Speeches

Madam President, Commissioner, congratulations on your work. You know that I tend to be very critical of your management, but I think that making ten reports from this entity is a great job for you and your team. I believe that, in Georgia, we are correcting the mistake that was made a few months ago. I believe that putting Georgia in a more proactive position will surely take away reasons from those who have less enthusiasm within the country to approach Europe. And, following the idea of Mr Bütikofer, there is one country, perhaps two, very particular in this package: Turkey is not walking forward. Turkey is not progressing lazily or with difficulties. Turkey backtracks on democratic standards and must therefore be put in a different situation. Beware of general offers to all candidate countries when not all political wills go in the same direction. I repeat an idea I told you this morning: There are no geopolitical shortcuts. It is one thing that the enlargement process is triggered by a geopolitical situation and another thing that the accession process is a merit-based process, in any case. I am talking about Turkey and I am also talking about some eastern neighbours. Therefore, be careful not to enter into this logic that in some candidate countries, as they need us for other reasons, they do not look at democratic standards.

Madam President, Mrs Montserrat, in Spain a customary constitutional procedure is being developed in which the king has commissioned a second investiture from Mr Sánchez because that of his leader has failed. And while the negotiators of the parliamentary forces are negotiating - I repeat, the parliamentary forces are negotiating - you have joined the Nazis, the Francoists and the fascists in organizing street rallies in which the police are even asked to disobey their authorities against a constitutional procedure. That is the real risk to the rule of law in Spain. Mr Tertsch, the position of the Spanish Government is clear, clear and repeated: condemns Hamas’ terrorist action, calls for containment and legality in Israel’s response and a humanitarian ceasefire. I think we would all do well if we listened a second time to what our colleague López Istúriz has just told us.

Madam President, being a global actor requires far more than mere political will. A thorough review of the actors and instruments of that foreign policy is required, because we jump from crisis to crisis and there is not much time to reflect on it. Who represents the European Union's foreign policy? The EPP colleague said that the solution to the question was Mrs von der Leyen. No, Mrs von der Leyen has created the question with a misdirected hyper-activism that is putting the European Union in a sometimes uncomfortable situation. With the same legal regulation, this question has never been asked in the past and today it is. Kissinger had a problem and Blinker still has it because there are still many phones to call and the President of the Commission is always communicating, because she said it today: I was talking to Jordan, to Egypt and to the Emirates. What is the President of the Commission doing speaking in this conflict with these countries? Under what mandate can you do it? And now, in addition, President Metsola joins this confused courtship of egos, for which the only recipe I recommend is to let Mr Borrell work, because at least Mr Borrell is not in a personal campaign. And let us properly fund the European External Action Service so that it does not have to negotiate every month the funds to carry out a foreign policy of the European Union.

Madam President, thank you to the speakers for their input and for suggesting matters that could have been included in the report. But I want to explain to you why we didn't think we should do it this year. The rapporteurs agreed on a short text without many particular mentions. More churches can be mentioned, more journalists can be mentioned, more cases can be mentioned, but the political message would remain the same. That is why I want you to understand what our approach has been in selecting amendments. But let's go to something more substantial. Commissioner, many of the honourable Members have spoken of the importance of Turkey - Mr Kyuchyuk, Mr Nistor, Mr Mandl - they have spoken of anchoring Turkey, of it being a partner, a neighbour, an ally. You are the Commissioner for Neighbourhood and Enlargement. That is why I think it is very important that, whenever we talk about Turkey, we distinguish between files with a neighbour and files with a candidate. Sometimes Turkey mixes them and I would not like it to be the Brussels criterion. The enlargement process is the accession process and it is the process based on values and the Copenhagen criteria. Neighborhood includes everything you said. It includes all digital, migration policies, everything we can collaborate with a neighbor, who will be welcome, but never mix it with the accession process, which is a process of a different, normative nature, and whose objective is an approach in principles and values, not only in interests. I would like both Parliament and the Commission to be on the same line when we talk to our Turkish colleagues, who distinguish those two areas, which are very different.

Mr President, the first thing I want to do is thank you for the work and the atmosphere that we have developed in drafting the report with my fellow shadow rapporteurs. I believe that we are putting together a common position, a position increasingly with a greater consensus and, therefore, a stronger and more robust position of this Parliament. This report, for the first time in many years, has had no votes against in the Committee on Foreign Affairs. The central issue of the report, recurrent and even boring, is the precarious state of health of Turkey's accession process. And to analyze that poor iron health of the process, this year, inevitably, we must talk about the recent elections in Turkey. I do not see what incentives the ruling elite can have to change their domestic or foreign policies when they have just been ratified in this process. In fact, what is appreciated in Turkey, domestic politics, is pure continuity. There are no actions concerning rights and freedoms. There are not even announcements of plans or reforms. It's pure continuity. Of course, as always, one week, a love letter from President Erdogan to the European Union, and the next week, a completely unfocused criticism based on half-truths, all for domestic nationalist consumption. With regard to the accession process, which should be at the heart of this report, not foreign policy and not the economy, which are adjectives and which have other frameworks, I believe that Turkey should receive some clear messages from this Parliament. The accession process is exhausted. That is my particular position. My fellow shadow rapporteurs consider that it is running out and, moreover, in my opinion, it is beginning to be dysfunctional because, as we have the accession process, we are not looking for alternative formulas to relate to Turkey and, therefore, that is preventing us from seeking a different framework, which is what the Council has asked Borrell, to examine a framework of relations with Turkey that is realistic and based on the real possibilities we have of relating to Turkey. The process is exhausted by an obvious lack of political will on the part of the Turkish ruling elite. You don't have to look for other responsibilities. There remains a simple empty shell in which we, the drafters of the report, intend in the end at least to protect the courageous pro-democratic and pro-European Turkish civil society, which is the only brake that I believe we have left to avoid euthanasia of the process. And, in order to become a member of the European Union, what you have to do is merit. This is a normative process, not a transactional process and therefore not based on negotiations or marketing. That's what Mr. Borrell just said in Georgia. It is a process based on the merits of the country and on achieving the goals that have been set. Therefore, this is not about geopolitics, it is not about drones, it is not about grain and it is not about the size of the army or the flag. For that there are other formats of our relationship. This will comply with the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights. This is going to put Kavala and Demirtaş on the street. This will stop attacking freedom of expression, leaving LGTBI people and associations alone, leaving the HDP alone, not imposing an Islamist agenda on the country's culture. If Turkey really wants to keep the accession process alive, let it put on the table, not declarations, but facts, actions and real progress. And it seems to me that, in recent weeks, the conflict in Cyprus and continuing to keep Stockholm waiting, of course, are not the best letters of introduction to approach the European Union or to resurrect a dying process.

Madam President, thanks to the excellent work of Natalie and Bilčík and the work in general of the Commission, represented by Raphaël. In addition to internal issues, the report says a lot of interesting things about protecting Parliament's image and good repute. For example, in matters such as electoral observation, it shows how electoral observation has to adapt to the interference that occurs long before the electoral event or the phenomenon of false electoral observation or informal or unauthorized electoral observation. We have to protect Parliament's good name also in election observation operations. I believe that the report reflects very well the progress that has been made in this House and how the way in which the House has defended its good name has finally been protected by the Court of Justice of the Union itself. It also includes NGOs: It is a good thing that organisations dealing with Parliament make their funding public, but we have to be aware that, in many authoritarian and liberal systems, if an NGO declares that it has money from the European Union, it will fall under the provisions of the Foreign Agents Act, and the report we are presenting today lays down precautions so that this cannot happen either. Sometimes our transparency can jeopardise the work of many actors operating in liberal countries and the report reflects this very well; I appreciate the flexibility of the rapporteurs to set it up.

Madam President, I would like to thank Mrs Kalniete and the negotiators who have again included a specific section on elections in the second report of the Special Committee on Foreign Interference. Elections are a goal because they are politically transcendent, but also because they are vulnerable. There are many people who only get hooked on political information when elections come. There is more technification, more digitization. Social media creates an environment in which those choices can be very vulnerable. In addition, by a recent investigation of European investigative journalists, we have discovered that there is a global market for election interference that has affected several elections in Africa. We have to be especially careful about the European elections. Not only because they affect a very relevant actor, but also because the European elections – being a single election – are held in 27 countries, with 27 different electoral systems and electoral infrastructures. Therefore, it is enough to find the weak link in the chain to cause interference that will affect not only that country, but all the European elections. The security and integrity of the European elections must therefore be high on our agenda in this last part of the legislature.

Mr President, as regards accountability for Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, a considerable effort has already been made as regards the legal bases for criminal prosecution. The collection and custody of evidence is already underway at the International Criminal Court in The Hague for this case of deported children and for other parallel cases. But this criminal prosecution has to be accompanied by a medium-term perspective: appropriate compensation for damage, including personal injury, not only physical damage. That is why I would like to draw colleagues' attention to a project by our neighbouring organisation, the Council of Europe. This will create in a month a register of damages with a view to claiming its repair from Russia. Funded by contributions from the Member States, many of us, and I believe that the European Union should join, are going to collect at an office in The Hague and at another office in Kiev the statements of damage suffered by citizens that the Ukrainian institutions deem appropriate. And I reiterate that the project includes not only physical damage or property damage, but also personal injury. And here must be understood, of course, the cases of children who must be returned, of course, and whose families must be compensated by the State responsible for so many brutalities.

Mr President, Mr Borrell, I will not insist on the obvious, which has already been said: the condemnation of the self-coup, the disproportion in the treatment of the protests or the possibility of turning the page with an election. There are other aspects that I want to discuss. The citizens who protest are no less citizens or have fewer rights to come from the rural world, to come from areas with a majority indigenous population or to come from poorer areas. Beware of that possible simplifying Manichaeism. That anger is very significant in political terms because it represents the abandonment by the urban capitalistic logics of a sector of the population fed up with not feeling represented in the ruling elites. Obviously, there is a bad constitutional design that will have to be corrected, but perhaps, pending a reform process – which does not have to be constituent – political practice must be refined and the mechanisms that have led to permanent governmental instability that now simply becomes ungovernable for the country must not be abused. Mr Borrell, we must build consensus and practical support from here to deeply restructure the police, create a professionalized administration and reform the judiciary, in order to develop, if possible, a common sense and a country project that also includes the rural and indigenous population.

Madam President, in the travaux préparatoires for this report, which has been carried out effectively and flexibly by Mrs Neumann, some harmful trends have been identified which should be emphasised. One is the topic of so-called silent diplomacy: a practice which, in the field of human rights, cannot be a general attitude, but a tool to use very exceptionally – as in the case of the negotiation of the release of a political prisoner – but it cannot be the way in which our embassies express themselves in countries that have human rights problems. Contact with human rights NGOs must be constant and systematic, and public statements must be frequent and expressive. Another trend is an implicit and perverse sharing of roles between EU Delegations and embassies of member countries. Thus, the EU Delegations take on the – less sympathetic – role of confronting the authorities with their human rights problems, and the embassies of the member countries engage in economic diplomacy, which is always friendly and rewarding. The obligation to put human rights at the heart of our foreign policy stems from the Treaties and is an obligation of the European Union and the Member States. That would be a good Team Europe.

Mr President, look, ladies and gentlemen, I refuse this false dichotomy of having to choose between the former president in prison, whom many of those sitting here recommended not to return to the country, and did so illegally in the middle of a campaign, Mr Saakashvili, and a government whose authoritarian drift is increasingly obvious. But we seem to agree to support civil society, and at least from there – I mean pro-democracy and pro-European civil society – we can build a consensus. I reiterate that it was a mistake not to put Georgia on the same footing as the other countries, to which we offered the candidacy, because that fueled Georgian Dream's anti-European narrative. We opened a huge space for that anti-European narrative to fill it, and it certainly did not serve to end the polarization that we said we cared so much about. Now we have to rebuild our levers of influence over the country in a situation infinitely worse than that of a few months ago, but it is our obligation to do so. And I call on all of you to support civil society, without confusing us with false dichotomies.

Mr. President, Mr. Borrell, if the famous urban legend of the frog in boiling water were true, this would be a good time to use it. We have let Israel go a long way in terms of freedoms and international law without proper wording. And now we find a judicial reform that its own president, so quoted here today, considers unacceptable, predatory and that dismantles the democratic foundations. I wonder what we would be saying if this was a project, for example, of Erdoğan. Would we be putting on so many hot cloths? Fortunately, there has been a backlash from civil society and there remains some hope for the country's future. That is why we must never confuse that civil society in Israel, which is in the streets protesting, with its government. We should also talk a little about the consequences, not only for the Palestinian population, but for the entire region. Israel was supposedly the only democracy in the Middle East. It never really was for the Palestinian population in the occupied territories, and now it risks becoming less so for Israeli society itself.

Mr President, Mr Paet, I thank you for your flexibility in negotiating this document and for having resisted the federalist turn of the PPE, which has defended in this report to disempower the Council of its competences in foreign policy and communitize this policy, thus skipping the treaties, by the way. I believe that this is a necessary report because in foreign policy we jump from one crisis to another and there is very little reflection on the instruments of that foreign policy and on their faces: Who represents, who defines, who executes foreign policy? It is based on a rather confusing legal framework. I would say that in foreign policy there are many faces and many egos. And I would recommend letting Borrell work, who doesn't seem very concerned about the height of his armchair. I believe that improving those instruments of our foreign policy requires diplomacy that is truly European diplomacy. That idea of the Diplomatic School, evoked by Commissioner Timmermans, is an idea that came out of this Parliament. We need to improve our intelligence capacity in external crises. We need to create an intelligence flow from the national intelligence services to Brussels in order to be well informed and not act blindly. The INCENT must therefore be strengthened. European cultural diplomacy must be made which is not merely a mixture of national cultural diplomacy; a new position for the European Union must be sought in this multilateral world shaken up by Trump; The position of the European Union in the United Nations Security Council needs to be considered. To be very practical, how do you move from a French chair to a European Union chair in a few years?

Madam President, in this House we have had, in recent years, many opportunities to exercise the most justified criticism of the Turkish governorate; with its authorities, not with the country or with its admirable civil society. I've said it many times: Erdoğan is not Turkey and Turkey is not Erdoğan. It is to Turkey, to the nation, to society, to its people, that we must address today with empathy and closeness. The scale of the devastation is historic, surely only comparable to what happened in Haiti in 2010. And the same size should be the two answers: the domestic response and the European response. Our relationship, that of the European Union and that of the member countries, has been up to par. Within a few hours, the European civil protection mechanisms were put in place, some very symbolic ones that I want to highlight here, such as Greece's effort as Turkey's immediate neighbour. Now it is time to maintain that initial effort by creating the means to accompany reconstruction in safe conditions for the future. Turkey is not Haiti. Turkey is a country that exhibits its character as a regional actor and its enormous state capabilities. It is time to prove it, protecting its population and counting on European aid, humanitarian aid and, therefore, foreign to political considerations. There will be time for politics.

Madam President, everyone in this House has pointed to polarisation as the serious problem of Georgia's political system. A political system that seems to revolve only around one issue, which is the situation of Mr. Saakashvili. A situation about which it is necessary to remember that it was deliberately provoked. Everyone in this house recommended to Mr. Saakashvili not to enter the country illegally. Mr Saakashvili decided to do so in the middle of the electoral campaign, which has created a situation that now obliges those of us who recommend not to do so to try to resolve the situation. However, my group reiterates a position that we have already expressed. It is best to suspend the execution of the sentence so that Mr. Saakashvili is medically treated outside the country. For humanitarian reasons, yes, but also because that – we believe – would help to create a more standardised political agenda, less polarised and, surely, with more political energy dedicated to resuming the path of the European Union.

Mr President, Commissioner, thanks to the work of Isabel Wiseler, and Isabel Santos for our group. The extent and depth of authoritarian currents in the world, the apparent security of liberal postulates, the fact that we have ceased to be a model for other societies, the erosion of our soft power, our repeated failure to attempt democratic experiments after conflicts, reveal a certain bewilderment in the area of mature democracies. Concern, the two rapporteurs said. In front, a narrative that draws human rights not as a universal conquest of civilization, but as a Western mechanism of neocolonial domination seems to impose itself. We are involved in a cultural and ideological war between democracies and autocracies. And this situation advises going out to give the battle on the open ground. Mature democracies, international institutions, civil societies of authoritarian countries, we have to come together and reaffirm our principles and our values. And surely this seventy-fiveth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is an appropriate time to reaffirm our values and our willingness to fight for them.

Madam President, mistakes have been made with Georgia, also on our side. I think putting it in a different situation from Moldova and Ukraine was. But neither are the country's authorities and opposition helping. Everything is conjured up to delay the start of a normalized political agenda. Everything is conjured up to maintain a polarization that is endangering the country's European project and, perhaps, even its own sovereign future. Therefore, the system has to release pressure. In that sense, not only because of his personal situation but because I believe it is convenient for the country, it would be good if former President Saakashvili were suspended from prison for health reasons and to receive medical care. This is not going to solve the issue by itself, but I think it will help attract political actors, or a more normalized agenda, and end that polarization that we all identify as the country's main political problem.

Mr President, Turkey often accuses the European Union of practicing double standards, but there are times when our double standards seem to benefit it. Let's see, how have we qualified the fact that a country, claiming the desirability of preventing a hypothetical and future danger, invades a neighbor with military forces, violating an internationally recognized sovereign border, even if it calls it a special military operation? And I am not talking about Russia, which seems to excite the zeal of this House so much. I am talking about a flagrant violation of Turkey's international law. On three occasions it has already launched "operations" in Syria and Iraq. When does an operation start to be a raid? And when is a raid an invasion? And when is an invasion an occupation? And won't our double standards make it easier for these airstrikes to give way to a very dangerous ground invasion? The Commissioner has asked Turkey "restraint". Is that the same double standard we're using for Russia? Have we asked Russia in Ukraine "restraint"?

Mr President, thank you, Mrs Yenbou, for your leadership in this report. It's been a pleasure working with you. It is up to me to give the opinion of the AFET Committee and therefore, inevitably, the issue is our European cultural diplomacy, the external aspects of the report. The certain weakness of our European cultural diplomacy is a deficit to be corrected. European cultural identity in the world cannot be an inarticulate accumulation of what our great national cultural institutions – the Cervantes Institute, the Goethe, the Alliance Française – do. What is our common label in the world? What is the united face we offer when we show off our European way of life? Of course, our European culture is made up of a vibrant and strong set of national cultures. But just as we have built common symbolic elements that have not displaced national symbolic elements, we can do the same with our culture and our cultural presence in the world, which must also be a vehicle for our values and principles. Let us therefore adopt a new toolbox for cultural diplomacy that is based on supporting the cultural sectors of the countries with which we interact.

Mr President, Mr Borrell, that last thought of yours is very good for me, because the issue of re-exports must be made transparent. Because sometimes the data indicate the first port where that cereal ship stops and we do not know if the cereal, transformed into flour or not, goes to other places. That is a market that must be clarified, because sometimes we receive confusing news about Turkey, which has just said that it is going to make a large export of flour, not grain, flour, to the third world and that means that part of that grain is going to be re-exported. I believe that transparency in re-exporting that grain in both ways would be important.

Mr President, Mr Borrell, the actual result of the Black Sea operation has been ten million tonnes. However, the diplomatic and image result for Turkey has been enormous. Turkey appears as the great benefactor of the third world, playing a role that has diplomatic returns. What has been the real result of our solidarity corridors? Despite that cost you said, despite the bottlenecks, we have taken out 15 million tons. Fifteen million tons on our land routes, ten million on the Black Sea. And yet the diplomatic return on this enormous operation, with the costs you have said, is much lower. Moreover, Russia has managed, at least for some time, to get the picture that the problems in some parts, for example, of Africa, had to do with our sanctions and not with the fact of the war. Not to mention the margin that Turkey has gained to surely make a different foreign policy. Mr Borrell, how is it possible that an operation of this cost and benefit does not have the same impact in diplomatic terms as that of Turkey?

Madam President, we are still in the haze. We do not know if this is an expectation of what could become or is always a talking show, but we must remember that many things in Europe began as a talking show, like the European Union itself. It takes time and a couple of crises. But for this we have to solve some doubts. Is this about values or is it about realpolitik? To values Macron referred, to values Mrs Truss referred; but Turkey, Azerbaijan or Serbia were there, which makes a question pertinent: in the medium term is the photo of Prague compatible with the photo of Samarkand, the photo of autocrats? On the way back from the summit, Mr Michel no longer spoke of values, only of interests, and that has a risk, Commissioner: that by widening the circle around or against Russia we risk lowering our democratic demands. But it doesn't look like a security organization either, despite the fact that war has been its trigger, because there are friends of Russia there and because a security system in which NATO and the United States are not, surely, is not very realistic. It is therefore still an unidentified political object and I will allow myself to agree with you, without setting a precedent: this is, for the moment, an opportunity.

Mr President, this is a good example of what human rights emergencies in this House could turn out to be. A wake-up call and not a battlefield for sterile partisan battles. We sometimes throw human rights urgencies at each other, and that doesn't help the situation we're dealing with much. I appreciate the tone of the negotiation, always constructive, with the aim of putting Haiti on the agenda. It is an issue that is talked about very little because in many parts of the world some country has violent gangs. In Haiti it is the gangs that have a country: the successive demise of public institutions and the power vacuum has empowered gangs that began in the service of political elites and now have these elites at their service. In Haiti, talking about an economic crisis is a euphemism. It is the most absolute poverty, and we will not mask it. Therefore, a vacuum of political power. Poverty. And the gangs running the country. The perfect storm. At least, we create awareness.

. – Madam President, Commissioner, she replaced my group's negotiator in this report, Mrs Bettina Vollath, who has left Parliament these days. I would like to thank you for your work on this report and on many others in the DROIT Committee and wish you good luck in your future. I would also like to thank Mr Urbán for his attitude and ambition. This could have been a more filling and predictable role on our agenda and yet it is not because of that ambition that he himself has expressed in his report, not just in his previous speech, not just because of that well-connected idea of the right to sanitation and the right to water. I think there are also a lot of ideas that we need to explore: non-discriminatory access to water, anticipatory and preventive actions, water in refugee camps - to which he has not referred - or the due diligence of European companies in their water management in their activity in the rest of the world. This is a problem on a global scale and therefore the analyses and solutions have to be global.

Mr. High Representative, the degree of commitment of the regional factors in the conflict can be measured graphically with that horrible video that we have talked about, not executions, but murders, and whatever the date of that video. International society had to admit, what a remedy, that Russia and, to a lesser extent, Turkey would act as interposed forces. But Russia is logically in something else and Armenia has been abandoned to its fate by its theoretician partner and protector. Russia sent troops to Kazakhstan over an internal problem, but did not send any aid to Armenia in the face of a military invasion. Nor has Turkey, so active and noisy on so many occasions in foreign affairs, given any sign of its recent and publicized mediating capacities, only bellicose phrases. The same drones that protect Ukraine attack Armenia; This is a good example of this attitude, which is sometimes difficult to understand by our Turkish partners, I repeat, Turkish partners in NATO. Turkey is also a candidate for EU membership. On Turkey, I believe, Mr Borrell, that we have some greater capacities of pressure than on other actors. Is there any kind of measure in this regard?