What Brando spoke about.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, with the election of Biden, the United States has turned the page, abandoning unilateralism and bringing the debate back to the multilateral level, albeit with an uneven attitude, let us think, for example, of the Afghan affair, which relaunches the need for strategic autonomy and European defence. But there are many issues to work on together. I am thinking of climate neutrality by 2050, a fundamental point on which to re-found our transatlantic relationship. Then I think about the issue of rights, the recent anti-abortion law voted in the state of Texas, which represents a step back for women's freedom, an issue on which we are also carrying out work and a battle in Europe. I am also thinking of the issue of digital, the regulation of artificial intelligence and the transatlantic flow of data, a truly crucial and complex issue. Here, we have a lot, a lot to do and I hope that the European Parliament and the American Congress can work together to design a more sustainable and fairer future for our planet.

(IT) Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, following the important vote in the last plenary session on the inclusion of gender-based violence as a 'Eurocrime', which is therefore a particularly serious crime on which the Union can set minimum standards for defining crimes and sanctions, this Parliament is once again expressing its views on the sensitive issue of gender-based violence by partners and its impact on children and custody decisions. We are not just talking about femicide, which is the most serious expression of it. In fact, gender-based domestic violence manifests itself in many ways, from psychological violence to financial violence, in particular, but not only, in cases of economic dependence, and has serious repercussions also on children. A problem that has also increased in our country, in Italy, during the pandemic, with forced coexistence in confined spaces and that asks us, even more so, to act with an all-round strategy. With this report, we reaffirm the importance of the Istanbul Convention and call on those Member States which have not yet done so to ratify it. We point out how, during the pandemic, violence against LGBT people has also increased. We call for allegations of violence to be examined in court before decisions on child custody are taken, and for child custody to never be shared in such cases, so as not to further increase contact with the violent partner. We call for the regulation on decisions in matrimonial and parental matters, the so-called "Brussels 2a", to be extended also to unmarried couples and also same-sex couples, and for Member States to prevent the use in court of the "parental alienation syndrome", which has no scientific evidence, to assess cases of violence or the suitability to care for children. We also point to the need to establish minimum standards at European level on how to conduct hearings of children in a protected environment and with properly trained staff. We also call for broader measures from increased funds for the protection of victims, to their full access to protection systems, to a common European protocol to combat violence against women in times of crisis. And we reiterate the importance of a broad, truly general intervention that promotes gender equality and economic independence, sex education and education, the role of the media in combating stereotypes. We must realise that gender-based domestic violence is still a scourge of our societies, far from being a legacy of the past, a scourge to be eradicated by all means at national and European level.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, while Parliament is preparing to examine the proposal for a regulation on artificial intelligence, with this report we are giving a clear message and already making an important point: In our view, there is no place in Europe for mass biometric surveillance and security and the fight against crime cannot be at the expense of citizens' fundamental rights. Indeed, identification by means of biometric data in publicly accessible places risks leading to serious abuses of the right to privacy and other underlying principles of our democratic systems. The European Data Protection Supervisor said: these systems would have a direct negative impact on the exercise of freedom of expression, assembly, association and even freedom of movement. Let us then think about what could happen in places that are not so attentive to the separation of powers or fundamental freedoms, be they states or cities. The risk of abuse is too high. That is why we believe that the exceptions to Article 5 on prohibited practices in the proposal for a regulation should be removed. Similarly, predictive techniques for law enforcement bring with them a very serious risk of discrimination, in addition to the lack of evidence on their accuracy, undermining one of the fundamental foundations of our democratic systems, namely the presumption of innocence. No human oversight or error-free datasets will be sufficient to ensure that such decisions by AI systems are made respecting constitutional guarantees and fundamental rights of the Union, even where these decision-making processes are reversible. A fortiori, these systems cannot undergo a mere conformity self-assessment before being placed on the market, as proposed by the Regulation in its first draft before us. A self-assessment exposes people to unacceptable risks of errors and violations, which would only be discovered later by the supervisory authorities if they had the means to do so, and this would result in damage that has now occurred, even irreparable, to people's lives. We already have the world's most advanced data protection laws in the EU today. For us it is a model, a model that we want to bring to the rest of the world, and we cannot afford to retreat even a millimeter from this setting when we find ourselves regulating artificial intelligence. In this area too, we must fully protect the rights of citizens. I think this is how we can act for a Europe that has its own model centered on the human rights of artificial intelligence.

Madam President, Madam President von der Leyen, ladies and gentlemen, what would Altiero Spinelli and the founding fathers and mothers of European integration say about the last twenty years, which began with the explosion of globalisation and the attack on the Twin Towers and Afghanistan? They'd tell us: How much time did you lose while the world was running? But they would also tell us that today we are finally on the right track. The dramas we have experienced have led to a reaction, today we are working on debt and common taxation, to reform the fiscal rules. We have a massive vaccination campaign that must continue, as well as the construction of social Europe, technological sovereignty, environmental transition, common defence, humanitarian corridors, the protection of LGBT and women's rights. On all these issues you, Mr President, have used courageous words, but we want to see them put into practice. If he does, he will have Parliament on his side. A federal, supportive and democratic Europe may seem impossible but it is not so, as we have heard from our Bebe Vio, then it can be done, indeed it must be done.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, after years of stalemate, we conclude the revision of the Blue Card Directive, a necessary tool to make the European Union attractive to talent and highly skilled workers. I am pleased to have contributed to this file as rapporteur for the S&D Group in the EMPL Committee. Since the last legislature, this instrument has been important to us as a proposal for highly qualified workers, for universities and companies that needed it. We have combated the risks of social and wage dumping, we have broadened the scope of the directive to include seasonal workers and those enjoying international protection. The outcome of the negotiations, however, is partially satisfactory, because we needed to be more ambitious by creating a single European instrument, replacing national ones – I am addressing governments – but we have achieved a lot, thanks to the work of our rapporteur Javier Moreno, whom I want to thank, a useful instrument that we will relaunch in order to build a more united and more open Europe in the world.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, we must say clearly that the European Union cannot go back to the austerity policies of the past. The pandemic has shown the need and usefulness of investment and social policy choices that many of us were proposing well before this last year and a half. We are now moving forward with the reform of the Stability Pact, which takes into account a new golden rule for social and environmental investment and for inclusive digitalisation, so that it becomes a sustainability pact. So we can support European growth with more work, with the necessary reforms, with less inequality for all Europeans, starting with the youngest. A new season is possible. We learn from the mistakes of the past and don't go back.