Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-05-14-Speech-1-032"
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"en.20010514.4.1-032"2
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"Madam President, it is customary in this House to congratulate rapporteurs at length and I often think that this is something of a waste of time when we have so few seconds at our disposal anyway. Surely it is axiomatic that rapporteurs do their work well? However, I should like to make an exception for Mr Maaten. Because this report proves that if one plays an active role as a rapporteur and hence also takes consultations with the Council and the Commission very seriously and makes a point of getting people together around a table, one can actually succeed. That is of course also dependent on the Commission and the Council. That is why it is gratifying that we can present this example at the end of the Swedish Presidency. In fact you could take this report into the schools and say: Look, this is an example of the way in which a European directive can be produced through consultation between the Commission, the Council and Parliament. I wish that were the case on more matters.
Now to come to the point. I have been in politics for quite a time and when I first took part in framing legislation on limiting advertising and on warnings on cigarette packets, it was actually seen as something completely absurd by many of my colleagues. Since then the fight against tobacco addiction and the regular use of tobacco has become universally accepted. Still, there are differences. I remember that on the first occasion when I went to Sweden for a meeting – I still smoked at the time – the smokers were put in a separate room together, where of course it stank terribly. That was where you had to smoke, but it did not taste good at all. Smoking was completely forbidden in the meeting room itself. There was a sign, and I had never seen that before since I came from a culture where meeting and smoking were as it were associatively linked. I now observe that the social pressure on smokers has increased in most countries and that great progress has been made thanks to the campaigns, despite scepticism about them many years ago. The number of non-smoking train compartments must be increased everywhere. More and more we insist on using and meeting in non-smoking areas. Nevertheless social pressure must be stepped up to a point where young people especially do not start smoking, and women to not take up smoking either. It is painful to see that despite the campaigns so many people are still starting to smoke. I experienced first hand that giving up smoking is a lot more difficult than starting. Having said this I hope that the strict regulations that run counter to the spirit of the lobbyists and their interests, will be followed up, and I believe that the measures proposed by Mrs Martens to abolish the subsidising of tobacco growing might give a healthy impetus."@en1
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