What Katrin spoke about.

23 Nov

2023

DE Speech

International day for the elimination of violence against women (debate)

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Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen! Yes means Yes, No means No, and we repeat this demand mantra-like every time for generations. For a similar, comparable demand, my mother took to the streets in the early 1970s. And we repeat it over and over again. I think we can say: Do not educate your daughters, but educate your sons. And Mr. Buschmann, to you: Your obstruction of this law, thi…

19 Oct

2023

DE Speech

Commission proposal for a Council recommendation on developing social economy framework conditions (debate)

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Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, dear spectators outside on the screens! I am very pleased that you are following the debate here. We visited Madrid with the Social Committee almost a year ago and looked at social enterprises with a focus on people with disabilities. And it has been shown, as the Commissioner rightly pointed out, that the social economy, the social economy and inclusive enterpr…

17 Oct

2023

DE Speech

International Day for the Eradication of Poverty (debate)

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Madam President, World Poverty Day is today. Fourteen days ago we talked about basic security here in this House. Oh, hurrah! Within a very short time, we are talking about poverty in the European Union. I am addressing our guests on the podium here, I am addressing those who may be sitting at home now and watching the debate – people affected by poverty. And I would like us to stop talking about …

2 Oct

2023

DE Speech

Rising precariousness in Europe including the need for aid to the most deprived (debate)

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Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, Poverty reduction or the fact that people in the European Union are poor is nothing new. What does poverty mean? Poverty is that maybe I can't afford the healthy food, that I can't afford the textbooks, that I can't afford to go to the theater. This is also part of social participation. We have managed to set up a Social Climate Fund in the Europea…

11 Jul

2023

DE Speech

COVID-19 pandemic: lessons learned and recommendations for the future (debate)

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Mr President, ladies and gentlemen. When Corona broke in on us, the women, the children, the weakest in society, people with pre-existing illnesses, pensioners in nursing homes were the first to pay the prices. People with disabilities or people with diseases were denied access to the clinics because of overcrowding. They were denied health care. Of course, the word ‘triage’ was never officially p…

10 May

2023

DE Speech

Roadmap on a Social Europe: two years after Porto (debate)

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Mr President, Commissioner, dear Minister, dear citizens on the podium! Financial union, economic union – what we need is a social union. We've made it, we've won the minimum wage. When the financial crisis, economic crisis, real estate crisis hit us in 2007/2008, many young people were unemployed. The Youth Guarantee, a strengthening of the Youth Guarantee, was the result. But we need a lot more.…

9 May

2023

EN Speech

Start of the European Year of skills (debate)

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Madam President, as we enter the European Year of Skills, it’s important to recognise the significance of the opportunity for Member States to incentivise workers to upskill and reskill themselves in light of the just transition. Member States utilise the available resources to empower persons and encourage employers to provide their workers with the tools they need to succeed. This includes provi…

9 May

2023

DE Speech

Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence – EU accession: institutions and public administration of the Union - Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence - EU accession: judicial cooperation in criminal matters, asylum and non-refoulement (debate)

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Madam President, We are slowly approaching the end of the debate, and it is very, very difficult for me to bear how much nonsense, dear women, we have actually had to listen to ourselves here for about an hour. We are really being told everything again. We have no idea how we define gender – our gender. We do not know what violence, assault, verbal violence, psychological violence, psychological v…

17 Apr

2023

DE Speech

Revision of the EU Emissions Trading System - Monitoring, reporting and verification of greenhouse gas emissions from maritime transport - Carbon border adjustment mechanism - Social Climate Fund - Revision of the EU Emissions Trading System for aviation (debate)

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Mr President! If I had been told 15 years ago that we were going to get the European minimum wage, I would have said: No way! Never! If I had been told 15 years ago, when the banking and financial crisis hit us, that we will sit here today and instead of saving we will invest, we will invest in social standards and we will try to help the poor in the European Union, and not only with money, but al…

30 Mar

2023

DE Speech

Strengthening the application of the principle of equal pay for equal work or work of equal value between men and women (debate)

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Mr President, dear Helena, dear colleagues, dear citizens at the top of the podium! History is made, it's moving forward! And today we are moving forward with ending discrimination. Women are often told: Well, you're imagining that with discrimination. Where does it say that a man deserves more than a woman? Prove it to me. And we end that today, that as a woman with different backgrounds you have…

15 Mar

2023

DE Speech

Combating discrimination in the EU - the long-awaited horizontal anti-discrimination directive (debate)

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Mr President, ladies and gentlemen. After 15 years, I think it's also good with We sit it out. We hope nothing happens. When I entered the European Parliament, I was not the first, but the only woman with a disability. Now we are three women with disabilities in the whole Parliament, six disabled people, six disabled MPs in the whole Parliament of 705 MPs. Why is that so? Because access to polling…

14 Mar

2023

EN Speech

Deterioration of democracy in Israel and consequences on the occupied territories (debate)

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Mr President, since weeks, thousands of Israelis have been demonstrating against the judicial reforms. The new Netanyahu government plan is not a judicial reform: it’s a revolution. A revolution in a very bad, dangerous direction. And what’s the plan? It seeks full power of the appointment of the nine-member committee that selects the judges of the Supreme Court. It wants to give the Knesset the a…

14 Feb

2023

EN Speech

The EU priorities for the 67th session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (debate)

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Mr President, it’s great to see that we women take the room, even if we are running out of time, because it’s so necessary and important, because ‘women who don’t ask for anything are taken at their word: they don’t get anything.’ Who said it? You can write an email. It was an important woman. One of the priority themes of the UN Commission on the Status of Woman is gender equality in a digital ag…

14 Feb

2023

EN Speech

Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence: EU accession (continuation of debate)

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Mr President, dear colleagues here in the room, I just checked the numbers. When it comes to women with disabilities and how they are affected by gender—based violence, we are talking about 26.1% of women with disabilities living in the European Union. And the numbers are not really clear because we don’t have the numbers and that is a problem. When you listen to women with disabilities about thei…

13 Feb

2023

DE Speech

EU response to the humanitarian situation following the earthquake in Türkiye and Syria (debate)

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Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, We are allegedly speaking – yes, this must not become a political issue. But let's be honest: Of course it is a politics. We are talking here about a Mr Erdoğan, a Bashar al-Assad and a Mr Putin, who have held their hands over Turkey, Syria and Kurdish Syria for a very long time. Now the call is loud: We need to stop the EU sanctions. This is not, I would lik…

13 Dec

2022

EN Speech

Turkish airstrikes on northern Syria and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (debate)

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Mr President, dear Commission, I’m searching for Mr Borrell. Where are you when it comes to Syria? I’m looking for you because I have questions when it comes to Syria. Syria is a bleeding country and I was there a couple of weeks ago with some colleagues, and we visited different places in north—east Syria. And we went, or I went, to the al-Hol camp, where thousands of Daesh fighters, some of them…

12 Dec

2022

EN Speech

Towards equal rights for persons with disabilities (debate)

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Madam President, dear ladies and gentlemen, dear Helena, dear colleagues, thank you for that well—written report on equal rights of persons with disabilities. A famous activist in Germany – he’s a wheelchair user – said in a statement: disabled persons are the last to be mentioned and the first to be forgotten. The situation for disabled persons in the EU is still unjust and almost all Member Stat…

12 Dec

2022

EN Speech

Order of business

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Madam President, colleagues, could you wait and sit down for a moment? It’s on human rights, not corruption. Thanks for listening. On 3 December, we celebrated International Disability Day. On 6 December, a few colleagues, me and EDF, organised an event on that and the host of that event, Ms Nicholsonová and her team applied for an accessible room for that event because it was about persons with d…

23 Nov

2022

DE Speech

Eliminating violence against Women (debate)

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Madam President, I would like to draw attention today to the situation of girls and women with disabilities. They are a group that is not visible – perhaps a shadow group in the European Union. In Germany it is like this: One in two women/girls are victims of violence – girls with disabilities, women with disabilities. And there we are talking about a very diverse form of violence; It's about psyc…

6 Oct

2022

EN Speech

COVID-19 – Sustaining EU preparedness and response: looking ahead (debate)

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Mr President, COVID isn’t over. COVID, Corona is here in the room, it is outside, it’s in the European Union. I am standing here as an MEP, but I’m standing here for Milena Hermisson, a German, a young woman who is sitting in the dark. She can’t go outside. She’s sitting in the dark because she’s sick. Or Faraz Fallahi, he’s sitting in the dark, separated from family because he can’t bear it anymo…

5 Oct

2022

DE Speech

The recent humanitarian and human rights situation in Tigray, Ethiopia, notably that of children

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Mr President, Commissioners, welcome guests up there on the podium! First, as I said, the good news: There is light at the end of the tunnel. There should be peace talks, which will probably take place on 8 October and which, I hope, will be the start of a dialogue at the end of which there will be a sustainable peace in the country for the benefit of all citizens. Although, of course, the respons…

4 Oct

2022

DE Speech

The EU’s strategic relationship and partnership with the Horn of Africa (debate)

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Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, First of all, I would like to express my sincere thanks to all those involved and, above all, to the rapporteur for the work that has been taken into account in this extensive report. As parliamentarians, we can look here at a rather progressive text that adds a number of important aspects to and significantly improves the Council's position. Ev…

4 Oct

2022

DE Speech

AccessibleEU Centre in support of accessibility policies in the EU internal market (debate)

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Madam President, Many thanks, dear colleagues, for these warm, appreciative and corrective words. The future will hopefully become barrier-free, because the present is not. It is still the case that disabled people have to justify themselves when they claim their rights. “What else do you want?” can be heard in parliaments, in public spaces. The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabili…

4 Oct

2022

EN Speech

AccessibleEU Centre in support of accessibility policies in the EU internal market (debate)

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Madam President, the future is accessible because the present is not. Dear President, dear Mr Commissioner Breton – and I’m looking for Mr Breton as he is the Commissioner responsible because it’s an IMCO file – but I’m very happy to have you here, dear Helena. You are our ally when it comes to the rights of persons with disabilities. But it is, of course, not only on your shoulders the whole huge…

14 Sep

2022

DE Speech

Situation of fundamental rights in the EU in 2020 and 2021 (debate)

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Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, dear rapporteurs, dear shadow rapporteurs! Thank you very much for this report. I have heard of many groups affected by discrimination. I want to focus on people with disabilities. I am very pleased, Commissioner, that you are here today. We talked about LGBTIQ – queer hostility – we talked about racism, we talked about antigypsyism. Today I want to talk to you …