What Clara spoke about.

Mr President, the historical mission of the EU is to accomplish the unity and peace of European peoples without one ruling over others, because we had unity and even some peace before in the form of empires, and we had some self-government in the form of this unity and war. It is our responsibility to make sure that both unity and diversity, both peace and liberty, prevail (the speaker used an uno

Mr President, this Union has yet to prove that our commitment to the rule of law and separation of powers is robust enough to allow Member States to use AI-powered biometric surveillance. Maybe not society will ever be advanced enough to be trusted with such power. All the exceptions introduced by the Council open the door to hard-core authoritarianism. Maybe it takes a Catalan to realise, but you

Mr President, the teaching profession is in crisis because we are failing to attain and retain enough talented and motivated professionals. In my country, in the 80s, we set up a language immersion model to normalise Scotland after the years of persecution under Franco’s dictatorship. This very ambitious project attracted thousands of bright young graduates, especially women, that were the bedrock

Madam President, the problem with Orbán’s routine blackmail of the EU institutions for his political agenda is not only that he delays and waters down much-needed policies, such as the Ukraine Facility, and it’s not only that the citizens of Hungary see their rights violated. The main problem with the cowardice of the Council when it comes to applying Article 7 once and for all in the face of blat

Madam President, any hate speech legislation risks criminalising those minorities or dissidents that it seeks to protect, and so it risks becoming a tool to protect the dominant groups of society. The elaboration of this report, I’m afraid, is a prime example of this. Renew has entrusted Ciudadanos to prepare this report. It’s the party that was born to suppress Catalan identity and language, a xe

Madam President, I have many things to say about today’s debate, and in fact I had prepared a very nice one-minute speech in Catalan. But again, I cannot speak in Catalan in this Chamber. (The speaker spoke in a non-official language) It turns out that Spain had promised that the official status of Catalan was going to be bolstered at the General Affairs Council of yesterday. But hey, Spain broke

Mr President, the mass surveillance of a democratic movement should make the government behind it fall. But not in Spain, where the government refused to clarify its role in the Pegasus, and they targeted 65 Catalan elected officials, activists, lawyers, journalists and their families, that we know of. But not only has Pedro Sánchez not shown any willingness to hold those responsible accountable,

Mr President, our Treaties proclaim that this Union is founded on the respect for human rights. But what do these grand statements mean at the end of the day, if citizens cannot uphold their rights as European citizens before the states that breach them? They are – as we say in Catalan, the language that is still forbidden in this Parliament – (Phrase in Catalan), that is they mean nothing. Collea

Mr President, this Parliament’s recommendations to Spain were crystal clear: conduct a full, fair and effective investigation into all spyware cases. These include spying on Catalan MEPs and our teams and many other Catalan politicians and activists. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe recently urged similar demands to Spain. To date, no one, no one in the Spanish Government has be

Mr President, loopholes in Russian sanctions are yet another by-product of the EU’s double standards and lack of spine. Just three examples: the illegal issuance of golden visas to Russian investors continues in Spain. Exemptions to Hungary are granted as a response to Orbán’s blackmail, and sanctions with close ties to Russia have given Azerbaijan the resources for an ethnic cleansing of the Arme

Mr President, representation is the core virtue of parliamentary democracy. But how can anyone take this Parliament’s duty to represent all European citizens seriously when so many European languages, so many millions of citizens, have their language still banned? Well, now it seems that for contingent political necessities in Spain, the EU institutions will at last start discussing making Catalan

Mr President, if you’re worried about our borders, you need to pay more attention to Morocco and Spain. Last week, two Spanish lawyers from the International Commission of Jurists were prevented by Moroccan authorities to enter Western Sahara to assess the human rights situation in that occupied territory. The Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs had no problem with it. No wonder – this is only one

Madam President, it would be good to make progress towards European election rules that are cleaner, more equal and promote a more continent-wide political debate. But beware of attempts to use this reform to take the power of representation even further away from the peoples of Europe, especially from us, the peoples forced to live as minorities in our Member States. We are not represented in the

Mr President, it is certainly a problem that the EU Presidency is occupied by a government that is democratic only in name – a country that puts dissidents in jail, spies and represses political opponents, prosecutes its minorities and savagely violates immigrants’ human rights. Such a country should never preside the Council. Beyond Hungary, this applies to Spain. It would be a shame to have Pedr

Madam President, efforts to improve our anti-corruption framework are welcome, of course, but when will we tackle the political misuse of anti-corruption laws turned into lawfare to repress dissidents? Spain has a widespread problem of corruption that starts right at the top at the head of the state. And yet, instead of actually combating it, they use the pretence of fight against corruption to pr

Madam President, we’ll hear a lot of fearmongering today, but the EU should take responsibility for the violations of human rights that take place on its borders day after day, and for its partnerships with third countries. The Melilla massacre resulted in disappearances and deaths. You want to talk about pushbacks? Well, Moroccan police entered Spanish land, dragged lifeless bodies out of the Spa

Mr President, when we talk about China and human rights, we talk about individual and collective freedoms. We talk about repression of minorities, as in the case of the Uyghurs, and the right to self-determination, as in Taiwan. But Europe will not get respect until we first do our own homework. Europe has a choice. It can act like a big Switzerland or be a bad copy of China. We can be a Union gro

Madam President, when we say that the European Union is a club of states instead of a true union and that it has democratic deficiencies because of that, we refer to the use of the European Council – that is absent right now – as the shield to protect Member States’ shameful actions from the scrutiny that they merit. Despite the EU institutions’ grandstanding on fundamental rights and democratic v

Madam President, I would like to raise a point of order on the basis of Rules 7 and 8. Specifically, I would like to draw your attention to President Metsola’s failure to comply with the President’s obligations to assert my immunity and protect the independence of this Chamber. Yesterday, I was illegally arrested in Barcelona, and I requested President Metsola to defend my immunities. I have recei

Madam President, Madam Commissioner, whether the interest—rate hikes are helping to control inflation is open to discussion. What is certain is that the ECB is giving a huge subsidy to banks. As Spanish banks reach historical profits, I think it is timely to remember the bailout of 2012. Your Vice-President, Luis de Guindos, was then the Spanish Economy Minister. He promised that the bailout would

Madam President, the spyware scandal has shown of how little importance our fundamental rights are for some governments – in Hungary, Poland, Cyprus, Greece and Spain. They have not only violated the right to privacy, but also the right to freedom of thought. Pegasus, Predator and whatever spyware comes next are used by democratic governments to treat political dissidents like dangerous terrorists

Madam President, nobody really cares about the rule of law in Spain. No matter how much you fuss about it, the Partido Popular certainly don’t care. They have forced this debate to score political points at home, even though they themselves shamelessly instrumentalise Spain’s institutions over and over again. Under their watch there have been illegal police operations, friendly judges that look th

Madam President, I just want to reply to lies that we have heard a few minutes ago. They referred to my status and they referred to the supposed persecution of Spanish in Catalan schools. Both are lies. I participated in a government that organised a referendum and that doesn’t please the Spanish authorities. I have always defended myself in the courts of law that have asked me to defend myself. A

Yes, my words cannot be translated because they were in Catalan. Millions of European citizens are being treated, even in this Parliament, as second-class European citizens – we’re second class, yes. And in the meantime, Spanish MEPs come to this microphone and speak about diversity and how languages unite. No, this is cynicism and it’s intolerable. The truth is that the European Union underpins t

(The speaker spoke in a non-official language)