Speeches

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Frontex is the most funded European agency – from EUR 6 million in 2005, its budget increased to EUR 543 million in 2021, i.e. ninety times more resources. And Frontex's budget has inflated along with criticism of it. These criticisms have turned into an investigation by the European Parliament, a report by the Court of Auditors, reports that no longer even include civil society organisations, all of which report internal dysfunctions, manifest shortcomings in the Agency’s tasks, but also duplicity on the part of management in serious violations of fundamental rights at the European borders. An investigation by the European Anti-Fraud Office is still open. Our role is to ensure budgetary control and, obviously, the management of Frontex does not take care of it, since our recommendations have been dead letter for years. Despite this situation, which can at least be described as bad governance, the proposal, particularly that of the right, is to vote for the budgetary discharge of the Frontex Agency and thus send it the message that it can continue with impunity. In January 2022, we will resume our work on the 2020 discharge. And what will we do then? We will address the same recommendations, possibly amended from OLAF’s. But what a joke for any observer and what a profound disrespect for our own institution and our role in budgetary control! What disrespect also for European citizens who have the right to transparency and what disrespect for migrants whose fundamental rights are systematically violated at our borders. Today we have to vote against the budgetary discharge at Frontex and we will see in three months’ time, when we resume our work, whether Frontex still considers our recommendations as optional.

Mr President, I find myself forced to go back to the stages of this dossier because it is so little debated, whereas it contains a concentration of the debates that drive us in this House: artificial intelligence, mass surveillance, indiscriminate collection of data, including non-suspects, exchanges of such data with third countries and private companies. The starting point of the reform is the discovery by the European Data Protection Board of the Agency’s massive analysis of personal data outside any legal framework. The Commission then presents us with a reform that legalises illegal practices and significantly strengthens the Agency’s competences at its request. All this without evaluation or impact assessment. Colleagues, this is far from a technical dossier. The exchange of data with private parties and third States has consequences in terms of fundamental rights and data protection. The financing of Europol projects by third countries may have consequences in terms of foreign interference. Empowering the Agency to directly insert security alerts into the Schengen Information System is a highly political issue. Allowing it to develop research and innovation projects, artificial intelligence for experimental and police purposes, and to promote facial recognition technologies, which our Parliament opposed two weeks ago, are highly political issues. Ensuring the protection of fundamental rights is an eminently political issue. However, in view of the broadening of the tasks and powers entrusted to the Agency, the necessary safeguards and independent mechanisms of democratic control cannot be found. Ladies and gentlemen, Europol must ensure the security of all citizens without weakening their fundamental rights. I therefore urge you to oppose this text, these developments that do not make Europe a safer continent for all.

Madam President, Pandora's Box was opened in 2013. Since then, ten more scandals have been uncovered thanks to the same consortium of journalists, revealing a system of systemic fraud by offshore companies, the complicity of many governments and the continued inability to monitor and ensure transparency. These revelations have led to a strengthening of anti-money laundering legislation and tax transparency in Europe. Ten years later, however, there is little or no enforcement of this legislation in our Member States and the European Commission is not opening any infringement proceedings. We demand that it be justified. We can have the highest standards, if they are not applied, what's the point? Pandora Above all, it reveals that those who make the laws are also those who profit from these immoral financial arrangements. Full of cynicism: The Dutch Minister of Finance, Wopke Hoekstra, himself responsible for drawing up lists of tax havens, a major scammer of public spending and promoter of budgetary austerity, is one of the political figures highlighted by the Pandora Papers for an investment in the British Virgin Islands, which are not on the list. We are starting negotiations on the revision of anti-money laundering policy in Europe. We therefore need a political consensus to strengthen the list of tax havens and non-cooperative countries – contrary to what the ministers of our governments have just decided – and to strengthen the European and global rules on tax transparency and the fight against money laundering, to put an end, once and for all, to the offshore industry. Our responses must be commensurate with the scandal; our credibility depends on it.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, in order to restore trust and make sense of globalisation, transatlantic collaboration must also take place on the human rights front. This is what the Picula report proposes through the development of a common toolbox. In this context, there is an urgent need to tackle the eradication of child labour. For the first time in 20 years, child labour has increased worldwide. 160 million children were working in 2020, one in ten. An additional 8 million children could work by the end of next year due to the pandemic. The United States has a long-standing arsenal of measures to punish companies that employ children. The European Union, which imports €50 billion worth of products from child labour, will adopt legislation next year on corporate social responsibility. While together they account for 30% of global imports, trade sanctions and aid to countries where endemic poverty is the cause of child labour are urgently needed. The Commission must use all the levers at its disposal, including the upcoming Trade and Technology Council, to give substance to the zero tolerance announced more than two years ago by President von der Leyen.

Mr President, the excellent report by my colleague Michèle Rivasi points to the inconsistencies in our European policies and their decisive impact on our southern partners. Our development policies, climate, agricultural but also trade, must aim at one and the same goal: the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. However, the European Commission does not sufficiently integrate the impact of trade agreements on biodiversity when negotiating with countries such as Indonesia, Brazil or others. Is it necessary to recall that the Amazon is home to exceptional fauna and flora, that it now emits more CO2 than it stores, and that it is home to indigenous peoples at risk of extinction? The consequences of EU trade policy – CO2 emissions, increased agro-industrial practices, deforestation, land grabbing and pesticide use – are devastating for biodiversity and local communities. Europe must therefore put its trade at the service of sustainable development and people's well-being, not the other way around.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, with the Pegasus scandal, spyware revealed once again by journalists and NGOs, we are entering a new era of surveillance. A surveillance that escapes the public authorities and becomes the fact of private companies whose search for profit makes them accomplices of governments, unscrupulous regimes. Journalists, political opponents, human rights defenders, lawyers, politicians, including a former MEP, have been targeted for espionage and repression. Each of us could have been on that list. The Israeli company that markets the software presents it as a decisive tool, exclusively for the fight against terrorism and organized crime. It was presumably misused for purposes other than its original objectives for surveillance, in violation of fundamental rights, but also outside any legal framework. This Parliament is currently working on a regulatory framework for technologies to combat crime. Here is a frightening example of the risks inherent in these instruments. In addition, the European Union is working with the States involved in this scandal through police and judicial cooperation. Are we really ready to enter into cooperation agreements with states that spy on us? We demand a moratorium on the export, sale, transfer and use of these monitoring technologies. We demand protection and reparation for the victims. Responsibilities must be established and the European response must be commensurate with the seriousness of the facts.

Mr President, floods and fires have claimed many lives this summer, causing tens of thousands of euros in damage and leaving indelible traces. While the climate crisis has been widening the north-south divide for years, it now also marks the social divide within our countries. In Pepinster, the floods hit the poorest families first. The social impact of the climate crisis is frontal. Victims, the thousands of volunteers still at work, two months later, European citizens for whom the climate and the environment are among the primary concerns, but also the latest report by IPCC scientists, call for urgent responses. Humanity is in red code. Emergency assistance and the Solidarity Funds as well as the availability of funds are essential to address situations of this magnitude. But structural measures are also needed. Investing in public services, civil protection, firefighters, emergency and health services, adapting policies and adopting climate change mitigation and adaptation policies that strengthen social cohesion: This is the real emergency.

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, Bangladesh is ranked among the ten worst countries in terms of workers' rights and trade union rights by the International Trade Union Confederation. The conventions on the organisation of work are not respected. The rights of workers, trade unions, freedom of expression, freedom of association and child labour are not respected. I know that the ILO and the European Union are working on this with the government of the country; however, pending the implementation of all these conventions that are announced in a few years’ time, I would like to draw attention to an agreement that has made a difference since the Rana Plaza tragedy in 2013. At the time, we became aware of the conditions under which clothes from well-known brands are produced that we wear on a daily basis, of the responsibility that we politicians, businesses and consumers bear when 60% of textile production, the country’s largest industry, is destined for the European market. Fashion brands had then embarked on an unprecedented agreement to improve health and safety in their factories and subcontractors – a binding agreement that has paid off for workers and especially women workers, but which is now on hold because some companies would like to end this agreement and only move forward on the basis of voluntary initiatives. However, since this experience in 2013, the agreement has shown us that in order for corporate responsibility to be effective and to benefit workers, the role of trade unions and NGOs must be respected. Negotiations between trade unions and trade marks are ongoing to renew the agreement on the protection of workers. We call on the European Commission to intervene with influential European players in the sector to encourage the conclusion of a binding agreement with an independent monitoring body. We also call for this agreement to be transposed to other countries that are affected by insecurity at work, such as India, Pakistan, Morocco or Egypt. We are all very much looking forward to the legislation on corporate social responsibility. But in the meantime, there is an agreement that needs to be renewed to ensure and guarantee respect for workers’ rights.