Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, 'I carry daily in my heart with sorrow the suffering of the peoples in Palestine and Israel, due to the ongoing hostilities. The thousands of dead, wounded, displaced, the immense destruction cause pain, and this with tremendous consequences for the little ones. I encourage the continuation of negotiations for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and throughout the re
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Cohesion policy 2014-2020 – implementation and outcomes in the Member States (debate)
Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, if I were to give the report a title, I would say 'no one touches cohesion policy', and yet we have done so. It's not an ATM, remember, it's not an emergency fund. In addition, we have also used it for purposes other than cohesion between regions: We have financed war industries, we have financed multinationals such as Big Pharma. Finally, I would like to mak
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Energy performance of buildings (recast) (A9-0033/2023 - Ciarán Cuffe)
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, no more fake news! The media campaign orchestrated by the brick lobbies and the right has painted it as a law aimed at removing homes from Europeans and Italians. The truth is that the so-called "green case directive", approved today by the European Parliament, will help the weakest families and groups. Yes, because making our homes more energy efficient means l
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Council decision inviting Member States to ratify the Violence and Harassment Convention, 2019 (No. 190) of the International Labour Organization (debate)
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, violence at work is not just an individual and organisational issue; This is an urgent political issue that requires our attention and action. It affects our communities, perpetuates social injustices, hinders economic growth and undermines the very fabric of our society. This is also a European issue: the objective of a world of work free from violence and hara
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Council decision inviting Member States to ratify the Violence and Harassment Convention, 2019 (No. 190) of the International Labour Organization (debate)
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, first of all I must thank Mrs Franssen and Mrs Peter-Hansen for the work they have done and which I am honoured to replace today. It is an honour to speak before you today because all the Member States of the European Union have supported the objectives and played a key role in the adoption of ILO Convention 190, the international labour organisation. In the tri
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Preventing work-related deaths following the Florence tragedy (debate)
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, 'Deaths at work are the fault of wild immigration'. It's not my words. It is the title in large letters that stood out in an Italian newspaper in the aftermath of the accident in Florence. That shameful title is the testimony of a political class that hides its responsibilities: This applies to Italy, but also to Europe. More than 3000 people die at work every y
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War in the Gaza Strip and the need to reach a ceasefire, including recent developments in the region (debate)
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, what is happening in the Gaza Strip is unprecedented: almost 30,000 people have died since October, the vast majority of them civilians and above all thousands of children; more than 70,000 people were injured and then millions more were displaced; most of the hospitals and schools destroyed by the bombs. No recent conflict has come close to such a massacre. Isr
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Multiannual financial framework for the years 2021 to 2027 - Establishing the Ukraine Facility - Establishing the Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (‘STEP’) (joint debate - multiannual financial framework revision)
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, STEP: A regulation that should have given a vision of European industrial policy and financed it with fresh resources to invest in strategic technologies. STEP: step in Italian. But more than I step forward to me it seems like a leap backwards: investments in bulk, from fossil fuels to CO2 storage, from GMOs to pharmaceuticals. All this using the resources of co
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Implementation report on the EU LGBTIQ Equality Strategy 2020-2025 (continuation of debate)
Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, stressing the importance of this strategy is important, voting on this report is important. But we must make the strategy operational with a timetable and sufficient resources across Europe. Above all, we must not let our guard down in the face of those who, like the right-wing governments, such as the Italian government, the Meloni government, normalize with
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Empowering farmers and rural communities - a dialogue towards sustainable and fairly rewarded EU agriculture (debate)
Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, it seems that everyone in this House has become a champion of farmers' rights. I'm pleased with that. I wonder, though: Where were they in 2020, when we, the bad environmentalists, proposed to reject the trade agreement with the Mercosur countries? Or: Where were they in 2021, when we asked for more resources for farmers and less for large farms under the new
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner, our young people can no longer do that. They grow up in a system that promises them great successes, provided, however, that they study hard and acquire more and more skills. Years of sacrifices made by themselves and their families. One traineeship after another, without a shred of perspective and, above all, without adequate compensation. Food, a
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Plants obtained by certain new genomic techniques and their food and feed (debate)
Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, the proposal on genomic techniques in agriculture does not respect the precautionary principle, because it exempts most of these techniques from the risk assessment procedure. It also violates the principle of transparency and thus the right of citizens to know what they find on their plate. We will have huge problems in terms of contamination of organic farm
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EU Action Plan: protecting and restoring marine ecosystems for sustainable and resilient fisheries (debate)
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the numbers are clear: 58 % of Mediterranean stocks are overfished; 25% of Europe's coastline has lost habitat. Yet here there are those who deny the problem and make the false champion of fishermen. That's enough! It is enough to say this to the right, which, on the one hand, tells fishermen that they are not responsible for the depletion of our seas, but on th
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Fight against the resurgence of neo-fascism in Europe, also based on the parade that took place in Rome on 7 January (debate)
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, every year in Rome hundreds of post-fascists gather to commemorate the deaths of Acca Larentia, also victims of the ideological delirium that marked a generation of red and black extremists in the 1970s. So hundreds of fascist posts renew their status as comrades in the street: It happens every year, it's true. Now, however, in Italy there is a party that comes
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Children first - strengthening the Child Guarantee, two years on from its adoption - Reducing inequalities and promoting social inclusion in times of crisis for children and their families (joint debate – International Day of the Rights of the Child)
Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the plan for implementing the Child Guarantee, published in the spring of this year, highlights in black and white the serious situation in Europe and also in my country with regard to child poverty and social exclusion. The numbers cringe: 34% of children in the South do not have access to so-called key rights, inability to attend nurseries, ea
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Type-approval of motor vehicles and engines with respect to their emissions and battery durability (Euro 7) (A9-0298/2023 - Alexandr Vondra)
Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, I voted against the Euro 7 regulation, which should have been an opportunity to reduce the impact of road transport emissions on air pollution and our health. Every year in the European Union 70 000 people die prematurely from nitrogen dioxide emitted by cars, 140 per day in Italy. But instead of following public health experts, Parliament preferred to listen
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Establishing the Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (‘STEP’) (debate)
Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, too little and too late: STEP is not the answer to the American recovery plan, it is not a sovereignty fund, but it is certainly a theft of funds for less developed regions, such as the Mezzogiorno of Italy. The proposal inflicts an unprecedented blow on cohesion policy, giving governments the power to reprogramme the resources of regional funds at will, in d
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Need for a speedy adoption of the asylum and migration package (debate)
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, ten years ago, the then President of the Commission, Mr Barroso, after observing the endless row of coffins in Lampedusa, said: Europe cannot look the other way. Ten years later, Europe did not create a European search and rescue system. Rescuers are criminalized. To authoritarian regimes, such as the Tunisian one, we give money to kill migrants in the desert. W
Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner, almost 20 years ago asbestos was banned in the European Union, yet it continues to be an emergency across the continent. In Italy alone there are 40 million tons that have not yet been reclaimed. This lack of remediation poses very serious risks for citizens and workers who come into contact with asbestos. I think of our firefighters in the firs
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Improving firefighters’ working conditions (debate)
Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, our firefighters are exhausted and I am not exaggerating. We listened to their cry of alarm, I would say of pain, a few months ago in the Work Committee. Today, in this plenary session, Parliament is asking the European Commission why these workers must be recognised as being at high daily risk in the face of measures that are essential for the
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COVID-19 pandemic: lessons learned and recommendations for the future (A9-0217/2023 - Dolors Montserrat)
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the report is weak and watered down and I voted against it. We talk about approach One Health, but austerity policies that impose cuts on public health are not condemned. The EU has given billions of public money to big pharmaceutical companies for research, but it has not revoked their patents. We do not demand the publication of contracts on vaccines, yet it i
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Protection of workers from extreme heat and other extreme weather phenomena resulting from the climate crisis (debate)
Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, we regularly find ourselves here calling for the activation of the Solidarity Fund following fires, floods affecting the North, the South and the centre of Europe. Colleagues, do we all agree that prevention is better than cure? Yes, yes. I ask you this because in this Parliament there are those who, with the help of a certain press, not all of them, deny the
Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner, the eyes of young Europeans are on us. They want concrete answers. It is intolerable that our children should study for years, making sacrifices after sacrifices to enter the world of work prepared, only to discover that there is a price to pay: one traineeship after another, without protections, without clear prospects and, what is worse, unpai
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the Porto Social Forum has just ended, where we discussed the state of social rights in Europe. Governments like Portugal demonstrate political will and leadership in responding to the social crisis with concrete measures. I am thinking of the tax incentives that led to an increase in the rate of workers covered by collective bargaining by 117 perc
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Social and economic costs of climate change in light of the floods in Emilia Romagna, Marche and Toscana and the urgent need for European solidarity (debate)
Madam President, we are mourning the victims of the flood that hit my country. Climate change deniers have missed an opportunity not to be silent, but at least to learn from the recent disaster. In this House there are colleagues who are sceptical about the connection between floods and the climate crisis. In Italy a minister not only expresses doubts, but argues that already in the past our count