Speeches

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner, one victim every six hours in Europe, every six hours. These are numbers, stories, talking about each of us, talking about each of us, because each of us, directly or indirectly, has experienced that violence. Regardless of our social condition and our religious affiliation, our condition of life because, whether it is physical or psychological, whether it is implicit or brazen, as it often is, violence runs through all our lives and remains an unbearable, unbearable limit to our dignity, our freedom and, ultimately, our life. So, Commissioner, President, we must ask ourselves today: Is this emergency at the top of the priorities of the European institutions and this House? The answer is no, because it is not. Just consider that we have not yet been able, for example, to ratify the Istanbul Convention, which is a minimal instrument. We should go far beyond, far beyond, and we haven't been able to do that either. We are hostage to illiberal and anti-democratic governments, which continue to block even the minimum measures that would be needed to protect women and not to turn this day into just another day of remembrance for the victims. It can't be just that. We need to go further, we need to give answers to those women. There is no more time, we have no more time. Women die killed at the hands of men, who are comrades, former comrades and husbands. It is not a natural tragedy, colleagues, it is not a flood, it is not an earthquake! They are crimes that are committed by men in the name of a precise culture called patriarchy, and that we, from here, starting from here, must reverse and defeat.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, today we are leaving behind a long job, as has been said, a complex job, a difficult job, but also a long-awaited job, which has led us to compare in these three long years of work very different positions, even very distant ones, until we reach what I consider to be a satisfactory balance, which today we deliver to European citizens. Mind you, colleagues, I want to be very honest with you: Everything can always be improved, everything can always be improved, you can always do better. But I believe that intellectual honesty must make us recognize here this morning that the text we are about to approve will deliver important innovations to European agriculture. Intellectual honesty must make us recognize that the point of arrival of this work is very far from the point of departure, because much has been improved thanks to the work, let me say this with pride, especially of Parliament, which has always worked to maintain the bar of the highest ambition, which has fought, we have fought, sometimes we have even clashed - the Commissioner knows - with the Council and with the Commission so that the expectations of farmers, of our farmers, were not betrayed. So today we approve a good text, a text that I believe should make us proudly recognize the results we have achieved. We avoided renationalization, it was a real risk. While allowing flexibility to the Member States, we have maintained a compliance check by the Commission. Above all, we will give citizens a CAP, let me say, fairer, more attentive to young people, greener, and above all fairer thanks to social conditionality, which is a result that really - and I want to acknowledge and proudly reiterate this - is due to the work that has been done above all by our political family, my political family, the Socialists and Democrats. So I believe that we will vote today on all these results that we must proudly claim. We are voting to give our farmers the answers they have been waiting for too long, after a difficult time that was that of the pandemic. And I am sure that Parliament will live up to these expectations.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner, reactionary and subversive governments, as we know, always attack the rights of everyone. But they always start, and history teaches us, from women's rights. Reactionaries don't like women being free, reactionaries don't like women being able to choose, whether it's their careers, their loves, their bodies, and yes, their lives. This liberticidal law, rightly suspended pending the constitutional review, is an example of what can happen and finally a warning, which tells us how we can not, even here, even in our European Union, never let our guard down. We, colleagues, you know, we know, we fight every day here too to defend women and their fundamental rights and we are still ready to offer our help to women and also to Texan men, who want to live in a rule of law, where their freedoms are guaranteed and where there is no return to the Middle Ages and the witch hunt.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Madam Commissioner, weeping, screaming, pleading, the sound of broken doors. These, Mr President, are the noises that accompany the study of the cases of the so-called "parental alienation syndrome", as noted by Daniela Poggio who is a feminist and a PAS scholar. And the desperation of those children remains stuck on them and prevents them from sleeping, from thinking about anything else, it requires us to ask ourselves how it is possible that in Europe, in the homeland of the rule of law, in the name of an alleged syndrome rejected by the scientific community, mothers and children are removed. They also call it "malevolent mother syndrome" or "symbiotic mother syndrome", so as not to leave doubts to the fact that this alleged syndrome feeds on very serious gender prejudices. In Italy the lawyers Teresa Manente and Ilaria Boiano of Difference between women From 2018 to 2020, there were 100 cases of children being removed from a parent for this reason. In 8 out of 10 cases the refusal to the other parent was charged to the mother; in 9 out of 10 cases the child was never heard by the judge; in 100 cases out of 100, in all cases, mothers have been intimidated, have been restricted in their freedom, must remain silent and must suffer the most cruel of the violence: the so-called "ablation of motherhood", so it is called. They must remain silent in the face of the compulsory treatment to which children are subjected who are removed by public force and conducted in neutral structures, where they must be re-educated and realigned, in this case evidently, yes, manipulated. Mothers must remain silent even when they are treated as dangerous criminals and instead are uncensored citizens and, in most cases, victims of partner violence. But if it were possible, colleagues, to draw up a ranking of the victims of the pain and damage that this established custom in the courts inflicts, children would have the first place. Because they are denied childhood, because they are deprived by the force of their mother. Is it acceptable? We do not think so, and we have reiterated this in this text. Now the floor to Parliament, which will have to choose whether to stand on the side of civilization, the rule of law, science, or barbarism.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, eight women have been killed in Italy over the last week. The last one today, a few hours ago, in Vicenza. In Europe, we know, we count one victim every six hours and so I want to be very clear, colleagues, this is not and cannot be a women's problem, just because it is women who are the victims. This immense crime against humanity concerns the very definition of our civilization. Think about it, we do not have rights in common, because there are significant differences between the different countries; We do not share freedoms. The only thing that unites us, for the fact of being women, and I would say for the fault of being born women, is the fact of being the object of violence. This is a real social and political emergency that we must put at the top of our priorities and our action. Including violence among Eurocrimes, that is, among those very serious crimes over which we have and will have direct and binding competence, would help us to equip ourselves with a series of effective tools to finally take an important step towards equality and the fight against violence. So, ladies and gentlemen, I expect from this House - attention, not alibi - I expect from this House understanding and not excuses, like the ones we always hear, too often, not excuses, the usual ones, not to be on the side of women. I expect, ladies and gentlemen, a vote in favour, loud and clear to say that yes, this... (The President withdrew the floor from the speaker)