Fuldstændigt Forhandlingsreferat

Torsdag den 13. december 2012 - Strasbourg

11.4. EU's menneskerettighedsstrategi (A7-0378/2012 - Rui Tavares) (afstemning)

– Before the vote:

  Rui Tavares (Verts/ALE). - Mr President, I would like to dedicate this vote on a report that strives for coherence and consistency in our human rights policy to the life and memory of Albert Otto Hirschman, who died this week at the age of 97. He was a development economist and worked on the Marshall Plan in Europe and in Latin America. His work was highly relevant for this Parliament. He was born in Berlin and he escaped Nazism. He helped many people escape Nazism, working with Varian Fry in Marseille. They saved people like Hannah Arendt, Max Ernst, André Breton and Heinrich Mann. Coincidentally, he was the brother-in-law of our illustrious predecessor Altiero Spinelli. Hirschman was Spinelli’s main supporter in the United States when in the 1950s Spinelli was striving for a transnational chamber of elected MEPs.

(Mixed reactions)

I think that our colleagues on the far right who actually owe their salaries to the work of Altiero Spinelli and are being elected should listen!

(Applause)

I also think that we should strive …

(The President cut off the speaker)

– Before the vote on paragraph 43 (oral amendment)

  Rui Tavares (Verts/ALE). - Mr President, this amendment was the object of a consensus by the political groups after a proposal by Stavros Lambrinidis, our Special Representative on Human Rights. It reads: ‘Calls on the establishment of a Women’s Interparliamentary Euro-Arab Convention’.

(The oral amendment was accepted)

– Before the vote on paragraph 70 (oral amendment)

  Rui Tavares (Verts/ALE). - Mr President, this is the last oral amendment: ‘Asks the Commission to produce and make public a list of EU companies which have been directly complicit in human rights violations in their dealings with authoritarian regimes’. This is not a list of all companies, but only those which have directly violated human rights.

  Kinga Gál (PPE). - Mr President, what we have as paragraph 43 is the text which the rapporteur just read out. What he read before is under paragraph 70, so they are mixed up. This is a problem because the PPE Group is in favour of paragraph 70, in which the establishment of a Women’s Interparliamentary Euro-Arab Convention is mentioned. I think there is a mistake here. That is paragraph 70.

Mr President, I think that the rapporteur has confused the two paragraphs. Paragraph 43 is about the procedure for making a list of EU companies. Could we please clarify which one is paragraph 43?

  Rui Tavares (Verts/ALE). - Mr President, our colleague Kinga Gál is absolutely right. There was a mix-up in the list that I had, so I would suggest – to make it very clear – that we have this vote first on the list of companies which violate human rights, paragraph 43. Then, if we could repeat the vote on the women’s interparliamentary EU-Arab convention, paragraph 70. So, first a list of companies, then the women’s interparliamentary meeting. I apologise for my confusion.

(The oral amendment was accepted)