Speeches

Madam President, I voted for this report because I’m always in favour of giving money to refugees not just in Ukraine, but everywhere. I’m thinking today also of the people of Afghanistan who are grappling with a horrific earthquake on top of starvation, sanctions and being blocked out from entry to the European Union. We have to end these double standards, but we also have to look at the policies that are making people refugees in the first place – mainly war and climate change. The report bemoans the lack of funds in the multiannual framework that we can use for refugees. That’s fair enough. But why is that the case? It’s because we’re spending billions on the European Defence Fund, on the misnamed European Peace Facility, billions to the European coastguard to help drown people in the Mediterranean, billions to ensure that the Ukrainian war continues rather than working for peace and a negotiated settlement. It was striking that when the President of Zambia called for that today, a majority of colleagues sat on their hands. They didn’t want to know. But actually, a negotiated peace is the best way to help the refugees in Ukraine.

Madam President, ‘The goal is an endless war, not a successful war’ – those were the words of Julian Assange in 2011 in relation to the war in Afghanistan, words which could now equally apply about Ukraine. Ukraine should absolutely be able to join the EU, but on terms that don’t bankrupt its people, and when it’s ready and when a majority of its people choose. But that certainly will not be happening while the country is an active war zone, everybody knows it. So instead, we’re artificially prolonging this war with a steady flow of heavy weapons, attacking peace efforts as appeasement. The EU is guaranteeing a stalemate and ensuring that Ukraine will never be able to choose its own path. President von der Leyen gave the game away last Friday when she said Ukrainians are ready to die for the Ukrainian perspective. My God, what a deluded narcissist! The real plan here – and we know candidate status is bait in a trap – is to transform Ukraine into a meat grinder and use its people as cannon fodder in an endless proxy war against Russia, with the European taxpayer footing one bill after another for the arms industry. There’s nothing to celebrate in that!

Mr President, you know you’re never going to find anyone who’ll would stand up and say, ‘You know what, I’m in favour of forced labour’, but actually it’s everywhere. So why is that? On the one hand, we have the reality of the most abhorrent forms – debt bondage, trafficking, and other forms of modern slavery. But actually the lines are quite blurred, because you look at situations of poverty and the consequences of capitalism in many societies, leaving people with no choice but to engage in appalling labour practices. This too is forced labour if the alternative is starvation, and we particularly see this in the Global South in relation to the unleashing of raw materials for the digital economy. And I think it is incumbent on us to deal with this issue in a proper way, not to instrumentalise it the way we do, and the way we did in this plenary in dealing with the issue of the Uyghurs in China, where the very good work done by the UN High Representative in visiting the People’s Republic of China and discussing these issues with the Chinese authorities was undermined and debased for geopolitical reasons.

Mr President, there’s no doubt about it: the EU must change radically. Its constitution isn’t fit for purpose; it’s an engine of neoliberalism; and its democratic credentials are not in good shape. So yes, revision of the Treaties is absolutely necessary, but not like this. The conceit here of orderly, democratic EU reform is a trap. The Conference on the Future of Europe is actually change from above disguised as reform from below. Some citizens did participate, and fair play to them, but the process was guided by the European elites to get the outcome that they wanted. It involved people who are already in the bubble. And the outcome that they wanted is what we have here, away from unanimity in the Council, so the big states can gang up on the smaller ones and a runaway EU hurtling towards federalism, neoliberalism and militarism can be unleashed. Now we tried to improve this resolution. It wasn’t possible. We’re opposed to revising the Treaties under these circumstances, therefore, we voted against.

Mr President, for me, I suppose this place is often kind of like a sort of delusional, backslappers’ convention, with endless self-flattery about how the EU is a force for democracy and values, out fighting the autocrats. But, of course, the reality is completely different: neoliberalism, market extremism, austerity, all set in stone in the Treaties, beyond democratic reform. Unelected bodies like the ECB and the Troika bully, sabotage and depose national governments elected by their people. And as the EU grows, power moves away from national parliaments into the EU without any corresponding control by the people. The bodies of the EU are complicated and obscure, and the only body directly elected by the citizens, the Parliament, has its wings clipped. No power to propose legislation. No democracy ever looked like this. The citizens aren’t stupid. The deficit is obvious. Like a real parliament, we need to initiate legislation. That’s why I voted for the resolution.

Mr President, thanks to colleagues for tabling the initiative. I mean, four days ago on every social media platform, the EU was celebrating World Environmental Day, and one of our key targets was to fight deforestation, recognising that forests play a vital role in mitigating the catastrophic impact of climate change. And yet the European Union’s forests only account for 5% of the world’s forests. And in countries like my own, which is twice the size of Switzerland, it is only half of the forestry. And I’m delighted that colleagues from the government parties in Ireland are present, so maybe their government might address this problem, but the forests that we have, we’ve got to protect. And in that context, illegal logging is important to address. I agree with the colleague who spoke before me. There is a distinction between people, out of energy poverty, eking out some fuel to heat their homes and the industrial scale illegal logging which is going on very often cross-border and done through organised crime. There has to be stronger coordination at EU level, but also a holistic approach that allows forest planning with a stronger role for local communities.

Madam President, Roe v. Wade was really a pivotal ruling in saving women’s lives by granting the right to abortion. And such was its magnitude that the conservative right in Ireland were afraid that the judges in Ireland might get the same idea. Even though abortion was prohibited with a ban of penal servitude for life, they forced a campaign to insert a constitutional referendum to ensure that there would never be abortion in Ireland. And it wasn’t until five years ago that we finally got rid of that prohibition after decades of struggle to deliver free, safe and legal abortions. It’s one of the few positives in recent years in terms of reproductive health. And one of the reasons for that was international solidarity, be it the friendship from our neighbours in the UK offering their homes to women and girls, the support from the Netherlands and women on web, the support from our sisters in the United States fundraising. So it is entirely appropriate that we discuss this issue to stand in solidarity with our sisters and friends in the US, offer our support and urge a defence of Roe v. Wade. Their struggle is also ours.

Thanks very much President, and I must just say to the colleague that I am a lifelong campaigner for abortion rights, but I note that you quoted Madeleine Albright and said that she said there was a special place in hell for women who didn’t defend other women. The same Madeleine Albright was the woman who was responsible when asked about the deaths of a million Iraqis in the war in America ‘Was it worth it, including many children?’ and she said it was. I’m wondering, do you think there’s a special place in hell for her?

Madam President, the Eastern Partnership region is a diverse group of states sandwiched between the EU and Russia, and we talk about threats to their security while replicating the policies which contributed to their insecurity in the first place. Even before the war in Ukraine, the text of this report was radically unacceptable to our group, needlessly confrontational and provocative, oblivious to Russian security concerns, bullish about extending EU influence. And of course, since the war, instead of scrapping this failed policy, the jet engines have been nailed on to every part of it. And yet militarism on one side merely feeds militarism on the other. And this report is now a gold rush for defence interests. Blank cheques are being written for the arms industry. MEPs are rubber-stamping an historic shift towards a militarised EU. Opposition is discouraged, hardly existent. And we couldn’t amend this report, so we had to produce a minority one because this report calls for aligning with NATO, providing lethal weapons to a conflict, and increasing defence spending. It’s a path to armament and imperialist rivalry, and it’s unacceptable to us.

Madam President, the Head of the African Union calls for an end to sanctions because people in Africa are dying and an MEP comes in here and bemoans it. I have to say, the arrogance is striking! Russia’s invasion was a godsend to the worst elements in European politics. NATO’s dodged being obsolete, the arms manufacturers are getting blank checks and the Eastern European far right got to bully the rest of Europe into prolonging an unwinnable war against a nuclear-armed neighbour. But the 100 days of hysteria are dying down. Fractures are emerging. Slowly, too slowly, Western Europe is coming to its senses. Scholz and Draghi want to build peace. Macron is against humiliating Russia – he wants exit ramps. But the extremists in Eastern Europe, backed up by the United States, are happy to see Europe wrecked in order to undermine Russia. We don’t need more of this lunacy. We need a change of tack, not to deepen it. We need to end this death-drive. We need diplomacy, de-escalation and multilateralism.

Madam President, as far as I’m concerned, the Commission’s record on rule of law was pretty abysmal to begin with. But the decision to release the National Recovery Plan funds to Poland, justified on the basis of the ludicrous charade of a meaningless bill put forward by the President to amend the disciplinary chamber, really takes the biscuit. But let us be honest about it, because contrary to all the claims from the Commission of no compromise with rule of law, your record actually is one of consistent compromise in this area. You have been incredibly slow to begin with; when you do move, you move in a partisan way, correctly taking action against Poland and Hungary, but not taking action yes, against countries like Spain, legitimising then those in Poland and Hungary who do want to continue with the status quo. And now this; it is an absolute joke. Nothing has changed in terms of Poland. This U-turn, unless reversed, will certainly go down as an historic red line crossed, with lasting repercussions.

Madam President, I wonder how many people here, or people who follow the media across Europe, are aware of the urgency of the humanitarian catastrophe that is accelerating in Afghanistan. Where’s the focus on the announcement by the World Food Programme this week that they have to roll back on their commitment? They actually have to stop feeding the hungry so that they can concentrate on the starving. Imagine: they know 18.7 million people need food, but they can only accommodate 10 million, condemning the rest to an agonising death. And why? Because they haven’t got the money. Even as the world spends billions on arms, they can’t muster USD 3.5 billion to save lives. During the war, the US spent USD 300 million a day for 20 years, but they can’t spend USD 300 a day for a fortnight to save lives. Meanwhile, the borders of Europe are closed. This is barbarism. So the next time we talk about European values, can we think about the bodies and the lives of these people of Afghanistan? Can we call now for a lifting of the sanctions, give them back their money and release money for aid to save lives, not kill them.

Madam President, I think there’s a certain irony that we’re discussing this today when we celebrated the 60th anniversary of the CAP. Because while some farmers benefited from CAP, albeit not small family farms, in an Irish context, our entire fishing sector was sacrificed for membership of the EEC at the time, and of course Brexit has affected it even more, where Ireland has been disproportionately hit in terms of the percentage reduction in quota that we’ve achieved as a result of trying to get together the trade agreement. And we have here now an industry on its knees, coastal communities crying out for assistance, no future for young people in fishing, and what funds were made available by the EU were really largely given for decommissioning boats. The common fisheries policy urgently needs to be reformed, it needs to be revised, but in the meantime, the industry needs help. We talk an awful lot about solidarity; well, the Irish fishing industry certainly needs it. It needs cooperation from bilateral agreements, it needs quota redistribution, sustainability and a favouring of small fishermen.

Mr President, I think it is incredible how in a very few, short years the EU has gone from not doing geopolitics to an absolute frenzy in it. And the report calls for cooperation with NATO, QUAD, AUKUS, all to deal with what it describes as a lack of an overarching regional security order in the Indo-Pacific. China’s economic and political influence in its own geographic neighbourhood is described as a security challenge. It urges the EU to prepare a strategy that would allow us to react against China. It talks about increasing our joint efforts in capability development, building up EU military power to be a credible security actor in the region, and all of this to protect our security interests. Could we ever open an atlas and could it tell me what is it about Europe that entitles us to speak this way about an entire region of the world with 60% of the world’s population as if it belonged to us, as if it was still a colonial backyard of Europeans. This isn’t the 19th century. The European Union isn’t in a position to boss around the rest of the world. We really seriously need a change in direction.

Mr President, it’s interesting that we’re having this discussion at the same plenary when we’re voting on the FIT for 55 package, because the truth is that military activity does emit significant amounts of greenhouse gases and pollutants in its production and in its operation. Yes, we continue to spend billions in a secret manner surrounding its share of emissions. Any attempts that we’ve made, for example, to try to get the military industry to register and meet its GHG emission reduction standards, or at least to disclose them, have been regularly voted down in this plenary. We continue to pour billions into military mobility, adapting infrastructure for military use without any heed been paid to the environmental footprint of the same. I have a certain sympathy for some of the comments from colleagues who are aghast at this idea of a kind of green euro-militarism. I agree, but for the complete opposite reason that they put forward, because actually climate change is the biggest challenge facing our planet and militarism in any form undermines that. So we can’t really dress it up. As long as we continue to promote rivalry and division rather than cooperation, then we will fail in our duty.

Mr President, year on year, we hear the same rhetoric about Turkey’s inability to live up to European values and standards. And yet, at the same time, we’re really happy to give them billions on a filthy deal designed to ensure that those fleeing what were often Western-provoked wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria and so on are prevented from exercising their legal right to seek asylum in Europe and kept in Turkey. And people here have criticised Erdogan for instrumentalising migrants. Of course he can, because we fail to live up to our international responsibility. And we have the misnamed Minister for European Values, Schinas, telling us that he has a clear conscience about pushbacks from Greece into Turkey, denying the irrefutable evidence that the Greek Coast Guard are involved in what amounts to murder. Well, you know what? With values like that, I’d say Turkey fits in pretty well. And when you add their incursions again into Syrian sovereignty and undermining Syrian sovereign territory without a word from the European Union, is it any wonder that they don’t take seriously anything that the EU says?

Mr President, for me, the aim of this resolution really is to put in place measures to offset the costs of continuing the war when in actual fact what we should be doing is working to end it. This lunacy is anchored in the knowledge that sanctions are hurting the people of the European Union and not, I would say, enhancing European security, but rather actually undermining it. I see now in every meeting and every committee, people in here slobbering over vast sums of money being ring—fenced for increased militarisation and securitisation, when these were the policies that contributed to the start of the war in the first place. These are resources, which could be dealt with to help the problems of ordinary people: health, housing, good public services and so on. But they’re not, and it’s ordinary people who are continuing to pay the price of this war. The measures that we’ve put in place today – while there’s some nice sounding words about environmental conditionality, rule of law conditionality, helping the ordinary people – are pretty weak in terms of those calls, and to me it smacks of a corporate handout.

Mr President, there’s no doubt about it: the images and stories of the atrocities emerging from Ukraine are truly horrific. They join similar images and stories from the likes of Palestine, from Yemen, from Afghanistan – all a testament to the depths of human cruelty, the enormity of human suffering, and to the evils of war. Yet the truth is that accountability for war crimes is the exception, not the rule, especially for powerful states. Because the only truly international system for holding war criminals accountable has been systematically undermined since the day it was created. We even had the obscenity in 2018 of the United States threatening to arrest and sanction ICC judges if they pursued Americans for war crimes in Afghanistan. The result is that the ICC has a shamefully limited jurisdiction. It has only indicted 46 people in its 20 year history, all of them African. It might suit some people in here to condemn Russian war crimes while ignoring American and Israeli ones. I condemn them all. But unless the law applies equally for all countries, we will never have an international system of justice for the victims of war crimes.

Mr President, I was a shop steward and a trade unionist all my working life. I stand against the repression of trade unionists everywhere. And this resolution could have done that in relation to Belarus, where the scale and nature of the arrests of trade union leaders is clearly a violation of the right to organise, and something which I utterly condemn. But yet again, what we have is an urgent social issue being contorted beyond recognition for geopolitical point scoring. We’ve a motion welcoming further sanctions on Belarus, which, contrary to the statements of solidarity, is going to inflict further economic hardship on Belarusian citizens. It talks about Belarus having to maintain its neutrality, while at the same time ordering direct support to the Belarussian opposition, not to mind forcing other countries who are neutral to abandon that and join NATO. Could we ever have a day in here – just one, maybe – when this Parliament didn’t instrumentalise human rights? It’s an absolute joke, which is why I abstained.

Madam President, I don’t know how to respond to our last speaker. Methinks he doth protest too much. But in any case, I want to thank our rapporteur, Terry Reintke, for articulating a really strong position here. The truth is the Commission’s annual rule of law report is an inadequate mechanism. It’s uneven, selective in its coverage, not independent, and it avoids specific cases. But even if it were to address our criticisms, it wouldn’t do much to stop an existential threat to the rule of law in Europe that doesn’t come from within, but which comes from without, from a foreign government. And that is the danger posed by the US prosecution of Julian Assange. I have to say that the time for fence—sitting has run out. Some people avoid this case because they think it’s complicated. It isn’t. It’s very simple. In 2010, a journalist in Europe published evidence of war crimes and foreign interference by the United States. Nine years later, Donald Trump had him prosecuted for espionage. He faces 175 years. He’s been in prison already for three, facing extradition, and a final decision is due today. If the United States can criminalise European journalists, put them in prison, snatch them from our shores, then efforts to enforce Article 2 values are meaningless. Colleagues, this is our last chance for a say on this case. If Assange is surrendered, he’s gone. How can we talk about rule of law and not resoundingly condemn this criminal prosecution and demand his release?

Madam President, look, there’s a lot of good stuff in this motion, but I abstained on it because, while I’m in favour of European cooperation to support many of Moldova’s challenges, such as relocating refugees, supporting the Moldovan economy in terms of export and import of goods, assisting their government to prevent risks of arms smuggling, what I don’t like is us bullying them into neoliberal reforms. I’d like to say that Moldova has been a constitutionally neutral state since 1994. No government has ever attempted to change its constitutional status. Neutrality is very popular amongst its people. Cooperation between the European Union and Moldova should bear this in mind. In the current context, the Moldovan Foreign Minister made it clear that he’s not asking partners to supply him with weapons. He rightly stressed that his method is diplomatic dialogue with partners, thus contributing to strengthening peace in the area, and I salute that. As a Member from another neutral state, I welcome cooperation with Moldova on the basis of recognising their national sovereign foreign policy.

Madam President, there’s no doubt about it, the conditionality mechanism is an important tool, and it could be effective in pressurising Member States to rectify any misuse of funds, corruption or other rule of law issues. In the cases of Poland and Hungary, though, it’s too little, too late. And, on the other side, those countries have a point that they are being singled out for special treatment when whole numbers of other Member States flagrantly violate the rule of law and we say nothing. We say nothing about the situation in Greece, where humanitarian aid workers and migrants are criminalised. We say nothing about the fact that four police officers yesterday were acquitted in Greece of the brutal death of an LGBT activist, Zak Kostopoulos, who was brutally beaten to death in 2018. Those people walked free. Endemic homophobia in Greece, Islamophobia in France, problems against the Catalans in Spain, and we say nothing. Rule of law conditionality should apply to all Member States.

Madam President, I voted against this motion because stability, security and democracy in West Africa and the Sahel will never be achieved by military efforts, even less so when it’s motivated by European – and especially French – interests. Last year, it was estimated that France is spending EUR 1 billion every year, but actually the true figure is probably EUR 2 billion. Four times the average amount on humanitarian aid is being spent on militarism. Security spending accounts for one fifth of its national budget, often to the detriment of social projects. The outcome of that was that, in 2020, we had the deadliest year for civilians: nearly two and a half thousand deaths in Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger and, across the three countries, more civilians and suspects were killed by the military, which is supposed to protect them, than by the Jihadist groups they are supposed to be fighting. We need to urgently change tack in this area.

Madam President, I think it’s absolutely crazy that we now have the racism of the Polish Government being the responsibility of the Kremlin. For God’s sake, there is something very sick at the heart of the European Union, where we constantly talk about values and we correctly have outrage at the construction of a border wall and the damage that this will do to nature and the forest in that area, but what greater damage it will do to the integrity of the European Union that claims to stand for international law, for the right to asylum and to be absolutely against racism. Because this wall is just a physical manifestation of the racism that has existed in the Polish Government’s policies towards migrants, and this is an insult to the wonderful Polish people, who have extended their hearts with generosity to Ukrainian refugees. Some of those very same people who drove night and day to bring Ukrainians into Poland were penalised by the Polish Government for having the audacity to give humanitarian aid to a family of Afghans who are freezing and starving in the forest. They rescued them with their transport and they were brought to court for that. What disgusting racism. The Commission has to act.

Mr President, I can honestly say that it was an absolute pleasure to work with our incredibly capable rapporteur. He is inclusive, diligent and I have no hesitation in saying that the legislation has been improved under his stewardship and it has the stamp of the European Parliament on it for sure, and we can take some pride in that. But for us, the legislation, unfortunately, has a number of shortcomings which won’t enable us to support it. It empowers Europol to gather unlimited and uncontrolled amounts of data, including from private parties such as social media and content from hacked phones and computers. And as we all know, data is power. Whoever holds it has control over our identities, our movements, our freedoms. And for one, opaque policing service to harvest large quantities of it in the name of enhanced security is, frankly, for us, terrifying. Greater security can’t align with the degradation of our right to personal privacy or the violation of human rights. And Europol intends to use this newly acquired big data to feed into research projects on AI and data driven policing. The Parliament has been clear on this before that practices such as mass data harvesting, automated surveillance, predictive identification entails high risks for discriminatory policing, which would be targeted against the most vulnerable – migrants, refugees and so on who’ve already been at the receiving end. So, we have to be careful once we set something in motion, the technologies are here for good.