the mother of a disabled child who brought a case against her employer for disability discrimination by association something fundamental to mrs buitenweg's report.
the european court of justice ruled in her favour and as a result of this judgement we have extended rights to britain's carers people who care for disabled people.
i would say to people in this house that you will grow old you may be disabled and you may care for somebody with a disability.
that is the reality for tens of millions of european citizens.
it is not about sectional interests or concerns about who is going to dominate one other section of society.
i would say that this report is not left or right it is about fundamental rights.
as mr cashman said in his speech people out there before the european elections will look to see whether we protected fundamental rights without doing anything bad to our businesses and our economy.
mr president i will be voting against this report and this proposed directive for three reasons.
first of all i dissent from the belief that the eu rather than national governments should be legislating on these issues believing every member state is best placed to decide if it needs to strengthen such legislation.
if ever there was a subsidiarity issue this should be it.
my second reason is that the new offence of harassment has the alarming prospect of in fact curbing the rights in respect of freedom of speech and freedom of religion particularly for those who proclaim a christian message.
christians preaching the gospel particularly in a public place to people of other faiths who take offence and who claim it is an assault on their dignity could be breaching this law.
the third reason is that the measures within the directive are disproportionate and inadequately balanced.
it compels the christian printer for example to accept an order to print material which offends his religious beliefs whereas he should be free to conduct his business according to his conscience.
without essential balancing mechanisms this directive will become an instrument which in fact creates discrimination.
i strongly believe that no person should ever be discriminated against on the basis of his or her religion or belief disability or age.
this help can come from us in different shapes and forms.
the court made clear that data about european travellers cannot in general be retained for years by canadian authorities.
but now with the entry exit system we would actually retain for years the personal data of canadians coming to europe i. e. we would be doing exactly the same to our counterparts and i really do not see how we could explain that to our canadian partners.
therefore we have requested an independent legal analysis of the implications of the court decision which we will publish tomorrow.
that study says clearly that the entry exit system poses serious problems because the data retention periods are far too long and not justifiable and because rules on access by law enforcement agencies are not specific enough and i think that we as parliament should not adopt eu legislation that will likely be struck down again by the court.
of course we know that this debate is crucial for us but we do not agree to change the order.
we should be careful because the negotiation on these amendments might delay the adoption of the decision and we might consider not engaging in lengthy and complicated negotiations in the framework of this decision.
parliament suggests also an increase in the ceilings of the eu guarantees to be used by the bank.
this should contribute to the efforts of the european union partner countries to finance efforts to implement climate related policies.
we ask the european investment bank to develop a stronger capacity for assessing and reporting on development environment and the human rights aspects of their projects.
therefore the eu has to make an additional effort to support the economies of the countries of the western balkans and north africa especially in these times.
with this decision we shall start elaborating the common eu position with the council.
any increase in the ceilings means effectively a nine contribution to the guarantee fund but on the other hand this is an extremely good instrument creating leverage and attracting more funding institutions to the eib projects.
the monitoring and reporting systems guarantee more transparency better access to information and increased possibilities for the stakeholders to give their opinion at an early stage of the consideration of the projects.
at first glance this is a very difficult decision because it is extremely sensitive for the member states.
this would not involve substantial costs whereas the benefits of achieving the eu's objectives in these regions would be very high.
during that period we discussed many ideas and tried to listen to the opinions of many stakeholders. we held dozens of meetings both outside and within parliament between the political groups working on the text.
now we have a draft decision to be voted by parliament which provides for more coordination between the european investment bank and the other eu bodies for more transparency and stakeholder participation and for a better monitoring and reporting system a decision that will improve the visibility of the impact of the bank's activities.
the draft decision preserves the very successful profile of the european investment bank as a top rated financial institution and investment bank. at the same time being an eu institution the european investment bank is expected to contribute better to the goals of the union through its specific means and tools.
mr president the european investment bank uses public funds from the nations of europe to guarantee loans either to financial intermediaries or to the ultimate recipients in seventy four countries.
in particular in the case of eib lending which is meant to go to smes via intermediary banks the public still does not know where the money is going.
when compared to other international institutions performing similar functions the eib's reputation is not one of transparency and the public disclosure policy still does not cover appraisal reports.
mr president up to now the professionals who run the european investment bank have operated the bank with a culture of financial probity.
however what this report aims to do is to dilute the professional culture of the european investment bank and expand its remit to encompass a series of policy objectives.
the commissioner made this very clear.
a relaxation of the commercial criteria on which the bank has operated up to now will inevitably result in the guarantee being called on.
now this will cost the taxpayer and i have to question once again whether the hard pressed taxpayers of europe and the uk really want their money to be used to advance purely political objectives outside the eu?
mr president when guaranteeing loans of this kind for projects inside or indeed outside the eu we need to remember that they are not without financial consequences.
while it may seem like a good way of making eu money go further we must be very careful to ensure that the appropriate risk management controls are in place to manage these kinds of loans and the balance sheet implications they pose.
as parliamentarians we need to be fully aware of the liabilities to which we are exposing the eu budget and therefore member states' budgets.
oversight systems and transparency will be crucial when using the balance sheet for leverage as has been shown by the financial crisis where banks were not always fully aware of the extent of their liabilities.
we must learn the lessons from the finance industry and be sure that we know precisely what the eu is guaranteeing and what appropriate levels of democratic oversight are being maintained.
fundamentally we must be sure that those individuals at the eib and the commission who are tasked with managing these financial products and making such wide ranging decisions have the appropriate expertise to manage what they are dealing with.
we need to spend it carefully.
it is a very stable financial institution and all the amendments that we tabled were targeted at keeping its stability on the market.
we are committed to working on measures to boost cyber security in the financial sector and in particular we support facilitating the exchange of sensitive information between banks to prevent cyber attacks while of course protecting the use of personal data.
we are committed to working with the parliament and council to take this forward.
it provides an excellent overview of how much has been achieved since the financial crisis and clearly identifies much of what remains to be done.
it should now be possible to support a better use of bank capital and liquidity resources across the banking union.
these are just some of the areas that struck me in your report.
the backstop should be fiscally neutral over the medium term. there is another set of issues which will not be part of the current negotiations on the banking package because global guidance is needed there.
in the case of the prudential treatment of sovereign debt we would like to better reflect the risks involved and we also hope with the differentiated capital treatment to incentivise diversification of exposures across sovereigns.
the current solution credit lines between national governments and the esm is not sufficient to overcome the banks' sovereign vicious circle and do away with the bailouts.
the recommendations of the report concern all the pillars of the banking union the supervision resolution and deposit insurance and it looks into a variety of issues.
we also have legacy issues to deal with such as non performing loans.
the report has become a helpful stocktaking exercise before handing over to the colleagues leading the legislative discussions.
however there are also broader issues in this report which will not be dealt with in the current commission banking package.
i am especially thinking of the fiscal backstop. it needs to be done and actually there is agreement to establish it.
i hope the messages will be taken into account and will feed into legislative debates.
what i intended to do with this report was to give a critical overview of the challenges we are facing while not pre empting the outcome of the legislative discussions on edis as well as on the new banking package that amends crr crd brrd and the single resolution mechanism regulation.
this has to be balanced with the need to keep some kind of safe asset to retain a benchmark for price formation on our financial markets and not to procyclically penalise financially fragile governments. to conclude let us not forget that with the uk out of the union all member states except denmark are committed to joining the euro in the future so we should encourage those countries to see the benefits of joining the banking union and of benefiting through banking union membership from participation in the decision sharing mechanism between home and host countries that we have established for the resolution of banks.
we need to balance the creation of a level playing field between small and large banks and the transparency and comparability of capital requirements with the need for risk sensitivity and the possibility to use specific information from banks that can bring useful refinement to the model.
is mps actually solvent?
and we need finally to step up and address the too big to fail' problem by introducing bank structural reform that actually separates commercial and investment banking.
otherwise we are set to repeat history and it will be the ordinary decent families of europe who will again pay the price.
in recent months we have seen and heard the first real test of the new rules on bank recovery and resolution in the italian banking crisis.
we need to address the bad loan problem by ending the savage austerity agenda championed by this commission;
if not it does not qualify for public assistance.
to the importance of having a robust and stable financial system while at the same time ensuring that banks are able to play their role in lending to the wider economy to support growth and jobs.
it is also committed to fostering self regulatory solutions by looking at the possibility of setting up an eu trust mark for e commerce to complement a code of online rights.
we can do this by harmonising rules for example on consumer contracts and we can streamline procedures to make them less costly for businesses conducting cross border transactions for example concerning waste management fees copyright levies vat reporting obligations and invoicing.
we will explore how best to improve adr in the eu and come forward with a proposal for an eu wide online dispute resolution system for e commerce transactions by.
alternative dispute resolution as mentioned in the report can provide low cost simple and quick redress for consumers shopping on the internet.
as part of the consumer protection committee national authorities regularly cooperate to stamp out unlawful practices on the internet.
many of the points raised are addressed in various policy domains including the digital agenda.
earlier this month we launched an in depth study of e commerce.
we can also make it easier for citizens and companies to interact with national administrations by setting up one stop shops.
we will make consumers' lives easier by enforcing eu legislation in particular in relation to the services directive which prohibits geographical discrimination against consumers.
addressing the obstacles that citizens face in the online world can go a long way towards turning the promise of an integrated internal market into a reality.
so what can we do to fill the gaps in the internal market and make e commerce work better? the commission will reflect carefully on its response to the report.
the commission also monitors the e commerce market through its yearly consumer markets scoreboard.
at the beginning of two thousand and eleven a communication will be dedicated to the evaluation of the application of the e commerce directive and will reflect on its better enforcement.
two thousand and twelve we also intend to ensure that consumers in mass claim situations across the eu are able to obtain compensation. proposals for adr and collective redress are also planned for the end of. two thousand and eleven knowing that public authorities are working together to keep a close watch on the internal market is a foundation for creating confidence.
most consumers have first hand experience of the internal market when shopping online.
the commission has set up a dedicated group of commissioners for the digital agenda to ensure a joined up approach to policy making on digital issues.
first we need to make life easier and simpler for both consumers and businesses.
in addition the council will be concerned with the review of the late payment directive which is now being prepared and which is to ensure that small and medium sized enterprises are paid in time for all business transactions.
especially the smes.
secondly conclusions from the commission communication entitled towards world class clusters in the european union implementing the broad based innovation strategy'.