What Saskia spoke about.

16 Jan

2024

FR Speech

Implementation of the EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) (short presentation)

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Mr President, thank you to the rapporteur for his report on the implementation of the agreement between the European Union and Canada. CETA is a free trade agreement that has given rise to a lot of controversy, we can say it in this way, so it must draw our particular attention to what elements, five years later, in the context of provisional implementation, could still be problematic and explain …

16 Jan

2024

FR Speech

Humanitarian situation in Gaza, the need to reach a ceasefire and the risks of regional escalation (debate)

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Mr President, 100 days of war, death and desolation in Gaza. 100 days that Israeli hostages are being held away from their loved ones. 100 days and more than 23,000 Palestinians, including 10,000 children, killed by Israeli forces. 100 days and more than 100 UN workers and 80 journalists dead. An unprecedented humanitarian crisis according to the largest international NGOs, the imminence of a grea…

16 Jan

2024

FR Speech

Presentation of the programme of activities of the Belgian Presidency (debate)

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Madam President, Prime Minister, Europe has to choose. To the return of austerity that has pushed our fellow citizens into precariousness and into the arms of reactionary ideologies, let us oppose solidarity and investment in transitional jobs, in public services and in conditions of a dignified life. At the regulatory pause in environmental and climate legislation, which some want, including you,…

13 Dec

2023

FR Speech

Frontex, building on the fact-finding investigation of the LIBE Working Group for Frontex Scrutiny (debate)

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Mr President, the investigation carried out by OLAF and the pressure from the European Parliament against it led to the resignation of Frontex Director Fabrice Leggeri. A good part of this Chamber probably thought that the agency would be reborn under new auspices, that it would leave behind the dysfunctions of the past and thus make it possible to justify the continuous evolution of its budget of…

13 Dec

2023

FR Speech

Jurisdiction, applicable law, recognition of decisions and acceptance of authentic instruments in matters of parenthood and creation of a European Certificate of Parenthood (debate)

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Mr President, the best interests of the child enshrines the right of every child to have a family, and there are 2 million children in Europe, 2 million children, for whom this right will become truly effective if the regulation on the mutual recognition of parenthood is adopted. Two million children will finally be able to move and settle freely within the European Union with their LGBTQIA+ famil…

12 Dec

2023

FR Speech

Need to release all hostages, to achieve a humanitarian ceasefire and prospect of the two-state solution (debate)

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Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, today I appeal to our hearts. The European Union bears historic responsibility for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; Today it bears a historic responsibility to speak with one voice and achieve an immediate ceasefire, to end the unprecedented massacre of civilians, innocent children, journalists and humanitarian workers, to secure the release of the hostages, al…

12 Dec

2023

FR Speech

Defence of democracy package (debate)

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Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, the clock is ticking for European democracy, which was built on the ashes of the Second World War and – let us not forget – against the far right, which wants to bring us back to the darkest hours of our history. From now on, it is also against foreign interference that we must fight. In this sense, the first package of measures for the defence of democracy i…

22 Nov

2023

FR Speech

The lack of legislative follow-up by the Commission to the PEGA resolution (debate)

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Mr President, Commissioner, five months ago, after hundreds of hours of work, the PEGA Committee of Inquiry handed over its recommendations to the European Commission and the Member States. And, always quick to act in the area of internal security, the Commission, according to this Parliament in any case, perhaps not in its view, has the power to act when freedom of the press, freedom of assembly,…

22 Nov

2023

FR Speech

Cyprus Confidential - need to curb enablers of sanctions-evasion and money-laundering rules in the EU (debate)

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Mr President, safe for Russian oligarchs, opaque financial centre for circumvention of EU sanctions and anti-money laundering rules, golden visa system. No, this is not the scenario of the latest Netflix series, it is what ‘Cyprus Confidential’ reveals about Cyprus, a Member State of the European Union. As Russia launched its war against Ukraine, Cypriot financial facilitators rushed to help Russi…

20 Nov

2023

FR Speech

Children first - strengthening the Child Guarantee, two years on from its adoption - Reducing inequalities and promoting social inclusion in times of crisis for children and their families (joint debate – International Day of the Rights of the Child)

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Madam President, the International Convention on the Rights of the Child was adopted unanimously by the 197 States on 20 November 1989. She asserts that not to wage war or suffer it is a right of every child. Let us therefore put an end to the ongoing massacres in Gaza through an immediate ceasefire. The right to live in dignity, the right to healthy food and the right to housing are rights for ev…

18 Oct

2023

FR Speech

Outcome of the SDGs Summit (18-19 September 2023, New York) – transformative and accelerated actions leading up to 2030 and beyond (debate)

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Madam President, 80% of the Sustainable Development Goals – access to electricity, food, school, poverty reduction – will not be achieved by 2030. World leaders meeting at the UN in September recognised that crises have swept away progress since 2015 and, worse, that inequalities are widening, due to a lack of international solidarity. In the aftermath of the International Day for the Refusal of M…

17 Oct

2023

FR Speech

Urgent need for a coordinated European response and legislative framework on intrusive spyware, based on the PEGA inquiry committee recommendations (debate)

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Mr President, Commissioner, you tell us, Ms Jourová, that the European Commission’s replies to the recommendations of our Pegasus Committee of Inquiry are ready to be sent and that you are exploring the possibility of a non-legislative initiative. It sounds a bit like a joke. In the face of the latest revelations, when we adopted our legislative recommendations more than six months ago, the Commis…

17 Oct

2023

FR Speech

Question Time with Commissioners - European measures to prevent and to fight the rise of organised crime

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Mr President, Mr Vice-President, the causes and consequences of organised crime linked to drug trafficking in Europe are manifold and - as you said, Mr Schinás - they must find systemic answers. Some of them have already been mentioned in the Q&A session, but in addition to the necessary repressive approach against criminals, there is also an urgent need for economic, social and cultural measures,…

17 Oct

2023

FR Speech

Effectiveness of the EU sanctions on Russia (debate)

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Monsieur le Président, des sanctions sont efficaces lorsqu’elles sont mises en œuvre. They are then an essential part of the non-military, European response to Russian aggression. But after eleven packages of sanctions supposedly weakening Putin’s Russia, sanctions are circumvented through trade schemes or through third states, with the shameful involvement of European states. Through third states…

4 Oct

2023

FR Speech

Need to complete new trade agreements for sustainable growth, competitiveness and the EU’s strategic autonomy (debate)

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Madam President, in 2021, the new business strategy was marked by open strategic autonomy. Two years later, after the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, the EU is now obsessed with any promise to secure the supply of essential raw materials and also seeks to multiply and accelerate free trade agreements whose social, economic, local and climate effects are unfortunately no longer to be demonstrated.…

4 Oct

2023

FR Speech

Energy Charter Treaty: next steps (debate)

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Madam President, perhaps one of the ways to convince the Council, which honours us with its absence today, when this is the message that Parliament and the European Commission send to our governments to withdraw from the Energy Charter Treaty, is to tell them that the cost of climate inaction will be five times higher than the cost of action today. It will cost us even more if we stick to this tre…

4 Oct

2023

FR Speech

Need for a speedy adoption of the asylum and migration package (debate)

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Mr President, ten years ago, 368 people lost their lives in the Lampedusa tragedy. And ten years later, 28,000 people, men, women and children, died without the European authorities standing up indignantly to prevent these tragedies. Ten years of politics that have made the bed of hatred and anti-migrant rhetoric leading to this fortress Europe that feeds smugglers and generates dramas. Disagreeme…

3 Oct

2023

FR Speech

European Media Freedom Act (debate)

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Madam President, dear to our European values, freedom of the press is the cornerstone of our democracies. It must become a model to be able to defend the rights of journalists all over the world. For years, in this forum, we have been denouncing threats to press freedom across Europe. Given the murders and arrests of journalists, the control and concentration of the media, surveillance and intimid…

12 Sep

2023

FR Speech

New Agenda for Latin America and the Caribbean in the aftermath of the EU-CELAC Summit (debate)

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Mr President, the top three concerns of Latin Americans are extreme poverty, climate change and human rights violations. Priorities that are at the heart of our sustainable development goals, our international goals, which should therefore also be ours, Europeans. The long-awaited EU-CELAC summit, after eight years without a major political meeting, was to be the occasion for a renewed partnership…

12 Jul

2023

FR Speech

The need for EU action on search and rescue in the Mediterranean (debate)

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Madam President, do you really think that brothers, sisters, parents and children are boarding a boat to cross the Mediterranean, thinking that everything will be fine? Do they not die of fear? That they do not know that the crossing is dangerous, but that they are guided by the immense hope of finding a better life here than the one they leave behind? Leaving people to die in the Mediterranean, b…

10 Jul

2023

FR Speech

Protection of journalists and human rights defenders from manifestly unfounded or abusive court proceedings (debate)

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In ten years, more than 570 legal proceedings by public or private entities have targeted whistleblowers, journalists, human rights defenders, environmental defenders and NGOs. Total Energies accuses Greenpeace of spreading false information. Socfin, a member of the Bolloré Group, attacks NGOs accusing him of greenwashing and land grabbing. 47 proceedings against the only journalist Daphne Caruana…

14 Jun

2023

FR Speech

Extension of the mandate of the EPPO with regard to the criminal offence of violation of Union restrictive measures (debate)

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Madam President, in recent months, the European Union has adopted numerous sanctions regimes against individuals, but also against entities, particularly in the context of Russia’s war in Ukraine. Two dimensions are of concern to my group. First, the consequences of these sanctions for humanitarian actors and fundamental rights. These are priorities in our ongoing work on the Sanctions Directive. …

14 Jun

2023

FR Speech

Implementation and delivery of the Sustainable Development Goals (debate)

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Madam President, the Sustainable Development Goals – the SDGs – are objectives that are widely shared, both by our Assembly, as we have just heard, and by the European Commission. Moreover, each Commissioner has, in his mission letter, their proper implementation. Yet, year after year, here, as the 2030 deadline approaches, the targets are moving away. The same is true: the lack of policy coherenc…

14 Jun

2023

FR Speech

Investigation of the use of Pegasus and equivalent surveillance spyware - Investigation of the use of Pegasus and equivalent surveillance spyware (draft recommendation) (debate)

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Mr President, almost two years ago, the revelations by Forbidden Stories, Amnesty International and Citizen Lab about the illegal use of Pegasus and other spyware triggered the work of our committee of inquiry. After hundreds of hours of expert and victim hearings, technical and political missions and negotiations, our Committee of Inquiry makes a strong set of recommendations to prevent such a sc…

31 May

2023

FR Speech

10 year anniversary of the Rana Plaza collapse in Bangladesh (statement by the President)

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Mr President, today we pay tribute to the 1,138 dead and thousands of victims of the collapse of Rana Plaza ten years ago. "Never again," the world chanted. An international agreement on health and safety at work was then signed by 200 major brands, ready to assume their responsibilities with suppliers. But some well-known ones have still not signed the agreement. Bangladesh has committed to refor…