What Carles spoke about.

Madam President, President von der Leyen, President Sánchez, in your video message to inaugurate the Spanish Presidency of the Council, you announced ambition and claimed a Europe of people that meets your needs and your demands. Other previous presidencies have expressed themselves in a similar way and we are sure to hear it again in the future. Europe's problem has never been the promises. Europ

Mr President, dear colleagues, I want to start by thanking the great work of the rapporteur, Sophie in ‘t Veld, and the Chairman of the committee, Jeroen Lenaers, for taking on an extremely difficult responsibility. The Pegasus scandal is not about IT, nor security, nor regulation of the radioactive space, it is a scandal that strikes at the heart of our democracy, and the measures we will pass wi

Madam President, Commissioner, the future of Kosovo is international recognition and Europe. The efforts being made by Kosovo society and institutions deserve more of both: more international recognition and more Europe. Unfortunately, there are still EU countries that do not recognise Kosovo. Some of them, like Spain, for reasons that have nothing to do with Kosovo, but with Catalonia. They do no

Madam President, Prime Minister, I have asked to intervene in this debate because I have been waiting for five months for the opportunity to thank you for your speech on the 70th anniversary of the European Parliament. You have given hope to many of us, who are tired of listening to speeches from our European leaders that are so predictable and standardised that they may well have been written by

Mr President, I would like to thank the Spanish PP for proposing this debate on the rule of law in Spain, because this is indeed a very worrying problem in which, by the way, they are an active part. Spanish justice has been in the hands of politicians for years. This includes the Constitutional Court, the Supreme Court and the Court of Auditors. But my gratitude is above all because I did not exp

Mr President, Commissioner, I share the disappointment of the chairman of the committee, Mr Lenaers, but I will be even clearer: there is a boycott from within. Neither the Commission nor the Member States have any real interest in knowing, investigating and acting. On Monday, there will be a mission to Spain, but even today, four days before, the members of the committee do not know who they will

Madam President, I would like to thank the rapporteur, Hannah Neumann, for her excellent report. It was needed, vital and principled, in its analysis and recommendations. But the proposed Team Europe will have to know how to answer uncomfortable questions that might be addressed to them. For example: how can there be a guarantee for human rights defenders if states like Spain disobey the European

Madam President, Madame O’Reilly, the Ombudsman is the last hope for many people whose rights are violated by European states and institutions. Litigation in European courts is not easy and is very expensive. Many vulnerable people and minority groups do not find a way to open the door to European courts. Member States that violate the rights of their minorities find in the Commission and in the P

Madam President, for Iranians who are victims of the oppressive regime of the Ayatollahs, the EU is not just the Commission, Parliament or the Council, it is also the heads of state and government of its Member States. The EU speaks to the world from this Parliament, but so does each European leader with their actions. The intensity of the statements of the European institutions are unquestionable

Mr President, the fact that the EU is the space with the most freedom and respect for human rights in the world cannot justify complacency or make us give up self-criticism. Fundamental rights are violated in the EU. Political dissidents are persecuted, illegally spied on, sentenced to prison, artists sentenced to prison for the lyrics of their songs, states such as Spain which do not apply 61 % o

Madam President, Commissioner, press freedom is threatened by EU Member States that use software such as Pegasus or Candiru to spy on journalists just like they do on dissidents, lawyers and politicians. It is also threatened by the fabrication of evidence by public authorities to attack the reputation of political opponents, which are presented as solid evidence to which the press gives credibili

Mr President, there is a political culture in Europe and in certain countries of the Union which consists of increasing leniency towards human rights violations – a strategic increase. Qatar-friendly Europe is an example of this political culture, as is the lucrative relationship between Spain and the regime of Saudi Arabia. One only needs to see the sympathy and praise of Commissioner Schinas eve

Mr President, Prime Minister, thank you for your inspiring vision on energy, food, freedom, for what it represents for Europe. Slovenia has made an extraordinary journey since it became an independent state, and especially since it joined the European Union. Today it is a model in many ways, and I believe it can help the Union as a whole at a time of very high risks which have been aggravated by t

Mr President, there is growing concern among citizens about the impact of energy prices on their lives, and it does not seem that the European Council agreements can reassure them. General strikes have taken place today in Belgium and Greece, and more will take place tomorrow in France. European citizens have embarked on a long journey towards impoverishment. This is confirmed by the data. For exa

Mr President, money laundering is daily and structural, but we will not defeat it with slogans or with moral superiority over their increasingly sophisticated speeches. We have to start dismantling their arguments one by one to show, through data, that they are not right in the debates where they feel comfortable – immigration, religion, security, taxation, etc. We have to renew our argument becau

Mr President, the Iranian women’s protest is a cry for freedom, for their freedom and for the freedom of the forgotten women of Afghanistan or Africa. We respect the protest for what it is. They rebel against the dictatorship of men who imprison them, bully them, torture them, limit their lives simply because they are women and want to live in equality. There is a common thread that connects this

Madam President, Madam President of the Commission, you have said that this is a battle between autocracy and democracy and you are right, this is the real fight. You recalled President Sassoli’s words that democracy needs to be renewed and described the real threats that come from outside. Unfortunately, you have forgotten about very serious threats from within. You did not have a moment to remin

Mr President, after the case of mass surveillance and espionage in Spain against Catalan politicians, our lawyers, our families and even university professors, this practice and scandal was also happening in Greece. Our colleague Nikos Androulakis was one of the many targets, and I want to express my solidarity. These two governments denied any involvement or simply justified it citing allegedly l

Madam President, Commissioner, the EU’s border with Morocco has been the scene of serious human rights violations for many years, not just now. But what we just saw 10 days ago is hard to forget and should be harder to justify. Sadly, the death of human beings has left the European Union indifferent. The Spanish state justified and thanked the intervention of the Moroccan police, and the European

Madam President, the human rights situation in China has not stopped deteriorating, but the West has not stopped doing business there. The persecution of the Chinese regime against the Uyghur people has been now for years, but we have been looking the other way for too long, despite the accumulated evidence of the serious crimes committed. After the publication of the Xinjiang police files, it is

Mr President, the phone of Jamal Khashoggi's wife was infected with Pegasus four days before her murder. The laboratory that certified Khashoggi’s espionage, Citizen Lab, has just revealed espionage targeting more than 60 people in Catalonia, mostly politicians, lawyers and journalists, and calls it the largest documented espionage case known to date: CatalanGate. Pegasus is used unchecked by auth

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, as we debated the future of Europe, Ukraine had to defend its future after the Russian invasion in a devastating war. You have all understood that Ukraine is struggling to defend its self-determination. The right to exist and freely decide one’s future is a guiding principle of international law. Many EU countries have ratified the International Covenant on C

Mr President, we agree on the need to reform Guatemala’s judicial system, on the criticism of its government, on the need to defend journalists and human rights defenders. However, it is surprising that the case of Bernardo Caal was not included, a q’eqchi social leader who spent four years in prison for an invented case, a case of remotely controlled lawfare from the European Union. Caal committe

...because I have been accused of sharing interests with the Russian secret services, so I have to answer these lies by telling what exactly happened. I say that the person who was accused of being a Russian spy and who was supposed to be the liaison between Putin and the Catalan independence movement with whom I shared a coffee in Geneva for five or ten minutes, was actually the Barcelona Chamber

Madam President, there have been accusations, direct allusions that I cannot let go of. This is a lie built by the Spanish intelligence services to attack the independence movement. There is a long and structural tradition of fabricating fake news that this Parliament could investigate if it is truly determined to fight fake news. I could give you a lot of examples that affect me personally: defam