Speeches

Mr President, I have to say, I find it outrageous that we are having this discussion. Instead of the Commission demanding that Latvia, Lithuania and Poland should face infringement proceedings for their gross violations of international and EU law, including the right to asylum, what you’re doing is organising so that these crimes can be retrospectively legitimised, covered up and even extended, and all done in a manner in which the European Parliament is being muscled out of any meaningful say. Let’s be clear about this: this isn’t about an emergency on the Belarus border. The disgusting instrumentalisation of migrants by Lukashenko, so dehumanisingly characterised as a hybrid threat – vulnerable, cold hungry, tired women and children a hybrid threat? Seriously, would you listen to yourselves? Rather than confronting this, what’s been done here is another step on the road to legitimising pushbacks, as requested by 12 Member States. It’s a disgrace. Allowing the delay in the processing of asylum, poor reception conditions, facilitating returns – this proposal should be rejected in its entirety. If the EU wants any credibility, we have to uphold international law.

Madam President, I think we have to talk about Islamophobia. Twenty years of a so—called war on terror, victimising Muslims, placing them under mass surveillance and profiling, chilling legitimate debates and political activity, sending police infiltrators and agent provocateurs into their communities and places of worship has brought us to a place where poisonous racism against Muslims is going unchallenged in parliamentary chambers of countries that never cease to proclaim themselves as bastions of democracy and human rights. In the United States, with Muslim Congresswoman Ilhan Omar subjected to racist and dehumanising language by fellow Congresswoman Lauren Boebert without sanction from either party. In the UK, Apsana Begum and Zarah Sultana, Muslim representatives in Parliament, routinely subjected to vile racist abuse by their colleagues. And in the European Parliament, verbal attacks on young people attending our conference in October. It just shows how deep the rot has got. Bigotry in representative institutions legitimises it across society. I want to use this platform to reject those ideas and to stand in full solidarity with our fellow parliamentarians targeted for their religion and ethnicity.

Mr President, I think it is interesting that we’re having this discussion on the eve of Black Friday, the day where undoubtedly we’ll see a splurge in online sales driven by the likes of Amazon that will have our congested ports creaking at the seams. And when we talk about the challenges of the carrying capacity of container ships and the container shortages and so on, let’s spare a thought for the port workers at the receiving end of this crisis, because soaring freight rates and costs are placing additional pressure also on the workforce. In many ways, part of the crisis is actually a case of chickens coming home to roost. A consequence of the driving down of wages and conditions, attempts to break dockworkers’ unions across the EU, outsourcing work practices, refusing to hire trained dockworkers for lashing and so on. And this race to the bottom must end. We don’t want a return to the days of on the waterfront, so graphically illustrated by Marlon Brando’s film. Transport workers have paid a huge price during the Covid crisis, and they are now at the receiving end of this surge. But I think we need to step back as well and look at whether container transport can keep apace in the changing world. We know the EU is launching its connectivity strategy, Global Gateway, in response to the Chinese Belt and Road. But before we do, we might want to make sure that no European countries are taking part in corrupt practices with local governments to get concessions on container terminals, like the French billionaire Vincent Bolloré and his links with the Togolese and Ghanaian presidents to get concessions in the ports of Lomé and Conakry. So no shortcuts. Ports should be run fairly everywhere around the world with respect for workers’ rights everywhere.

Madam President, is it any wonder that the World Trade Organization (WTO) has a deep crisis of legitimacy? It’s undemocratic, it’s non-transparent, and it perpetuates imbalanced policies that disempower the Global South. The usual nonsense that increased trade is a win—win has long been exposed for what it is: a lie. Instead, for the majority of people, increased trade has meant precarity, a race to the bottom in wages, public services, consumer standards and the environment. So the calls for reform of the WTO are obviously widespread and long overdue. But, if it’s to mean anything, then there must be transformational change to the existing trade rules and the creation of a fundamentally different type of trade cooperation. Plurilateral negotiations, for which there is no mandate, no consensus, and entrenched power imbalances and corporate globalisation, must end. The idea that the EU, which trumpets itself as an advocate of fairness and social justice, would position itself within the WTO to block the triggering of the trade-related intellectual property rights (TRIPS) waiver and prevent the production of generic vaccines, which can save lives, is a monument to our hypocrisy. It does, as colleagues have said, expose that the interests really being furthered and protected here are those of big business and big pharma. The WTO, with the support of the EU, shows that its so-called fundamental principles of fair competition, support for lesser developed countries and transparency are just words. Would we ever cop ourselves on?

Madam President, during the pandemic, Amazon became a trillion-dollar corporation with record profits and a revenue higher than the GDP of 133 countries. They pay close to 0% tax, so check their warehouse workers to inhumane conditions, tyrannically denying them the right to join a trade union. Meanwhile, their activities dump millions of metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every year, while its data centres cannibalise entire country’s energy budgets and consume our water supplies. It’s always the same: Amazon profits forever and never pays for the social or environmental costs. Well that will change. This Friday, the 26th, Black Friday is a global day of action in the campaign to make Amazon pay. All over the world, a growing movement of activists and workers in factories and cargo facilities, oil refineries, warehouses and data centres will strike and demonstrate together, to force Amazon to pay for its environmental and social consequences. This movement is needed, all power and solidarity to them this Friday.

Madam President, the only pharmaceutical strategy worth having is one that places medicines and drugs in public ownership for the benefit of humanity and not the profits of the few. Instead, we have the obscenity of public money being used to fund research, to absorb losses and then, when a successful medicine is developed, a patent is slapped on it, and its production is undertaken to make money for the shareholders who own it rather than to save lives and benefit humanity. Let’s be clear: the case of Aspen Pharmacare buying up six critical off—patent cancer drugs with no market alternative, using their monopoly position to drive up prices, blackmailing governments and killing people, wasn’t a blip. It is an inevitable consequence of the privatisation of the pharmaceutical industry. Intellectual property rights should have no place in medicine. We’ve seen the COVID-19 pandemic yield bumper profits for big pharma, with Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna receiving EUR 34 billion in pre-tax profits in the last year. We should be concerned that the European Medicines Agency, which approves medicines, relies on those pharmaceutical companies for up to 86% of their funding. It is time to change course. Medicines should be publicly owned for the benefit of all.

Mr President, an intellectual property plan for the EU is certainly incredibly important for our recovery. But to achieve that, we need a healthy European Union IPO office, it’s absolutely key. I know the organisation has requested an extra 247 posts. This is unprecedented and would certainly help, but we also need to look at the issue of staff retention. I’m aware that high-level staff had contracts recently not renewed despite that. This is a well-established practice and there should only be exceptional reasons why this wouldn’t happen. I am acutely aware of the need to retain Irish staff, given that our numbers are falling across EU institutions, and it’s very important that we retain women in senior positions. It’s a fact that 50% of the internal audit team in the EU IPO are retiring over the next period, so we do need to retain a skill set if we’re to achieve the ambition outlined in the plan. A staff survey recently said many staff were afraid to speak out. There’s no point in us waffling on about workers’ rights in other institutions if we don’t respect them on our own. We’ve got to have a clean EU IPO office if we’re going to implement this plan.

Mr President, I was a shadow on this report, it is extremely important and timely because there is a serious threat to the media. But I have to say it is been weakened by the fact that the inclusion of the amendment on Julian Assange, which is actually the mother of all strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs), did not pass. This is a publisher who bravely published information in the public interest in 2010 – exposing war crimes by the US military – being prosecuted for espionage. The publisher was working in an EU country. The US Government is exerting extraterritorial jurisdiction over journalism conducted in Europe. The intention was not just to silence Assange, it was strategic, to warn all other publishers worldwide of national security reporting about serious challenges to US power. Indeed, the incarceration of Assange has already resulted in that chilling effect, and it is regrettable considering that the European and international federations of journalists recognise this and have called for the case to be dropped. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe recognises it, the UN Human Rights Commissioner recognises it and many others. It is an awful pity that our motion didn’t pass today.

Mr President, I voted for this report on serious cross-border threats to health because of the practical implications of the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement and the Northern Ireland Protocol in terms of the impact on the pharmaceutical industry and the serious potential impact on patient access to generic medicines in Northern Ireland and related issues in the rest of Ireland. There really remains a high degree of uncertainty around the commissioner’s recent proposals to help stable medicines supply into Northern Ireland when the current post-Brexit derogations end on 31 December, and really time is running out. At the same time, there’s uncertainty regarding the UK’s plans. So patients deserve clarity now to stop them worrying and to stop the stockpiling or shortages. And I really think that the Commission needs to urgently confirm its commitment to continue the current temporary derogations on medicines rules to ensure a stable supply in Northern Ireland to ease patient concerns and help the medicine makers plan correctly. The Commission has to give a deadline in which it will publish its legislative proposal to give effect to the solutions proposed in its non-paper of July 2016 entitled ‘Medicines and the implementation of the Protocol on Ireland and Northern Ireland’.

Madam President, there should, of course, be more transparency in the financing of European political parties but we have to accept that the European political party system is not how you foster engagement with European politics. Instead of complaining that citizens don’t engage, we should look at the reasons why. The fact is that for European citizens, the EU is distant, undemocratic and indifferent to their concerns because the politics that people actually care about have no outlet here. The reforms that are necessary – the repeal of neoliberal policy, massive state investment to reverse the decline in living standards – are illegal under EU treaties and fiscal constraints. Irish citizens voted no Nice, no to Lisbon. We were forced to change our mind and vote again. We were promised our neutrality would not be impacted yet we’re galloping towards a NATO-backed European Defence Union. No matter how much funding you pump into propaganda campaigns from unfamiliar European political parties, they’re not going to cut it. If we want European citizens to participate, we have to give them a stake and we should start by abolishing the treaties.

Mr President, there’s no doubt about it, our world has many problems. But the one thing that’s definitely not going to fix them is billionaire-funded social change, when it’s the very existence of billionaires like Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos or Denis O’Brien that’s responsible for a lot of the problems that we have in the first place. So, no, we shouldn’t have a free market in philanthropy. We shouldn’t allow philanthropic capital to flow across borders unimpeded. The point is, there shouldn’t be any billionaires, and we certainly shouldn’t be making it easier for them to hide their fortunes in so-called charitable foundations. Obscene wealth doesn’t come from working hard earning a wage like a normal person, it only comes from exploiting people on a vast scale or by inheriting it from somebody else who did. And yet, here we are arguing for them to be able to keep their wealth, use it however they like without oversight and pretending that this is going to make things different. This is nonsense. Of course, what we should be saying is ‘tax them’. Tax wealth and not just income. Close tax loopholes, eliminate tax havens, redistribute wealth, develop public services so people don’t have to fund-raise. But also we should be looking at casting down the system that made them so wealthy in the first place. But I think there’s a sickening irony that we’re here on a Thursday, discussing how to make the EU a playground for these donors, when we’ve had nothing to say for over a decade about the blank blockade on the donations of ordinary people who wanted to use their money to fund WikiLeaks, an organisation that genuinely challenged society and argued for transformation to change. Their founder, Julian Assange – hounded, imprisoned, spied on, plots to kidnap and kill him – next Wednesday will go into a London court to fight his extradition to the US where he faces a life sentence for telling the truth. Why aren’t we talking about that? I’ll be at that court case, where will you be?

Madam President, there might be some people in here who choose to bury their heads in the sand, but the truth is that the evidence of human rights violations linked to Frontex activities is profound and extensive. So this isn’t a discussion about Lukashenko’s appalling actions in Belarus. It isn’t a discussion about a fake division between migrants and asylum seekers. For us, this is about the fact that there are consistent and constant reports of Frontex’s collusion in violent pushbacks on the EU’s external borders – collusion with the Libyan Coast Guard returning thousands to be held arbitrarily in deadly camps, to be raped and tortured, collusion and pushbacks in the Aegean Sea with people being left to drown, and complicity with the denial of access to asylum in Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Greece, Hungary and Malta. We are here discussing signing off on its budget. Let us be clear about this. Frontex is now the Commission’s militarisation of the EU’s borders made flesh and given an obscene budget of a half a billion. Rather than carrying out its mandate to guarantee a safe, secure and well—functioning border, it has become a weapon in Fortress Europe. The EU Ombudsman and our own scrutiny group have both acknowledged that there are insufficient safeguards in fundamental rights, and this will not change unless they’re held to account. It would be ludicrous for us to approve the budget in these circumstances. This is actually our moment to support the hundreds of journalists and activists who have painstakingly investigated and documented the extreme abuses of this EU agency. It will be a slap in the face to them if we were to turn a blind eye to what’s going on, a slap in the face to the men and women and children who’ve been abused by Frontex and a slap in the face for international law. Look, we have very little power, but when we do have it, let’s use it for good. That obviously means refusing this discharge – but I think you got that bit!

Madam President, the sad truth is that illegal push-backs – because I’m sorry friends, there’s no such thing as a legal one – have become the new normal, in part thanks to the Commission’s toxic approach to migration. The Commission knows well that EU money funds border forces who push back refugees, who torture and beat them. It knows well that thousands of people are illegally pushed back from Croatia into Bosnia every month, without the ability to exercise their right to seek asylum, on orders from the very top of the Croatian Government. It knows well that thousands of people are pushed out to sea by Greek border guards, left to drown or disappear, on orders from the very top of the Greek Government. But the money from the EU keeps flowing. So now, here we are at a point where our 12 Member States have actually called for the legalisation of push-backs in blatant disregard of international law. We should be absolutely ashamed of ourselves.

Madam President, sadly, with the exception of Ireland, where a huge majority of people voted to change our Constitution and provide free, safe and legal abortion up to 12 weeks and longer in a whole range of other circumstances, and Argentina, where a social movement led by women and young people overthrew one of the world’s most restrictive and repressive abortion laws, which resulted in the deaths of thousands, in general, abortion rights have been under attack worldwide. So, I welcome the decision of Judge Pitman to temporarily block the implementation of the Texas law, effectively banning abortion, which he correctly described as offensive deprivation of women’s constitutional right to control their lives. But more importantly, we stand here in solidarity with the activists who took part in 660 demonstrations across the United States last Saturday to defend abortion rights. It’s only the organised people power of citizens that delivers social change, not benevolent politicians or judges, so long may that continue – they have our full support and solidarity, the way US activists brought such a benefit to us in Ireland.

Madam President, disinformation is, of course, a social ill, but it’s not new. For years, we’ve had billionaire-owned tabloids peddling lies, and nobody particularly cared about this. So if there is a threat to our societies, it’s certainly not from online disinformation, and it’s not from abroad. It’s actually from right here in the creeping authoritarianism and intolerance of the political mainstream. We see this in the securitised language in the question, which I have to say is very dangerous. The question talks about social media platforms facilitating espionage. I mean, seriously, when we say this, it’s actually an abuse of language. Is it any wonder, then, that we have the scandal of journalists like Algirdas Paleckis being prosecuted for espionage in Lithuania without a shred of evidence and without a chance to meet his accusers? And we’ve never even mentioned his name in here. We have Julian Assange facing 175 years in a maximum security prison for espionage, but actually for revealing US war crimes, and we say nothing. We claim to be defending democracy, but the question calls for sanctions. Aren’t we forgetting the two distinguished guests who came before the foreign interference committee and warned us against this, who warned us about the potential illegality of such a move? In actual fact, sanctions are an instrument of international law. They should only be used within the framework of the United Nations in order to protect human rights.

Madam President, as the tourist season draws to a close, I want to focus on the position of workers in the international travel sector, particularly airline and airport staff, because the truth is we’ve seen a recovery of sorts – dramatic increases in numbers transiting through airports, companies like Wizz Air and Ryanair bragging that they’re back to normal – and yet the so-called flag carriers and former state companies (represented in Ireland by the Dublin Airport Authority and Aer Lingus) are using the crisis to unleash a reign of terror, a race to the bottom, and to stand conditions that were fought for over decades on their heads. These companies are demanding everything – ending demarcation, pay freezes until 2025, redundancies being replaced by yellow-pack jobs. If it’s not accepted – and they haven’t been by over 80% of the workforce – they’re being bullied by the imposition of unilateral cuts and threatened outsourcing. These companies are in receipt of tens of millions of public funds. Where is the Commission protecting European workers? Where is the socially responsible recovery that is so desperately needed?

Mr President, when we talk about US shared values and common bonds, let’s remember that this is a country which is ruthlessly pursuing an espionage case against Julian Assange for publishing information about US war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq, including attempts to kidnap and kill him. A country that plots regime change and imposes illegal sanctions that kill in every corner of the globe. But of course the narrative here is that the only choices are that we either keep sucking up to US power, as it faces off against China and Russia, or we cut the apron strings, dump billions of euros into military budgets and go it alone with an EU army. Of course, both of these choices are nonsense. The century of American and European supremacy is over. We live in a different multipolar world that’s more interconnected and interdependent than ever before. The main challenge is climate change. Getting through it will require cooperation, not competition. Europe will either extract itself from reducing US influence and develop an independent, peaceful role or face further irrelevance.

Mr President, EU-Russia relations are at their lowest ebb ever, and Parliament’s response is more, much more, of exactly the same thing – prevent Russia from developing relations with EU countries individually, ratchet up NATO, strengthen EU defences to deter Russia, sanctions and international investigations and so on. This isn’t a serious, credible document. It’s actually a xenophobic rant. Much of the information is false, misleading and one-sided. We surround Russia with NATO bases and we call them the aggressor. We support opposition groups and we accuse them of foreign interference. The European project is not being undermined and divided by Russia, but by the rank hypocrisy that is characterised in this report, and the only beneficiaries of this nonsense are the arms industry made fat on the profits of its hysteria. So would people ever calm down and cop on. We need to work diplomatically with our neighbours for a peaceful resolution of differences. Would you back off the Russia phobia. The last thing we need is a cold war turning into a hot one. We absolutely reject the report in its entirety.

Mr President, European pilots and crews have been the victims of bogus self-employment and social dumping for years, and post—pandemic it’s only going to get worse. We’ve already heard Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary bragging about how the pandemic will be a huge opportunity and how the payroll bill will be a lot smaller, with Wizz Air following suit. Against this backdrop, for DG MOVE to tell the trade unions – a point echoed by the Commissioner here today – that the national courts were the most efficient way for aircrew to assert their rights is simply unacceptable. Do you not know of the Ryanair Mons case, which took 10 years for the Court of Justice to rule on applicable law for crew? Ten years of horrific hardship for our airline workers. Do you not know that the expert group on social matters related to air crew has demanded legal clarity on applicable labour law, such as defining operational base and home base? It’s really time for the Commission to act on this. Can the Commissioner please spell out the timetable for the revision of Regulation (EC) No 1008/2008. Will it commence this year? Will it be concluded in a matter of months? Will there be specific legislation to swiftly deal with these issues? Otherwise, it’s all hot air, and we’re jeopardising our workers and those who travel with them.

Madam President, for years I think the EU’s policies towards migration have rested on the assumption that every person who wants to come here from outside is a potential threat: highly skilled workers, babies, children washed up dead on Europe’s Mediterranean shores. And sadly, the same logic applies to the revision of the Visa Information System. There’s actually no rational justification for this. Europol says there are no signs of systemic use of illegal migration by terrorist organisations. There’s zero evidence that people using things like work and tourist visas to come here are any more dangerous than the people who already live here. The mania for making every migrant an object of suspicion is really no more logical or rational than the medieval assumption that if a woman was tied to a chair and thrown into a pond and she sank, she was a witch. No more logical, but actually the same type of evil prejudice. And there may be people in here who are happy to bring in a policy based on the type of logic that would make a Witchfinder General proud. But I’m not interested in witch hunts, and we won’t be voting for this resolution.

Madam President, I’d like to start by thanking Tanya and her staff for the really constructive and inclusive negotiations on this file, the result of which is we have before us a report which is really strong in a whole number of respects, in particular, I think, in terms of the criticism of the illegal internal border controls and the criticism of Frontex, an agency that has been involved in the most outrageous abuses on Europe’s borders. The report also contains necessary references, more generally, to the really atrocious situations at those borders, where pushbacks, horrific abuse and violence are a daily reality for men, women and children who seek asylum in Europe. The report could have been stronger on this, but unfortunately, some of the right-wing groups prevented that. But they shouldn’t – because we have to be real about this. Europe’s approach to migration for years has amounted to a crime against humanity. Tens of thousands are dead. Tens of thousands of children and others are a scourge inflicted by Fortress Europe. We should recognise this and take note, but I thank Tanya for the work done on the report so far.

Madam President, I have to say these discussions are becoming increasingly posed as democracy against authoritarianism, the goodies against the baddies, truth versus disinformation – but of course it’s more complicated than that. In reality what we have is a geopolitical confrontation in Eastern Europe and both sides are trying to advance their own version of the truth. When the EU strategic communication challenges biased Russian narratives in the eastern neighbourhood, it’s not out of disinterest and commitment to the truth, but it too is defending and advancing its own strategic interests. So there’s something quite troubling about the way in which this Parliament is embracing a hawkish attitude to foreign interference. Increasingly we see the legitimate concern of EU foreign policy being defined as disinformation, and the space for dissent is narrowing inside of our democracies. ‘This is my truth, tell me yours’ said the great Welsh socialist Nye Bevan. He was describing a situation, a fundamental commitment in any democracy where we arrive at the truth through a radical tolerance of – and openness to – opposing views. The moment we close the door on that, we have a step towards authoritarianism. The EU shouldn’t be in the business of defining an official truth. Speaking about certain opinions using the language of national security should appal us. Stigmatising criticism of our own foreign policy is an anathema to a free and open society. And using any regime of sanctions to combat perceived disinformation is a drastic mistake whether by unanimity or qualified majority.