11
Feb
2025
Watch
Preparedness for a new trade era: multilateral cooperation or tariffs (debate)
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.