Speeches

Mr President, we’re asking farmers to cut methane and other emissions in the agricultural sector, but crucially also to draw carbon out of the atmosphere by sequestering it in soils. We really need to urgently get on with this and give farmers the right tools and finance to transition to sustainable forms of agriculture. Agroecology is clearly the answer, and it’s very good that we are in here discussing these issues and producing this report. But there is something sickeningly ironic with this debate in the context of our deafening silence with regard to the biggest-ever release of methane in history, which happened on our territory last September. Methane, a greenhouse gas 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide, with the latest UN data estimates of between 75 000 and 230 000 metric tonnes of it released in the Nord Stream 2 economic sabotage and environmental terrorism. These issues aren’t going to go away. The truth will out. We should start by asking questions and demanding an independent investigation.

Mr President, we’re obviously talking here about closer cooperation between the EU and the Council of Europe, and that’s something that I very much support. Paragraph 35, in particular, talks about the whole area of media freedom. But whereas the Council of Europe has been loud and consistent on the case of Julian Assange, for example, the European Union has been silent, and I think this is absolutely scandalous. Three years ago, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe passed a resolution declaring that the detention and prosecution of Julian Assange set a dangerous precedent for all journalists. They called for his release and 37 representatives issued a declaration that the Assange case threatens the Council of Europe’s standards on the protection of journalistic sources, the rights of journalists and freedom of expression. And Commissioner Mijatović called on the UK not to extradite Assange on the basis that it would have a chilling effect on media freedom and hamper the activities of the press. If this report is to mean anything, we should follow the example of our counterparts, put ourselves on the right side of history and call for the release of Julian Assange.

Mr President, we are talking about Fit for 55 against the backdrop of the revision of the European emissions trading scheme for the aviation sector. We all know that the biggest question in this area has always been the issue of long haul flights accounting for 6% of flights from the EEA, but responsible for about half of the CO2 and NOx emissions. Yet under the new EU legislation, these flights are going to continue to be covered by the much cheaper UN CORSIA offset scheme, rather than our European emissions trading scheme. Obviously we need to be doing a hell of a lot more, but there are powerful forces in the way, and when governments make decisions that are often being blocked. We’ve seen the decision by the Dutch Government to reduce the capacity of Schiphol Airport being taken to court by many airlines. The same airport, when it abandoned the creation of a new runway, banned night flights and private jets which emit a lot more – 20 times more – than commercial flights, should have been an example for Europe, but yet they were blocked. We’ve seen the same thing with France trying to ban domestic flights in the case of a 2.5 hour rail alternative. We’ve got to stop talking out of both sides of our mouth. Choosing between a habitable environment or airline profits should never be a difficult choice.

Madam President, I voted for this report. On Tuesday of this week, Clara Ponsatí was arrested and detained by Spanish police at the behest of a Spanish judge working on behalf of elements in the Spanish State, in flagrant breach of a European Court of Justice order. An MEP, a colleague. One of us is arrested and detained. A clear—cut case of state harassment, a threat and a warning to her. It is a bread—and—butter case of vicious political repression by the Spanish judiciary and a violation of the rule of law. Do we scramble the checks? Do we clear the decks to discuss this case, condemn the arrest? Do we hear denunciations across the House? Do we hell. This issue goes well beyond politics. I don’t care what anybody thinks of the Catalan independence movement; it really does not matter. If an EU state is arresting politicians it does not like in order to intimidate and harass them, in breach of her parliamentary immunity, in flagrant breach of EU law, you stand up. Every month in here, we get people coming in and telling us how great you are at defending democracy and rule of law and all this kind of good stuff, but when it comes to tackling these issues at home, you are totally silent.

Madam President, I welcome the measures to tackle the depletion of the ozone and I voted for the file. But while that’s all well and good, there is a huge contradiction between our statements here and the fact that the biggest methane emission ever, with huge consequences for the ozone, took place last September with the blowing-up of the Nord Stream pipelines – a devastating act of sabotage on EU infrastructure. And nobody in the EU has anything to say about it. Neither do we want to do anything about it. Seymour Hersh produces a very credible report that the US was responsible, along with Norway, then US intelligence come up with nonsense that it was a pro-Ukrainian non-state group. Come on, we don’t need leaks from the people who brought us the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. We need answers, and that the UN Security Council and two European members failed to support the call for an independent investigation into the explosion this week is absolutely scandalous. If we want to protect the ozone, we have to have some consistency in our policies.

Madam President, of course I voted for this motion, but I think it’s slightly mad that we’re still here in 2023 having to argue that people who do equal work should get equal pay. But I guess that’s capitalism for you. An opportunity to exploit workers will always be taken, and women, as James Connolly said, have always been ‘the slaves of slaves’. Capital steals resources instead of paying for them whenever it can, and women’s time and energy is a resource pool it’s been robbing since the dawn of time. But let’s make no bones about it: at a time of record shareholder profits and stratospheric executive pay, workers – no matter their gender – are being robbed blind. So there’s not much benefit in us talking about a right to equal pay if it is a right to be treated equally badly. So if we’re fighting for equal pay for women, we have to fight for everybody’s pay to go up to a fair and equal level.

Mr President, we have just passed the 20th anniversary of the Iraq War, a war where over a million people died, where people still grapple with the after-effects of the use of depleted uranium, where nobody has been held to account for a country torn apart and a region plunged into chaos. And we have a responsibility to look back and ask: how did it all happen? Well, it happened because the people in power told us over and over things they knew were not true. It happened because a compliant media failed to ask the questions and parroted those lies day after day, beating the drum for a war of aggression dressed up as a battle of democracy against authoritarianism. So now, as another country is torn apart, another region turned into chaos, at this uniquely dangerous phase in world history, we see the same people again baying for blood — not their own of course — seizing the moral high ground, condemning peace as appeasement, bellowing that the only option is escalation. Well, you really have to ask yourself the question: why in God’s name would we believe these liars? Now we need peace and we need it now.

Mr President, I abstained on this report because while there was much good in it, the Magnitsky Act and other measures, I do not agree with. If we want to defend human rights defenders, we have to be honest. And I want to give an example to back up my position. Last night in here, we had a discussion on the reports of hundreds of girls suffering respiratory problems and temporary paralysis in schools across Iran, which of course is deeply concerning. Targeting children for any reason is unimaginable and inexcusable. I am very glad that the Government of Iran has initiated an investigation. I expect that to be transparent. But every time we take up these issues, we should be mindful of the impact on human rights defenders and the people we claim that we are defending, because by constantly seizing on every development in Iran to press for a regime change, we are hurting the people we say we stand by. We are trying to intervene in a negative way in that sense. I find it a bit of a cheek for people in here to feign concern about women and girls in Iran when they are dying as a result of the sanctions that we are imposing on them.

Mr. President, as George Bernard Shaw said, ‘The worst is that towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that’s the essence of inhumanity’. Exporters of live animals will never be able to take the proper care of their animals, since a journey can last for several days, or even months. We cannot rely on our current rules, as carriers ignore them when they leave the European Union. It is a scandal and a shame that only six percent of the seventy-eight boats approved in the European Union are purpose-built for the transport of animals. In the context of this year's review of animal welfare legislation, the transport of live animals on long journeys should be strictly prohibited, and the transport of all non-detached animals should end. And, in general, we need to significantly reduce the amount of meat we eat for the climate and animals.

Mr President, far from helping, the IMF and the World Bank are imperialist institutions for the legalised theft of resources, where 85% of the world’s population are left with the minority say while the rich countries exercise a veto. And I think there is a really sick irony in the fact that the World Bank provides around 1.7 billion to the oil and gas sector, while at the same time reaping back repayments on the indebted poor, the very people suffering from the climate crisis in the first place. We see now the revolving door where Donald Trump’s World Bank president appointee steps out, Joe Biden steps in and the ownership of this World Bank and IMF by the US continues the very countries that are failing to pay for even the most meagre climate pledge. They failed to meet the 100 billion goal for 2020, but we actually need six times that finance in order to avoid the most dangerous climate change. So where is that money going to come from? We could have international financial institutions that work for people and the climate, that are oriented by human needs. We need to totally dismantle Bretton Woods and make something more democratic.

Mr President, this report on Azerbaijan is a really interesting read. In it, we’ve alleged war crimes with torture and mutilation, the persecution of political dissidents, lack of women’s rights, racist hate speech, child labour, illicit spying on journalists and politicians, with the grotesquely evil trophy park in Baku; we’ve enforced disappearances, desecration of corpses, political repression, police brutality, intimidation, death threats and assassination against the opponents of the Azerbaijani Government; lack of media freedom, violation of human rights, not to mention no workers’ rights – because they don’t have any. And after all of that, after all the squares of this shameless authoritarian bingo card have been ticked off, the EU’s oil and gas deal with Azerbaijan is signed in the same breath as, ‘We can’t do business with the authoritarian Russia. We’ll do it with these valiant defenders of democracy and human rights.’ If you want a clue about why nobody outside here takes this place seriously, well, this report is a very good place to start.

Mr President, I voted in favour of this text because of the urgent need to raise the national minimum income in the EU Member States in order to reduce the number of people at risk of poverty and social inclusion. Now, we know that in 2021, 95.4 million people in the EU, 21% of the population, were at risk of poverty and social exclusion. So, grand and all as this measure is, and it is, unless we go much further than this, the problems will not be sorted out. Our workers are in a situation of constant precariousness; the energy crisis, deindustrialisation, unemployment, inflation are all increasing the numbers of people who are increasingly insecure. The share of housing costs in the disposable income of people at risk of poverty is 38%. In Ireland in the last quarter last year, average rents were EUR 1 733 per month. In France, the number of people achieving food aid has tripled. The social emergency is here, it’s time to wake up.

Mr President, the protection of EU citizens against discrimination is inadequate and for far too long we’ve failed to improve the discrimination directive. I’m glad that we’ve just had the first UN international day against islamophobia, but sorry that we’ve had to have it because of the appalling rise of crimes against Muslims in our society. The institutional suspicion which has increased since 9/11 and the so-called war on terror, the negative profiling, the stereotyping, make life in Europe very dangerous for Muslims and the actions that some members of our parliaments take makes that even more. In the presence of the Swedish Presidency, we have to say that burning and disrespecting the Koran is absolutely unacceptable. It is a hate crime and passing it off as just freedom of expression, I’m sorry, is just not good enough. We have to put our actions where our words are and stamp out discrimination against Muslims in our society.

Mr President, it’s a mark of our skewed priorities that we can rush through things like spending billions of public money on arms, but something as simple and essential as dealing with the cross-border aspects of adoption sits on the backburner for years. The Commission and Parliament started to address this over ten years ago and nothing substantive has happened. And why is it that the rights of adopted children are never a priority? In my own country, Ireland, thousands of people were illegally adopted. They had to wait decades for our government to give them even the smallest bit of information about where they came from. Successive governments had to be dragged screaming and kicking to a place where they’d even begin to address this. And they still haven’t got answers. Most recently, being insulted with an offer of EUR 3 000 compensation for being illegally adopted and in a mother and baby home. The scale of abuse is appalling. If we talk about values, we have to address this issue.

Madam President, organised crime, terrorism, migration: the monsters that lurk under every right—winger’s bed; the catch—all justification for every attack on our fundamental rights. Our rights and civil liberties are being relentlessly eroded in an endemic securitarian obsession that does almost nothing to deal with the problems it’s supposed to, but does everything to make our societies more fearful and authoritarian. It doesn’t actually have to be like this. If you really want to tackle organised crime in the EU, there are ways of doing it without implementing mass surveillance, without eroding civil liberties, without fattening the pockets of the arms and security companies, and without creating a pervasive climate of fear and suspicion. First step: if you are really serious, drug decriminalisation as a first step towards full legalisation. At the same time, you’d provide safe and legal pathways for people to come to Europe, work here in the regular economy. It might sound simple, but I can guarantee you it would be effective.

Mr President, this debate is happening against the backdrop of the deaths of 74 people off the coast of Italy last month. Half of the dead were children, 30 are still missing. It’s against the backdrop of the ongoing criminal trials of rescue workers and innocent refugees for helping people to safety. It’s against the backdrop of the new Italian regulations that tightened the noose around the civilian search and rescue operations who have stepped into the breach since the EU shamefully walked away from its legal obligations to save lives at sea. It’s against the backdrop of illegal pushbacks, violence, torture and thousands of deaths. It’s against the backdrop of Gary Lineker being suspended from his job as a broadcaster for expressing solidarity with refugees. My God, what a grim backdrop. So can we please get real and change the narrative? The people coming to the EU from outside its borders are an asset, not a threat. Europe can wake up to that fact or stay in its savage and evermore authoritarian death trap. I hope for the first, but fear for the second.

Madam President, listening to the cheerleading in here, safe and secure thousands of miles away from the front line, I think it would be a useful exercise for us to remind ourselves about what ordinary Ukrainians are experiencing. The Economist’s reports of forced recruitment across the country. Draftees with no experience or training are being sent to the front in what a UK minister calls WWI-levels of attrition. Casualty figures are secret but we know there are estimates of about 120 000. Battalion commanders tell the Washington Post of recruits fleeing positions en masse. Politico reports a crackdown on deserters. These are human beings and there is a shameful lack of empathy for ordinary people in the war rhetoric in here. The debate is about keeping the weapons flowing to keep the war going. Ukraine is burning through a generation of men; sons, husbands, brothers who can never be replaced. This cannot go on indefinitely. And you sickening war generals who sit in here and will these men to our debts, you make me sick! We need peace. We need dialogue, however unpleasant that may be.

Mr President, Moldova is dealing with an extremely sensitive situation: a brutal war next door, intense polarisation internationally, a Russian military presence in Transnistria and international actors increasingly pressing states to pick sides. Now Article 11 of the Constitution states, ‘the Republic proclaims its permanent neutrality’, and the overwhelming majority of Moldovans have consistently been against joining either NATO or the Russian-led CSTO. Like my own country, Ireland, Moldova doesn’t have a strong military, and its neutrality has been a crucial guarantee of security for its people. And I think now Moldovans are clearly worried about being pulled into the war and seeing it spread, and we should be taking the utmost caution not to pull at the threads of Moldovan neutrality. I think it’s a disgrace that we’re forcing countries to take sides. Why can’t they have good relations with Russia and with the EU? It’s a disgrace that there’s been the revocation of broadcast licenses for the six Russian—language channels in Moldova: we have to respect all rights of all Moldovans.

Mr President, I have to say, I think this debate is really very unhelpful. While the odd person has come in and argued for calm and dialogue and diplomacy, most people here, quite frankly, have been happily stirring the pot with no apparent care for the consequences. Nobody but nobody in here should be doing that. Everybody on all sides should leave Georgia be. Since 1991, the Georgian people have been put through the wringer of neoliberal shock therapy, political instability and vicious political polarisation. A third of the people in Georgia under 50 are considering emigrating. Some 61% of them say that no political party represents them. It is one of the most unequal countries in Europe and Central Asia: that’s what we should be focusing on. That’s what matters to the people of Georgia. And yet people come in here trying to inflame things. You’re giving out about the Georgian Foreign Agents Act when the Commission comes out and leaks its own version of exactly the same thing and you’ve nothing to say about this. This type of thing is madness. Previously, the EU argued for dialogue and de-escalation, I ... (The President cut off the speaker)

Mr President, it’s ironic that we are looking at the future of the European External Action Service under the title ‘a stronger EU in the world’, when the truth is that the world – particularly the places where the majority of the world’s population live outside the global north – are shaking their heads in disbelief at the weakness of the European Union and its subservience to US empire, even when it’s blatantly against our own interests. Instead of championing peace in Europe, overcoming differences and difficulties through dialogue and diplomacy, we’ve acted as a pawn for NATO – captured by the military industrial complex, imposing sanctions. And now we have an energy crisis, a cost of living crisis, an angry nuclear power on our doorsteps and the Inflation Reduction Act. If we want to be stronger, stop playing US war games, stop antagonising our trading partners, stop interfering and trying to have regime change in countries we don’t like, stop robbing the global south – they’re not going to take your colonialism anymore. If you want to be stronger, stand up for international law, for UN principles, multilateralism, in other words, the opposite of what you’re doing now.

Mr President, today we are discussing three pieces of legislation in the Fit for 55 Package aiming at climate neutrality in the EU by 2050. Among them is the update of the regulation on land use and forests for the period 2021 to 2030. We all know that to achieve the EU’s climate objectives and climate stability, European and national policies rely heavily on carbon storage in forests. However, new data from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change shows that most EU countries are losing or have lost their forest and terrestrial carbon sinks. This is obviously disastrous. While we say one thing, our actions are leading us in a different direction. Overexploitation of forests for energy production appears to be one of the main factors for this loss, as the current fuel crisis leads to an acceleration of panic logging and firewood purchases. The consequence of our failure to develop clean technologies is becoming more apparent. We need to recognise, accelerate and deal with the issue of biomass. Harvesting has to be reduced.

Madam President, it is actually almost unprecedented to see an EU office secure unanimous praise across the House that we’ve heard tonight, and I think that is a great credit to Emily and her staff for the crucial work that they do and how well that they do it. And I do think that the work in relation to Ursula von der Leyen and the text messages with Pfizer give an indication of the importance of this office, so comhghairdeas daoibh go léir! I think what was particularly interesting in this year’s annual report is the account of the Ombudsman’s finding of maladministration in the European Defence Agency’s handling of the scandalous decision to allow its Chief Executive to go off and work for Airbus. This is indicative of the revolving door and how lobbying works. Airbus is one of Europe’s biggest arms companies, a monstrous corporate giant that’s a hotbed of scandal that’s profited so handsomely out of the securitisation and militarisation of EU policy over the years. This paints a very grim picture of how EU defence policy is set by the arms industry for profit rather than the interests and security of the people of Europe.

Madam President, I have to say it is an awful shame that a committee report that was pretty progressive under Ciarán Cuffe’s direction, and which improved so much on the Commission’s insipid proposal, has been so badly hollowed out by some groups inside this Parliament. Of course, there are still some positive elements in here, and let’s hope they make it through the final votes. But it really is disappointing that so much of the ambition has been sucked out of these proposals and out of the minimum performance standards, in particular. Now, as colleagues have said, our buildings are responsible for nearly 40% of the EU’s greenhouse gas emissions. This needs to be addressed and it needs to be comprehensively addressed. We are in the middle of an energy crisis. We’re staring down the barrel of a future earth that will be uninhabitable for our grandchildren – not our great grandchildren, our grandchildren. We need to take action. It’s not the time to lock in low standards and high emissions for the next 20 years. I really appeal to colleagues to vote not to water this down tomorrow.

Mr President, I voted against this resolution. Fertilisers are vital to ensure the continuous production of food and feed in the EU and globally. But as Russia is the world’s principal supplier of fertilisers, the war and our response to it in imposing sanctions is threatening global food security and driving up food prices in Europe and abroad. Inflation is having a major impact on the European agricultural sector and the level of farmers’ income. The Red Cross estimates that more than 145 million Africans are currently going hungry and millions more are facing acute food insecurity. Meanwhile, the largest fertiliser manufacturers have been making record profits. While EU sanctions don’t target agriculture, Western diplomats are very clear that they create a sense of legal uncertainty, which makes it harder for Russian companies to access funds, to cover transport costs and engage with European operators. We know almost a quarter of a million tonnes of fertilisers were frozen in November. This was lunacy. Later released, but only through negotiation and dialogue. This shows a way forward. We have to have people first, in this situation.

Mr President, I forgot to congratulate you earlier, so congratulations on your elevation [the speaker was interrupted]. It is too late, but I'm sorry. Anyway, this report is one of the few powers that we have to attempt to hold the ECB to account, but unfortunately, it falls well short of the mark, so I voted against it. We're told that the European Union has managed to escape recession – just about – but that isn't any comfort for the people in the real world who are struggling so hard this winter and coming into the spring. This inflation problem with energy and food companies exploiting the bottlenecks, profiteering from it, and there's nothing in the report to rein it in. Not to mind that, but much of the problem with supply is self-imposed with the sanctions that we are supposedly putting on Russia, but it's European citizens who are paying the price. Now, what's the ECB response to this? Ease the pain? No. Their response is double it! Interest rate hikes which cripple people, now mortgage increases and cutting off access to credit. So now people don't just have to worry about heating their homes and feeding themselves, now they have to worry about keeping their homes, when we should be releasing fiscal measures in order to invest in jobs and security. But of course, true to form in this place, this is dancing with big business and ordinary people pay the price.