What Nacho spoke about.

Madam President, before our eyes is unfolding in all its splendor a European foreign policy prey to Chamberlain syndrome: to appease and reassure the world's new authoritarian leaders. Only moral verticality towards Putin and Russia is shown; for the rest – for Trump, for Erdoğan, for Saied, for Al-Sisi, for Aliyev, for Netanyahu – appeasement: It is the only European policy. We exhibit values and principles like a peacock, with Putin, here, on the dark side of Belliard Street, but, for the others, double standards, which are becoming a non-traditional but genetic component: the metastases of our foreign policy. The case of Israel is a good example: Laziness in activating human rights mechanisms is costing lives every day. In this Parliament, the supposedly Israeli-American humanitarian spawn, whose sole function is to lure Palestinian men into the queues of hunger to be shot there at pleasure by American mercenaries, is normally received. Here the dilemma is whether or not to suspend an Association Agreement; There the dilemma is to watch the children die or risk their lives in a queue of hunger. I make it easy for the Council, because the Council has to choose how history goes: or Chamberlain, or Churchill.

Mr President, one of the most common and sometimes annoying aspects of authoritarian regimes is not only repression, but treating citizens as minors, as children, with all kinds of fantasies. The idea of the outside enemy is one of the favorite mechanisms of authoritarian systems, and this childish narrative, this children's tale, takes the name "Deep State" in Georgia. Anything that annoys the government is "deep state": It can be a tweet from a student or it can be any pronouncement from this House about the country. But, to get that narrative implemented, it is necessary to displace the professional and truthful information made by journalists like Mzia Amaghlobeli. Freedom of the press is an infallible antidote to the psychotic fantasies of authoritarian systems and, therefore, it is necessary to remove any kind of freedom of the press from the environment, sometimes with ridiculous measures, such as, in the case of Georgia, prosecuting judicially if any journalist uses expressions such as "illegitimate parliament", "illegitimate government", "oligarchic regime", "prisoners of the regime" or "pro-Russian regime": Chemically pure Stalinism in a country that, until recently, was a leading candidate for membership of the European Union.

Madam President, Mrs Bentele, can we close our eyes to the contempt and criminalisation of international courts? Can you close your eyes to new waves of illegal settlements? Can you close your eyes to plans to demolish a hundred houses in Jenin? Can one close one's eyes to withholding funding due to the Palestinian Authority, to the violent death of a thousand people in the West Bank, where there is no war, to the criminalization of honor and its replacement by a perfectly dysfunctional spawn? Can you close your eyes to the destruction of schools and hospitals? Can you close your eyes to the displacement of 700,000 people, to the withholding of international aid at the border, to the proudly genocidal statements - because words matter, and you have said so - by Mr Netanyahu's ministers about the use of hunger as a weapon of war? Can you close your eyes to 56,000 deaths, including 17,000 children and 1,000 babies under the age of one? Mrs Bentele, I'm asking you if you can close your eyes to all this at the same time, because all this is happening at the same time. The same army that boasts of being able to put a missile with millimeter precision in an apartment in a building in Tehran is carpet bombing the civilian population in Gaza, as in Guernica, Mrs. Bentele, as in Guernica. The double standards, Mrs Kallas, are the cancer of European foreign policy. Of course we can do things: Do not close your eyes, call things by their name, activate the clauses of the agreement that give us some ability to influence that situation, stop selling weapons to Israel, recognize the Palestinian state and persevere in the two-state solution.

At the beginning of the plenary, it was announced that the rapporteur intended to table an oral amendment to cover the events of last weekend in Cyprus, as follows: 'Reiterates its deep concern regarding all unilateral action which aim at entrenching on the ground the permanent division of Cyprus as opposed to its reunification; condemns, in this context, the recent illegal visit of President Erdoğan to the occupied areas of the Republic of Cyprus, as well as his provocative statements, which jeopardise the efforts of the UN, the EU, the international community at large and other parties involved for the resumption of substantial negotiations in the agreed framework; regrets that such unilateral actions are tantamount to a direct illegitimate intervention against the interests of the Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities;'.

Mr President, Commissioner, there is one question that pervades this debate: Why don't we finally close the accession process? I would like to reflect on that. Some of the comrades on the right have expressed a kind of substantial social and cultural incompatibility that I do not see. The European Union gave Turkey the opportunity and it has been wasted many years ago, but please do not confuse Turkey with Erdoğan. Erdoğan is not Turkey nor Turkey is Erdoğan. I remind many of those who say close the door that in the last local elections Erdoğan's party did not win and the opposition party won. So let's look at the country. There is a civil society that implores us not to close the door, not to leave them without hope of changing the country. It is possible that in ten years there will be another Turkey really committed to a European path. And we must also look after a pro-democracy, pro-European civil society that is constantly demonstrating against repressive policies and defending the flags of the European Union. Why have we defended the flags of the European Union in Maidan? Why don't we defend the European flags on the streets of Istanbul? There is a vibrant and active civil society in Turkey wanting to continue the path towards the European Union. This Parliament needs to hear that voice and not just the voice of some rulers who are – hopefully – temporary rulers. That is why, in the opposition, for many years - I am talking about my previous colleague, Kati Piri - we have been suspending the accession process, but we have not finished it, because to finish it would require unanimity again and that would be very complicated. Therefore, I ask you to reflect that in the criticisms we all share that Turkey has missed its opportunity, the idea, sometimes very tempting, of confusing a country with its ruler at this time does not take hold.

Mr President, Commissioner, I would like to thank the rapporteurs with whom I have worked on an important dossier in which we have sometimes expressed very different positions, but in which I have found a very open negotiating environment and which we hope will lead to a better relationship between the European Union and Turkey. The main thrust of this year's report is to distinguish between being a Member State of the European Union and being a partner and neighbour of the European Union. And why do we now make this insistence that we have not made other years? Because in the Turkish press - 90% of it, the pro-government press - there is a nationalist propaganda that says "our military power will open the doors for us to be a Member State of the European Union", which encourages a mistake in public opinion that we think it is necessary to dissolve. They know it's not gonna happen. There are no shortcuts to being a member state of the European Union. Being a member of the European Union is about mature democracy and values, while being a partner can be many other things. Accession is a non-negotiable regulatory process and partnership is transactional and depends on mutual trust and the ability to have shared interests. And, therefore, the adhesion process is frozen and well frozen. Since 2013, there has been no good news regarding freedoms and the rule of law in Turkey. La represión ha alcanzado cualquier rincón de la sociedad en el que haya el más mínimo criticismo, incluso el más inocente, desde estudiantes, periodistas, activistas, miembros de la oposición, los líderes de la asociación empresarial más importante del país, los periodistas —como el caso del periodista sueco al que nos referimos— y cerramos el ciclo, por el momento, con la detención de İmamoğlu, que es quizá el caso más grave de los últimos años y que demuestra a las claras el carácter plenamente autoritario del régimen, esencialmente —repito, esencialmente— incompatible con el carácter de ser miembro de la Unión Europea. But Turkey, in addition to being a failed candidate, is a neighbor. He is a potential partner in other aspects of the relationship. And Turkey obliges us to consider it once again as a potential partner – and only as a potential partner – by abandoning democratic reforms and closing the accession process to itself. Turkey can be important from a security point of view. It must be understood and it is good to make some clarifications: Turkey has been a member of NATO since 1952. Sometimes, reading the Turkish press and talking about Turkey's importance to Western security, it would seem that Turkey is going to ask for membership in NATO, of which it has been a member since 1952. But Turkey has an alignment with the European Union's common foreign and security policy of 5%. Our agreement with Turkey on foreign policy is 5%, which almost falls into statistical error. If twice they make a mistake, they can double the alignment with the European Union - and it also has the Russian S-400 missiles. Therefore, these are things that Turkey needs to examine: whether this attitude and this lack of alignment is the basis on which to build our foreign policy relationship with them. Economy: The economy is also about the rule of law. The lack of legal certainty in legal processes in Turkey is driving investors away, and surely chasing the leaders of the business world doesn't help either. However, Commissioner, you have heard me say: We advocate the continuation of high-level dialogues. Precisely because Turkey is closing to accession, the partnership chapter must be opened, and high-level dialogues are an essential element as long as they are not at all confused with the accession process.

Madam President, you will not be surprised, Mrs Kallas, to be told that my group regards the current framework for political dialogue as a useful tool for open critical contact with the Cuban authorities. Of course, much better than the relationship vacuum that Aznar ordered and that became a completely sterile period. If we dismantle this framework, we have the American embargo and the insult of considering Cuba a state that promotes terrorism, that is, we have Trump. Is that the policy with Cuba that the right wing of this House defends? Is that Trump's? However, the defence of the current framework is not uncritical: the Political Dialogue Agreement can and should be improved in its implementation. Civil society represented in human rights dialogues should be that: civil society and all civil society, not only civil society close to the government, but also criticism and opposition. And we don't have the argument that there are counterrevolutionary elements in these opposition groups. Being counter-revolutionary is not a crime, it is a right, the right to dissent from the opinion of the authorities. And in the European Union they have every right to sit down with all Cuban civil society in the framework of political dialogue.

Madam President, Mrs Kos, with Turkey we have the same dilemma as with other countries in clear authoritarian drift: how to combine interests with values? But with one essential difference: Turkey is formally at least a candidate country and being a candidate means progressively aligning with European interests, values and views. Membership is about democracy; partnership It can be many other things transactional and reversible. In the current landscape in Turkey there is a veritable barrage of texts and comments in all pro-government media, that is 90%, in which it is said "our military power will open the doors to us being members of the European Union". That is why we must insist that there are no shortcuts, that being a member of the European Union goes from Demirtaş and goes from Kavala and now goes from İmamoğlu. Why stop İmamoğlu now? Not only to nullify him as a candidate, and hence the accusation of corruption, but also taking advantage of the fact that Europe is looking for friends and Erdogan expects a response from Europe that is less strong than at other times. Thank you for your decision not to go to Antalya, in line with this Parliament's decision not to attend the Joint Parliamentary Committee meeting.

Madam President, I shall try to concentrate three matters in one minute. First, a lack of adjustment between our foreign policy expectations and the means we employ. There is a chronic underfunding of the European External Action Service but, at the same time, there is a chronic inflation of expectations. We all ask you for everything and you have to worry so that, in the new financial framework, you do not follow that situation: financial reinforcement should be requested every few months in the Commission. Secondly, your obligation is always to try to agree to 27, to have everyone on board. That's his role. But if it is not achieved within a reasonable time to reach crises in time, it is necessary to normalize work to twenty-six or twenty-five. I don't insist on Deputy Gahler's idea. Any measure except to continue giving an impression of paralysis or being late. Third, double standards are the cancer of our foreign policy. And I know that it is not always possible to achieve unanimity but, with your public statements, you can try to limit the damage that makes us appear before the world in some cases by raising our voices a lot and, in other cases, by being very timid.

Madam President, after a bloody weekend that tells us about the fragility of the new institutions and the danger inherent in uncontrolled militias, last night we had good news that seems to clear, even provisionally, one of the most urgent unknowns of the Syrian labyrinth: the national assemblage of the northern Kurdish minority, of its institutions de facto and its military strength. As far as Kurdish communities are concerned, there seems to be hope on both sides of the border, albeit with different logics and rhythms. The initial agreement reached last night has at least two roots: the massacres of the attack of these days and the risk of uncontrollability, and Öcalan's call for the disarmament and dissolution of the terrorist organization PKK, whose waves have reached the Turkish militant forces of northern Syria. It is an initial agreement and therefore subject to shocks, but our political will towards that framework is for there to be a united, sovereign, inclusive Syria in the hands of the Syrians themselves. So, it was Turkey, it was Israel and it was Russia.

Mr President, the removal by administrative means of democratically elected mayors to impose commissars of the losing governing party is one of the clearest proofs of the abyssal level of democratic deterioration in Turkey. The origin of the rule was emergency legislation after the 2016 coup, a coup attributed to a religious sect; an anti-coup law that immediately began to be used against the Kurdish movement, which had nothing to do with the coup; exceptional legislation that remains in force eight years after the reason that gave it meaning and that is activated after each local election. The rule is undemocratic, but the practice is even more so, because nothing in the law prevents the government from appointing a local adviser to the party that won the elections, and not a commissar of the party that lost them. Despite so much cruelty and so much pain, the ridiculous character of Turkish authoritarianism reaches literary limits: Accusing an actress of terrorist propaganda for playing a terrorist in a television series is like accusing Charles Chaplin of a hate crime for having played Hitler, or recommending from power to the media that they do not broadcast so much negative news because that goes against the general interest. And with these and other practices they keep knocking on the door of the European Union.

Mr President, Commissioner, on the elections, some colleagues have stated here that the international election observation considered the elections to be perfect. It's not like that. I cannot go into detail, dear friend Mariani, but the OSCE harshly criticized many conditions and also the violent pressure on voters. But there is one element that is little talked about: the hidden agenda of the elections. Georgian Dream ran for election without telling voters: "I'm going to get the country off the European path". Surely many Georgians would have voted differently if they had known that what the government was proposing was "outside Europe, welcome Russia". There is therefore an element of legitimacy that needs to be re-stated. Some comrades have also referred to the attack on Giorgi Gajaria, the country's former prime minister, by armed people from the government party. That fact and many others reflect an element of absolute impunity. Activists are persecuted, tried and put in jail immediately. There is still no court ruling on the aggressors of pro-European activists. That's obviously no coincidence. It's not just some policemen, Commissioner, it's also a lot of activists...

Mr President, Commissioner, in Kyrgyzstan, as in so many other countries, Mr Zdechovský has just said, the regression in democratic standards has been pointed out by many international reports. The case before us today is further evidence of this worrying drift: filming by the security services has served to arrest the leader of the opposition party and – beware – to ban that party’s participation in local elections. We do not know – and we have asked – whether that recording had been made with judicial authorisation. Nor do we know how to go from a conversation between two people who do not quote any other third person to arresting a third party, the leader of the party, and, beyond that possible criminal responsibility, prohibiting in administrative, not judicial, the participation of a party in an election. Today that leader is on hunger strike and in jail when he could be under house arrest. This Parliament must give its consent to a new political and trade agreement with Kyrgyzstan. An agreement based, like everyone else, on the protection of human rights. We hope, for the sake of relations, that this case will be resolved before that parliamentary procedure.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, another Spaniard, I'm sorry. At the beginning of the session there were twenty-two colleagues in the Chamber and eleven were Spanish. One hour should be set aside for the Spanish national debate as a permanent matter. And all you needed, Mr. Gonzalez Pons, was to join the group of Spaniards. Indeed, Spain has been very much mentioned in the debate, but I believe that there is a certain time lag because it was before 2018 that this House should have been concerned about corruption in Spain, because it was in 2018 that the Spanish Parliament expelled the Popular Party from the Government and because in those years there were many cases that led to the Spanish Popular Party being the only political party definitively condemned for corruption. There is a long list of issues that I will avoid reading because the Spaniards who listen to us will know them. The Spanish Government is not besieged by corruption; the Spanish government is besieged by the media and judicial terminals of the right and the Spanish far right. With little success, by the way, as is shown in every vote in Parliament and every time the polls are called.

Madam President, last Friday there was a session of the EU-Kyrgyzstan Human Rights Dialogue. Obviously, the European Union asked for explanations on the case of the leader of the country's social democratic party, Temirlan Sultanbekov, arrested three days before the local elections were held on the 17th. On the basis of a conversation recorded by the intelligence services – it is not known whether with judicial authorization – the party leader was arrested, the party’s participation in the elections was prohibited and its social networks were closed. Mr Sultanbekov has been on hunger strike for thirteen days and his health is deteriorating day by day. However, his first court hearing has not been set until January. Many international bodies have been mobilised and so must this Parliament. This Parliament is going to negotiate and approve a new cooperation agreement that includes a chapter on human rights and democracy and will be an excellent opportunity to assess the political will of the Kyrgyz authorities in the case of Mr Sultanbekov and others like him.

Mr President, there is a traditional tension between authoritarian regimes, which seek to be whitewashed through the organization of major events, and those who think that these occasions are also an opportunity to precisely underline this political repression. Bad news: They're winning the first ones. The event is the excuse for a twist to repression, just so as not to cloud the celebration. And without consequences. That is at the heart of the question: without consequences. Think of the World Cup in Qatar, the Olympic Games in Beijing or the Winter Games in Sochi. And there are still no consequences, which is, in itself, an incentive to repeat; above all, if the country has gas or oil, because then you receive kind visits from the Commission, pats on the back and they call you a "reliable partner", while your Police continues to terrorize, harass, silence and imprison, as happened in Azerbaijan in Eurovision 2012 or in the European Games of 2015. Human rights defenders already fear that their countries will be chosen for major events, because it will be the signal to clean the streets, the newsrooms of the media, social networks, of any hint of criticism, because there will be many journalists: more witnesses, more repression.

Madam President, double standards are the cancer of the European Union's foreign policy and metastases multiply throughout the world so that our discourse of values only provokes smiles of disbelief. We're acting like the worst Kissinger: promoting and defending violations of sovereignty and human rights, because they are – for some – ‘ours’. Yes, Netanyahu is a conspicuous violator of international law, but for some he is "our" violator of international law. Are international borders inviolable? Well, it depends on which army does it: if Turkey does it in Syria, big scandal; if Russia does so in Ukraine, resolutions and sanctions; But if it's Israel, you go to October 7 and Hamas and you justify anything: the vilest killings of defenceless civilians under the guise of human shields, the craziest verbal and military attacks on the United Nations. The violations are so flagrant and repeated that the question of rethinking our entire relationship with Israel is not just about justice and values, it is also about our credibility in the world.

Madam President, Commissioner, Turkey has been recognised for many years in all press freedom reports as the country with the most imprisoned journalists. This is not the case now, because now the strategy has changed. It is not a question of imprisoning, but of silencing through sustained judicial harassment whose armed wing is the Prosecutor's Office, which, in Turkey, unfortunately, is not at the service of the law but of political power. Bülent, Isabel said, works for Deutsche Welle and the Frankfurter Allgemeine, that is, reference media in Germany and in Europe, which will be able to protect their journalist and will be able to hold long trials in defense of their rights. Do you know what Mr. Bülent's judicial problem is? He posted on a social network the first page of a court ruling. A photo on the front page of a court ruling has led a journalist into this Kafkaesque situation. He is going to be able to be protected judicially by those strong journalistic companies, but what about so many journalists from small rural media whose companies cannot sustain long judicial processes? This, unfortunately, is the situation of freedom of the press in Turkey.

Madam President, Mr Orbán, the European Union is not a prison and the foreign policy of the European Union is not a corset that suffocates national foreign policies. In reality, boundaries are the principles of sincere cooperation, loyalty, active support and mutual solidarity. They're in the Treaties. I quote: ‘[Member States] shall refrain from any action contrary to the interests of the Union or likely to impair its effectiveness’. Your commitment to be a Jones broker was violated from the first minute of his presidency. Your international tour with the excuse of peace should have been done with your legitimate Hungarian T-shirt and well before or after this semester, but not using the European T-shirt or the logo of the rotating Presidency, because you had no European mandate to prostrate yourself before Putin or greet Xi Jinping. Thank you anyway, Mr Orbán, for your essential effort in favour of the system of qualified majorities. You have done more than any European federalist to put on the agenda the need for a system of qualified majorities in foreign policy.

Mr President, Commissioner, in politics it is not only about the substance of a matter, but also about the sense of opportunity, about when. And this resolution, like the previous one on Moldova, days before the elections in these two countries, is inopportune and can be counterproductive. Parliament has always avoided pronouncing itself on countries where elections are to be held in order not to be accused of interference in those elections. This resolution, regardless of its critical content which we support, as my colleague Mikser has said, is going to be used by the Georgian Government and by Russia as a test of Western interference. It is, in fact, a gift to nationalist and anti-European forces, as we have been prophesied by far-right colleagues who have spoken. This is a debate about democratic backsliding. There are thirteen mentions of elections. Thirteen mentions of the election! Under these conditions, how will the election observers of this Parliament appear in Georgia in a few days' time? Will they be considered objective, professional and neutral? And are the negotiators, amenders, speakers and those who are going to vote on this reference going to be considered neutral by those countries? I doubt this and, therefore, the consequence is damage to the image of the European Union and Parliament, damage to the credibility of our election observations and the risk of being accused of interfering. We could have waited a month and approved exactly the same without incurring these risks.

Madam President, Mr Borrell, Israel's ambassador to the European Union, in an interview last week, advised the Union of two partially contradictory attitudes: pragmatism and moral clarity. Of course, in this dilemma, the European Social Democrats will always bet on moral clarity, which you have shown during these last months and for which many of us thank you. It is a moral clarity that compels us to say that the unjustified suffering of civilians, those killed by Hamas a year ago, is not of better quality, nor is it preferential, nor is it superior to the unjustified suffering of Palestinian civilians. We don't understand why we have to choose between two moral evils or why empathy with civilian victims disables us from feeling the same way about other equally innocent civilian victims. Mr Borrell, we must continue to talk about Gaza, which has disappeared from the title of this debate by the vote of the right and the extreme right, with the intention of creating a vacuum, a logical leap, from October 2023 – the Hamas attack – to Lebanon, ignoring a year of disproportionate aggression and 40,000 dead. Because Iran is a more presentable enemy in the West than Palestine.

Mr President, Commissioner, I would like to thank you for the tone, content and text of the negotiation on a subject that until recently was divisive in this House. Surely Mr Mato's good coordination work has also maintained that agreement. And it is that Maduro is doing everything possible so that again we vote all or almost all together. It happened already in February and I think this time it will be similar, because I have now known, this afternoon, that there were no amendments. The gravity of the situation of the opposition there, the open, naked repression of any critical opinion, has a side effect outside the country, and that is that it agrees with international organizations, the United Nations, the European Union. Everyone is in a close of ranks with the opposition's right to a fair election. The penultimate turn of the nut – unfortunately we must always talk about the penultimate turn of the nut – have been the cases that call us here today: Rocío San Miguel and General Hernández de Acosta. But there have been more these past few days. All against the backdrop of a transparent, sustained attempt to silence any critical voice. The disqualification of María Corina Machado has not been enough. It is not enough to lead the opposition electorally. We must continue to pursue any critical voice, even from people in the academic world recognized as the teacher to whom we refer today. It proves, by the way, all this - and perhaps an element of hope - of the regime's fear of those ballot boxes that will be the way to end this disastrous period in Venezuela's history.

Mr President, I would like to thank Sergey Lagodinsky for something that has been more than coordination. It has been, in my opinion, a leadership shown by the constancy with which it has maintained this agenda and that it has managed to unlock an issue that had been stuck for many years. Last year, this Parliament took the initiative to call for a directive and in the end the Commission understood that it had to take the step. It is true that we lack the fiscal aspects, but I announce that they will arrive, as everything in Europe arrives when maturity is reached. But, in addition to the issues dealt with by the Commissioner and the Members who have preceded me, I would like to make a reference in the deepest sense of what Mr Lagodinsky was talking about. Europe is built on top in the capitals, in the chancelleries, with great treaties. But it is sewn socially at the borders. It is lived at the borders and legitimized at the borders: physical border policies and legal border policies. Surely there is no better social perception of what it is to be a European citizen than the current possibility of crossing the border without having to show a passport and without having to change currency. That directive is a kind of Schengen area for collective persons, just as we created a Schengen area for the mobility of natural persons. And, as Mr Lagodinsky said, it is also something to do with the creation of a new political actor, because this is the embryo of the creation of a future European civil society. It's not yet the demos We have talked so much about it, but it is the beginning of a civil society different from the disorderly overlap and with different regulations of national civil societies. It is the birth of a European civil society. And that is the news brought to us by a proposal for a directive which, when read, seems a more technical thing, but which in essence is precisely one more step in European integration.