Speeches

Mr President, these are the first main files of the ‘Fit for 55’ package that we’ve had to deal with in the TRAN Committee and I have to say, looking on them, I’m not that hopeful that we will meet our environmental goals. I mean, shipping emits 3% of global CO2 emissions, yet the International Maritime Organisation has so far failed to adopt global reduction measures in this field. We, of course, see the same problems with the International Civil Aviation Organisation, which again fails to regulate an international sector, which is aviation. Europe has to take a lead in this area with strong regulation but yet we seem happy to bend the knee to the market, expecting industry to deal with this and eat its own profits, if you like. It is not going to happen. At the same time, we see a major U-turn on alternative fuels to include LNG. This is an absolute sick joke. It is against energy independence and environmental preservation. It makes a mockery of what we’re trying to do. The future of humanity depends on us doing a lot better.

Mr President, I have to agree with colleagues that the saddest part of this discussion is that, as shocking as it is, it contains nothing new. The report is very clear, and I thank OLAF for it, but we know that Frontex has carried out pushbacks. We know that Frontex has funded the Greek Government in carrying out pushbacks; we know that Frontex has deliberately withdrawn surveillance to a allow for pushbacks; and we know that they deliberately covered up information they had in order not to reveal pushbacks. So they are guilty of some of the crimes that have led to the deaths of 35 000 people on our borders. We have known about these from testimony received time and time again from activists on the ground in Greece, but nothing was done. I salute OLAF, but let’s be clear, the terms of reference were limited enough. What I want to know is, what has the Commission done? It has been eight months since this report was completed, and it is not good enough to come in here and say: ‘Well, it’s all about a few bad eggs, the three fellas are now being moved. Ah sure, alright. Nothing to see here’. The report reveals collusion and information passing between Executive Director Leggeri and the Commission. Has that been investigated? What are the recriminations of this? This is the EU’s biggest funded agency. It has broken international law. This is not about arranging deck chairs on the Titanic. It needs to be disbanded.

Mr President, the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia was a tragic loss for European journalism. She was a genuinely fearless investigative reporter who worked throughout her career to bring important truths to light, and God knows there are very few who do that kind of work in the European media. Fearless reporting is a rarity. What dominates the European media instead is client journalism, and it fills the pages of our newspaper. It gets all the air time in broadcast news. Client journalism trades its freedom for access and profit. So when we talk about threats to media freedom, what we’re talking about are the threats to this handful of journalists who actually do journalism, who uncover uncomfortable truths and hold them up to the light. The murder of Ms Caruana Galizia was one such threat. The continued incarceration of Julian Assange is another. Every day he remains in prison, the noose draws tighter around the neck of any journalist who might threaten Western power. So, for anyone who says they care about media freedom, one of the important ways of honouring her legacy on this important anniversary is to demand his release.

Madam President, I think it is ironic that the theme of this year’s International Day for the Eradication of Poverty is ‘dignity for all in practice’ when it comes, as we heard earlier, in the same week that High Representative Borrell tells the globe that Europe is a garden and the rest of the world is a jungle. And apart from the sycophantic racism and arrogance, which is a million miles from dignity, seriously, a garden? There are 95.4 million people in danger of poverty or social exclusion, 21.7% of the EU’s population. And this is what he calls a model of social cohesion and economic progress, when all of the trends are going to more inequality and the gap is widening. Meanwhile, in the jungle, as he calls it, it is as it is in a large part because of the policies of Europe and global capitalism. You cannot tackle poverty without tackling the fact that the majority of the world’s wealth is owned and controlled by a tiny minority who use it for their own enrichment instead of the needs of the many. We need to end neoliberalism and put people before profit.

Mr President, Mahsa Amini’s death in police custody is very concerning. There should be a full and transparent inquiry, and the people of Iran have every right to protest and push their government for women’s rights and civil and social reforms. They should be able to do that without shocking violence and repression from the authorities. But they should equally be able to do it without the EU trying to capitalise from their struggle. While many in Iran push – and rightly so – for much—needed social progress, it’s for them to decide what happens in Iran, not us. Most of them don’t want to see their government overthrown or their country thrown open to the predatory whims of foreign capital as it was before. But unfortunately, that was the sentiment of many in this Chamber. The resolution itself is level—headed and does call on Iran to see to its own house, but unfortunately, it also calls for maintaining coercive measures and sanctions, which is going to damage the very people we seek to protect. That’s why I regretfully abstained on the motion.

Mr President, I think we definitely should look at preparedness in terms of a new pandemic. I certainly never want to see the horrific images of Italy being abandoned as it was at the start of the outbreak. But one of the major lessons that we have learned is that infectious disease surveillance and research has declined. Another lesson is, of course, the commodification of health care, which actually poses a real risk to the ability of our systems to cope with a new pandemic. Unless we address these, the path we’re on will not help to deal with future outbreaks. We’ve got to get to a situation where we fund science and allow research to be independent of any private or commercial interests, and we have to improve transparency in the activities of the EU administration. So, to date, the fact that the Ombudsman’s request remains unanswered concerning Ursula von der Leyen’s text messages with the head of Pfizer is not acceptable. It’s not acceptable that these messages haven’t been maintained and it’s not acceptable, as the Ombudswoman has said, that there is maladministration. So the amount and quality of information in contracts has to be improved.

Mr President, this is undoubtedly a human catastrophe of proportions that we don’t actually really know. Thirteen million people, at least, in need of humanitarian assistance in northern Ethiopia, according to the World Food Programme. Estimates of maybe 100 000 through direct killings; deaths from hunger – maybe 200 000; maybe half a million from lack of healthcare. But what we do know is that the Tigray region is witnessing a complete weaponisation by the Ethiopian Government of all basic services such as water, electricity, communication, and even access to bank accounts. This is collective punishment. We know that for two years the region has been under siege by the Ethiopian army, aligned with the Eritrean forces to settle scores against the Tigrayans, who in their time were pretty violent themselves as well. But it’s the ordinary people of Tigray, Afar and Amhara who are bearing the brunt of this military engagement. I agree with colleagues that now the entire Ethiopian population is affected. We must concentrate on a peace agreement, the ceasefire and the restoration of living conditions in the affected areas in this noble country that was never fully colonised.

Mr President, the situation in Myanmar is appalling. Mass arrests, detention of critics, beatings and deaths in custody, the use of the death penalty – all indefensible – and, in particular, attacks on freedom of expression, with journalists and activists charged with incitement and sedition for criticising the military; with the crime of causing fear and spreading fake news. This is an abomination, and we are right to condemn them, but they also hold up a mirror for us to see ourselves. This Parliament voted in March for the Kalniete report, which calls for the use of sanctions against so-called disinformation, including targeted individuals. We had calls this morning for sanctioning journalists, and even musicians. This report was against the advice we heard from expert lawyers, who made clear that sanctions have too low a burden of proof, no trial, no defence, no due process, no way to appeal and none of the rights to a normal defence. This has a chilling effect on freedom of expression. So see Myanmar and learn the lessons. Policing political speech is incompatible with democratic freedoms. The idea of using sanctions to combat disinformation disgraces us. It should be abandoned.

Mr President, Haiti is the site of the first and only successful slave revolution in history. Haitians won their independence from France in 1804 and immediately abolished slavery, becoming the first place in the world to do so. It was also the first state to outlaw racism in its constitution. Haiti was a beacon of light for the world, and it was punished for it. It was punished over and over again by France, by the US, through a series of coups, invasions, occupations, assassinations, through relentless meddling and crushing debt. They were determined that this beacon of freedom would be extinguished because it presented a bold challenge to the logic of capital and empire. But the Haitian people kept fighting through. Theirs is a light that never goes out, and so it’s still being punished. The meddling goes on. If Haiti is a mess – and it is – then Europe and the US are to blame. If we want to support the Haitian people – and we should – we’ll stand up to the US, the world’s bully, tell them to get out of Haiti and get out of it ourselves.

Mr President, what happened in Pakistan is devastation beyond belief and there is no question but that it is climate induced. 53 degrees, glacial melts, a monsoon going into October, one third of the country under water, 33 million affected. We’ve even heard about schools being shut down because they’re needed for shelters, so all of the young people are being denied an education. Pakistan’s Climate Change Minister, Sherry Rehman, blames the inefficiency of the North—South climate deal. She says there is so much loss and damage with so little reparations to countries that contributed so little to the world’s carbon footprint that obviously the bargain made between the global North and the global South is not working. She is totally right. Pakistan has contributed so little and is paying the most. It’s the world’s 50th most populous country. It’s host to so many Afghan refugees to whom we shut up our borders. The international community has an obligation to assist and yet we condition our relief or give them a pittance. It’s just not good enough! It’s time to act!

Madam President, I want to welcome and support the accession of new countries to Schengen. I firmly believe in the free movement of absolutely everybody, but I find it very hard to separate Schengen expansion from the violence that is going on at the edges of Europe. The grotesque and spectacular violence and abuse against refugees trying to enter Croatia and, to a lesser extent, Bulgaria and Romania makes it very hard to shake the impression that the EU is demanding that these countries prove that they’ll stop at nothing to keep migrants out as a price for free movement. The EU seems to have developed a habit of rewarding appalling behaviour with free movement. Qatar murders thousands of migrant workers – we reward them with visa—free travel. Croatian border guards beat, torture, rape, imprison and push back migrants – and we reward them by fast tracking their Schengen accession application. This is the same Croatia which tried to suppress a report of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture into horrifying abuse. It is the same Croatia that lied to this Parliament about what’s going on at its borders, and the same Croatia whose sham monitoring mechanism could not find any evidence of push—backs. We can only hope that Bulgaria and Romania don’t look at Croatia’s reward and decide to escalate their violence against migrants in the hope of impressing the psychopathic EU establishment with their commitment.

Mr President, the war in Ukraine is quickly escalating into a wider horror. And from what I can see, practically nobody in this Chamber is doing anything to prevent it. In fact most people seem to get off on the fact that it’s escalating. And at this precise moment, of course, as usual, the voices challenging the rush to war are attacked and silenced, smeared as traitors, cronies, Putin puppets, Kremlin stooges, Russian agents. Frankly, it’s pathetic. And I don’t make the comparison lightly, but the crudeness and cynicism of these slurs coming from mainstream EU parties might as well have been written by Hermann Göring, who infamously said that even though people never want war, they can be brought to war with threats and smears. He said all you have to do is tell them they’re being attacked, denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing their country to danger – it works the same every way. Where he led, you are following. This House should be ashamed of this debate. Words are being twisted, meanings subverted, and the truth turned on its head. Opposing the horrible madness of war is not anti—European, it’s not anti—Ukrainian, it’s not pro-Russian: it’s common sense. The working class of Europe have nothing to gain from this war and everything to lose. And I find it laughable that those calling for arms to Ukraine never call for arms for the people of Palestine, or for the people of Yemen. Unlike you, I oppose all war. I want it stopped. I make no apology for that. And I am not going to be scapegoated and labelled for it either.

Madam President, Credit Suisse, the private investment bank, has the following extract on its website: ‘Water is a focus for those in the know about global strategic commodities. As with oil, the supply is finite, but demand is going up by leaps and unlike oil there is no alternative.’ Water is scarce, but the profits aren’t. Of course, this is the root of the problem – the commodification of water for profit rather than for human needs. That’s why we’ve had the huge movements from Bolivia to Detroit, to Greece, Berlin, Madrid, Rome and many others around the issue of water. That’s why we had the heroic struggle in Ireland in the Right2Water campaign, where we forced our government to abandon its privatisation plans. We continue to have a situation of no charge and no water poverty, although that obviously can change at any time. During that campaign, the UN advisor on water, Maude Barlow, made the point that Ireland’s system of paying for water through progressive taxation with a user fee for only non-domestic users was an exemplary model of fair, equitable and sustainable service delivery for the world. That is what we stand by, and we will defend that with everything that we have.

Madam President, I don’t think you’d have to be a genius to know that the last thing the Horn of Africa needs is more foreign military bases, more weapons, and more European meddling. What we call our ‘strategic relationship’ isn’t about human flourishing; it’s about the EU’s ambitions as a superpower. There’s now a new great game in the Horn of Africa. Greater and lesser powers are pockmarking the place with military bases: France, the US, China, Germany, Japan, Italy, Saudi Arabia all have a presence in the tiny area of Djibouti alone. Mercenaries are swarming in from all quarters. The entire region is being militarised. War is in the air. And what about the people facing climate and food insecurity? None of this benefits them. We talk about instability, but we only make it worse. We flood the place with weapons, hand over the profits to European arms companies, and charge the bill to our citizens. And then with the carnage, we go back in and we do it all again. It’s a racket! ‘Strategic relationship’? It’s one thing after another, isn’t it? Really, it’s the same as it ever was. And all I can say is, God save Africa from Europeans offering help.

Madam President, so we finally have some proposals now for action on the rule of law conditionality mechanism, though whether it’ll actually come to anything or not is very much an open question. Because, to be honest, there is plenty of wriggle room for Hungary to escape sanctions. So I really will believe this when I see it. But of course, the escape valves in the proposal aren’t the only notable thing about this; Poland is also glaringly absent. The fact that Poland isn’t even in the crosshairs on this one tells you something, because all along the idea of this regulation was to try and deal with the rule-of-law problems in Hungary and Poland. But the Polish Government’s abuse of the rule of law, of minorities, of women, of judges, of EU funds and all the rest of it has been conveniently left out for the moment. It’s got its Resilience and Recovery Fund money released in the summer, despite loud protests from civil society and judges in Poland. And Hungary, of course, is not getting its. The only possible reason for these wretched double standards is a geopolitical one, because Hungary has taken a different attitude to Russia. And I think that is shameful for all of those in Poland who are suffering from violations of rule of law, not to mention those in Spain, Bulgaria and France as well.

Madam President, I welcome this debate and the resolution that goes with it – of course I do. Anything that gets the massive discrimination, repression and systemic exclusion faced by Roma onto the agenda has to be welcomed – and it’s not nonsense, and it’s not political correctness. I know many Irish travellers. They’ve been educated with my daughter. They live in my community. They’re in our parliament in Ireland. I am delighted that this is so. But I have to say that debates like this are depressing because they just highlight the gap between speech and action. Sometimes it’s like shouting into a void. Nothing changes. In 2019, the Irish Government published its Irish Traveller Accommodation Expert Review. It was supposed to be the grand new beginning, following years of disastrous traveller accommodation in Ireland; it produced 32 recommendations. As of June this year, only six have been implemented. You could paper the walls in here and in the Irish Parliament with the likes of these resolutions, but nothing changes for the 6 million Roma and travellers who go on suffering outrageously. I don’t know what the solution is, but we do need to figure it out fast!

Madam President, month after month we gather here, and month after month, the people of Afghanistan suffer and die. They die from hunger, from lack of access to medicine, from earthquakes. They die because they want to send their girls to school! Fifty-three mainly young women slaughtered in Kabul last week and our President couldn’t even mention them earlier. Increasingly, they die because they are Hazaras. Hundreds murdered, thousands persecuted – these people are at risk of genocide and yet the world says and does nothing. And of course, now that the US and its friends have found a new theatre of war in Ukraine to test their weapons and launder their arms profits, Afghans are no longer needed. Discarded with all of the problems of 20 years of an intervention, left at the hands of the Taliban, whom the US created. It is an affront that the Biden administration has spent USD 15.2 billion on military intervention and war in Ukraine while seizing USD 7 billion of Afghan people’s money. For God’s sake, what have these people done to ensure this endless horror while the world does nothing? It is time to speak up, stand up and demand justice for Afghanistan!

Madam President, for me, I’ve been a lifelong campaigner for the separation of church and state. Religion, for me, is very much a private matter and I myself am an atheist. But I absolutely defend the right of every person to practice their religious beliefs, whatever that may be. I noticed that colleagues are very vocal about the discrimination against Christianity and absolutely there is discrimination against Christians. We only need to see what happened in Syria when the West, in its keenness to overthrow the Assad regime, opened up the borders, allowed ISIS in, and unleashed the gates of hell to the Christians inside Syria. But the reality is that the biggest persecuted religious group in Europe are Muslims. We see that in racist legislation enacted in numerous of our Member States, conflating Muslims with terrorists, and so on. I think it would be completely remiss to have this debate without mentioning the appalling massacre of Hazara women and young girls in Kabul last week, who just wanted to have an education. Religion has been used to divide and rule. Everybody’s religion should be protected, and all should be equal.

Madam President, I think it is a good motion on ocean governance and I too am glad to see the reference to military waste and activity, because military activity treating our ocean as a firing range is massively damaging to biodiversity. And just mentioning it isn’t enough: we’re going to have to do a lot more to tackle it. And of course we cannot ignore the methane explosion in the Baltic Sea as a result of the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline. The UN has said this is the biggest single methane release ever recorded. We know, of course, that methane is 80 times more powerful than CO2 in heating the atmosphere, and methane leaked rather than burned is even worse and will have a massively lasting impact on the climate. The Nord Stream attacks have released 300 000 metric tonnes of methane. This is catastrophic. It is a climate and environmental crime. When we’re looking at protecting the ocean, we need to factor in this sabotage, have it independently investigated and have consequences for the vandals who did it.

Madam President, and I think while there is certainly a need to improve and deepen European collaboration in order to prevent, monitor and respond to cross-border health threats, I think COVID, more than anything, has highlighted actually the harmful consequences of neoliberal policy adjusted to the health sector and promoted in the EU. The commodification of health care is assaulting the principle that health is a fundamental right. And we see in countless states institutional abuse, lack of materials, exorbitant prices and the priority given to profit. And where is this coming from? It's coming from the Commission. We know that many Member States have been directed to slaughter their health budgets in order to balance the books. And we saw those devastating consequences then, in COVID, when people and economies had to be basically shut down, people were locked in nursing homes, nobody could visit them because of the fear of what would happen if there was an outbreak of COVID and the hospitals couldn't cope. So we need to ensure that health is immune from the loss of the market. Health should be a fundamental right.

Madam President, I voted for this motion. I would like to compliment the work of our very own Damien Thomson from Firhouse in Dublin, who was the main negotiator on the text, and we are very proud and happy to see it. But we have to be honest as well that a lot of the good stuff in this is contradicted by our actions. The motion acknowledges that we’re not doing enough, that the Green Deal and Fit for 55 are grand as they are but they’re not enough. And we have to look at things like the decisions we’ve made in terms of the vote on EU taxonomy, which gives a role to private investment in gas and nuclear in the green transition. We’ve got to look at us bringing back filthy fracked gas into Europe, reigniting coal plants in the so-called name of the war against Ukraine when the biggest war on earth is the war to save our planet. So we have to be very careful here. The issue is clear. We can continue to bend the knee to vested interests that keep the pressure on the European Union to protect their profits, to continue growth, or we can to take a sustainable course. I’m very glad that a lot of good measures are contained in this report but the job of work will be to have it implemented.

Madam President, I’m really annoyed that I had to abstain on this motion because of an outrageous recital giving out about Hungary blocking sanctions against Russia. If Hungary wants to block sanctions because their economy is dependent on Russia, that’s their business. If they want to block sanctions because they love Putin, we might not agree with it, but that’s the law of the European Union. European reaties give them that right. But what this recital does is say that Hungary blocking and exercising their legal right is unacceptable and dangerous. That’s hardly accepting and respecting the rule of law, is it? What it is doing is saying the rule of law is fine, except when people we don’t like exercise it. It sounds very Orbán to me. Unfortunately, because of this, the Hungarian Government will now have an excuse to dismiss this report as politicised. We’re undermining our actually very strong case with regard to the disastrous rule of law situation in Hungary, and on top of that, we are alienating the minority groups in Hungary who don’t agree with Orbán’s policy on Russian sanctions, but the people we’re supposed to be supporting. So it’s a really serious precedent. If we accept this, what next? Will we have a data protection resolution on Ireland saying that our neutrality is a threat to European security? It’s just not good enough.

Madam President, I have to say I’m glad that we’re having this discussion but obviously sorry that we have had to because, as colleagues have said, since the end of July we’ve had unquantifiable tonnes of dead fish floating on the Oder river between Germany and Poland. And it is an environmental disaster of enormous proportions, the cause of which has not been clarified, the full of extent of which cannot be foreseen. So I think we really have to take note of this. We know from the Polish parliamentary inspection revealing nearly 300 sites of illegal waste water discharge, but it is unclear about what and who is responsible for this poisoning. But what is clear is that the growth of algae is not a natural occurring phenomena, it’s definitely a man-made problem. It could have been caused by industrial discharges as well as dry and hot weather conditions. And as my colleague has said, it’s not a problem that’s confined to Poland. We see similar phenomena on the Baltic Sea, which has had large dead zones reaching as much as 60 000 km2 in total. Human activities, the use of artificial fertilisers in agriculture, end up in rivers and contribute to dead zones. We have to look at the CAP, we have to look at our policies and we have to look at a policy of degrowth.

Mr President, my problem with this report is that Libya seems to have been forgotten in it, getting only the vaguest of mentions. But then Libya always seems to be forgotten. I can’t remember any urgency or resolution in here since I started, dealing directly with the fact that Libya is now hell on earth for the people who live there or who are stuck there. And given the direct responsibility of a number of European countries for the NATO operation that destroyed Libya, it should always be top of our agenda. Given that the EU is effectively collaborating with acts of murder, torture, imprisonment, rape, enforced disappearance perpetrated in Libya’s prisons, which the UNHCR concluded last year were crimes against humanity. Given the discovery of mass graves by the UN investigators last March, we might be more focused on it. But of course, the reality is that the EU wants to look away. We’re all over crimes against humanity when they’re committed by countries outside the EU, but we want nothing to do with the ones we’ve caused, we finance, we support and give our blessing to. If hypocrisy had a name, it would be called the EU.

Madam President. What you have to explain and what you never explain in motions like this is why your so—called authoritarian regimes also have massive support. Instead, what we’re presented with is effectively a cartoon. You reduce diverse and complicated histories to a single cliché. You pretend that a section of the population – the comprador middle class – is the people, and you ignore the larger sections of society that disagrees. You ignore the history of anti-imperialist and class struggle. If we’re to be honest about why Nicaragua is the way it is today, we should talk about the decades of assault, the campaigns of terror, the years of contempt against the decent, justified struggles of ordinary people for self-determination and decent lives. We should look at what came before. We should look at what the Sandinistas tried to build and how it was wrecked by the likes of us. I’m not here to excuse repression, but we are the last people who should be lecturing Nicaragua.