Speeches

Madam President, for me this resolution is a hodgepodge of unverified and wildly exaggerated claims laced with a strong dose of hypocrisy, as the right-wing groups beat their breasts over mass data collection and mistreatment during secret security screening of refugees, all seasoned with a hearty dollop of pure invention. There's no doubt about it that the stuff the Russians are doing in screening Ukrainians entering Russia is bad: fingerprinting, facial biometrics, invasive background checks, detention – all nasty stuff that would be very familiar to anybody who tried to enter the European Union over the past decades. There's no question that those detained in screening are having a horrible time. But I don't remember the right wing jumping up and down about the detention filtration camps in the European Union, where refugees are kept for years, where the conditions are so bad that people set fire to themselves to end the horror. We have a UN statement on this issue – it's a world away from this resolution. There should be an investigation of verified claims, and international bodies need to take human rights seriously. Parliament should stop turning itself into a pathetic parrot parody of a tabloid newspaper.

Mr President, I have to say, I find it incredibly interesting to see the EPP being so exercised about the rule of law in Bulgaria, because he certainly didn’t have any interest in it before the change of government. In fact, the EPP voted against a Parliament resolution in 2020 which dealt with the deep and systemic weaknesses in rule of law in Bulgaria, the systemic problems in the country’s judicial system, the misuse of EU funds, the horrific prison conditions and many more. But of course, Boyko Borisov was in power then, so it didn’t matter. These problems haven’t gone away, and it’s very clear that this debate isn’t about a genuine concern of rule of law. It’s a political stunt to use the European Parliament to influence the Bulgarian elections in GERB’s favour. And it is pathetic. Look around: everybody has seen through your con. The key point here is not having enough evidence to convict someone is not the same as being exonerated of wrongdoing. At the heart of this arrest were claims of extortion by a Bulgarian gambling boss in Dubai, who says that Boyko Borisov, one of his ministers and MPs designated gambling legislation to keep his taxes down in return for multi-million handouts and backhanders. It’s a fact these claims have never been investigated by the hand—picked Bulgarian Prosecutor Geshev, who has tried to keep the lid on this case and so many others. So let’s hope that the EPP’s own office investigates these claims, because my God, the people of Bulgaria deserve better.

Mr President, I have to say, I think this is an incredibly strong report, but I want to particularly deal with the section on migration. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, more than 5 700 civilians have lost their lives. We rightly condemn in the strongest possible terms, even as we do nothing to stop this war. But there’s another war in Europe, even though we don’t call it that. But it is a continuous and bloody war against migrants going on for nearly a decade. And the casualty rate easily matches anything that is happening in Ukraine. Almost 25 000 people have died or gone missing at sea in Europe over the past eight years. In the last year alone, 3 500 people have died at our borders. Countless more have been pushed back, beaten, raped and tortured on EU borders. More than 34 000 people were pulled back into detention, horror and death in Libya, and the EU funded the Libyan Coast Guard. So, if we oppose war, we should end Europe’s war on migrants because if Putin is a monster, then what the hell are we?

Madam President, let’s face it, we can’t say we weren’t warned: fossil fuel consumption is unsustainable. Of course, we should have been a long way down the road by now, moving to environmentally friendly, renewable, public—owned energy. We could have built, we could have invested, we could have been ready for the inevitable crisis, but we kicked the can down the road, allowing greenwashing by big business. Now, having shot ourselves in both feet with backfiring sanctions that have allowed Russia to sit on a record current account surplus while turning off the gas to Europe, and forcing old people and poor people to go cold this winter because of the action of European powers, we have absolute lunacy as big energy rubs its hands with glee, US LNG operators laugh and reap their dividends and Europe goes back to burning more fossil fuel. It’s about time the Commission and the Council started to cop on. The ordinary citizens of Europe paying through their cost of living or environmental damage is not the way forward. We need publicly owned energy.

Madam President, I really feel that the European Union has to cop itself on if we don’t want to get caught up in the US efforts to destabilise the Taiwan Strait in the manner in which they have done with Ukraine at such enormous cost to the citizens of Europe, be they Ukrainian, Russian or indeed citizens of the EU itself. If we’re worried about cross-strait tensions, we shouldn’t be doing anything to make them worse. For decades, the one-China policy has guaranteed stability and peace in the Taiwan Strait. It doesn’t give anybody everything that they want, but it gives everybody enough to avoid the possibility of war. And yet we see this ambiguity being dismantled by ignorant fanatics in the US Administration and Congress, and a foolish appetite by some in the EU for a confrontation with China. With, of course, China predictably responding, we risk a runaway escalation. The tough guy act can be emotionally satisfying for some, but it’s reckless, stupid, immature foreign policy. If we care about the people of Taiwan, we should not be dismantling the arrangements that have protected them for decades. Do we really want another war? Do our citizens? Of course the arms industry and the US do.

Mr President, I too condemn the use of spyware by Greece against journalists and opposition. I’m glad we are debating it because, to be honest, we didn’t deal efficiently enough with similar revelations against our Catalan MEP colleagues. But the truth is that this scandal really is just the tip of an iceberg. The design, sale and use of spying technologies doesn’t happen by accident; it’s a business, a branch not only of Israel but also of the European arms industry. We fund it through the EU budget by financing research and development, by producing the products to use them on desperate migrants on our borders and in third countries. We encourage surveillance commerce. As far back as 2011, WikiLeaks published a trove of brochures of these companies gathered from cyber—arms fairs in European capitals, where security services browsed for weapons of mass surveillance. We can’t say we weren’t warned. We can’t say these are isolated cases. If we’re serious about putting an end to it, we need to kick the arms dealers and lobbyists out of Brussels, turn off the tap for their funding and put an end to the cancer of surveillance capitalism.

Mr President, I have to say, I found it really heartening to see the large numbers of citizens getting in touch with us to support the ban on products associated with deforestation. For me, it gave a very clear example of how our citizens, in some ways, are far ahead of us and far ahead, certainly, of the Commission regulation that was released last November, which I do think had quite a few holes in it in terms of the definition of tropical regions and so on, and in terms of some inclusions that we would regulate products in line with national legislation, which in countries like Brazil would effectively mean no regulation whatsoever. I think we have to be firm, and I support a lot of the calls of colleagues here tonight that we have to do more – because the EU, as the third—largest importer of these commodities, is responsible. It is the driver behind the industrial exploitation of forests that’s going hand-in-hand with our overconsumption and modern societies. This is modern neocolonialism, and it has to stop now.

Mr President, I, too, welcome the fact that we have a new forest strategy for 2023 although, of course, we all know that it was weakened before publication under pressure from the forest industry and some of our Member States. But, nonetheless, it is important in that it does put as much emphasis on our ecosystem services as it does on woods and energy, and that is incredibly important. If we ever needed a wake-up call this summer was it with the droughts and floods that we’ve seen. Deforestation is in part a consequence of that. But we have to be careful because forests are increasingly seen as the silver bullet to replace our dependence on fossil fuels and whole trees are being burnt into pellets when they could be used for other purposes. We’ve seen intensive forestry exploitation having a devastating impact on the development of monocultures, with a strong impact subsequently on our ecosystems. And, of course, clear cutting has had a significant erosion which has in turn polluted watercourses. So, a strategy is good, but we need to have it severely implemented if it is to mean a fraction of what it says on paper.

Mr President, before I start, could I correct the record? I don’t actually own a bicycle, but I don’t own a car any more either. I came here by train and I used to work in the aviation sector, but anyway, there we are. In terms of this report before us, it is dealing with fraud, which is a huge problem everywhere across the EU. The report focuses a fair bit on Poland and Hungary, but I think this is a problem in that it ignores other countries where there are similar problems. I think of Bulgaria, the poorest country in the EU, which doesn’t get the attention that it deserves, because the people of Bulgaria have been engaged in a heroic struggle to deal with the massive problems of fraud in their country by many successive governments. The EU, rather than helping them to deal with those problems, has actually enabled those in power to carry on corrupting, by turning a blind eye. We know the big headline scandals, of course, but it is a country that I am very close to and have visited many times. I have seen the problems, for example, in the Black Sea, with a business model where not paying VAT in tourist sectors is the norm, ringing up cash at a discount, abusing loyalty cards, withholding tax deducted from owners, rental income used by rental companies which then change their ownership, selling off assets to foreigners through special purchase vehicles, shares being sold at a nominal value, payment by long—term loans which never get repaid. This is the norm. They need the help of the EU, not it turning a blind eye.

Mr President, there was a good skit doing the rounds in the last week about how a banker persuades an economist that cycling is bad for the planet by explaining that a cyclist doesn't buy cars, doesn't borrow money to buy them, doesn't pay for insurance policies, doesn't buy fuel, doesn't pay for maintenance or needs repairs and doesn't pay for parking. And actually, they are much healthier as well. In other words, the point being made was that there are substantial vested interests from the car industry standing in the way of the development of the revolutionary change that is necessary if we are to really turn to the type of potential that a cycling strategy could have. I'm a huge car fan. I've always loved my car, but the days of the car being the mode of private transport are over. The only way forward is cycling and proper public investment in public transport. My colleague, the cyclist Seán Kelly, made the point about Katie Melua, the Irish-Georgian singer who is playing in Strasbourg, and she had a song 12 years ago called ‘There are 9 million bicycles in Beijing’. There are probably 90 million of them there now because the Chinese understand that to run cities, we need bicycles and public transport rather than cars.

Mr President, I would like to acknowledge and appreciate the efforts of our rapporteur who absolutely strove might and main to try and deal with this file and be as inclusive as possible. And him and his staff deserve credit for that. But having said that, the final text is just not credible for us in terms of the sector dealing adequately with its decarbonisation requirements, primarily because of the decision to broaden the definition of sustainable aviation fuels, which we strenuously oppose on the grounds that this is actually not sustainable. Without the caps and restrictions, the text opened the door for new biofuels, which are just not suitable for air transport. And during the discussions, we did warn about the risks of fraud with, for example, used cooking oil, which is mainly imported from outside the EU. While we have strengthened the text to improve the information provided by suppliers, at the same time, there’s no sign of a cap as applied in the Renewable Energy Directive, which we thought was very unfortunate. So, obviously aviation is energy intensive. The demands for the feedstocks qualified by the current definition would be absolutely enormous. It includes by—products of the palm oil industry, intermediate crops, and would produce massive risks for land-use change, disastrous for the environment, communities and biodiversity. And what we’re really trying to do here is square a circle. We’re accepting increased demand, which in turn means increased fuel—led demand for feedstocks which are considered sustainable while at the same time their availability is limited. This is in contradiction with the energy strategy promoted by European authorities, which involves also trying to address lowering consumption. And we’re not doing that in this report. Aviation is going to continue to be dependent on fossil fuels for a long time, the price of which is going to continue to rise and be borne by workers, passengers and the climate. I think it’s all well and good to debate different targets up to 2050, but even if we have a target of 100%, it’s not going to matter if the definition allows inappropriate feedstocks. So, if we don’t address that, we simply cannot vote for this report. I also think the exclusion of private aircraft – so the wealthy who create most of the problems anyway again are being excluded and pay the least – is regrettable, and the exclusion of military aircraft is also regrettable, particularly in the period of increased traffic. So again, like my colleague Ciarán Cuffe, we need these amendments to be passed before we can accept this report.

Mr President, it is really, truly terrifying to see these record heat waves, with much of Europe nearing 40 degrees and devastating consequences in Italy and Spain in particular, major rivers drying up, water rationing becoming the new normal. But the consequences will be even more magnified in the global south, with millions and millions suffering destructive wildfires, prolonged drought and crop failures. But for me, the most horrific thing is our Western leaders’ total immobility in the face of this ever—nearing burning, destructive crisis caused by climate change. And we got a glimpse of that yesterday in the shameful decision of Parliament to refuse to support the taxonomy objection in relation to nuclear and gas. We welcome the coal burning again, LNG and the so-called ‘fig leaf’ of combating Putin. But these decisions will have consequences. There’s no doubt that victims and the farmers need urgent support on this. We need sustainability, but we have to tackle also the root cause.

Madam President, I voted against this report because, while there’s some good bits in it, overall it’s confused and deceptive. It purports to be a call to defend multilateralism, but instead it attempts to redefine it and turn it into its opposite. Multilateralism in a multipolar world means working through genuinely inclusive bodies – such as the UN – on the principle of sovereign equality, where each country has a say. It means listening to the people that you disagree with. It doesn’t mean groups of so-called like—minded partners forming a little gang – be it the G7 or the G20 – and negotiating your own rules and then imposing them on the rest of the world. That’s the opposite of multilateralism, but that’s the way it’s defined in this report. We should be calling instead for upholding international law. But instead this is about rules—based international order. That isn’t international law. That means the rich countries making up the rules and giving everyone else orders to follow. We couldn’t be more in need today of returning to genuine multilateralism, but unfortunately, this isn’t it.

I made a very specific point. I think it’s interesting that a lot of the contributions here are from Member States’ deputies criticising their others in cheap political point scoring. When I referred to that situation in my own country, I was talking about me. I’ve been accused of being an apologist for Putin. I have never once! I would like to ask you to pinpoint any scenario, any action, any word, any deed that I did to support Putin, who – as the former speaker said – is a right—wing capitalist, nationalist who would have nothing to do with anybody who is a socialist. So my points were quite specific in that regard. I would like to put to you to produce any evidence that I or my colleague have supported Putin in any way.

Madam President, we’ve had loads of resolutions in here condemning Russia for repressing civil society and opposition figures for alleged connections with the West and now we’re doing exactly the same thing. We’ve already heard people here – to score cheap political points in their own Member States – condemn as Putin’s puppets those who have never supported Putin or any authoritarian regime. It’s absolutely pathetic. We see increased trade union activity across Europe accused of helping Russia. People who oppose NATO are accused of disloyalty. We talk about democracy, but where is this going to end up? Those who brand us populist and anti-European have a democratic right to disagree with you on the course that Europe is taking. What is being stoked up here is a scare. And just like the Red Scare, it’s being used to justify over-reach and repression, to undermine human rights, and to silence and harass radical voices. It’s intolerant, anti-democratic and authoritarian. You’d want to start asking yourselves what kind of Europe lies at the end of this road?

Mr President, what we have here is another example of EU doublespeak. We say we want to move away from fossil fuels, but to do that we’re going to allow essentially free money to invest in fossil fuels by allowing gas into taxonomy and therefore ensuring their continued use at the expense of other green alternatives. It’s absolute nonsense, and it’s nonsense put forward by the same people who are responsible for our over—reliance on gas in the first place, by our failure to invest in renewables and our failure to pursue a strategy of degrowth. But when we see the lobbying that has gone on around this vote, we really get to understand the vested interests that are at stake here. But invoking Ukraine, I have to say, is the last straw for me. We talk an awful lot in here about foreign interference, but the lecture from the Ukrainian Government which we received at lunchtime, telling us to support this greenwashing in order to show support for Ukraine, I think is a new low. Calling for the promotion of Ukrainian gas is no less economically damaging than that of Russian gas. The planet won’t distinguish. We have to support the objection.

Madam President, we hear a lot in here about the battle between democracy and authoritarianism. To defend democracy and get Finland and Sweden into NATO we’re prepared to do a filthy deal with Turkey, selling out the Kurds to a country known for persecuting them. To protect EU values, get oil and guns, we’re prepared to snuggle up to Saudi Arabia, known to dismember journalists, execute 81 people on the one day, not to mind murdering 400 000 in Yemen and starving 2.3 million children. And to defeat Russian authoritarianism, we’re prepared to sanction Russia hurting ourselves, arm Ukraine, helping to kill them in the process. And when the people of Europe call out this lunacy and as in Italy demand peace and a cessation of sending arms to the conflict, instead of listening to them as a democracy would do, Italian state TV and four private channels are investigated for spreading Russian disinformation. You couldn’t make it up. Orbán’s doublespeak is alive and well. We have a ministry of truth, and your democracy is looking a hell of a lot like authoritarianism.

Madam President, I too would welcome the balance introduced in the report by the rapporteur. I think it was very welcome because all too often now the warmongers in NATO would appear to have captured the EU, and as somebody from a neutral country I find that quite offensive: NATO has come to view China as a security threat, describing its policies as a challenge to the alliance’s interests, accusing the Chinese Government of seeking to make friends, whether through economic support or alliance building, in order to undermine what has been the Western alliance in the Indo-Pacific. Now, what absolute cheek: countries in this region should be sovereign to make decisions about who to trade with. This is China’s front yard and they’re entitled to develop cordial relations with their neighbours, and I’m glad they’re doing it with trade rather than with guns. And of course, that’s not good enough for NATO. They want to invite the Asia-Pacific Four into the NATO summit, stoking up division as they did in Ukraine. I hope this time round we will resist.

Madam President, I have to say I think there are a lot of good provisions in this agreement, but it is debased by the insertion of geopolitical interests, which have no part in neutral international cooperation agreements. Now, Interpol has a huge responsibility to ensure proper verification of information, judicial redress and compliance with fundamental data rights. It should be organised on a rules-based cooperation to protect citizens, but it’s well known that governments in many parts of the world are abusing its systems to pursue their critics, whether they be asylum seekers, journalists or political opponents. But Interpol is supposed to be above all that. It’s supposed to share information in compliance with the founding principles of neutrality and to protect human rights in tackling international crime. And to that end, the report’s call to suspend Russia and Belarus from Interpol membership actually disturbs Interpol’s concept of political neutrality. The speaker made the point that on the basis of war crimes, Russia should be excluded. Well, so should Ukraine, so should the US. That’s not a way forward. We shouldn’t be instrumentalising every discussion.

Madam President, I think the simple truth is that the neoliberal policies advocated by the European Union cannot provide a sustainable solution to women’s poverty in our economy. We see widespread, atypical and precarious working conditions, with the dismantling of social security systems being a huge contributing factor to the problems. And the only solution to eradicating women’s poverty is to strengthen collective representation, effective collective agreements, minimum wages and the right to a decent job with pay and conditions. Our priority, in that sense, should be to restrict the circumstances in which precarious contracts can be used, not to encourage them. And yet here we are meeting when our interpreters, a majority of whom are women, have had to take action to defend their working conditions. They are being forced to use equipment which doesn’t meet the necessary standards to protect their health; 100 out of 250 of them have health problems; and when they serve strike notice the Parliament moves to bring in strike-breakers and outsource labour. If we want to protect dignity in working women’s rights, let’s protect our own workers first.

Mr President, I think the DSA really was a chance for the EU to regulate the hyper-centralised digital sphere and to crack down on the harmful business model of big tech that so much feeds off the exploitation of the billions of users’ personal data. But we have to be honest about it. The attempt to create a digital constitution and to protect our online fundamental rights has largely failed. It really has. We’ve only chipped away at the immense power of online monopolies. We don’t have the right to opt out of targeted surveillance advertising. We don’t have the right not to use digital services anonymously. And there’s no alternative to the toxic content algorithms that shape our online world and information and cause so much damage to people’s mental health. So democratising the digital sphere is going to take collective action. We’ve got to hold the tech giants to account – their wielding of addictive, obsessive platforms, it’s just not good enough. It’s motivated by profit and not people’s interests.

Madam President, Moroccan border forces are funded directly by the EU. When they carry out a massacre of 37 people on the EU’s borders, the EU bears responsibility, and we have a responsibility to call it out, because it’s not an accident: it’s a consequence of the EU’s reliance on third countries to prevent people from arriving in the EU, exercising their right under international law to seek asylum, in many instances fleeing from wars and unequal trade caused by Europe in the first place. So now we have Spain hiding behind Morocco, as Greece blames Turkey. But the truth is, it’s EU Member States that are responsible for murder and the violation of human rights. Did the people in Melilla injure themselves? Where is the condemnation of the police? Where is the call for the investigations into the burials to avoid scrutiny? Is it any wonder that Lithuania has now come out and said it’s going to ignore the ECJ in these matters when the Commission has stood by and done nothing except encourage rampant lawlessness and racism on our borders? It simply isn’t good enough.

Madam President, vicious divisions in US society have again been exposed in the aftermath of the decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and the devastating impact on access to safe abortion. Because we know, of course, that outlawing abortion does not lead to a reduction in abortion, but only to a reduction in safe abortion, endangering women’s lives in the process. And as somebody coming from Ireland, where we only in recent years got rid of our ban, we know that women pay with their lives. And we have to revisit this constant mantra that the US are our like-minded partners. Really? Is it like-minded of EU values that we would like-mind ourselves with a society where women are condemned as second-class citizens, denied the right to bodily integrity by a politically appointed judiciary. And it’s all very well President Biden saying he’d like to codify the legislation. Well, why didn’t the Democrats do it when they had the chance? It’s their failure. It’s another political failure. Collective action and solidarity by ordinary people is the only way to deliver on this and in that, they have our full support.

Madam President, I’d like to thank colleagues for the suggestion. There’s no doubt about it: the crisis in aviation is having devastating consequences on citizens and workers alike, and it is something that can’t wait until September. But equally, the UK’s unilateral introduction of the Northern Ireland Protocol and the implications for international law cannot wait either. So we would have a counter-proposal that we would maintain the discussion on the Northern Ireland Protocol, but add a debate on the aviation situation for Thursday morning with a round of Group speakers and that the session would therefore start at 8.30, and we would therefore hope that everybody could live with that counter-proposal.

Madam President, I voted for the report also. I’d like to compliment my Left colleagues who acted as rapporteurs. There’s a lot of really good stuff in it about safeguarding food sovereignty, preventing deforestation and degradation, and many more issues. But the truth is, it’s a million miles from the reality of EU—Africa trade policy as it exists now, because our economic relations with Africa are simply a continuation of European colonialism perpetuating exploitation by other means. Africa trades more with Europe than it does with itself. It’s portrayed as a poor continent, but actually it’s the richest. It’s just that the people there are denied the fruits of their land and their labour by unequal economic relations, by unfair trade rules, by illicit capital flights into Western banks, and by multinational corporations allowed off the leash by Washington, London and Brussels. This report would begin to change that. But I think it would take a revolution to actually make that a reality.