Welcome
We are pleased to welcome to the official gallery the parliamentary delegations from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine, along with representatives of the democratic opposition in Belarus.
The delegation from Georgia is led by the Speaker of Georgia's Parliament, Mrs Burjanadze.
These delegations have come to Brussels to take part in the conference on the European Neighbourhood Policy to be held in the European Parliament today and tomorrow.
We warmly welcome them and are delighted to welcome them to this joint debate.
(Applause)


Voting time
Before starting the votes, Mr Schulz has asked to speak on a point of order.
on behalf of the PSE Group. - (DE) Mr President, I have asked to speak on behalf of my group for two reasons: firstly, for one very general reason - on account of yesterday's events here in this House - and secondly, because I have a request in connection with the forthcoming votes.
I should like to deal with the general reason first, however. Mr President, would you please issue a statement about yesterday's events on behalf of my group, particularly about the very specific case, the case concerning our ushers here in this House. I wish to say: it is every man and every woman's absolute right to be able to express their opinion in this House. We are also accustomed to seeing posters and T-shirts and to everyone being free to express their opinion here. Anyone who is in favour of a referendum is entitled to express this in this House. What we experienced yesterday, however, is not acceptable in the context of this freedom of opinion.
(Applause)
We can argue here about what individual fellow Members are doing here, how they conduct themselves, whether or not they shout. One thing is not acceptable, however, and that is that the ushers in this House, for whom - and I speak on behalf of all my fellow Members, of almost all Members, I believe, in this House - I have the greatest personal and professional respect...
(Applause)
What is not right - and I also speak specifically on behalf of my fellow Member Mr Daul and, I think, also, on behalf of Mr Watson, Mr Cohn-Bendit and Mr Wurtz - is that ushers in this House are physically and verbally assaulted in a heated debate: ushers, who have been discharging the duties of their office, and were described yesterday as the Gestapo and SS. This is a disgrace, Mr President! I think the House should express its total solidarity with the ushers.
(Sustained applause)
Ladies and gentlemen, the ushers in this House are not private individuals; they are officials of this Parliament. They are the long arm of the President in this House. When an usher is physically assaulted here, when an usher is punched here, only one thing is possible: the Member who has done this must be identified! The offence must be reported to the police and his or her immunity must be removed immediately!
(Applause)
Mr President, on behalf of my Group I should like to address the Union for Europe of the Nations Group, particularly Mr Crowley, although I do not know whether he is here, with regard to the votes - that is, the votes on the resolutions on extremism, the EU/China human rights dialogue, Montenegro and the ban on land mines. The UEN Group is a co-signatory to these resolutions. As long as no official apology is forthcoming from the UEN Group for yesterday's incidents in this House, I see myself, as representative of the Socialist Group in the European Parliament, being unable to continue to cooperate with the UEN Group.
In particular I refer to the resolution on combating the rise of extremism in Europe. It was pointed out in the third recital on behalf of the UEN Group, among others, that we condemn racism in Europe and we do so with reference to the European Charter of Fundamental Rights. This should have been signed here yesterday and was shouted down by a large proportion of the members of that group. Please withdraw your signature under this joint resolution. You cannot adopt a resolution relating to the Charter of Fundamental Rights, which you all hooted down yesterday!
(Applause and uproar)
Yesterday you expressed the fact that you do not want this Charter of Fundamental Rights. Remove your signature! Our cooperation with you is finished!
(Applause)
Ladies and gentlemen, I have this stack of paper in front of me, which gives you an idea of the amount of work we still have to get through this morning. Some of my fellow Members have nevertheless asked to speak. I do not wish to start a lengthy debate. Mr Daul has asked to speak, as has Mrs Muscardini, so I will let them speak for one minute and no more.
(Noise)
on behalf of the PPE-DE Group. - (FR) Mr President, I will be very brief. I was in the chamber at nine o'clock this morning awaiting an apology for the personal attack on the ushers. As one was not forthcoming I made my statement at nine o'clock this morning, and I am not going to make it again.
on behalf of the UEN Group. - (IT) Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I have been sitting in this Parliament for more than 18 years, and in this Parliament, with my fellow Members, I have always defended human and civil rights and my speeches in the Chamber and questions and motions for resolutions bear witness to this.
I will not take lessons from Mr Schulz because Mr Schulz is not the repository of the truth, either in this Chamber or outside it. Democracy, Mr President, is a value that must be defended, and this includes showing respect for individuals and groups. I feel embarrassed for Mr Schulz because he has said things he must feel ashamed of.
The UEN Group is behind all Parliament's officials, and particularly the ushers, who on many occasions this year have tried to defend the right to speech and expression that has so often been denied by a few majority groups in Parliament. For this reason, Mr President, the UEN supports the ushers, the UEN believes in fundamental rights, and the UEN calls for respect for duties and respect for people. Mr Schulz, take your own signature off!
Ladies and gentlemen, are there any other group chairmen or women here who would like to speak? I deliberately say 'group chairmen or women' because I am not going to let all 785 members speak on this matter.
I cannot see any group chairmen or women, so this item is closed.
(Applause)
I will simply add something that a poet once said, which is that the most beautiful hymns are sung when bombs are falling. I think the one we heard here yesterday was wonderful, for that very reason!
(Applause)
Mr Salafranca wishes to speak on another matter.
(ES) Mr President, yesterday there was a brutal terrorist attack in the city of Beirut, in which the Lebanese general François el Hajj was killed.
As the House is aware, Mr President, Lebanon is linked to the European Union by an Association Agreement. At the mini-plenary session in Brussels, Parliament adopted an important report granting macro-financial aid to that country and, to take an obvious example, a delegation from the Committee on Foreign Affairs, made up of Mrs De Keyser, Mrs Gomes, Mr Belder and myself, visited the country last week, so that, like various ministers from the Member States, we could express our solidarity with the cause of peace, for understanding, harmony and reconciliation in the country.
I would ask the President to pass on our support to Prime Minister Siniora in response to this brutal terrorist attack and our unquestionable and irrevocable commitment to the cause of a sovereign, democratic, stable, viable and peaceful Lebanon.
(Applause)
Mr Salafranca, I think the applause from your fellow Members shows quite clearly that the assembly supports your declaration. It will be passed on.
The last request to speak is from Mr Pirker, on a point of order, and then we will proceed to the vote.
(DE) Mr President, this does not really have anything to do with the debate, and I actually wanted to say this immediately after the last debate: it is simply unbearably cold in this House. It may have been quite good yesterday because feelings were not running so high there as they would perhaps otherwise have been. However, in general it is simply too cold and I wanted to suggest, in connection with the debate on the Free Trade Agreement with Korea, that we try to achieve a reasonable temperature perhaps once with a Korean air conditioning system, should we not manage to do so with our European one.
I think we have covered everything we wanted to cover before launching into the vote.
The next item is therefore Voting time.
(For results and other details of the votes: see Minutes)


3. (


Resumption of the session
I declare resumed the session of the European Parliament adjourned on Thursday, 26 November 2009.


23. Budget support to developing countries (


Communication of Council common positions: see Minutes


Impact of EU development policy (short presentation)
The next item is the report by Filip Kaczmarek, on behalf of the Committee on Development, on increasing the impact of EU development policy.
Mr President, the report which we will be voting on tomorrow is important for the future of the EU's development cooperation. Why? In October, the European Commission will present a communication on future European Development Policy Priorities. Towards the end of the year, the Commission will also present a legislative proposal for a future instrument for development cooperation, and in Busan, South Korea, there will be another High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness. The Busan Forum is in fact one of the Polish Presidency's development priorities. This is, therefore, a good time for Parliament to present its own expectations of future EU development policy.
The basis for discussion on this subject and for our report is the Green Paper on inclusive growth and sustainable development, presented by the European Commission last year. Within the Committee on Development we achieved a wide-ranging political consensus, and we agree with many of the proposals put forward by Commissioner Piebalgs and the Commission as a whole. We believe that development cooperation must concentrate more on outcomes and concrete results than has been the case so far. However, at the same time this does not mean that we want to convert indicators and measures into absolutes. We should avoid a situation where our attention is focused on 'easy' countries or sectors, those in which it would be easy to obtain results and not those where the need is greatest. We should not forget aid for those hit hardest by poverty and those who have had the bad luck to be born in countries which are very badly governed.
On the other hand, it is worth remembering that 72% of poor people throughout the world do not live in the world's poorest countries, but in middle-income countries. Development cooperation cannot be interrupted as soon as a particular country emerges from being one of the poorest nations to being a middle-income country.
We also support efforts aimed at improving coordination. We support a proper division of labour and utilisation of those qualities in which individual Member States excel. We support the EU's proposal to focus more on certain areas, such as renewable energy and agriculture. These are areas of relatively high potential in developing countries. We would like these priorities to be targeted at those hit by poverty and at their needs, for the methods of realising these priorities to allow for small and medium-sized enterprises to become involved, and for them to promote activities at local and regional level.
Two further particularly important subjects are sustainable development and climate change. However, the subject which provoked most discussion within the Committee on Development was the term 'inclusive growth'. I believe that we should not be afraid of this idea. For me, personally, it means growth which is on the side of the poor, in the interests of the poor, growth which will lead to a reduction in social inequalities. In other words, growth is to be accessible to the poor, not just to those who are most active. We realise that this is not an easy task, that social inclusion requires the accomplishment of many difficult tasks: access to labour markets, better labour market standards, the creation of social insurance systems and tax systems. These are very difficult and important tasks. The Committee on Development has repeated many times and on many occasions that when we formulate new tasks or principles we should never forget our earlier obligations. This is the case on this occasion as well.
If we wish to rise to new challenges, old promises must be kept. This is a question not only of moral responsibility, but also of our credibility in the eyes of external partners. This is why an increase in the effectiveness of development aid cannot be a pretext for decreasing or freezing the amount of aid for developing countries. It is very important to be consistent in our earlier promises.
Thank you to all my fellow Members, to the experts and advisers and to the Secretariat of the Committee on Development for their help in drafting this report.
Mr President, many thanks to the rapporteur. The process of achieving aid effectiveness is an extremely important one for development assistance and I believe that the principles set in the Paris declarations are exactly the right ones that make our development assistance more effective.
However we should not confuse the idea of aid effectiveness with value for money. Development does not come overnight. The number of schools that you build does not say anything about the quality of education taught in those schools. We should not fall into the trap of demanding short-term results which might not even support our long-term goals and long-term development. Development takes time. I am very sorry if that does not fit into everybody's election plans, but that is life and that is how development works, so we should not forget to look at the long-term perspective.
(ES) Mr President, the current situation of crisis obliges us to look again at the Union's development cooperation work and to make a serious commitment to improving our efficacy and achieving more and better results in the battle against poverty.
The European Union is, without any doubt, an excellent platform for greater and better coordination of EU and Member State aid. Now we have the opportunity to redouble our efforts in terms of aid efficacy, and we know that official development aid alone will not be enough to eradicate poverty.
I would like to point out some of the challenges that lie ahead for European and international development cooperation, and which will require us to act, and will probably demand a rethink of our priorities.
The first of these is development cooperation after the Millennium Development Goals. We should start thinking right now about what new international cooperation objectives must be set in order to end poverty.
The second thing is to seek new and innovative funding mechanisms. We know today that official development aid is necessary, but it will not be enough to meet our objective of wiping out poverty. We believe a tax should be introduced on financial transactions.
Thirdly, we need to achieve truly and completely integrated planning in the battle against poverty and the battle against climate change.
Fourthly and finally, we should think about how to continue cooperation with emerging countries, while at the same time strengthening our work with the least-developed countries.
(CS) Mr President, I wholeheartedly support the idea of giving the European Development Fund a place in the overall EU budget, and I welcome the flexible position outlined by Mr Kaczmarek, and not only with regard to the emphasis on better control of resources, transparency and the efficiency of public administration in countries receiving development aid. However much aid is granted for development, it will come to nothing if it disappears into the jaws of corruption. I also share his fear that it would be problematic to concentrate on a very limited number of safe countries, to the detriment of countries in which the security risk is greater, since this is the very reason why aid might be needed more in these countries.
In conclusion, I should like to emphasise the warning given in paragraph 84 of the Kaczmarek report. It relates to farmland acquisition, above all by Chinese investors. This may pose a serious threat to local residents, above all with regard to their food supplies and the development of agriculture.
(PT) Mr President, there is a central question to this debate, which is, it must be said, very pertinent: the question of consistency, or, rather, the question of inconsistency between the proclaimed objectives of development assistance, and the policies and specific actions applied in practice.
On one hand, the importance of agriculture, industry, local natural resources, training and the transferral of knowledge is acknowledged as they are essential factors in promoting the emancipation and free and autonomous development of less-developed countries.
On the other hand, there are those who continue to defend the deregulation and liberalisation of world trade and the financial system, which divert resources from these countries, compromise possibilities for development and worsen their dependence and subjugation. The importance of public health and education systems in combating poverty is recognised but, in practice, they are placed under immense pressure by the so-called structural adjustment programmes, as advocated by the International Monetary Fund, which dismantle these and other essential public services.
Property rights often still take precedence over public interest and the health of entire populations; this is so-called raw materials diplomacy, which conceals undisguisable neocolonial visions. These are just some examples of this blatant inconsistency.
(SK) Mr President, the modernisation of European development policy must necessarily be based on an assessment of existing ways in which European Union development policy works. I firmly believe that the European Union must make much greater efforts to support the working and business practices of people in developing countries so that they can gradually make the transition from basic, inefficient work activities, or sometimes from the inactivity caused by a lack of employment opportunities, to work which benefits society and provides a reasonable salary to those who perform the work.
We also need to make sure that business regulations in these countries are straightforward and that their tax systems are simple and fair. We must try to teach the citizens of these countries to catch fish, rather than handing them the fish on a plate, as the saying goes.
Member of the Commission. - Mr President, I should like to thank Mr Kaczmarek very much for this report. I think it fits very well into the current debate that we are having at this moment and the reflection on the future policy. We have just finalised the public consultation on the Green Paper on development policy. It produced 240 written responses, and we have also received a lot of other input from different stakeholders. The findings from this can be seen on the website.
Having reflected on the findings of the consultation, the Commission is currently drafting a follow-up communication, and it will be adopted in mid-October. Looking at this, we are very pleased to see that there is very little divergence in our thinking on how to increase the impact of EU development policy. It is clear that we agree on the vital role that doing more to support inclusive and sustainable growth could play in this endeavour.
For instance, Parliament supports the suggestions in the Green Paper of focusing EU development on energy and food security. We also agree with Parliament, as expressed in your report, on the vital importance of good governance for poverty reduction, including the importance of fighting corruption and having tax systems working well. We note and share your concern for utmost transparency over the use of aid to incentivise political reform, and the Commission, like Parliament, values the role played by local and regional authorities and of course national parliaments as well.
Furthermore, we want to see continued action in the field of human development, notably health and education. The Commission agrees with Parliament that broad measures of poverty should be applied rather than narrow income definitions. It is for this reason that the Commission anchors its support around the achievement of the MDGs, as these provide the best available measure of poverty in the broader sense.
We agree that we need to improve effectiveness and transparency. We are all pleased, I think, to see the last European Council confirm the commitment of the Member States to increase ODA levels to at least 0.7% of GNI in 2015. As regards the importance of strengthening policy for the coherence of development, I am obviously very pleased with your paragraph 49, calling for a linkage between external policy and the internal policies on migration.
On differentiation we agree that the aid should be targeted at those countries where the need is the greatest and where we can make the biggest difference. However, that does not mean that we will only focus on so-called easy countries and engage in a risk-averse strategy. On the contrary, we consider support to fragile states to be a vital element of development policy. We also noted with interest the remark and the suggestions by Parliament regarding the assessment of the risks of working with and through the private sector and on avoiding a return to tied aid, as well as on innovative financing mechanisms. We also saw your reference to gender equality and support for the most vulnerable sectors of society in developing countries.
In short, I believe that the European Parliament and the rapporteur Mr Kaczmarek will find that many ideas in the report will also be in the future communication. I would like to thank you very much for your contribution.
The debate is closed.
The vote will take place on Tuesday, 5 July 2011.
Written statements (Rule 149)
The European Union is the world's biggest provider of development aid. Last year, the EU and its Member States donated a total of EUR 53.8 billion in aid. Of this, the European Commission contributed around EUR 10 billion.
The problem with aid is getting it to its proper destination. So that we are able to avoid corruption, aid needs to be as transparent as possible, both in the donor and recipient countries.
Parliament is proposing the creation of an electronic database for aid. It will help to increase the transparency of development cooperation projects and their general approval. The database will need to be made as clear as possible. The public must be able to monitor the delivery of aid, and what it achieves, in real time on the Internet.


Debates on cases of breaches of human rights, democracy and the rule of law (announcement of motions for resolutions tabled): see Minutes


Texts of agreements forwarded by the Council: see Minutes


Statement by the President
For the first time, the past week has seen the death of a soldier on an EU operation under the European security and defence policy. Sergeant Gilles Polin, a French member of the European Union Force (EUFOR), was killed on active duty after he had inadvertently crossed the border between Chad and Sudan in his all-terrain vehicle. Another French soldier was wounded in the same incident.
Together with the Sudanese authorities, EUFOR is now investigating how such a tragedy could have occurred. I should like to express our deepest sympathy to the late sergeant's family and to all his relations.
May I remind the House that the purpose of the EU operation in Chad and the Central African Republic is to protect the refugee camps that have been established in the areas adjoining these countries' borders with Sudan as a consequence of the conflict in Darfur.


Documents received: see Minutes


Europeana - the next steps (short presentation)
The next item is the short presentation of the report by Helga Trüpel, on behalf of the Committee on Culture and Education, on Europeana - the next steps -.
Mr President, Commissioner Kroes, Europeana is to be the major digital cultural project of the European Union. What does Europeana mean? It is a digital library, a digital museum and a digital archive for our European cultural heritage. The intention is to provide access for all citizens to this digital resource, not only within the European Union, but throughout the world. The Europeana project was started in November 2008 and 1 000 cultural institutions contributed to its establishment. It has 150 partner organisations. So far, around 6 million works from our European cultural heritage have been digitised. By June 2010, there are expected to be 10 million digitised works and by 2015, the figure is expected to reach 15 million.
As you can see, this is a very ambitious undertaking, and it is very important for the European Union. Up to now, it has been funded by the eContentplus programme and by the Member States. However, so far, the rate of digitisation has varied considerably between the Member States. France is leading the way with over 40%, Germany is at around 16%, but many other Member States are much further behind, and this, remember, is supposed to be our joint flagship of European digital cultural policy.
It is particularly important that we understand that there is a public cultural institution, and this is intended, for understandable reasons, to provide strong competition for the Google Book Search legal case settlement, because we do not want our European heritage simply to be entrusted to a monopoly. We want a public resource, in the best European sense, for our European cultural heritage. We also want to retain public influence, because that means that European citizens can also have genuine political influence.
There is no problem in respect of works that are no longer subject to copyright or that are in the public domain. It is much more complicated when it comes to orphan works, in other words, works that have not been released from copyright, but for which it is very difficult to trace the rightful holders. It is another matter again when it comes to works protected by copyright. If Europeana is to one day also hold works protected by copyright, there will need to be a payment for private downloads, because otherwise, we will destroy our cultural added value on the cultural markets.
Therefore, what I want to achieve from a political point of view is, on the one hand, quick and effective digitisation while, at the same time, retaining copyright, because that is the only way that we will be able to maintain the cultural diversity of the European Union. Thus, we need consensual solutions for orphan works and a very thorough search to find out who the rightful copyright holders are. From a political perspective, the absolutely key issue for me when we now discuss the post-Lisbon strategy, the EU 2020 strategy, and when it comes to modernising our economy, developing the digital society, the knowledge-based society and cultural diversity, is that Europeana must also be partly financed from this EU 2020 programme, with the involvement of the Member States, of course. It must be a joint European project. We therefore also need a 'join Europeana' campaign to hopefully find additional private sponsors. We must make it clear, however, that we need to raise awareness among our citizens and, above all, among young people, that this resource exists. Many people still do not know about this. That is the huge task that we now have to face together.
(PL) Mr President, Europeana is an undertaking of crucial importance, which can make the cultural heritage of Europe available to the whole world. As we all know, it is not only a library, for it is also a virtual museum and archive. I wish that each one of us in this Chamber could say that the works of great national creators, such as in my case Chopin, Marie Curie née Skłodowska or Słowacki, could be available on the Internet. I would like to mention three key factors. Firstly, in the case of Europeana, we cannot allow a reduction in quality. This is something about which we should be careful during this project. Secondly, it requires a solution to the matter of copyright in the case of orphan and out-of-print works. Thirdly, I have a huge request to Mrs Kroes to speed up digitisation in Member States, if we want to be proud of this great flagship project in the future.
I would like to thank Mrs Trüpel for an excellent report.
(RO) As rapporteur for the opinion of the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy on the report 'Europeana - the next steps', I welcome the fact that this report has been finalised and I hope that its recommendations will be adopted by the Commission. During the debates on this topic so far, a whole range of subjects have been discussed, such as IT structure, management of the Europeana site, free access to library information, the need to standardise the digitisation process and the problem of media coverage for the website. Some of these subjects feature in the report. This fills me with the hope that we have managed to achieve an exhaustive report.
However, I hope that the debate will continue in the future on certain aspects, such as managing the site, funding methods and, above all, organising the site in the form of a single database and not a portal. I hope that the recommendations specified by the European Parliament, along with the Commission's reflections on the issues mentioned above, will be turned into a successful project. Europeana can become a successful project for the European Union as long as it is built on the EU's values and ideals and provides the focal point for European cultural information.
(FI) Mr President, to begin with, I would like to thank Mrs Trüpel for this excellent report. I have known her well from the committee for five years now, and I know that whatever she does, she does with true care and professionalism, and this is one good indication of that.
This is another kind of project that we need in Europe, because the European Union is regarded as a community of values, but it is also a strong cultural community. We have 27 different Member States which have an extremely rich and varied culture.
If, at a time when information highways are increasing in number, we can make information more easily available to people, then this is the kind of European richness which is worth investing in and seeking resources for. In this way, all the small countries will also have the opportunity to promote their own unique and special cultures. Once broadband is extended everywhere through the work of the Commission and the Member States, the principle of equality will be realised in the supply of cultural services, in electronic libraries, museums and archives.
(PL) My political group, and I personally, are not specially in favour of extensive programmes and institutions or of creating entities which go beyond what is needed. However, Europeana is not such an entity. It is, in fact, something very important, especially because we live in times of a visual, and not a written, culture. This means, as Neil Postman has shown in his superb book Amusing Ourselves to Death, that the visual culture is devaluing public debate and making us poorer citizens. This means, in turn, that if a project has a chance of improving the habit of reading, it has a chance of improving the mind of the citizen, and in this way, the European Union would contribute to a strengthening of the quality of the education of its citizens and the way they function, and this would mean that in the Member States, those citizens would be more active and wiser and would be better citizens.
(EL) Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, we are debating an initiative which may prove to be a real treasure for the Union and I should like at this point to thank the rapporteur, Mrs Trüpel, once again for the exceptional report which she has submitted.
We are referring to an electronic cultural depository of the European States which will allow access to primary cultural information, and I should like to emphasise at this point that the success of Europeana will depend on the format which we ultimately decide to give it, by which I mean that we do not want a Europeana which is a copy of electronic platforms that already exist, such as Google or Wikipedia.
We want a serious and reliable source, the information in which is of scientific importance and value, a source in which intellectual property rights are protected and the seriousness of the content of which is safeguarded. I think this is guaranteed with the amendments tabled and the debate on the subject that we held in the Committee on Culture and Education. Of course, what it cannot ultimately safeguard is the interest on the part of the Member States in making use of this tool to promote their culture.
This is where we all need to develop our role, to explain how important this project is to our national governments and the citizens of the Member States, so that this project has an impact and we can all make use of it in the best possible way in the medium term.
(DE) Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, first of all, I would once again like to offer my sincere thanks to Mrs Trüpel for the truly excellent report that we are debating today.
I believe that it is a splendid project that will be making Europe's diverse cultural heritage available to the people of Europe and throughout the world in a digital online library. However, it still requires further joint efforts on our part to actually make this project a success. A significant prerequisite for this is, in the view of my group, the free - and that means also, as far as possible, cost-free - access to our cultural heritage via Europeana.
In the joint discussions, we have reached a good compromise, which protects the interests of authors of protected works on the one hand while, at the same time, providing the necessary free accessibility, and I would very much like the Commission to also take account of and adopt these proposals in future.
Another prerequisite is that the Member States become increasingly aware of their responsibility. For my own country, this means that it is not acceptable for Goethe to be available in Polish and French, but not in the original German. In this regard, we must all jointly call on the Member States more strongly to once again provide the appropriate financial resources to make Europeana a real success on this level as well.
(RO) Bearing in mind the benefits offered to the European Union's citizens through having access to Europeana, I believe that existing digital content must be made available in all the European Union's official languages. I also think that it is of paramount importance to offer people with disabilities access to Europeana's digital content. With this in mind, not only is a suitable format required, but also access which is adapted to their needs.
We recommend that the European Commission ask digital content providers to certify the security of the websites linked to Europeana. Last but not least, I believe that it is important to provide a sustainable system with regard to funding and developing the Europeana project. Commissioner, please also say a few words to us about the revision of the directive on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society.
Vice-President of the Commission. - Mr President, honourable Members, and, of course, especially Mrs Trüpel, we are absolutely fascinated by your report. We welcome it. I think that indeed 'Europeana - the next steps' is just a start of a very challenging adventure and it shows, by the way, the strong political support for the further development of Europeana as a common access point to Europe's rich and diverse cultural heritage in the digital age.
So I would like to thank Mrs Trüpel, the rapporteur, for the work she has done and also give her my compliments for the branding, since the branding itself is already unique: 'Europeana' - you do not need to explain what it is all about.
The Commission can also support the alternative motion for a resolution, which has the agreement of the main political groups in Parliament, I have been informed.
It is an ambitious project and again, I repeat, it is the start. It aims to make digitised books, newspapers, maps, museum objects, audiovisual material and sound archives from across Europe available on the Internet. That is essential to ensure access to culture in the digital age. It is not only what Mr Migalski said: something that makes us better citizens. Well, let us wait and find out, but, anyhow, it gives an opportunity to be more happy, for enjoying culture is, in most cases, enjoying happiness, so to speak.
It is Parliament's report that rightly underlines that there is also an economic component. The digitisation and the online accessibility of our cultural heritage will benefit different sectors of activity: think of education, research, tourism and the media.
The Europeana site is the result of an unprecedented collaboration between European libraries, archives and museums. At present, as was rightly mentioned by Mrs Trüpel, it gives direct access to 7 million digitised objects. Again, this is just a start and let us go for it. More can be done and more needs to be done. The Parliament report highlights different areas for Europeana and for the related policies where progress must be made in the coming years.
The development of the site depends, in the first place, on the input from Member States who should do more to digitise their cultural heritage and to make all digitised objects available through Europeana. I am glad that Parliament joins the Commission in asking Member States to make fast progress in doing so. The sooner the better.
Parliament underlines that Europeana should not just give access to public domain works, but should also include material that is still in copyright. Indeed, there is an urgent need - and that is my answer to Mrs Ţicău - to find workable solutions for bringing out-of-print works online, for dealing with the issue of orphan works (works for which it is impossible to locate the rights holders). Failing to do so bears the risk that Europe will lag behind within a few years from now, in particular, compared to the US.
At present, the Commission is carrying out an impact assessment on a possible legal solution for orphan works at European level and we are discussing what could be done, but if you do not mind, I will come back to that when we talk of the digital agenda, for that is one of the issues that we have to touch upon.
An enhanced version of Europeana will be launched later this year, and is expected to give, by then, access to more than 10 million digitised objects. The site will be further developed in the years thereafter. Parliament rightly points out that for the success of Europeana, it is a must to increase the awareness of the site both among cultural institutions, who could contribute their digitised content, and among the general public. Special attention should be given to younger people, rightly mentioned by you, an extremely important part of our population, who could be targeted through the schools.
The Commission is fully committed to continuing work on the development of Europeana and the policies related to it and that will be a key area of work in the European Digital Agenda. It is anyhow worthwhile to fight for it.
The debate is closed.
The vote will take place in two weeks' time, at the next part-session in Brussels.
Written statements (Rule 149)
Europeana, the European Digital Library, faces many challenges today. The success of this pan-European undertaking is far from being assured. Firstly, because until now, Europeana has contained, principally, works coming from just a few of the most active countries. Secondly, these are not contemporary works, which would attract the greatest interest, but older ones which are in the public domain. I would like to draw particular attention to one aspect of the Europeana project which, in my opinion, is of crucial significance for its success - financing. The process of extending digital collections is very expensive and will take many more years. Meanwhile, Europeana is only guaranteed financial resources up until 2013, as part of a project financed partly by the European Commission and Member States, and also by private sponsors. I think it is essential to ensure stable sources of finance as part of the new Financial Perspective for 2014-2020. European funds in the form of grants made to individual cultural institutions in Member States should encourage them to be more effective in the digitisation of collections. At the same time, compulsory digitisation targets should be introduced, which Member States would have to meet in a specified time. Only consistent realisation of a 'carrot and stick' approach will ensure that Europeana becomes an attractive portal of great interest to readers and researchers, and not a digital attic used for the sentimental storage of old junk.
Our intention is for Europeana to be a brand new project devoted to European cultural values and not an alternative to Google's book digitising project. Europeana, which is a library, museum and digital archive rolled into one, must promote a single European heritage, offer a credible source of information and enable Member States to add content in a formal, structured manner.
Europeana must not turn into a portal like Wikipedia where anyone can input text without it being verified beforehand. This practice obviously produces numerous mistakes in the content posted there. In this regard, we could create a special section on this site specifically where users can have discussions with each other, without offering them the chance to amend the cultural content posted on the site.
It is important for us to focus attention on the Europeana site's graphical presentation, on raising its profile and making it accessible at a time when its current design is not very user-friendly and may contribute to a loss of public interest. Based on the considerations mentioned, I support the motion for a resolution tabled by the Group of the European People's Party (Christian Democrats) as an alternative to the current option put forward in the report so that we can help create a valuable portal, which is relevant in terms of the information the public will find there.
Ladies and gentlemen, one of our fundamental duties nowadays as politicians and citizens is to preserve our European cultural heritage for future generations. Europeana is one of the leading projects in this area, helping to speed up the processes for digitising cultural heritage in each individual Member State. However, cultural and legal problems associated with the mass digitisation of books, including those currently held by European libraries, still remain to be overcome. Copyright and legislation governing it in Member States pose one of the biggest challenges Europeana faces. Competition with Google also spotlights numerous issues which will have to be resolved. In this respect, every possible resource needs to be found to support national libraries, museums and archives so that the Europeana project can become a true reflection of the wealth and diversity of Europe's cultural heritage. During the debates in the Committee on Culture and Education, I suggested that the European Parliament should have certain controls over the project, but I realise that, based on current rules, this is not possible. Nevertheless, I want the European Parliament, as the only EU institution whose members are directly elected, to be able one day to exercise its control over European initiatives. Thank you for your attention.