Women are more vulnerable than men to the dangers of smoking. One explanation is that, in general, women are smaller than men and have smaller hearts and narrower coronary arteries than men.

Some answers to this question are provided in a Commission report, which takes stock of policy measures in favour of small enterprises as a follow-up to the European Charter for Small Enterprises.

The Commission also monitors developments in the business climate for small enterprises with reference to the yearly report on the European Charter for Small Enterprises. The report for 2002 will be coming out in the next few days and will assess the action to help small businesses that the Member States and the Commission have said they are taking.

I have to tell you that this hush-up conceals bankrupt companies, a great deal of human misery and several suicides, which is why the report by the chairman of the Committee on Petitions, Mr Gemelli, which Plenary adopted today, calls for the powers and efficiency of the Committee on Petitions to be enhanced so that petitioners can obtain justice promptly and avert irreparable damage, for example to the environment or cultural monuments.

In the Committee on Petitions we have a large number of petitions which relate to the particular directives concerned in this important report.

Any residual overcapacity of segments will have to be eliminated through a permanent fleet renewal regime; the segmentation of fleets will be decided in relation to the identified critical stocks, taking into account the MAGPs III and the different situations in the Member States; small-scale coastal fishing vessels which may be exempted from the reductions are defined as non-trawl small-scale vessels of an overall length of less than 12 m; increase in the aggregate capacity expressed in tonnage (GT) and power (kW) are not counted against the objectives in respect of these small-scale fisheries vessels if such increases are the res ...[+++]ult of improving the safety of navigation at sea.