Speeches

Mr President, thank you very much. Finally, at last, Europe is about to step away from the Energy Charter Treaty. This is a lousy treaty that the EU has been a part of and that allows if we abolish fossil power such as coal or gas power plants, we could be sued. It's unreasonable. It is therefore to be welcomed that the EU is now finally on its way to taking this decision. The Greens have been fighting for this for a very, very long time. It's time to put the fossil fuel on history's rubbish heap. Coal power, gas power will be shut down and instead renewable energy will flourish with wind power, solar power and hydropower. This will finally allow us to unreservedly take the next step in renewable energy legislation.

Madam President, thank you very much. With regard to the financial market, we see it as self-evident that regulation and supervision are needed to protect consumers and ensure that the market is not manipulated. The EU has finally woken up to the fact that we need the same thing for our electricity market. Consumers need protection, not least when it comes to cross-border trade. Consumers should be able to feel confident that things are going right and that we do not get manipulated prices and thus unreasonably high electricity costs. This legislation is a major step forward. It is a victory both for us in the European Parliament, which has brought with us the Commission and the Council on more progressive legislation, and for Europe's consumers, who will now be better protected. We increase transparency, we increase transparency and we ensure that the European authority is able to conduct its own investigations in cases where national authorities do not act. European citizens should be able to trust that the price they pay in the electricity bill is the real price and that there has been no manipulation, either by European companies or by foreign powers, which risk being able to use the electricity market as a weapon. We are now putting an end to this, and that is a very good thing.

Mr President, thank you very much. The death penalty is a terrible tool that no state should have the power to use against its citizens. In Iran, the regime executed 834 people last year and now – just over a month into this year – another 54 lives have been extinguished. It's disgusting. The mere threat of being sentenced to death is a ruthless weapon that the Iranian regime holds over the heads of its citizens. Unfortunately, it is only one of many tools they use to oppress the country's population and silence the brave voices that dare to rebel. On January 23, 23-year-old Mohammad Ghobadlou was executed for participating in the women-life-freedom movement. His confession was forced under torture and the trial was deeply uncertain. The fact that Swedish and other foreign citizens are also arbitrarily detained by the Iranian regime is also unacceptable. My thoughts go especially to Johan Floderus and his family, after the prosecutor in Johan's case recently demanded the death penalty for imaginary crimes. We must protect those who have managed to escape and never stop fighting for Johan, Ahmad and all the others who are being held in captivity. No one is free until everyone is free.

Mr President, thank you very much. The number of people killed in Gaza every day now exceeds all other conflicts of this century, according to Oxfam International. 250 people every day, that's more than twice as many as in Syria, as in Ukraine, as in Sudan, Iraq, Yemen and Afghanistan. The threat doesn't just come from the bombs raining down on Gaza. It is also the lack of food, water, healthcare and heat. It is unreasonable that children should have to be afraid when they go to school, that you cannot get food to eat, that mothers need to give birth without electricity, without proper medical care. We need a permanent ceasefire now. It's time for this house to take a stand, put pressure on Israel! We need a ceasefire now.

Madam President, thank you very much. More than a year has passed since Jina Mahsa Amini died in an Iranian police custody. At the same time, Iranian women and girls continue to protest against Iranian repression. Earlier in October, 16-year-old Armita Geravand took the subway and protested against the veil claim and was beaten and then died in the hospital. This is terrible. At the funeral, Sakharov Prize laureate Nasrin Sotoudeh came to manifest her support – and was imprisoned. This cannot be allowed to continue. The EU must put more pressure on Iran. Stop oppressing women and free everyone who fights for human rights.

Mr President, thank you very much. Members of the Commission. The climate crisis is acute. Parts of the transition are progressing, but emissions from heavy transport are still increasing. Despite the Paris Agreement, despite a European climate law, emissions from heavy transport are still increasing. It is therefore extremely urgent that we take ambitious decisions that ensure that heavy-duty truck manufacturers have to reduce their emissions and focus on electrification. This is the future of heavy transportation. But I am concerned that the European Right is trying to undermine these decisions and reduce ambition. That would be very unfortunate, because we already have enough rolling trucks on our streets that emit CO2 and we have to reduce them extremely quickly.

Madam President, thank you very much. The climate crisis is acute and the pace of transition needs to increase. At the same time, we are seeing a recession in Europe and we need to invest in both industry and the green transition. Not least when the United States is finally starting to show its prominence on the climate issue and is investing in its law on inflation reduction. That is why I think we are slightly missing out on the opportunity here, in the Net-Zero Industry Act, not just to invest in batteries – which is, of course, good for cars and trucks. But we forget the railroad. After all, the best way to quickly reduce emissions from the sector where emissions are growing the most – the transport sector – is to invest in rail. Therefore, I think this is a missed opportunity to do the best for the green transition.

Madam President, thank you very much. No child grows up to hate anyone. You learn that from adults. Nor are children responsible for military conflicts – adults are responsible for it. A few years ago, I was in Israel/Palestine and visited Sderot, an Israeli community close to Gaza that is often the target of rocket attacks. I visited a school and talked to the Israeli children who need to be scared when they go to school for rocket attacks. These children have no responsibility for this conflict, but neither do the children currently living in terror in Gaza – who are the victims of Israeli attacks. Children must live in peace and freedom. We need a ceasefire now, so that we can have negotiations, so that we can have peace between Israel and Palestine.

Madam President, thank you very much. The whole science is clear. Emissions from aviation must be significantly reduced! Therefore, we are now making decisions that require the flight to reconfigure: a reduction obligation that reduces fossil fuels and starts to incorporate renewables. I particularly welcome the fact that the high-altitude effect – greenhouse gases other than CO2 – will now start to be reported and that there will be a specific quota for electrofuel, which is more sustainable than regular biofuel. These are the things that we Greens have negotiated into this legislation and made it better. But at the same time, we must realise that these alternative fuels are not enough. Not everyone is sustainable and they are also in short supply. The entire world's total production of sustainable fuels would not even be enough for a third of Swedish domestic aviation. Therefore, the most important thing we can do to reduce emissions from the transport sector is to invest in rail.

Madam President, thank you very much. whereas 564 days have passed since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and even longer since the annexation of Crimea; It is a long-term conflict, and it risks continuing to be a long-term conflict. Ukraine needs our support, including with armaments, not least ammunition. It can be expensive. We need to be willing to pay, but we can also be more efficient in how we spend our tax money. For right now, many countries are buying armaments, and few companies manufacture and sell them. If Europe promotes joint procurement of defence equipment, we can be more efficient with our defence equipment and ensure that we can help Ukraine defend its country for a long time.

Madam President, thank you very much. Batteries are crucial if we are to cope with the green transition and phase out fossil fuels. But at the moment, batteries have a dark back. Some of the minerals used, including cobalt, have a problem in how we extract them. A majority of the world's cobalt is mined in Congo, where a quarter of a million miners work in dangerous conditions. According to UNICEF, around one in seven workers is a child. We can't go on like this. That is why it is important for us here in the European Parliament to adopt new legislation that ensures change. We have the opportunity, capacity and technology to create a circular and sustainable battery industry. That is why it is important for us here in the European Parliament to adopt new legislation and ensure that batteries can be part of the green transition.

Mr President, thank you very much. whereas on 17 December 2010 the Arab Spring began following Mohammed Bouazizi’s protest against corruption, the lack of democracy and food prices; Tunisia became a symbol of the democratic revolution throughout this region. But a decade later, the country's democracy is on the verge of being wiped out. Imprisoning opposition leaders, journalists and civil society representatives goes against the most fundamental values of a democracy. President Saied's actions are totally unacceptable. I met him last spring with a delegation from this Parliament and it was already clear at that time that respect for the rule of law and fundamental democracy was lacking in this President. Last year's voter turnout speaks for itself. If nine out of ten citizens in a country choose not to vote, it is a symbol that something is not quite right. To lose confidence in your country's political institutions is to lose hope for a better future. It is time for the world to raise its voices in solidarity with the Tunisian people. It's time we hook arms with those who have been forgotten and show that we exist. That Tunisia can be a symbol of a democratic aspiration. We must increase the pressure on the Tunisian regime and show that we stand up for the Tunisian people.

Mr President, thank you very much. Dear colleagues, Commissioner, The time for gasoline is over. The electric car revolution is here. Every car we sell on the market today will, on average, roll for another 20 years into the future. In 20 years, we will be well into the 2040s. We need to be close to zero in our emissions. It is therefore wise consumer policy to ensure that we sell fewer petrol cars now and more electric cars so that people who buy a petrol or diesel car in the future do not have to stop using it prematurely. It is also a wise industrial policy. At present, most companies that sell electric cars on the market are domiciled outside Europe, but with sharp policies here in Europe, we ensure that more electric cars have a strong home market in Europe and the industry can grow. The gasoline car era is over, the electric car revolution is here.

Madam President, thank you very much. Dear colleagues, Ukraine belongs to Europe. What the Russian regime and Vladimir Putin are trying to assert, when they are trying to claim that the Ukrainian nation does not exist but is actually the same nation as Russia, is a falsification of history. Looking back through history, there are of course ties to Russia, but there are more and stronger ties, for example to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and many other connections: to Austria, to Germany – going further back: Constantinople during the Byzantine Empire. It is no coincidence that there is another democratic aspiration in the Ukraine we see today – which is different from Russian society – and that is what Putin is afraid of. That is why the falsification of history is taking place, because Putin does not want to see that Ukraine is anything else and that Ukraine belongs in Europe.

Madam President, thank you very much. We gather here in a Parliament in the House of Democracy, where we solve our problems and contradictions – not by force or weapons, but by votes. That's what we do in a democracy. A few months ago, I was on a visit to Kiev, Ukraine, to the Ukrainian Parliament. It was surrounded by protective positions, with sandbags to defend this Parliament against an external threat – a Russia that does not accept Ukraine’s democratic decisions but wants to change those decisions by force. We saw the same movement attack the US Congress, where right-wing forces, far-right forces, do not accept democratic decisions but want to change them by force. We saw the same thing in Brazil. I fear that we will see further examples, also here in Europe, where the far right wants to change democratic decisions by force, and we cannot accept that.

Mr President, thank you very much. Colleagues! The courage and fighting spirit of the Ukrainian people is a primeval force. But this glow is put to the test when the true winter cold strikes, when windows are knocked out by the blast waves of the bombs, when the elements are cold because electricity lines have been cut and the power plants bombed, when there is no water coming out of the tap and when you are forced to spend the night in a basement, in a metro station or in a shelter. A month ago, I was in Ukraine with a few colleagues and saw this reality that the Ukrainian people have been exposed to, and my feeling is that we need to support the Ukrainian people more. By protecting them with anti-aircraft defenses against the missiles, through financial support. We need to stop buying fossil energy from Russia that is financing the war. This must happen now.

Madam President, dear colleagues, Commissioner, the growing threats posed by digitalisation and the surge of cyberattacks underline that the weakest link is often the one from which a chain reaction can happen, and in an economy increasingly dependent on the digital domain, this can have catastrophic results on our society. We need to increase our collective readiness and ensure that a high common level of cybersecurity is attained across our Union. In this proposal I welcome the strengthening of the security requirements, reporting obligations, the more stringent supervisory measures and stricter enforcement requirements, including harmonised sanctions across the European Union, and in this work we Greens focused on interoperability, transparency, open source and encryption. On these issues we made some important steps forward, but there is more work to be done to ensure that we are fit for fighting the cybersecurity challenges of tomorrow.

Mr President, thank you very much. Putin claims that the people of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia have made their choice in so-called referendums, but they are illegal under international law. It is a lie, just as the annexation of Crimea has been ever since the beginning of this war in 2014. whereas the annexation of Ukrainian regions by Russia is a violation of international law; The list of war crimes that Putin is accused of has become unimaginably long. Massacres against the people of Ukraine barely reach the front pages of newspapers anymore. We must not allow this war to become a background noise. We must not think that the energy crisis is the worst thing affecting Europe this winter. It's the war. And our sisters and brothers in Ukraine are paying the highest price every day that we in Europe are not taking the step to stop financing this war. We need to stop buying fossil fuels from Russia.

Mr President, thank you very much. We are in a climate emergency and it is now that Europe makes decisions about our future climate policy that it is decided whether we will be able to meet our climate targets. We are in a climate emergency. Emissions need to be reduced faster. We need to ensure that aviation and maritime transport are included in the green transition. We must abolish the system of fossil subsidies for those parts of the industry that still receive free allowances today. We are in a climate emergency, and I am concerned about how conservative forces in this house are currently working to undermine the progressive proposal that we Greens have been involved in negotiating. Now is the time to decide. We cannot continue to postpone the green transition for the future. This is where we have to take responsibility.

Madam President, the importance of independence with regard to energy supply has been made painfully obvious by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. We must use this pivotal moment – as we transition away from combustion engines to electrification – to become more energy independent. The amount of batteries the EU will need will increase immensely in the coming years, and we must not simply switch our dependence from fossil fuels to dependence on rare materials from regions that are problematic when it comes to democracy, human rights and the environment. To be energy independent, we must instead create a circular economy for batteries. This is an important strategic topic for the EU, with many serious implications.

Madam President, thank you very much. No matter how the current situation in Ukraine ends, we must take seriously the threat of Russian aggression. The use by Russia of the threat of violence as a means of diplomatic pressure is unacceptable regardless of the extent to which the threat is actually carried out. Russia's actions undermine international law and the European security order. Although the threat to Ukraine is currently the very lever, the aim of the policy is to be able to exert influence over all of Russia’s neighbouring countries. If Putin intends to divide the EU, we must show that it has the opposite effect, that it brings the EU countries closer together and creates a security policy entity. This is the basis for increased opposition to Putin's imperialist claims to power. European solidarity with the self-determination of the Ukrainian people, and firm determination, is the way forward for Europe. Joint sanctions against Russia and efforts to support Ukraine are crucial. I repeat, a threat of violence is a serious violation of the rules-based international order, regardless of the extent to which the threat is actually enforced. If your neighbor comes over to you and waves a gun and threatens you, it's a crime, even if the gun isn't fired.

Madam President, thank you very much. In recent weeks, hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers have been mobilised on Ukraine's eastern border. This is not the first provocation, it raises disturbing memories. Almost eight years ago, a similar escalation ended with the illegal and illegal annexation of the Crimean peninsula. Under the Helsinki Agreement, countries have the right to self-determination, and conflicts over borders should be resolved through diplomacy. Nevertheless, in the past Russia has not hesitated to violate the sovereignty of other countries and change borders with military power, and they now seem willing to do so again. This action is an attack on the Helsinki Agreement, and it is contrary to the European security order. The Ukrainian people should know that we in Europe are on their side, that we stand up for their right to self-determination and for the agreements and principles on which we have built a peaceful and democratic Europe.

Mr President, thank you very much. Last year, renewable energy became the single largest source of energy in Europe. For the first time. It was historic, but we need to do so much more to get there and reach zero emissions. Now we are entering the moment of truth for Europe's climate transition, and our most important tool is the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS). Emissions trading in its current form has led to the closure of coal-fired power plants after coal-fired power plants. But if we are to reach 100% renewables, the price of emission allowances must continue to rise. Nine Member States have already phased out coal, but we need up to 27. Then we need to sharpen emissions trading substantially, phase out hundreds of millions of allowances on one board and increase the pace of emission reduction. We also need to close all the loopholes that still make fossil subsidies keep coal-fired power plants crampingly alive. We can only solve this through the climate transition.

Madam President, thank you very much. Let's start with the basics. An economy built on finite resources will always lead to greatly increased prices when these finite resources begin to run out. It's that simple. The rise in energy prices today is 80 per cent due to the fact that the supply of fossil gas is lower than demand. That demand is currently increasing sharply in Asia, and in Russia, for example, the supply of fossil gas to Europe is now declining. That is why energy prices are rising, not European climate policy. That being said, we cannot turn a blind eye to the challenges that parts of Europe are now facing, especially those with low incomes and poor access to cheap renewable energy. Therefore, EU investments in the green transition need to be specifically targeted to those parts of Europe. Therefore, the green transition must go hand in hand with fair distribution policies and social reforms. We need significantly increased investments in renewable energy, energy efficiency, increased transmission capacity between parts of different countries, but also between countries in Europe. And we need investments in energy storage, such as hydrogen and batteries. It is the solution to the increased energy prices, not increased dependence on fossil energy.

Madam President, thank you very much. Now Swedes are once again starting to travel to Dubai to have fun. Last year, the United Arab Emirates was also the largest recipient of Swedish arms exports. At the same time, the country is treating Ahmed Mansoor and other human rights defenders in appalling ways. For over ten years, Ahmed Mansoor has been subjected to arbitrary arrests, death threats and ill-treatment. Since his imprisonment in 2017, he has spent four years in solitary confinement. This is a treatment that can be equated with torture. This is an image that cuts against the tolerant surface that the Emirate wants to present. The EU must act and consider action against serious human rights violations. Ahmed Mansoor deserves to be treated with respect and in a decent manner. The emirate must end his isolation and begin to respect the right and dignity of every human being.