misclassified/meps_speeches_with_translation.csv huggingface dataset:
Speaker: Damian BOESELAGER (Germany — Volt)
Political group: Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance
Date: 2020-11-24
Debate: Situation of Fundamental Rights in the European Union – Annual Report for the years 2018-2019 (debate)

  Damian Boeselager (Verts/ALE).   – Mr President, I have a point of order regarding the deletion of an amendment that refers to the powers of the European Parliament of being the only competent authority to waive the immunity of its Members.
The report we are about to discuss addresses the EU elections in 2019. These have been somewhat incomplete because some of our Members were not able to take their rightful seat in this House: a House that is protected and independent. Oriol Junqueras is one of these Members. Our amendment deplored that he is not present in this House with us, urging the European Parliament’s President to recognise the judgment of our highest judicial body: the Court of Justice of the European Union. The EP is to follow the Court’s judgment, even if the national judiciary does not. This is a case of primacy of EU law. Rule 181 of the Rules of Procedure thus does not apply to make this amendment inadmissible.
I am deeply concerned and worried about how technical rules are used for political purposes, and I would therefore like to make a point of order to re-admit our amendment to the report and to have Parliament vote on it.
Speaker: Damian BOESELAGER (Germany — Volt)
Political group: Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance
Date: 2020-11-24
Debate: Stocktaking of European elections (continuation of debate)

  Damian Boeselager,  on behalf of the Verts/ALE Group. – Mr President, first of all let me thank Pascal Durand for presenting this very good report, an ambitious report with very good compromises, I think, bringing together most of the groups. I want to remind everyone in this House that this House already decides on laws that affect 450 million Europeans and maybe potentially many more across the world. I hope that at one point this House will also be able to initiate laws and will field a European government, hopefully. This House is already a beacon of European democracy and I think it’s really important that we try to increase legitimacy and that we try to improve the way we are elected into this House, at all times. I think the report shows ways to do this. 
First of all, I think it’s very important that we set minimum standards to ensure that there’s a trusted process. That means minimum standards when it comes to the registration of a party, when it comes to the registration of this party for the European parliamentary elections, when it comes to internal party democracy about how to field candidates, when it comes to party financing and fraud control, and when it comes to the election procedures at the actual election date. 
Second, and this has already been mentioned by some colleagues, we need to Europeanise these elections. It’s not enough that we all work in our national context to try to put forward European topics. We need to have an actual European debate about European topics and I think there are some ways to discuss this further, as has been discussed for transnationalist Spitzenkandidaten. But we should also try to regionalise and localise the elections so that parliamentarians are closer to their citizens as much as possible, so that people have some people to relate to and to reach out to. 
I think we should not shy away from any of these discussions. We should discuss all the options on the table to be able to improve our electoral procedures. When we look across the Atlantic, I think we can see how important it is to have trusted procedures, especially when it comes to the transition of powers. Let us not waste this legislative chance, let us try to improve the electoral law.
Speaker: Damian BOESELAGER (Germany — Volt)
Political group: Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance
Date: 2020-09-17
Debate: The need for an immediate and humanitarian EU response to the current situation in the refugee camp in Moria (debate)

  Damian Boeselager (Verts/ALE).   – Madam President, I say to the Commissioner: Moria showed it clearly, but we see the same across the continent. We deliberately create suffering and hardship in camps to dissuade people from coming. We try to match their suffering outside Europe by creating suffering on European soil, traumatising people with hardly any shelter, sustenance and medication. I call this the policy of ‘deterrence by systematic suffering’. 
Today, I plead to you for two things. First of all, please help all the people of Moria to travel to communities across Europe who are very happy to welcome them. And second, I plead to you to ensure that something like Moria can never happen again.
I repeat your call, ‘no more Moria’, but I would also extend it. No more Chios, no more Samos, no more camps in general. Don’t finance camps with EU money. Close them all. 
(Applause)
Speaker: Damian BOESELAGER (Germany — Volt)
Political group: Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance
Date: 2020-07-09
Debate: The 2019 Human Rights Annual report - Stability and Security in the Mediterranean and the negative role of Turkey - Situation in Belarus (debate)

  Damian Boeselager (Verts/ALE).   – Mr President, as Chancellor Merkel said yesterday, we cannot look away. We must address the European migration and asylum crisis.
Yes, we must establish security, but what is security? As long as EU countries are closing down their harbours to migrants and refugees, there is no security in the Mediterranean. As long as COVID—19 is being used to create de facto detention camps on the Greek islands, there is no security in the Mediterranean. As long as EU money is being used to fund Libyan coastguards and to circumvent asylum law, there is no security in the Mediterranean. 
Security in the Mediterranean can only be reached by applying asylum and maritime law, by allowing people to disembark after days on freighters and by relocating people out of the camps on the Greek islands. Day by day, we endanger the lives of human beings, of our brothers and sisters, as our Christian Democrat friends would say, but we can change and we can learn from our mistakes.
First, we need to set up a European asylum system that is centred around the right to asylum and around the asylum interview. Second, we must acknowledge that we are a continent of immigration and we must create new channels and new pathways, and create new opportunities for people to enter the European Union. 
(Applause)
Speaker: Damian BOESELAGER (Germany — Volt)
Political group: Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance
Date: 2020-02-12
Debate: Humanitarian situation of refugees at EU external borders (debate)

  Damian Boeselager (Verts/ALE).   – Mr President, two weeks ago we discussed the situation on the Greek islands, and I’m asking myself how much has really changed on the ground since we talked about it. And the answer is: the situation has got worse. We haven’t done anything at EU level to make the situation better. Yes, we still give money, but in the end, the idea of creating a floating barrier to stop people even asking for asylum and the overcrowding in the camps is still so bad that people are protesting now – both the local population and the refugees.
So I would ask us to stop the blame game between the Council and the Commission and act on both sides, as much as we can, to improve the situation on the ground. That means, on the Commission side, triggering the Civil Protection Mechanism today, and, on the Council side, actually accepting minors and refugees, who need our help so badly on the ground. Let us actually act today and not tomorrow.
Speaker: Damian BOESELAGER (Germany — Volt)
Political group: Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance
Date: 2020-02-10
Debate: SMEs and better regulation (debate)

  Damian Boeselager,  on behalf of the Verts/ALE Group. – Mr President, I would like to thank the Commissioner for coming here and talking about this very important topic. I am very happy to hear that you are an entrepreneur and founder yourself. I am as well. I founded a political movement so it was in a bit of a different sphere, but I’m also a huge fan of innovation and competitiveness. I also therefore welcome better regulation, especially decreased uncertainty. We know that especially for smaller businesses and start-ups it’s really hard to keep up if there is legal uncertainty, regulatory uncertainty, so I hope we can get better at that.
But I also see, like my colleague from Renew, quite a boring trend: that we want to weaken competition, or at least, as the governments in Poland and Germany (my own country) and France and Italy have said, and that is exactly the opposite of innovation and competitiveness. So I hope that we can safeguard, with the Commission and Parliament together, the competitiveness of all the small players by not weakening competition.
Speaker: Damian BOESELAGER (Germany — Volt)
Political group: Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance
Date: 2020-02-10
Debate: SMEs and better regulation (debate)

  Damian Boeselager (Verts/ALE),  blue-card question. – I really like your idea of improving digitisation and training for SMEs, also to digitise further, especially since the Data Strategy is coming up. My question here is: where do you see the role of the EU in helping this digitisation to actually get the right set of data, to measure it and to be able to share it and to analyse it?
Speaker: Damian BOESELAGER (Germany — Volt)
Political group: Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance
Date: 2020-01-29
Debate: Urgent humanitarian situation on Greek Islands, especially of children - ensuring protection, relocation and family reunification (debate)

  Damian Boeselager (Verts/ALE),  blue-card question. – I have a very simple question for you, and that is this: are you willing to uphold the right to asylum and the right to have an interview to determine the asylum status?
Speaker: Damian BOESELAGER (Germany — Volt)
Political group: Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance
Date: 2020-01-29
Debate: Urgent humanitarian situation on Greek Islands, especially of children - ensuring protection, relocation and family reunification (debate)

  Damian Boeselager (Verts/ALE).   – Madam President, I would like to say to Commissioner Johansson that as we speak, argue, and also scream here, these children that we talked about are still stuck on the islands and there are no transfers. There are also, at the moment, no more guardians taking charge of their legal cases and they are already traumatised and sick when they arrive. So I’m very happy, Commissioner, that you take first measures and want to improve the situation.
And I would like to point out to the State Secretary that the Member States are blocking any additional, even voluntary, support at this very moment and so I would ask, State Secretary, that you please press for additional steps here. But I also want to bring your attention to a fact that is overlooked, which is that the Member States are even opting out of the current responsibilities that they have under this law that we already have in place. So, my Member State, Germany, is currently declining 70% of the family reunification cases for these children. Which means that we are basically telling them: even though you have family, you are not welcome here, and this is not okay.
Speaker: Damian BOESELAGER (Germany — Volt)
Political group: Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance
Date: 2020-01-15
Debate: European Parliament's position on the Conference on the Future of Europe (debate)

  Damian Boeselager (Verts/ALE).   – Madam President, after listening to this debate, I am even happier that we have a strong resolution in this House, which is basically supporting the future of Europe.
I just want to mention a few points that have been mentioned already to showcase that. We do recognise the problems – and because we recognise the problems, we’re trying to find solutions, and the problems as Mr Verhofstadt has said and also Ms O’Brien and others, lie in all the challenges we face with migration, with our social standards, and so on. We cannot address them fully because we are currently blocked in our solutions. That is why we need this conference to go into the future. The second question about the national interest. Yes, currently, we can’t defend our national interests because national interests are European interests and that is I think important to understand. 
The majority of this House is for the future, and the future can only be obtained if we find a common future for Europe together and that means to have a common vision together that is shared with the citizens, and I hope that with this conference we can go down this path. 
(The speaker agreed to take a blue-card question under Rule 171(8))
Speaker: Damian BOESELAGER (Germany — Volt)
Political group: Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance
Date: 2020-01-15
Debate: European Parliament's position on the Conference on the Future of Europe (debate)

  Damian Boeselager (Verts/ALE),  blue-card answer. – Ms Cseh, there are two elements that we can use to make sure that this doesn’t end up as a talking shop. The first one is that we actually follow up on the outcomes of this debate, so that we have Treaty changes, so that we have procedural changes, so that we go into the regular processes here in this House, and in the other institutions and follow up. The second one is that we don’t only go bottom up as Mr Verhofstad said, but that we also play back our results to the citizens and say, ‘do you agree? Do you think these are good results?’ And only via this accountability, I think will we be able to hold all of us and all politicians accountable.
Speaker: Damian BOESELAGER (Germany — Volt)
Political group: Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance
Date: 2020-01-15
Debate: European Parliament's position on the Conference on the Future of Europe (debate)

  Damian Boeselager (Verts/ALE),  blue-card question. – Ms Charanzová, I am very happy that you mentioned meaningful citizen participation again, and so my question – because this has been discussed a lot here – is how would you see meaningful citizen participation with the maximum amount of people? How would you organise that?
Speaker: Damian BOESELAGER (Germany — Volt)
Political group: Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance
Date: 2019-11-26
Debate: 2020 budgetary procedure: joint text (debate)

  Damian Boeselager (Verts/ALE).   – Mr President, first I have to respond a bit to what Mr Fest said because I think, if you’re not there, it’s hard to be transparent about something if you don’t know it and if you don’t send someone to actually represent your Group. So I think that would help in terms of transparency. 
I was also, let’s say, more in an observer role for this first negotiation. For me it was very interesting because I learned three things. The first is that the new set—up of Parliament with Renew and the Greens also pushing priorities can lead to a budget which is actually better. I’m very happy with the outcome in that direction. 
The second is that a big deal is possible, and I also want to thank the rapporteurs for their great work in having a good negotiation strategy and working in a proactive and deal—finding way, and also for ensuring that we move from the Commission proposal towards Parliament’s position. So it is positive that we got EUR 400 million on top of that.
The third thing is – and this makes me a bit less optimistic – that the national governments often seem only to care about the bottom line of how much they have to pay and how much they get back into their own pockets. If we now think about this as the prelude to the MFF for the seventh annual framework, I think we have to step up our game because the problems that we are facing – and I was in Lesbos a week ago – are so much bigger than what we are currently committing to. We shouldn’t only be thinking about our national budgets, but really about how to fund common solutions to the biggest problems of our time so that we honour the demands of our citizens and that we are actually able to act from a European level.
Speaker: Damian BOESELAGER (Germany — Volt)
Political group: Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance
Date: 2019-09-18
Debate: Presentation by the Council of its position on the draft general budget - 2020 financial year (debate)

  Damian Boeselager (Verts/ALE).   – Madam President, I support my Group’s initiative to honour the Barroso Commission’s promise of committing at least 20% of the budget to climate within the old multiannual financial framework (MFF). Let me remind you that this promise was given even before the Paris Agreement. As it stands, we are falling short of this promise by EUR 3.5 billion. I also strongly support the initiative for using the entire financial flexibility towards young Europeans in Erasmus and the Youth Unemployment Initiative. 
But this discussion is also about something bigger. It’s about demonstrating Parliament’s ambition for the next budget. In the European elections EU citizens have shown us that they expect us to be more ambitious to provide European solutions to the challenges that affect their lives. We need a budget that increases, rather than decreases, the EU’s capacity to act when it comes to climate change, migration, asylum and youth unemployment. For that we need a budget that serves European people across all Member States. We should also increase the financial resources that the EU raises itself, which the Treaties demand we do. 
We need to explain and convince European citizens and our friends in the Council that giving more money to the EU is worth it and that the additional investment is worth it. Let us be confident and ambitious, as the European people have demanded we be, within this budget and the next.
Speaker: Gilles BOYER (France — Horizons)
Political group: Renew Europe Group
Date: 2023-12-13
Debate: One year after Morocco and QatarGate – stocktaking of measures to strengthen transparency and accountability in the European institutions (debate)

  Gilles Boyer,  au nom du groupe Renew. – Monsieur le Président, Madame la Commissaire, nous avons, comme cela a été dit, commencé à répondre aux différents scandales qui ont touché notre institution l’an passé par une transparence accrue de nos relations avec les représentants d’intérêts: les représentants d’intérêts privés, mais aussi, nous l’avons vu, les représentants d’intérêts publics, qu’ils agissent à l’intérieur de l’Union européenne ou à l’extérieur.
Nous avons aussi tenté de mieux définir les cas de conflits d’intérêts des députés, de mieux les identifier et surtout de mieux les résoudre, ce qui n’était pas toujours le cas par le passé. Enfin, avec le rapport de la commission INGE, nous avons tenté aussi de limiter les ingérences extérieures sur notre travail de la part de puissances étrangères. Nous avons enfin essayé de réglementer les relations avec nos anciens collègues, en particulier en ce qui concerne l’accès aux locaux et les tentatives d’influence sur notre travail.
Comme vous l’avez dit, Madame la Commissaire, il manque une étape importante, une étape que nous avons entreprise: c’est la création d’une autorité d’éthique européenne, indépendante et extérieure à nos institutions européennes. Vous savez que notre Parlement avait voté une proposition ambitieuse, il y a deux ans, avant même que ces scandales ne surviennent et qu’ils ne viennent abîmer notre image. Vous savez que nous considérons la proposition de la Commission comme très insuffisante à ce stade. Je sais que les discussions interinstitutionnelles ont commencé et que l’équipe du Parlement aura l’occasion d’essayer de réviser cette ambition à la hausse. Nous souhaitons aller plus loin et dans l’intérêt de tous.
Speaker: Gilles BOYER (France — Horizons)
Political group: Renew Europe Group
Date: 2023-11-21
Debate: Proposals of the European Parliament for the amendment of the Treaties (debate)

  Gilles Boyer (Renew).   – Monsieur le Président, chers collègues, nous devons sans cesse nous interroger sur nous-mêmes et je dois dire que nous serons tous jugés sur notre capacité collective à prendre des décisions rapides, concrètes et efficaces. En ce sens, le travail accompli ici est particulièrement précieux. Nos processus de décision trouvent leurs limites à 27. Nous éprouvons ces limites tous les jours dans notre fonctionnement. Et si l’Union européenne devait s’élargir, elle devra aussi se réformer, pour inventer un nouveau fonctionnement adapté. Et la fin de l’unanimité, mes chers collègues, sera le symbole d’une Union intégrée sachant faire émerger l’intérêt collectif pour le bénéfice du continent et des citoyens européens. Ce sera une Union qui, après avoir consacré beaucoup d’énergie à s’occuper d’elle même, saura faire bloc pour affronter, unie, les défis du monde.
Speaker: Gilles BOYER (France — Horizons)
Political group: Renew Europe Group
Date: 2023-10-04
Debate: European green bonds (debate)

  Gilles Boyer,  au nom du groupe Renew. – Madame la Présidente, Madame la Commissaire, nous avons placé ce mandat sous le signe du pacte vert et de la transition écologique, et cette transition nous devons la financer. Et avec ce nouvel instrument, les obligations vertes européennes, nous créons un outil supplémentaire au service de ce financement. Un standard ambitieux avec des critères stricts, qui permet à celui qui les respecte de se proclamer objectivement vert ou soutenable dans le respect de notre taxonomie européenne. 
C'est un outil qui sera gagnant pour l'émetteur de dette et gagnant pour l'investisseur. L'institution ou l'entreprise qui émettra de la dette pour investir pourra choisir ce nouveau standard, sa dette sera plus attractive et les conditions de mise sur le marché seront meilleures parce que la demande en produits verts est en augmentation constante. De son côté, l'investisseur aura l'assurance que ces fonds seront mis à profit pour financer des équipements ou des projets compatibles avec le pacte vert et la taxonomie européenne. 
Attractivité pour les émetteurs, transparence pour les investisseurs, c'est l'équilibre que nous avons défendu. Nous avons défendu un standard ambitieux, volontaire, qui pourra faire école au niveau mondial et être utilisé, y compris par des émetteurs d'obligations extra-européens. Et nous voulons ainsi limiter au maximum le greenwashing qui repeint trop souvent en vert des projets qui ne le sont pas. Et nous voulons apporter une pierre décisive au financement des investissements verts.
Speaker: Gilles BOYER (France — Horizons)
Political group: Renew Europe Group
Date: 2023-09-11
Debate: Amendments to Parliament’s Rules of Procedure with a view to strengthening integrity, independence and accountability (debate)

  Gilles Boyer,  au nom du groupe Renew. –Madame la Présidente, suite aux scandales de 2022, il était de notre devoir d’améliorer nos règles internes. C’est le sens de la proposition de la Présidente Metsola et des groupes politiques, et c’est le sens de ce rapport, auquel mon groupe est fier d’avoir contribué. Merci à notre rapporteure, Gabrielle Bischoff, pour son travail.
Ce rapport permettra des vérifications plus strictes sur les déclarations et sur les conflits d’intérêts, sur les relations avec les représentants d’intérêts privés, mais aussi une plus grande transparence sur le patrimoine des députés. L’Europe nous regarde et nous devons démontrer mercredi, au moment du vote dans cet hémicycle, notre capacité à tirer les conséquences de ces événements désastreux pour l’image de notre Parlement et pour l’image de l’Union européenne.
Au-delà de cela, mon groupe appelle plus que jamais à la création d’une Haute Autorité d’éthique européenne indépendante, commune à l’ensemble des institutions de l’Union européenne, qui nous aidera à établir et à mettre en œuvre des standards harmonisés pour toutes les questions d’éthique et de déontologie. C’est plus que jamais nécessaire et mon groupe y veillera.