What Catarina spoke about.

Madam President, this is not a discussion about Navi Pillay, who rightfully won the Nobel Peace Prize, and this is not a discussion about Donald Trump, a man who thinks he's above the law – that is not news to anybody. This is a discussion about the victims: the 20 000 children from Ukraine taken by Vladimir Putin; the up to 30 000 people killed in the Philippines by Duterte; the 1 million Rohingy

Madam President, an island, a coastal community, an outermost region. All of these definitions apply to the place where I was born and raised – the wonderful islands of the Azores. So, colleagues, Commissioner, I know the challenges first-hand. Demographic crisis – because young people leave. I myself left at age 18 to go study and I never lived back in the Azores. Difficulties in accessing health

Mr President, colleagues, Commissioner, let me start by welcoming the fact that Dr Gubad Ibadoghlu, the 2024 Sakharov Prize finalist, has finally been allowed to leave house arrest and is now receiving essential medical care that he much needed. But his charges must still be dropped, and he was far from being the only person arrested for political motivations in Azerbaijan. Look no further than th

Madam President, colleagues, the UN estimates a gap of over EUR 1 trillion to reach the Sustainable Development Goals in Africa. Closing this gap would mean achieving something very concrete: female entrepreneurs gaining equal access to investments, daily blackouts becoming a thing of the past, and vibrant communities leading the green transition. It means giving millions of young people a real fu

Madam President, Prime Minister, almost ten years ago I emigrated and times were difficult, but today, unfortunately, times remain difficult and old problems are added to new ones. He talked about housing: With record costs in Europe, his government prefers to facilitate evictions and reward speculation rather than uphold the fundamental right to housing. He talked about migration, we see the expl

Mr President, innocent people were massacred at the Kawel village and our thoughts are with the families of the victims. The violence in Nigeria is driven by disputes over land and water, climate change, poverty, criminality, weak governance, persistent impunity and deep‑rooted religious, ethnic and intercommunal tensions. Together, these pressures have fuelled a brutal cycle of revenge and breaki

Mr President, a few months ago, I stood in the occupied West Bank, and around me was the rubble of what was once a community centre. The family next door were next – their house was next to go. And right there, there was still a children's playground with a shiny blue EU plaque. I wonder how many of those plaques are buried under the destruction of the genocide in Gaza. Israel has destroyed more t

Madam President, colleagues, today in Burkina Faso, critics are silenced, journalists disappear, political parties are dissolved, civil society organisations are suspended. Human rights defenders, judges, students and opposition figures face arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances and intimidation. Proposed legislation to reintroduce the death penalty and criminalise LGBTQI+ people raises furth

Madam President, tomorrow we vote on a deeply unequal deal. A deal to prevent the worst, even though the worst was deemed illegal by the US Supreme Court. A deal, so we know what to expect, even though, since it has been struck, the US has already increased its tariffs on steel and aluminium, and today threatened France with more. A deal to get certainty and predictability from the same US adminis

Colleague, you talk about certainty and predictability. With the US administration of Donald Trump, you think you can write on a deal what will happen and that he will follow by the rules because he follows by the rules? What kind of certainty and predictability are you giving businesses? If today he threatened France with more tariffs on wine if they do not scrap their digital service tax, what c

Madam President, the Commissioner said that he understands the problem, and I'm glad to hear that, but that the Commission is not ready to present a solution quite yet. That's okay – we've waited many years for many amazing video games to come about, and we've also sometimes waited many years for great European laws to come. I just hope we don't have to wait as long as we've been waiting for GTA 6

Colleague Warborn, I can agree with a lot of what you said, but you also spoke about the importance of defending the video game industry in Europe. I can very much agree with that. But of course, when we legislate our market for our consumers, we don't just apply that legislation to European companies; we can apply it to whatever companies want to operate in our market. So, given that reality, wou

Mr President, as the EU and Indonesia prepare to close on the CEPA agreement, we must remember that allies are more than just trade partners – they stand for the same core values this Parliament raises today, the cases of Andrie Yunus and Muhammad Rosidi, not as isolated incidents, but as symbolic of our greatest concerns when it comes to freedom, human rights and the rule of law in Indonesia. Bec

Mr President, it's very frustrating when we need to stand in this Parliament to say the obvious, but the obvious is worth stating: women's rights in Afghanistan are being infringed upon by the Taliban regime. Women have, pretty much, lost their right to exist: their right to education, move freely, express themselves, access justice, and work. This will have so much impact on society for so many,

Mr President, colleagues, today we protect our steel industry and its workers from unfair competition, notably from China. Today, our Union takes the lead in the global stage to tackle overcapacity in the steel sector. And today, for this, I'm especially proud we reaffirm that the green transition and trade defence instruments can and should go hand in hand. By securing the decarbonisation criteri

Mr President, colleagues, this resolution is not just about Venezuela and the Venezuelan people. It's also about defending the principles of rules-based international order that the EU and this Parliament stand for. Let's be clear: the Maduro regime was catastrophic for Venezuela but, at the same time, the US military intervention and abduction and removal of Maduro represent a clear violation of

Mr President, dear colleagues, with the adoption of the Law on the Promotion of Ethnic Unity and Progress, China is taking another step to intensify the repression and forced assimilation of Tibetans, Uyghurs, Mongolians, Hui and Manchus. This law does not promote unity – it shrinks the space for diversity. While it claims equality, the law strips minorities of their right to learn their own langu

Mr President, colleagues, the situation in Haiti is beyond words. Thousands of homicides, over 1.4 million internally displaced, and armed gangs exploiting the absence of state authority to massacre the population. Killings, kidnappings, extortion and sexual violence are commonplace. Children are trafficked, exploited and recruited. As often happens, women and girls are disproportionately affected

Mr President, Commissioner, Colleagues, Lebanon is once again being torn apart by war. What we are seeing in Lebanon, we have seen before in Gaza. Israeli airstrikes hitting densely populated areas. Civilian infrastructure destroyed. Hospitals damaged. Humanitarian workers targeted. Entire communities displaced. We are seeing more than 1.3 million people who have fled their homes. These are clear

Mr President, colleagues, Commissioner, more than two years after the coup, Niger's democratically elected president, Mohamed Bazoum, remains under house arrest – without charge, without trial. This is unacceptable. I call for his immediate and unconditional release. Not only for him, but for all those arbitrarily detained, like, for example, human rights defender Moussa Tchangari, who is detained

Mr President, it's clear that for doing their job, upholding international law and investigating genocide claims, the International Criminal Court Judges and the UN Special Rapporteurs are being treated like terrorists with sanctions from the from the US administration. We've raised it in letters, we've raised it in committee meetings, and we are raising it here in plenary. But even after this mee

Madam President, Commissioner Šefčovič, in a time of unilateral trade tariffs and systematic breaches of the global order – by the way, a global order that indeed is still worth defending – it's also worth acknowledging that 70 % of global trade still relies on WTO rules, and that is quite remarkable. As we head into Cameroon in two weeks, three things are sharply on my mind. First, that we mus

Madam President, colleagues, Ms Kallas, we are taking a painful snapshot of 2025. In Gaza and the West Bank civilians suffer unimaginably while humanitarian access is restricted. In Sudan, mass atrocities continued without accountability. In Myanmar, a brutal military junta uses sham elections to legitimise its repression. In Iran, dissidents face systematic violence and a wave of executions. And

Madam President, dear colleagues, dear Commissioner, Guinea-Bissau has once again been plunged into crisis by a military coup. This coup, reportedly orchestrated to prevent electoral defeat, reflects a troubling trend of unconstitutional changes of government that is undermining stability and the rule of law across West Africa. Since the coup, journalists, civil society leaders, electoral official

Madam President, dear colleagues, today I speak in outrage and in solidarity. The mass kidnapping of children and teachers in Nigeria, including the abduction of 100 children from St Mary's School, is shocking and unacceptable. This is not an isolated tragedy: it is part of a wider pattern in which students, teachers and schools are deliberately targeted. Violence against education is enabled by a