Speeches

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, who in this room can say that the priority today is to break the only texts on social and ecological progress that were voted on in the previous term? Who in this Chamber can seriously think that the most important thing today is to throw in the trash regulations that prevent multinationals from massacring people and the planet? To protect the environment, to improve people’s lives, this is never the time. You always have to wait, postpone, "we'll see when we have time". But when it comes to deregulating, the EPP is the great lord: Especially, fast, fast, fast! There is an urgency to give gifts to big companies, more and more. You have to get started right away, right away, in an urgent procedure!" – you who usually like the European Commission's evaluation procedures so much to waste time. The reality is that you did not have this idea on your own, dear friends of the EPP. The big companies that want to continue to make profits from the exploitation of workers and nature, they are the ones who suggested it, and it is actually at the request of their lobbyists that you are making this request for an urgent procedure today. This is a real scandal! Furthermore, Mr Tobé, you are talking about forecasts for large companies, but this text was adopted at the end of the previous term of office. What are we going to do during this mandate, here, all the Members of the European Parliament? Are we going to unravel the texts that have been adopted by our European Parliament? What is the point of sitting here, then, if it is to undo what has just been adopted? Today I would like you to think of all the victims of the crimes of multinationals and tell them face to face that their fate is not urgent. Go say, dear right-wing and far-right MEPs who are about to vote on this urgent procedure, go tell the 100,000 people expropriated by Total in Uganda and Tanzania that there is no urgent need for redress. Tell the families of the 6,500 people who died at the World Cup in Qatar that making those responsible pay is not urgent. Tell the Uyghur slaves exploited by Shein that stopping their torture is not urgent. Tell the relatives of the 1,135 employees who died in the rubble of Rana Plaza that access to justice is not urgent. So yes, this text on due diligence in the Omnibus package is not the most revolutionary, but it has the merit of existing. We have ripped it off after five years of fighting lobbyists and we are proud that the left, united in this Chamber, has managed to defend it and get it to vote, and finally put an end to the impunity of multinationals. The cynicism of those who propose this urgent procedure to establish the total impunity of the big bosses who have blood on their hands is a shame, and it makes you directly complicit. So, colleagues, it is up to you to take responsibility. Do not allow this disgraceful step backwards and defend this essential human rights acquis!

Madam President, Mrs von der Leyen, Mr Costa, I shall begin with a rather simple question: Ms von der Leyen, how much longer are you going to let Donald Trump dictate his law on US-EU trade relations? What are you waiting for, Ms von der Leyen, to raise your voice and propose a firm response that protects workers in the sectors concerned? I heard you this morning: You are still thinking, considering, calibrating your response, while Donald Trump is actually stripping us. The feverishness of the European Union in the face of pressure from Donald Trump speaks volumes about its inability to envisage its own independence. Yet this was an opportunity to rethink the entire EU policy, including its trade policy. With the United States, of course, but also with the rest of the world. It is obvious that our current economic fragility is the consequence of several decades of your liberal policies, the very ones that have promoted extreme economic globalisation and specialisation. Sweet trade was supposed to be a substitute for war. Result: We will have and war by arms on the European continent and trade war. This supposed freedom of free trade is what now makes us captive to the trade blackmail of Donald Trump. This supposed freedom of free trade makes us unable today to support ourselves: medicines, solar panels, clothing, food, and so on, are imported en masse from the other side of the world. We are getting others to produce what we should be producing here on the European continent. The consequences are well known: relocation and deindustrialisation, rising inequality and unemployment, accelerating the ecological catastrophe. But, Mrs von der Leyen, far from learning from these lessons, you are continuing the flight forward and multiplying the free trade agreements with Mercosur, Mexico, India, Thailand and Malaysia. How dare you, Mrs von der Leyen, again this morning, come and advocate free trade agreements? Have you really learned nothing from our dependence on states outside the European Union? There is an urgent need to completely rethink ways of producing and exchanging. What is produced, and where? For what needs and in what quantity? Are we producing to export airplanes or luxury goods and fatten multinationals, or are we producing to meet basic needs locally – to feed, house, dress, heat, furnish, move, heal? These, Mrs von der Leyen, are the questions you should ask yourself, rather than delighting in the comfort of worn-out economic dogmas: free trade, competitiveness, market, competition, growth... More than ever, we need solidarity-based and ecological protectionism, to refocus our economy on our needs and within planetary boundaries, to build an economy of peace rather than an economy of war. This is what must guide our economies: Our lives rather than their profits.

Colleagues, between corrupt politicians who put their money in their pockets by accepting gifts from lobbyists and those who divert public money, such as Marine Le Pen, frankly, there is enough to disgust people with politics. Those who advocated ‘Head up, hands clean!’ now have their heads down and their hands dirty. Those who called for zero impunity for offenders find themselves caught up in their own game and hand in hand. Those who were the first to rescue Viktor Orbán are suddenly calling for the rule of law. I admit that it is quite tasty to hear the far right talking about the rule of law. You will certainly still ask your buddy Elon Musk to fly to your rescue? But in reality, the problem is even wider. In France, in my country, 26 ministers have been involved in cases since 2017, and in the European Parliament scandals follow one after another, without it arousing the slightest emotion. Two years after the suitcases of Qatari banknotes, there is now a place for luxurious gifts and bank transfers from the multinational Huawei, which you do not even dare to mention in the title of this debate. This is the return of searches, sealed offices and investigations revealing Mafia practices. It's not a Netflix series, it's just the state of our democracy. And what happened between these two cases? Nothing. Just a few bars. Circulate, there is nothing to see. Everyone here stands by the goatee to protect themselves and, most importantly, not change anything. But you can count on my group and me to continue to denounce these schemes and change everything from the cellar to the attic. It is time to clean up and finally put ethics ahead of money.

Mr President, Commissioner, it seems that you have found money, sounding and stumbling, money for tanks, but strangely not for hospitals. Indeed, this is what you propose to us: a war economy, where all of a sudden billions rain down on military spending, but not on social and environmental spending. While the debt of the states was supposed to be an insurmountable point, Europe is getting out of its hat 800 billion for armaments. When we were told that we had to cut spending on our schools and pensions, we had to invest heavily in missiles and guns. While we have been fighting for years – quite alone, it must be said – against the austerity rules, these same rules are suddenly shattering to finance the army. It is as if, all of a sudden, there is no more global warming or poverty, and the only priority is the armoured vehicles. The truth is that the only war you are preparing is a social war. Already, the most fervent advocates of the established economic order see it as an ideal opportunity to push their social enterprise even further and unfold their austere roadmap. Because we need money for guns, they are quick to fire red bullets at our social protection. Some already offer to work until the age of 70 and to retire only after. Why stop in such a good way? Unemployment insurance, working hours, public services, environmental protection... All sacrifices are good for the peoples of Europe, as long as we do not touch the money of the richest. The war economy is really about big bosses and shareholders rubbing their hands. Those who have already experienced the golden age of superprofits during a pandemic are now seeing the financial windfall of the arms race. Already in 2024, no less than $750 billion in dividends were paid worldwide – $69 billion in France alone. Every year, a record is broken and another is chased away. The endless enrichment of a handful aggravates the gaping wound of inequality. Yet, in the eyes of European leaders and the majority of this Parliament, this is still not a sufficient reason to tax the richest and multinationals. Strangely, on the side of the European Commission, you always prefer to slash our social spending, rather than go and get the money where it is. We will not allow ourselves to be trapped in this false dilemma between the defence of Europe and our security on the one hand, and the social state and the ecological bifurcation on the other. It is time to rebuild an economy that is based on our defence needs, but also social and ecological, because no common good can be sacrificed on the altar of war or holy austerity.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner – delighted that you have finally found your way to the European Parliament; I don't know, maybe there was an "omnibus" on your way? – I will start with a simple question for you: Has Donald Trump become your role model? Because, obviously, its great wind of deregulation has blown to this side of the Atlantic. I can imagine you at the European Commission: the planet is burning at +4°C, multinationals continue to make profits by violating human rights, and here you are: Eureka! Let's get rid of the only regulations that exist to hold companies to account! With this "omnibus" package, you are offering a white-pee to the companies that will destroy the planet and exploit the workers. You are throwing multinationals' duty of care into the trash, limiting liability to direct partners only, betraying its very principle, and removing financial sanctions. Too bad if companies like Shein, Total or Vinci continue blithely to violate human rights and destroy the environment with impunity. As long as we are here, you can count on my group to fight to protect these regulations and prevent multinationals from making their laws and generating profits at the expense of our lives.

Mr President, I believe that we were all here waiting for the European Commission to deign to take an interest in our debates, deign to come to the Chamber and deign to come and present the biggest package of deregulation it has ever had. I do not know if the Commissioner is having meetings with lobbyists or banks to continue to deregulate due diligence, but I do not think that we can have such an important debate without the presence of the European Commission. I will therefore ask you whether it is possible to consider rescheduling this debate, to ensure that the European Commission will be present and that, after a while, it stops disrespecting us, as it has done on too many occasions, unfortunately.

Mr President, yesterday's event organised by the ESN Group was about remigration. Remigration is the deportation of people who are European outside the European Union. Mr Garraud, by defending this event, you are showing the true face of the far right, which is today the face of a racist and xenophobic project. So yes, Mr Garraud, we protested peacefully. Yes, Mr Garraud, you will find us every time – every time! – on your way. Whenever you organise racist events on the premises of our European Parliament, you will find us here to protest, because racism has no place either here in the European Parliament or outside.

Madam President, Commissioner, how dare you come here to defend the agreement with Mercosur, the largest and worst free trade agreement ever signed by the European Union? How dare you tell farmers, who are already struggling to make ends meet, that importing hundreds of thousands more tonnes of beef, chicken or cheese will have no impact on them? How dare you deliberately expose the population to GMOs and pesticides banned in Europe? Because no, there will be no reciprocity of norms. How is it possible, at a time of ecological emergency, to support an agreement that will help accelerate global warming and deforestation? Yes, Commissioner, you should be ashamed. Shame, because the reality is that no one wants this deal. And here you find yourself having to pass in force, trampling on the European Parliament's consultation rules. Yesterday, the vote on one of my amendments made it very clear: the concerns about this agreement are extremely strong and there is no real majority in favour of it. The dogma of free trade stifles people and devastates the planet. He's already faltering. The battle is not over. Count on us to bring him down.

Mrs Vedrenne, I appreciate that you like the debate in this Chamber as much as I do. You rightly said that we have the means to act as a European entity. We are a real economic power. But in this case, why give ourselves the means to act, on the one hand, and, on the other, let our European industries be robbed and especially sign in turn free trade agreements with countries around the world? I know you have reservations about the one with Mercosur, but behind it are Mexico, Malaysia, India, China, Australia. You know as well as I do that it is also organizing our own dependence abroad. So I see a certain contradiction in your speech.

Madam President, Donald Trump is multiplying attacks, threats and excesses. What is the European Union doing? She looks at her shoes, her pumps. Worse, she submits. Withdrawal of the WHO, withdrawal of humanitarian aid, withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, the UN Human Rights Council, sanctions against the International Criminal Court and even the abject threat to transform the Gaza Strip into a gigantic tourist complex: Here is a glimpse of the disastrous record of Donald Trump and his billionaire henchmen in the space of a few days at the White House. In the face of this policy of the worst, what is the European Union's reaction? Nothing. Ah yes, I did find a statement that says we should deepen our transatlantic relations. Trump wants to rob us and it's just if you don't turn the other cheek, Commissioner, to stay in the fold of the United States, even when his far-right leader tramples on all the principles of international law and puts a target in the back of immigrants and LGBT minorities. This unconditional alignment with the United States is a dead end that is precipitating Europe towards its own ruin. Ironically, those who call themselves the Patriots – not very many, by the way, this morning – in this Parliament, the far right, are also the quickest to idolise Elon Musk and walk with their heads bowed in Trump's footsteps. So, I'm asking you: How many more provocations will it take for European leaders to stop obeying him, with their fingers on the seams of their pants, paralyzed by the prospect of a trade war? Yes, the Trump administration continues to agitate the scarecrow of tariffs on European products. And we, we should be afraid, when our economy weighs the same weight and we have tools to defend ourselves and fight back? Stop being tetanized, Mr. Šefčovič. To those who accuse us of fuelling the economic war with protectionist measures, do not be fooled, because it has already existed for a long time and the European leaders are giving us back the turkeys of the farce and are making us lose it. This war is the one waged by capitalism that puts people in competition and destroys the planet. But rather than learning from its failures, the European Union continues to give full powers to multinationals. And eurêka! She said to herself: "Well, let's sign even more free trade agreements", or even the new mantras of the European Union, "deregulation" and "simplification" of a European Union that in reality loses its compass, to the point of destroying the only social progress wrested in recent years, starting with the duty of vigilance of multinationals. So yes, Mr Šefčovič, Europe must take back its destiny and reduce its dependence on the United States and the rest of the world. How is it that we should import from the other side of the planet medicines or solar panels that we know how to produce here? At a time when the European Union is multiplying these new agreements, it is time to put an end to free trade. It is time to radically change the rules to produce at the scale of our continent what we need, to regain our sovereignty over energy, industry, agriculture and food through a true protectionism of solidarity. This is the path that Europe must take to face the perils that lie ahead. Without it, we run to our own loss.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, Prime Minister Tusk, on 9 June 2023, a woman, Dorota Lalik, five months pregnant, died of sepsis because she was unable to have an abortion. This happened in your country, Mr Tusk, Poland. This 33-year-old woman had her life ahead of her. She died because men decreed that they knew better than women what to do with their bodies. Like Dorota, too many women have lost their lives due to the abortion ban in Poland. How can this still happen in Europe in the 21st century, when we are celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Veil law in my country, France? The right to abortion is in jeopardy, and the total passivity of the European Union is encouraging the reactionary international, which is organising to attack it all over Europe, as we saw again at a rally held this weekend in Paris. Yet, Mr Tusk, you were elected on the promise to liberalise the right to abortion against the PiS, which had introduced this despicable law. While some political groups here again believe they are celebrating with your government the victory of the free world, you are in fact prolonging some of the far-right policies. This is reflected in the work programme of your Presidency of the European Union. I read it correctly and, frankly, I wondered if there were not parts that had been written by Mr Orbán or by Ms Meloni. As inequality explodes, as climate disasters pile up, you have only one word to say: security. What about Dorota's safety, Mr. Tusk? What about the safety of women who risk their lives to decide the simplest and inalienable right to dispose of their own bodies? The worst part is that you connect this word, of course, to the fantasy of a migratory invasion. No wonder, when you know that you want to suspend the right to asylum. Yet there was so much to do with this Polish presidency, such as having a blocking minority to oppose the free trade agreement with Mercosur, or creating genuine European independence rather than aligning with Donald Trump’s US footsteps. Unless you consider their climate-sceptic, racist and misogynistic project the way forward. Mr Tusk, in conclusion, we do not oppose the far right by taking up some of its proposals. For Dorota and for all the victims of the obscurantists, on the contrary, we have the duty to oppose her frontally, with a radically emancipatory project.

Madam President, Madam President, Mr President, weapons have finally died in Gaza. The entry into force of the ceasefire is a huge relief, and its preservation must be at the heart of the Council's exchanges, rather than the signature in turn of new free trade agreements, Mrs von der Leyen. I am thinking today of the 2 million Gazans who have lived for 18 months in fear and hunger and who are finally seeing a light at the end of the tunnel. I am thinking of the hundreds of thousands of children whose only playground was a field of ruins, and who will be able to find a few moments of respite and carelessness. I am thinking of the Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners who will finally find their loved ones, and freedom. But the precarious hope that is rising keeps a bitter taste, because too much time has been lost. At least 46,000 civilians have already been massacred under Israeli bombs. These women, these men, these children have been abandoned by the European Union, which has not only been helpless, but complicit in the martyrdom of the Palestinians. Mrs von der Leyen, Mr Costa, how many lives could have been saved if the European states had not been so cowardly, if they had stopped sending arms to Benjamin Netanyahu, if the European Union had suspended its association agreement with Israel? Mrs von der Leyen, you have done nothing to stop the war, but you can still act to restore peace. For while the massacre has temporarily stopped, the torment of the Palestinians is far from over. Those who survived find themselves on a field of ruins, when they do not continue to be targeted, such as this child shot down by an Israeli missile or the Jenin camp in the West Bank, which is subject to numerous attacks. In a year and a half, an entire territory has been razed, its population starved and massacred, humanitarian aid blocked, hospitals deliberately destroyed by a genocidal far-right government whose leader is under an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court. So yes, the European Union must say it clearly: War criminals must be tried, illegal colonization of the Palestinian territories must stop, and finally a sovereign Palestinian state must be created. Ms von der Leyen, you cannot redeem your culpable inaction during the genocide, but you have a duty, at the very least, to do everything to protect the survivors and offer a promise for the future to the children of Gaza. So today, to conclude, I think of the words of the Palestinian poet Marwan Makhoul: “I have to listen to the birds, and to listen to the birds, the bomber noise has to stop, it has to stop forever so that Palestine finally finds its freedom.”

Madam President, rest assured, you will have the opportunity to vote in a moment, because I cannot help but react. Frankly, hearing the extreme right give lessons on ethics in this institution, while it has consistently voted against all the proposals on the fight against conflicts of interest, is involved in a number of scandals and has a large number of MEPs who receive the most ancillary remuneration from large companies, frankly, it is a huge joke. Because the subject we're talking about, it's serious. After the ‘Qatargate’ scandal – as we all remember – everyone had promised that this time it was the der des der and that it would change... (Tumult on the benches of the far right. Chahut). Colleagues, can you let me talk, maybe? Colleagues, let me... I listened to you with great attention and patience. I am well aware that, when you are caught in the bag giving lessons on ethics in politics, but doing nothing in practice, it is a bit complicated for you and you have to protest, but let me finish, because the case we are talking about is extremely serious. We have a former European Commissioner who, just six months later, is going to sell his services to Bank of America, one of the biggest American banks – icing on the cake, just before Donald Trump’s inauguration – and all, of course, with the blessing of the European Commission. And that is what is at stake and why we need to have a debate to confront the Commission with its own rules.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, we are here again today to talk about corruption in the European institutions. Unfortunately, this is becoming a habit, because conflicts of interest are on every level. The latest is former Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders, who is suspected of laundering up to €800,000 in 10 years. Just before, it was the head of the Commission’s Directorate-General for Transport who had been paid for air tickets by Qatar. Even before, the global scandal of the "Qatargate", with its suitcases of tickets. In short, this list is long, and this lack of ethics must shock us all. But what revolts me even more, ladies and gentlemen, is the total inaction of the European Parliament. And you know what? I found the reason, last week, for your complicit silence One third of MEPs receive side salaries in addition to their mandate allowance – which is, by the way, quite comfortable. Obviously, when you risk being caught in the bag yourself, you say nothing about the little comrades who do the same. So, know it, count on me, count on us, so that finally and forever ethics take precedence over money.

Madam President, thank you for this point of order, on the basis of Rule 117 on Parliament’s involvement in the signing of international agreements. As you know, last week Ursula von der Leyen announced the conclusion of the EU-Mercosur Free Trade Agreement. As you know, this agreement will have disastrous consequences for our agriculture, our health and the planet. But it is all the more unacceptable that this agreement is imposed in complete opacity, in defiance of the operating rules of the European institutions. How can it be explained that no Member of the committee responsible has been informed? That we were denied access to the negotiating documents? That the European Commission is secretly preparing a change of legal basis to circumvent the validation of national parliaments? So, ladies and gentlemen, we cannot accept such a passage in force. We cannot allow our European Parliament to be trampled on in this way. This is about democracy. I therefore invite you to sign our motion of censure of the European Commission to remind it that, in a democracy, it is the people who make the law.

Madam President, Mrs von der Leyen, what struck me during this debate was your level of total disconnection from the reality experienced by millions of European citizens: citizens who are struggling to make ends meet, pay their electricity bills, lose their jobs, because a few profit-seeking shareholders prefer to relocate. These people have not been mentioned today, Mrs von der Leyen, perhaps because you have a very comfortable salary, from the top of your 30,000 euros per month. Similarly, using billionaires, superprofits, rather than making workers pay out of their own pockets, has never been discussed in this debate either. Instead, you turned your speech into "Europe has incredible talent", listing your commissioners as rockstars one by one. I could have done it, too. You present Mr Dombrovskis, in charge of racketeering our public services and social protection systems, responsible for orchestrating austerity; Mr Šefčovič, in charge of the world's great move, signing free trade agreements in turn; Mr Séjourné, in charge of deindustrialisation, relocations and redundancy plans; and, icing on the cake, Mr Fitto, in charge of the new alliance with the far right – although I could also have mentioned Mrs Kallas, in charge of complicity with the genocide in Gaza. The reality is that the only winners of this contest, Mrs von der Leyen, are on the far right. And we saw how Mr. Fitto's group, the far-right group led by neo-fascists in Italy, came out on top with Mr. Weber. With Mr. Weber. Because yes, in order to save your coalition, Mrs von der Leyen, you have made a deal with the extreme right. No wonder no talent has been proposed, for example, to safeguard women's rights. This is especially what we will remember today, even if it means humiliating certain groups here. So my Left group, Mrs von der Leyen, is not for sale. Count on us to stand firmly, but with hope and radicalism, against your Commission of Doom.

Madam President, Mrs von der Leyen, your new Commission will be the first union government of the right and the far right in the history of the European Union. The so-called coalition of central groups no longer exists and all the red lines of the so-called progressives have been trampled. We were told that there would be no far right in positions of responsibility: You have chosen as Vice President Raffaele Fitto, the post-fascist also known for his accusations of corruption. You told us that there would be no negotiations with the far right for the distribution of positions of power: In the end, the far right led the negotiations. You told us that there would be no coalitions between the right and the far right: since the beginning of this mandate, they are systematic, as we have seen for example to bring down a text against deforestation. And it was enough to see, just now, the jubilation of Manfred Weber, celebrating his new coalition with the far-right ECR group to be sure. Mrs von der Leyen, the Commission you are proposing is in fact the Commission of the end of the cordon sanitaire. It is the Commission of Shame, which is rolling out the red carpet to the far right by celebrating authoritarian leaders, as in Hungary, Italy, who are attacking women's rights, LGBT people and spreading their racist and xenophobic hatred. So, to my fellow ecologists and socialists, I ask: How can you condone that? All the more so since the whole process of appointing this Commission was a pure democratic scandal. Conflicts of interest have never been seriously studied. One example is enough to understand it: Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra will be in charge of climate and taxation, while he worked for the oil company Shell and had a shell company in a tax haven. The auditions were a laughable circus whose outcome was already known; opaque tricks that ridicule the credibility of our European Parliament a little more, if not completely. I tell you with pride, Mrs von der Leyen: Our group on the left is the only one to have refused this masquerade from the beginning. Because, basically, your political project will also add social unhappiness everywhere. What is your response to the proliferation of social plans across Europe and the increase in poverty? A blank check to multinationals who can touch public money while firing, and a new social bloodletting with your XXL austerity cure. How do you respond to agricultural anger and the climate emergency? The signing, in turn, of free trade agreements, including the one with Mercosur, will probably be one of your first acts. What is your response to the ongoing massacres in the Gaza Strip? A guilty complicity, Mrs von der Leyen, in refusing to take the necessary sanctions against the genocidal Benjamin Netanyahu despite the arrest warrant of the International Criminal Court. So how dare you remain silent after such a decision, when more than 45,000 civilians have already died under the bombs? Mrs von der Leyen, as you will have understood, our group on the left will vote unanimously against your Committee on Misfortune and will be the only credible opposition in this Chamber. With your blessing, the rule of the far right begins today. Finally, I think of the words of the great French resistance fighter Lucie Aubrac: "The word resist must always be conjugated in the present." So, from this Chamber, I launch this great, this beautiful, this powerful call to resistance before it is too late.

Ms Maréchal, in reality – and strangely – you are only interested in women’s rights when the authors are foreigners or Muslims. But you know that sexual violence knows no religion or nationality: Gérard Depardieu, Cauet, Damien Abad, PPDA, Polanski, Nicolas Bedos... I could go on, the list is long. These are Frenchmen like you and me, Madame Maréchal. And the number you come out with, you know very well, is a fake news. Then recognize it: 90% of perpetrators of sexual violence are people close to us. It is clear that this would mean, for you, to get out of your racist ideology. Indeed, the perpetrators of sexual violence are just men, Madame Maréchal. Recognize him!

Mr President, what woman can say that she has never experienced a single gender-based or sexual violence – from a malevolent remark to a non-consensual relationship, from street harassment to a blow, from humiliation to femicide? All these acts are part of the same continuum of violence that is that of our patriarchal society, and that all women suffer until they build coping mechanisms. How is it that we live in a society in which we configure our clothes, our alcohol consumption, our social interactions in the light of the risk of aggression? But our bodies are not freely accessible. Today, I want to tell you about our rage, the rage of women who can no longer endure violence: from the street to our homes, in the public space or in privacy. Because yes, the aggressors are everywhere. Not all men, of course, but all men. They are in our workplaces, in our sports clubs, in our groups of friends, in our families, on TV, and sometimes even in our political parties. And how many times do they defend themselves by saying: "She didn't say no"? Rape is the only crime where the perpetrator feels innocent and the victim is guilty. One need only look at the defence of the accused in the Mazan trial, who claim to be victims or refuse to acknowledge that they committed rape, even though they entered the drugged body of Gisèle Pelicot. Yet while this trial imposes the systemic nature of the rape culture, the new European Commission no longer even has an equality commissioner, nor has it planned anything against gender-based and sexual violence. We could start with one simple thing. The Advocate General in Mazan’s trial made this clear: “We can no longer consider in 2024 that, if she did not say anything,” a woman “agrees”. So let us make this trial history, the history of the inclusion of consent in French law, but also in European law. We can do one simple thing: clearly defining sexual intercourse without consent as rape, a bar point – an initiative that our Parliament had adopted, before Macron’s France allied itself with Viktor Orbán’s Hungary to block it. To put an end to the impunity of sexual abusers, 99% of whom are never convicted, but also to profoundly transform our societies, including in sexuality education – which the extreme right hates so much – so that finally shame changes sides, for good.

Madam President, I am sorry, I would have liked to have avoided doing so in order to be able to finalise the vote, but after verification, the first votes on the deforestation text were reduced to three votes. There were between 625 and 630 voters. You said it yourself, most of the votes... Colleagues, I know very well that you want to kill, absolutely, the forest and this text against deforestation, but do it at least with good intelligence: you could accept that we vote again, if you are so sure of your vote otherwise. So, Madam President, if I may, I would like to ask you whether we can inquire about the Members who were present in the Chamber and whose votes were not counted, and whether we can ensure that, whatever the position of this Chamber on this text, this vote is taken in good democratic conditions, because, moreover, I do not think that we are giving a good image of our Parliament today with this vote.

Madam President, I wanted to make a point of order on the basis of Rule 129 of our Rules of Procedure on the validation procedure for European Commissioners. This article states that we must meet without delay after the hearings. Yesterday, however, some groups asked for a postponement sine die and without any justification for these assessments. In fact, the justification is simple and I will give it to you, here it is: time to spend some small arrangements with friends, completely disconnected from the political content. But in this case, I have a question for you, ladies and gentlemen, why did you spend tens of hours auditioning the European Commissioners if it is to end with a few little tricks of corridors, and moreover with the extreme right? All this is in fact an unprecedented masquerade which has a very concrete consequence, ladies and gentlemen, weakening the weight, role and credibility of our European Parliament. And we cannot sit idly by here waiting for the white smoke of small opaque deals whose terms citizens will never know. Therefore, Madam President, I would ask you to put an end to this farce and to ask that the committee coordinators be able to meet without delay to complete the assessment of the Commissioners.

You say, Mrs Trochu, that abortion is suffering. But how dare you? Tell that to Polish women and the families of Polish women who lost their lives precisely because they could not have an abortion when their lives were in danger. You also say that the life of an unborn child must be protected. So, what to do with women's lives? Those lives that you threaten from this European Parliament, from the comfort of this European Parliament? You see, engraving this right in stone is not an admission of weakness, contrary to what you say. This is precisely what prevents people like you from going back on our fundamental rights. And we'll always be on your way.

Mr President, if I had to have an abortion in Poland, I could have died there. Like Izabela, who was in grave danger after losing water prematurely, but to whom doctors refused an abortion. Like Agnieszka, pregnant with twins, who died of sepsis after the death of one of the two fetuses and whose doctors refused to perform an abortion until the second had died. Like Dorota, whom the doctors also let die, when her fetus was not viable. And again, I am talking here about therapeutic abortions. Even these are restricted in Poland. Even when the woman's life is in danger. Even when doctors can practice it, they let women die instead of saving them, for fear of prosecution. So what about the broader right, still prohibited in Poland, to choose whether or not to have a child, to choose whether or not to have an abortion? How can all these men decide for millions of women what they can do with their bodies? What do they know about the impact of pregnancy on our lives, on our bodies? Since Donald Tusk came to power, who promised to legalise abortion, almost nothing has changed. Promises remained words, and the suffering of Poles a reality. The report of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women is formal: the ban on abortion in Poland endangers women’s health and lives, causes mental and physical suffering and violates their rights. This conclusion, which is true for Poland, is also true, ladies and gentlemen, for many other countries, at a time when the far right is increasingly threatening our rights. In Hungary, women must listen to the heart of the fetus before having an abortion. In Italy, there are so many conscientious objectors that access to abortion is a real path for the fighter. In Malta, the right to abortion is simply prohibited. Not to mention all the states where anti-choice movements are ambush, where they organise themselves to misinform or attack family planning, when they do not sit directly on the benches of the extreme right in this Chamber or orchestrate demonstrations here in the European Parliament. Colleagues, you have heard the rhetoric of the far right: An abortion would be murder, genocide. What are they? What are they doing today? They bear a heavy responsibility: attacking our fundamental rights. Their face here in the European Parliament is very clear. So, dear comrades, dear colleagues, I propose to you, together, a common commitment: to fight here on foot to extend the right to abortion for all, to enshrine it in the Charter of Fundamental Rights, to bring to fruition the European initiative facilitating access to abortion throughout Europe. Because, with all the reactionaries present – too many – here, our body is not assigned to a mission. It is up to each and every one of us to choose our destiny. This is the very condition for our emancipation. So, for Izabela, for Agnieszka, for Dorota, for all those who have not had the chance before us to benefit from the right to abortion, let us fight this fight together and drive the extreme right out of this European Parliament, which has only one obsession: attacking our rights.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, it is a good thing, I wanted to talk to you about democracy and to make a point of order on the basis of Rule 154, which deals with interinstitutional agreements, to talk about the state of negotiations between the European Union and Mercosur. I shall begin, ladies and gentlemen, with a rather simple question: Who finds it normal that the most important free trade agreement ever concluded by the European Union is being signed secretly, without our Parliament having any information whatsoever? Go ahead, tell me who agrees with this and raise your hand. As you can see – and I have done the counting – it has been exactly five years since the European Commission gave or published any official report on the state of the negotiations. Of course, this free trade agreement will have a disastrous impact on our farmers, who are already suffering, on health and on the planet. Ladies and gentlemen, this is also a democratic scandal. How can we accept being kept out of this way? That is why, Madam President, I would ask you to hold the European Commission to account so that it can finally keep us informed, because we cannot allow ourselves to be ‘banned’ in this way. It's time!

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to make a point of order on the basis of Rule 150 concerning urgent resolutions. We are about to vote on three urgent resolutions on three cases of human rights violations. But once again, Gaza and Lebanon are forgotten and none of these texts concern the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe in the Middle East. Let me tell you, this is a scandal. Isn't a genocide in Gaza a humanitarian emergency? Isn't 42,000 deaths in Gaza and 2,000 in Lebanon a humanitarian emergency? Aren't schools, health centres and buildings bombed a humanitarian emergency? This double standard, ladies and gentlemen, is unbearable. International law cannot be variable geometry. I see your reaction: Stop your hypocrisy because a human life is worth a human life, no matter who committed the crimes, no matter where, and count on us to defend those human lives you never want to talk about here.