Speeches

Madam President, Commissioner, we must put an end to a fraudulent situation where platforms present themselves as mere intermediaries between a self-employed worker and a customer, when in reality they decide on tariffs, they decide on sanctions and they decide on working methods, all without fulfilling their obligations as employers. To remedy this, Parliament makes a proposal in this report. There needs to be a presumption of wage-earning for digital platform workers. A presumption of salaried employment linked to a reversal of the burden of proof. And the definition of the word presumption is unambiguous. From Latin praesumereIn advance, the presumption of wage-earning means that workers are considered employees of digital platforms from the first day of the employment relationship, without the need to go to court to assert their rights. This does not mean, of course, that all platform workers must be employees. There are cases where platforms are actually intermediaries, I am thinking for example of the Doctolib platform. In this case, it is up to the platform to prove that it has no subordinate relationship with the workers and they retain their status as self-employed. If we ask you to act, Commissioner, it is not to force self-employed workers to pay. If we urge you, it is first of all to remedy the extreme precariousness of VTC drivers and two-wheeled meal delivery workers. But it is also, and above all, for the whole world of work: If today we allow Uber to have workers under its command without assuming its responsibility as an employer, tomorrow it is all employees whose status will be threatened with replacement by a bogus self-employed person.

Mr President, while some have their heads in the moon, others have their hands in the sludge. Dear colleagues, Jeff Bezos is leaving his position as CEO of Amazon to focus on his passion: space tourism. So when he puts his clothes in his suitcase, I hope he will have a thought for the workers of his subcontractors in Bangladesh who make clothes for Amazon. These workers who were on strike on May 26; who were sent home without a cent during the lockdowns; who, in order to keep their job, are obliged to accept pay of less than EUR 80 per month for 12 hours a day, six days a week, in deplorable conditions. And all this while Bezos, sitting on a small cloud, makes billions to pay for his rocket. Colleagues, let’s force Amazon and all multinationals to come back to earth, to pay their workers a salary that allows them to live in dignity and for which they do not risk their lives. You will agree that this is not asking to land the moon.

Mr. Speaker, ladies and gentlemen, just a week ago, the thermometer in the village of Lytton, Canada, stood at 49.5°C. Not in the Sahara nor in the Middle East. No, no, 49.5°C in Canada! The cause of this extreme heat in a country also in the north is known to be climate change. Scientists have warned: what happened in Canada could very well happen again in Europe in the near future. With such a wake-up call, one would think that Europe would do its utmost to curb the runaway climate. And yet, with the Connecting Europe Facility, the European Union is preparing to finance gas projects in turn. Fossil gas can be just as dangerous to the climate as coal or oil. Rather than subsidising gas pipelines, Europe should fund wind turbines and solar panels, for the success of the green fork, for our future and to be able to enjoy the summer without burning.