Speeches

We now come to the order of business. The revised final draft agenda, as adopted by the Conference of Presidents by written procedure today on 4 October 2021, pursuant to Rule 157, is available. Furthermore, following consultations with the political groups, we wish to report to the House the following proposal for changes to the revised final draft agenda. The debate on the Commission statement on the increased efforts to fight money laundering is postponed to the October II part-session, and therefore as a consequence the 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. debate slot on Thursday is cancelled. Finally, I would like to inform you that the votes will be distributed across different voting sessions taking into account the number of amendments tabled and the number of requests for split and separate votes. Please note that this distribution could still be subject to changes. The relevant information concerning the distribution of votes is available on the website of the European Parliament under the section ‘priority information’. With this, the agenda is therefore deemed adopted and the order of business is thus established. I would, however, now also like to inform the House that I have received two requests for a point of order and I will give the floor to the following colleagues in the order received by the President. First, Mr Juan Fernando López Aguilar, and then Mr Gabriel Mato.

Madam President, we should not have to have these debates. The checks and balances that are expected in every Member State by every citizen should ensure that issues like media freedom and the rule of law, that are so fundamental to the legitimacy of our European project, are not subject to debate. Member States are not all the same. We do not want them to be all the same. Europe is about celebrating differences, but it can only work in harmony because we are bound by our common values system. A system that, if allowed to come under threat anywhere, puts us all at risk. And this is why it is correct to take action because this joint project of ours is only as strong as our defence of European values. And when Polish citizens look to the European Union, they expect the promise for Europe to deliver for them, too. You cannot have a free and open democracy when state—controlled media freedom feeds streams of propaganda, when independent media is intimidated, when judges’ independence is threatened. And we in Europe know how slippery the slope can be when loyalty to the party is placed above loyalty to the nation, above meritocracy, above truth. And so we must act and we must do so in a way that draws a difference between the Polish authorities and the Polish people. Poland’s place is not on the sidelines of Europe because the ideals that Poland embodied when my generation was growing up inspired by Lech Wałęsa speaking of justice, law and equality, or St John Paul forcing a change in the axes of global history, that is the Poland that we know. That is the Poland that we look to for inspiration. A European Poland that understands that the fight for democracy and freedom did not end with the revolution and that the struggle is continuous and is constant. So my appeal is one: don’t move further away from these ideals that moved a continent only a generation ago, that changed the world. My appeal is: please come back.

The next item on the agenda is the statement by the Vice-President of the Commission and the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy on The situation in Afghanistan (2021/2877(RSP)).

As regards the decision of the TRAN Committee to enter into interinstitutional negotiations, pursuant to Rule 71(1), announced at the opening of the session on Monday 5 July, I did not receive any request for a vote in Parliament from Members or political groups reaching at least the medium threshold. The Committee can therefore start negotiations.

– The next item on the agenda is the joint debate on: - the recommendation for second reading of the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy and the Committee on Transport and Tourism, on the Connecting Europe Facility (06115/2/2021 – C9-0214/2021 – 2018/0228(COD)) (rapporteurs: Henna Virkkunen, Marian-Jean Marinescu and Dominique Riquet (A9-0219/2021) - the recommendation for second reading of the Committee on Transport and Tourism, on Streamlining measures for advancing the realisation of the trans-European transport network (10537/1/2020 – C9-0215/2021 – 2018/0138(COD)) (rapporteur: Dominique Riquet (A9-0223/2021), and - the report by Izaskun Bilbao Barandica, on behalf of the Committee on Transport and Tourism, on Railway safety and signalling: Assessment of the state of play of ERTMS deployment (2019/2191(INI)) (A9-0181/2021).