Speeches

Mr President, I propose that a chronometer be scrolled through during my speech. Every second, pharmaceutical companies will make a thousand dollars in profit. This is the jackpot. By refusing to lift the patents, Mrs von der Leyen, this is what you wanted to protect at all costs: Big Pharma money rather than our lives. Because the infernal circle has been the same for two years, when COVID-19 entered our lives. Two years after the outbreak, it has already claimed more than 5 million lives. Two years as the virus grows, spreads, mutates and returns to us like a boomerang, varying after varying, wave after wave, overwhelming our health services. For two years, Mrs von der Leyen, you have forbidden us full access to contracts with laboratories, even though they were financed by public money. For two years, you - the European Commission - have been ignoring calls from the WHO, the UN, a hundred states and even three times from our own Parliament to get vaccines out of the market. Two years, Mrs von der Leyen, that you are protecting the production monopoly of a handful of multinationals, rather than requisitioning their factories and skills and sharing them with the world. Two years you claim that it is useless because it would take months to open factories, but two years you push back the problem and waste time. Two years of selfishness in taking up the few doses available, while only 7% of the population has received a dose in poor countries. Two years, Mrs von der Leyen, you boast of your charity, again this morning, when the rich countries have still not given more than two thirds of the doses that have been promised. Two years that you continue to feed the sharks that are surfing this fifth wave and have taken advantage of it, like Pfizer, to increase their prices, making COVID-19 an opportunity like any other to accumulate cash. Two years that you put in parentheses our lives, our outings, our little happinesses, our links with our alumni to serve the Big Pharma. In short, two years that you protect at all costs their profits rather than our lives. In conclusion: Since the beginning of my intervention, the laboratories have earned more than $120,000 in profits and at the same time, COVID-19 has taken a dozen lives. So when do we stop this madness?

Mr. Speaker, we released the floor with MeToo, and then we threw our pork. We threw our pork in the cinema, we threw our pork in the literature, we threw our pork in the sport. We got up and broke. But you decorated the pigs. Even those who recognized the facts. Then we threw away our own family, adults who rape children, men who rape other men. We threw the actors, the musicians, the youtubers, the publishers. The Church and, more recently, the bars have also been thrown out. And now we're even swaying politics. But you made them ministers. Do not think that this has no cost for us. As soon as retaliation, intimidation, exclusion, insults, threats and harassment are thrown away. We are exhausted, but we are not afraid of you. We will continue to swing as far as it takes to end the impunity of the aggressors, as much as it takes to protect ourselves and win the respect that is due to us.

Mr President, blablabla, victory by K.-O. of the lobbies and . This is how COP26, which I attended, ended with a big flop, with a final image of unacceptable cynicism: the irresponsible people of this world who self-congratulate themselves on burying the planet with a suicidal trajectory of more than 2.4 degrees. No wonder we came to this when we see the omnipresence of lobbies in the COP. Imagine the decor: halls littered with logos, including J.P. Morgan Bank, which has invested 317 billion in fossil fuels, or Unilever, the third largest plastic polluter in the world. And among the participants, it is even worse: 503 representatives of accredited fossil fuel industries, more than all eight countries most affected by climate change. Just that. Ultimately, this COP was no longer a Conference of the Parties, but a Conference of Polluters. But as you know, lobbies would be nothing without their accomplices. In the first place, states like France, which act underhand to pass nuclear and gas for green energy. It had to be done, anyway! And just a few days after this COP, you find nothing better than to accept an agribusiness CAP that denies all our climate commitments. So, fortunately, not everyone is fooled here in this Chamber, but especially outside. In the streets of Glasgow during the COP, but also across Europe, young people are mobilising. And as you know, they do not say goodbye to the CAP, live the carbon market and live the finance, but vote this CAP downRefuse the CAP and get out of fossil fuels! I would also like to appeal to them here. Do not resign yourself, do not become cynical, keep the same strength and, most importantly, do not wait for others to take the decisions for you. Invade public debate, invest political institutions, take power. Do not denounce only those who burn the planet, replace them.

Thank you, Mr Boyer, I noted in your speech – and I am delighted about that – that you want the system to be extended to all countries in the world so that, finally, there is transparency about the activity of multinational companies around the world, including the most notorious tax havens. But I remember that during the negotiations on this text, the media revealed that France had literally copied and pasted its position on that of Medef and thus weakened the negotiations at European level since the red lines that had been established by Medef were found word for word in the final text. So I have a pretty simple question: Is it a coincidence that these are exactly the same flaws that we find in the final text? And if I wanted to be a bit provocative, did the Medef also write your position and your text tonight?

Madam President, tax evaders are like bats, they hide in darkness. For Google, Amazon or BNP, it’s ‘let’s live happily, let’s live hidden’. And it is to get them out of their den that we have been fighting for years for the transparency of the tax arrangements of multinationals. At the time of the first vote, in 2017, I was not in this Chamber, but in front of Parliament with my colleagues from Oxfam: We had organized a punch action. Our expectations were high and it was to lead the fight against tax evasion that I became involved in politics. But let’s be clear, they have been far from satisfied. So, of course, this is the first victory wrestled thanks to the fierce struggle of my colleagues in civil society. But I'm telling you frankly, I'm fed up with the fact that we're still just taking small steps. For God's sake, why does Parliament have to give in before it has fought the battle to the end? This agreement leaves aside 80% of the states. You call that transparency? For most of the well-known tax havens – Switzerland, the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands and so many others – there is nothing, nada, walou, not a piece of information. Tax avoidance schemes therefore still have a bright future ahead of them. And it is not surprising when we know that France has again – and this time obviously – modelled its position on that of Medef to empty the text. But I tell the tax evaders: Do not rejoice too quickly, the fight continues. We will organise as many actions as necessary in this Parliament and outside so that you finally give back the money.

Mr President, Bolloré, who attacks all-va journalists and NGOs as soon as they talk about his affairs. Darmanin, who is filing a complaint against Philippe Poutou for observing that police officers kill each year in France. The Polish far right, which is bringing more than 50 lawsuits against the newspaper that denounces its abuse of power. Vinci, who has taken Sherpa three times to court for denouncing his use of forced labour on World Cup sites in Qatar. Are these big bosses and politicians seeking justice? No, no. They abuse justice to weaken, intimidate, stifle voices that denounce abuses. This trend is deeply worrying, because when the greats of this world hijack justice to silence any criticism, it is democracy that they are gagging. Our duty is to protect all those who dare to challenge them – associations, researchers, trade unions, citizens, journalists – to defend whistleblowers as soon as possible and to penalise harassers. The report we are going to adopt goes in the right direction and incorporates many of the proposals my group has fought for. But I have a message for the Commission: we will not let you go so that you do not parade and so that we finally put an end to these SLAPP procedures. Justice cannot become the watchdog of power, because democracy is only a fiction when the law is at the service of the powerful.

Madam President, far-right attacks on democracy must be at the heart of the debates at the next European Council. What is happening in Poland is the result of a carefully prepared operation to destroy democracy and the rule of law. By putting the judges to the test, the far-right government is giving itself almost full powers, and it is doing so with a very specific purpose: have a free hand to harass LGBTI people, muzzle opposition and prevent women from aborting. This drift is very serious. And the Polish government is making a diversion by agitating the thorny debate on the primacy of European law over constitutions. Mrs von der Leyen, I listened to you yesterday and the days before. Let me tell you that you fall into their trap by going on this ground to claim an unconditional and absolute primacy that does not exist in practice. The stakes are not there. No, European law does not always take precedence over national constitutions and I believe that we should establish a principle of non-regression so that European rules can never lead to a loss of social and ecological rights at national level, as is all too often the case. But yes, democratic principles and fundamental rights must be inviolable in Europe. So we need a political response, and here I am questioning the responsibility of all those who participated in the witch hunts launched by the far right. It is not the Muslims or the immigrants who put us all at risk, but the reactionary apprentice dictators: Morawiecki in Poland, Orbán in Hungary or Janša in Slovenia and those they inspire, such as Zemmour and Le Pen in France. When states refuse austerity, you immediately put the knife under their throats. But when the far right destroys democracy, you look down, that's enough! Stop procrastination once and for all and finally take the necessary sanctions against the far right. I also raise the alert on another top priority: financing the ecological and social bifurcation. Europe is about to give lessons to the whole world at COP26 by pretending to be the climate champion, but it stubbornly refuses to get the money where it is to act, as in the case of the trillions hidden by the Pandora Papers thieves in tax havens. And you missed a golden opportunity to stop multinational tax evasion by giving your whitewash to a minimum corporate tax rate of only 15% internationally. This rate is a disgrace, as it is barely higher than that of notorious tax havens like Ireland, while a rate of 25%, for example, would have allowed us to recover at least €120 billion more each year. Result: Multinationals are rubbing their hands and there is a risk of further accelerating the global race for tax dumping. So what are you waiting for to finally recover the stolen money from tax evaders? This is the absolute condition for launching the major climate project and combating inequalities. Everything else will be the eternal chorus: words and words and words. Let me say one last word on energy prices: you will not solve the problem of soaring prices until you get out of the logic of the market, where speculators and shareholders get rich while people pay their profits. So, please, for people, let’s put the market logic aside for once and have the courage to organise an EU-wide price freeze on energy and basic necessities.

Madam President, today there is a pandemic that is causing terrible damage, but which the European Commission ostensibly ignores in its 2022 Work Programme: This is poverty. And the explosion in energy prices for which you are directly responsible is the drop in water that can drive millions of people into misery. So, as usual, you waited first, you said: “It’s not my fault”. Then you were forced to suspend your absurd rules that prevent public price control. But you also warned that you wouldn't change the problem: energy will remain a commodity like any other, that is all. You are not at your trial. It reminds me of the beginning of COVID, when it was necessary to help people hold on. The Commission first told the States: "Get out of the way!". And then she was forced to concede that she could deviate a bit from her cherished rules of austerity and competition at all. But then again, only temporarily, of course. It is the same story over and over again with climate change and the terrible floods that have ravaged entire regions in Europe. You shed a few crocodile tears and swore, hand on heart, that ecology was the challenge of the century. But you have refused to change any comma of your climate law, which will not comply with the Paris agreements. The scheme is now known: you create iniquitous rules, you exonerate yourself from any responsibility when they create chaos, you put them temporarily in parentheses when it is already too late, after which you strengthen them instead of permanently getting rid of them. I remember, however, that a year ago we said ‘never again’ – never again this austerity that destroyed our hospitals, never again this free trade that prevented us from producing masks, never again this poverty pay for the first chore. A year later, all these promises were forgotten. Because your work programme is similar to the previous ones. Hurry up! Let's restore the 3% deficit rule. Hurry up! Let us return to the prohibition of State aid. Hurry up! Let us sign more and more free trade agreements. Hurry up! Let's further expand the carbon market. You'd better go back to reason and learn from your failures. Let's get rid of your obsessions of the past. Let’s turn the page on the neoliberal gospel to address everyday concerns: How to pay your bills? Breathe healthy air? Offering a future to your children? This is what millions of Europeans expect in 2022. In short, finally reconnect with a little hope.

Madam President, I have been fighting tax evasion for ten years and I no longer count the scandals I have followed: , the last, the , , , , , , , ... The list is endless. I tell you frankly: She's giving me rage. The rage that a handful of privileged people continue to rob us before our eyes. The rage that nothing has been done, whereas the same solutions have been repeated in a vacuum for ten years. You know what all these cases have in common? Almost none of the states involved are on your blacklist of tax havens, which was updated yesterday. We could have thought: Here, for once at least, they're going to pretend to supplement it a little on the margins. No, no. Worse. Imagine the scene: all European finance ministers meet two days after one of the worst tax evasion scandals in history and they find nothing better to do than remove three states from this already almost empty list, including Seychelles, which is at the heart of the European Union. Pandora Papers. Frankly, how dare you, after that, come here to the European Parliament to defend this blacklist, which is in fact a carte blanche for tax evasion? This is unbearable! But at bottom, it is not even surprising, because those who are supposed to fight this scourge are too often tax evaders themselves, like the 35 heads of state who are wet to the neck in the Pandora Papers. But I do not resign myself and I tell you clearly by quoting a singer also pinned in the Pandora Papers: ‘Whenever, personally’. We will find tax evaders wherever they are hiding and make them pay.

Madam President, while billionaires have never been so rich, millions of Europeans will not even have the means to heat up or light up this winter. Plus 57% increase for the gas price in France, plus 37% for electricity in Spain, plus 40% for Italy this year: no European country is spared. If you don’t have to worry about paying your bills, just imagine what it’s like to be scared to see your electricity cut off because you can’t pay it anymore. And contrary to what you said, Mrs Simson, you are directly responsible for it. Yes, you, the European Commission and all those who, like you, want to commodify everything. I have a little riddle for you. Who said and guaranteed, I quote, ‘that the energy market would make it affordable’? You, the European Commission in 2019. And you've been telling us the same shit for years. Barroso boasted its added value in 2007 and Juncker its modernity in 2017. It's been 15 years and that's the result. Since you privatised the energy market, prices have almost doubled. And once again, it is the poorest who will pay the bill, while the shareholders of EDF, Total or Engie binge on nearly 10 billion dividends. You are still talking, Mrs Simson, about respecting the sacrosanct European rules in this context, but how dare you? I'm sorry, but these are the very ones that led us right into the wall. You have definitely not learned anything. Energy should be a common good, accessible to all, but you have made it a product like any other, on which we speculate and make profits. Heating or feeding should not be a luxury: it is a fundamental right. Our Left Group in the European Parliament is proposing an immediate price freeze on energy and basic necessities. Every effort must be made to reduce bills, starting with lower taxes and progressive rates. Learn from your failures, get out of any market that takes us right into the wall, allow states to renationalise the energy sector and keep a lasting grip on price control, put the package on the renovation of the millions of thermal sieves that are driving up energy consumption in the most precarious households, finally act. Rising energy prices are your political choice, but you can stop it: either you continue to serve the interests of a handful of shareholders, or you finally wake up to help millions of people in trouble.

Mr President, ‘Did you enjoy it?’, ‘Did you wear a provocative outfit?’, ‘Did you look for it?’, ‘Was your love too passionate?’: These are the kinds of questions police officers ask victims of sexual assault in French police stations, when they do not simply discourage them from filing a complaint, or even take the opportunity to flirt with them. Victims are treated as guilty and for these women, it is double punishment. First brutalized by violent men, they are then once again abused and humiliated by the very institutions that are supposed to protect them. How many of them have not filed a complaint, discouraged by this institutional sexism? How many have preferred to remain silent for fear of insidious, guilty and sexist questions? From the police station to the court, women's voices are systematically challenged, diminished, ignored, even in the allocation of custody rights, which forces nearly three-quarters of abused mothers to share parental authority, allowing violent fathers to pursue their strategy of intimidation, isolation and control. We can no longer deal with this double penalty. As this report calls for, it is essential to train police officers and judges, increase the budget for the protection of victims and finally take into account the violence of the spouse for the custody of children. It is these failures of public action that guarantee the impunity of the aggressors. Domestic violence will not stop as long as the police are sexist and the justice system is complicit.

Madam President, in the race against tax evasion, fraudsters are always one step ahead, especially when states refuse to go turbocharged and collaborate. As soon as a new rule is put in place, these white-collar offenders always invent a way around it. The latest example is the LuxLetters scandal, which shows how large consulting firms have colluded with Luxembourg to hide their gifts from multinationals from their neighbours. To prevent such scandals, transparency is a key element, not just between states, as shown by the limitations of these DAC directives. Because tax evaders are like vampires: They hate the light. But under pressure from employers' lobbies and with the complicity of the French government, the text on tax transparency has been largely weakened. So you, who are usually so quick to hold governments to account when it comes to cutting or privatising our public service budgets, would be better off using the same firmness with those who steal from us on a daily basis. Finally, attack the tax evaders. Their impunity lasted too long.

Mr President, deadly floods, apocalyptic fires, absolute heat record: Climate disasters were the scenario of films like ‘The day after’. But this summer, fiction has become a reality in Europe. We are no longer passive spectators of a disaster film, but we are living it. Climate change is already here. It's irreversible. He's brutal. And in case this life-size alert isn't enough for you, the IPCC report closes the discussion. We need to change everything, now, radically if we want to avoid chaos. The countdown is started, but you continue to ostrich. It already starts badly with your target of a 55% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, when it would take at least 65% to comply with the Paris Agreements. You might as well extinguish the fire with a garden sprinkler. On the method, then, you surpassed yourself. What is your miracle solution? Let the deal go. Eureka! No one had thought about it. Yet we have seen the triumph of the carbon market that companies have used as a license to pollute. As a result, industrial emissions have fallen by only 1% in ten years. But will you take it up a bit more by extending it to transport and buildings? And while we're at it, we don't have to deal with productivist agriculture and climate-related free trade agreements either. No surprise, finally, on whom will pay the bill? No, not the crazy finance or the poor multinationals that are the heart of the problem. But no, what you are proposing is the working classes, of course, who will see their bills skyrocket. Plus EUR 370 per year of petrol and EUR 420 of heating for these households, which are already the first victims of climate chaos. The alert launched by the yellow vests in France? Clearly, you have not heard of it. So, Mr. Timmermans, you're telling us: We need to act now. But you remain desperately trapped in your neoliberal software. And since you say you are open to alternatives, we will continue on our side to propose the only serious path: A social and ecological "Green New Deal" that breaks with this predatory economic system that destroys everything.

Mr President, in many European countries, abstention is on the rise. Many citizens say that politics is useless, that it no longer changes everyday life, that it is powerless in the face of lost work, at the end of difficult months, in hospitals that close. And frankly, when I sometimes hear our debates in this Chamber, I want to tell people who doubt that I understand them, because it is these concrete concerns that should guide only your political agenda and that of the Commission. How can we prevent the planet from literally burning even more, after temperature records approaching 50 degrees in Canada? How can climate change be mitigated to avoid the widespread chaos announced by the IPCC and already illustrated by Madagascar's climate famine? How to save threatened jobs, such as those of the 300 employees of the Fonderie du Poitou who burned their electoral card to denounce their abandonment? How can we help the most vulnerable who can no longer make ends meet when billionaires have seen their fortunes increase by 30%? Just imagine: If the SMIC in France had increased at the same speed, it would be 370 euros more per month. How can we stop the tax evasion of these ultra-rich like Bernard Arnault or these big multinationals like LVMH that plunder the revenues of our states? In short, how to respond to the two challenges of our time: the inequality crisis and the climate catastrophe? And how can we tackle those responsible, the neoliberal economic system that is destroying everything? A shot of green paint on a discounted climate package will not change the game. We need to tackle the structural problems of the European Union to get out of the all-market and all-profit that is depleting the planet and people. A symbolic taxation of multinationals and an already obsolete mini-recovery plan will have no impact. It takes fresh money to invest in the public service and trigger the green fork. The very essence of politics is to serve people’s demands. If you continue to despise them, don’t be surprised that they no longer respect you. So listen to the alert of citizens on civic strike. Because a democracy without voters is no longer a democracy.

Madam President, Mr President, today I want to talk to you about love, the happiness of loving whoever you want, wherever you want, whatever your gender or sexual orientation. Do not have to hide, justify or be afraid, and have a heart that beats 100 per hour, just out of passion, not out of fear of being targeted. Ms von der Leyen, Mr Michel, I thought that in Europe, in 2021, we would not allow this simple and fundamental right to love to be called into question. However, this is the case in Orbán Hungary, where a shame law that associates LGBTI people with pedocriminals is now in force. Mere convictions are no longer enough, it takes action to demonstrate to every European citizen that we will defend them at all costs. Orbán is far from being at his trial. It has been challenging the separation of powers and freedoms for years. And this is almost always Europe’s radio silence. At each Council, and still today in your speeches, it is the same comedy. The European Union is worried, moved, outraged, but let it happen. She frowns, yes, makes big eyes sometimes, raises the tone, but never rages. And this impunity is jurisprudence. Slovenia, which is taking over the presidency of the EU, is attacking freedom of the press and opponents, like our comrades in Levica. Poland is challenging abortion. And that is Europe’s radio silence. The far right is jubilant about your cowardice. Orbán taunts us by publishing his propaganda in the complicit newspapers as The Figaro, and his authoritarian friends dream of a brown alliance to defend their disastrous project. Your inaction encourages them to go further. So today, yes, it is true, we hear the word ‘sanctions’ timidly. But you know, as I was talking about love: In love, only the evidence counts. So if you like the rule of law so much, why wait and stubbornly refuse to apply the necessary sanctions immediately? Every week lost is an insult to those homosexuals who fight to keep the right to love, to women who fight to keep the right to abortion, to journalists who resist to keep the right to inform. Your false naivety is not an excuse, but an accomplice cowardice. It is time to send a clear message: We won't let anything pass, we won't let anything pass.