Speeches

Mr President, what we risk doing with this EU certification process for carbon removals is creating a system that actually promotes greenwashing, instead of actually stopping it. I mean, of course, we need to ban offsets – grand – but there is another problem. If we call everything we like a carbon removal and given an EU certificate of approval, then we will end up with a certification process that has absolutely no integrity. I mean, we all want farmers to be rewarded for storing carbon through good agricultural practices. But if we set up a system where we count everything from planting to grazing as a carbon removal activity, well, we are just going to have a junk certification process. So let us certify real carbon removals, like the peatlands rewetting, agroforestry, so that we can promote no-regret, biodiversity-positive solutions. Otherwise we are only fooling ourselves, and we cannot cheat the climate – we are the only losers if we try and do that.

Mr President, (start of speech off mic) ... really was a neoliberal dream: produce something, make sure it doesn’t last, and then force the person to buy it all over again, and on and on it goes. But this way of living has no future. Global waste is due to grow by 70% at today’s levels by 2050 unless we act urgently. And where is it all going? To places like Toxic City in Ghana, a former wetland turned into a 16 square kilometre dump for Europe’s old electric equipment, around which 40 000 people live. This has to stop, and I think that we need to radically bring back the repair economy, with public support and legal obligations on companies, and the legislation is a very good first step in connecting consumers to repairers, but most importantly, we need to strengthen the legal guarantee on products. No product should be designed to break after two years. Companies should be responsible for what they put on the market.

Madam President, the Net Zero Industry Act is presented as Europe’s answer to the Inflation Reduction Act, the USD 360 billion so-called clean-technology investment initiative launched by the US last year, which completely caught the EU off guard, enacted as it was when Europe was on its knees from the repercussions and the energy crisis triggered by the sanctions on Russia, and raising the prospect of wide industrial relocation to the US. But the question that has to be asked here is: does this initiative genuinely contribute to environmental protection and decent jobs, or is it, as it would appear, just a con to really transfer public money into private hands with zero accountability? Because the expedited administrative process does pose a risk to losing control over activities, exemplified by the ‘silence-means-approval’ rule, weakening authorities’ oversight; the extension of the list of supposedly clean technologies, including activities on Natura 2000 lands, raises concerns about this project. We have to do a lot better.

Madam President, I think many people will be watching the news about COP28 and wondering what’s the actual point of it, not just because of where it is, but because year on year we fail to act. Of course there needs to be a dedicated space for multilateralism, but COP isn’t working, and one of the key reasons for that is that the Global North has failed in its responsibility towards those areas of the world that are most affected by climate change. We promised 100 billion by 2020, even though they needed actually 4 trillion, but we couldn’t even deliver on that. And even of the monies that were delivered upon, 71% of that public climate finance was in the form of loans. Now let’s think about what that actually means. Last year, Pakistan was at the front line in terms of the climate crisis, with floods displacing 33 million people. So when they should have been spending money rebuilding homes in the aftermath, they were using 50% of the country’s annual revenue to pay back foreign creditors. If this is the way forward, we’re doing the world a disservice and we and they cannot afford it.

Madam President, it’s World Children’s Day, the day when we commemorate the signing of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child – the most widely ratified human-rights treaty ever; the world united around the protection of children. Well, aren’t we great? It’s about time that we wake up and smell the white phosphorus, the burning flesh of children torched alive in Gaza. Wake up and hear their screams over the dead bodies of their parents, their severed limbs, their blinded eyes, their parched lips, their starving stomachs. Feel their terror day after day after day after day, as the bombs rain down on their homes, their schools, their hospitals. On and on it goes. All the great nations that signed this great treaty to protect children sit on their hands, and we pat ourselves on the back in places like this, while not just doing nothing, but enabling that Israeli genocide against children to continue. Well, the people of the world have seen through your complicity. If you mean a morsel of concern for children, stop the slaughter, demand a ceasefire.

Madam President, I voted against this file. Promoting the right to participate is obviously a noble goal, but this report twists it into an excuse to pretend that we are somehow in charge to sit in judgement of global south elections and interfere if we don’t like the results. And to be honest with you, after the last month, I am finding it difficult to understand why anybody would think that the rest of the world would give a damn what we think. For weeks, billions have watched us. Europe has stood lock, stock and barrel behind our friend apartheid Israel. We call Israel a democracy. In this democracy, 4.5 million Palestinians live under occupation with no rights at all, victims of dehumanisation, arbitrary checkpoints, settler violence, brutalisation by security forces, a military court system and no vote. This is what we call with a straight face the only democracy in the Middle East. Well it’s over. After the show Europe’s made of itself recently, don’t expect the rest of the world to be taking you seriously any time soon.

Madam President, I voted for this report because, in principle, I do not have a huge problem with the EU raising money through things like taxing corporate profits because somebody has to and, God knows, Member States like my own certainly are not going to do it. But there is an elephant in the room, and that is the question of why the EU needs to raise all this money for itself. It just got a EUR 1 trillion budget two years ago. Where did all the money go? Well, we all know where it went: the EU blew all that cash on war and weapons, and now it is passing around the hat for more. It is not just the own resources. The Commission has demanded that Member States cough up an extra 100 billion – 100 billion – to fatten up the budget that the EU blew on war and militarism. Half of that is for Ukraine, a country whose destruction we continue to cheerlead. Well, shame on you because somebody is making money out of this. And it is certainly not the poor people in Ukraine or Europe. If the EU wants to find some money, there is an easy way to do it: back a ceasefire in Ukraine, stop the war and give that ruined country a chance to rebuild itself.

Madam President, we need to talk about Israel. Joe Biden says that if Israel didn’t exist, the US would have to invent it – and he’s right. It’s a rogue state, vested in ensuring instability in the region and US geopolitical goals. And the result of this? In the last month, it’s bombed Palestine, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria – all the while claiming it’s the victim. It has occupied parts of these countries and bombed them so often that we don’t even generally give it a mention. And so we’ve got to where we are today – where they’re slaughtering children on an unprecedented scale. Children wrapped in bloodied shrouds in their thousands. Children under the rubble, even now, maimed and terrified, blinded with chemical agents, gasping for food and water. Children screaming over the bodies of their dead parents: ‘mama, mama, wake up, wake up’. Well, I, for one, never thought I’d see such scenes. And the governments of the West may continue to shield Israel, but the people everywhere see it for what it is, including large numbers of Jews. The Zionist project is over. A new Middle East of peace and justice will be built!

Mr President, every year that passes brings us closer to the deadline set by the Paris Agreement necessary to limit the climate catastrophe. And yet a new study has shown that the carbon budget today is less than half of what we thought it was in 2020. So if we continue at the present emissions rates, we have only six years to remain within the 1.5 degree limit, and it is fossil fuels that are at the root of this problem. Yet the eighth State of the Union Report states that fossil fuel subsidies in the EU have doubled in 2022, supposedly on the basis of supporting consumer demand for energy. But we have to wonder, how effective is that really, when we see 41 million people in the EU being unable to heat their homes? At the same time, subsidies earmarked for fossil fuel extraction and infrastructure get EUR 19 billion. Three European banks are the top banks financing these companies and exploiting carbon bombs. It is lunacy. We have to stop talking the talk and walk the walk.

Madam President, a month has elapsed since the commencement of the unrelenting mass murder of Palestinians in Gaza. It’s not a spiral of violence, Frau von der Leyen. It’s genocide! Openly declared and carried out by the apartheid State of Israel. Starvation, bombing hospitals, ambulances, journalists, humanitarian routes: 10 000 dead, 1 in 200 Gazans killed. A Palestinian child slaughtered every 10 minutes for a month! And Frau von der Leyen’s answer to this graveyard for children is to tell Israel: ‘avoid civilians’, ‘be as targeted as you can’. Well, that displays some neck! You can’t even call for it to stop. You can’t even call for a ceasefire. Well, of course you can’t, because these crimes against humanity are being carried out with your weapons, in your name, when you stood with Israel a month ago and you said you’d stand with them now and in the days to come. So don’t come in here trying to wipe the blood off with belated concern. It’s not just Israel’s genocide; it’s yours. And The Hague isn’t good enough for you.

Mr President, I voted for this motion. We have resolved to never forget Daphne Caruana Galizia for her exceptional journalism, holding those in power to account, brutally murdered six years ago in a car bomb explosion in Malta. The token of our commitment to protect the freedom of journalism is a vital component of democracy. But as far as I’m concerned, it’s undermined by a refusal of a majority in this Parliament to say anything, let alone do anything, about the persecution of Julian Assange. Honouring Daphne Caruana Galizia is not good enough, while Julian Assange lies for a fifth year in a high-security prison in Britain, deteriorating health, fighting for his last chance before the courts to block extradition to the US, facing espionage charges for acts of journalism carried out in the EU. When will we act? When it’s too late? We talk about freedom of the press – it’s time to put our money where our mouth is.

Mr President, I voted against this motion. After a week of horror in Gaza and the EU diving in headfirst, draping our Parliament in the Israeli flag, aiding and abetting in war crimes, including the bombing of a hospital and still we find it impossible to say that Palestinian lives matter. We’re still privileging one category of victims over another. We talk about the humanitarian situation in Gaza, but why is there a humanitarian crisis? Is it a national disaster? Who cut off the water, fuel and electricity? Are we not sure? Who is bombing Palestinian civilians? Do we not know? Do you think we couldn’t mention it? There is a crime unfolding in Gaza now, such as we have not seen since the 1940s, and we are in it up to our necks. We are watching Israel murder Palestinian civilians and preparing to drive millions of them into the Sinai Desert to annex and colonise their land. it is another Nakba. it is a crime against humanity. It is not a humanitarian crisis. The EU will never live down this shame. Long live Palestine! Long live Gaza!

Mr President, there are 2.8 million social economy enterprises in the EU, employing over 13 million people, or 6% of the workforce. The Belgian film Le Ballai Libéré tells the story of a group of cleaning ladies in the Catholic University of Louvain who set up their cooperative and we’re going to be showing that in the European Parliament in the coming weeks. I really hope that colleagues come out and see that because it shows that story very well, because the social economy should be a priority. I was shocked and disappointed that, again, the Commission refused to include, in its annual work programme for this year, the revision of Regulation (EC) No 1008/2008 in relation to air services, because this was supposed to be in the 2022 programme, but it didn’t appear even now. The Commission’s failure to deal with this is not just a violation of the rights of pilots and crew, but it will potentially result in catastrophic aviation safety measures. It is about time we began to act and take this seriously.

Madam President, every year, millions of animals are bred and killed in the EU for fur, the main species obviously being mink, foxes and raccoon dogs. The whole idea is so utterly repulsive and hard for so many citizens to understand. This is wanton cruelty. There is no basis for it whatsoever. This initiative has massive support across all Member States for a European ban on the farming and killing of animals for fur. It is welcome that over a dozen Member State governments, representing about two thirds of the EU’s population, have backed the calls for an EU wide ban, including our own, Ireland, one of the more recent ones to join despite many attempts that we made during our time in the Irish Parliament. In these infamous fur farms, foxes are kept in solitary confinement in battery cages, preventing them from natural interactions, prevented from running, digging, exploring, while in small cages less than 1.2 m2. We’ve seen the damage to them. Fur is non-essential, there are animal free alternatives. For fox sake, it’s time to ban the practice.

Mr President, for years, we have been warning of the dangers of a massive EU power grab over public discourse in our societies. There is disinformation, it is a problem, but the European Union is the last institution that should be deciding what’s true and what’s false. Political culture here is so intolerant that anything that contradicts the official narrative is vilified as disinformation. It is not disinformation you want to shut down, it’s alternative views and politics itself. Now the mask is off – the EU is backing Israeli terror. There’s a massive public outcry, so attempts are made to control the narrative. Palestinian solidarity is banned in the streets, the mainstream press repeats the lies, social media is the last space left, so the Commissioner plays ‘bully boy’ with the outlets over Hamas content. The result: predictable over-compliance, Palestinian silence trying to communicate the unimaginable crime being done to them. And all the while, citizens’ feeds are flooded with paid-for war propaganda from Israel’s Foreign ministry. That’s not taken down because it’s the same (inaudible) is splurging out.

Madam President, there is no sustainable development without peace. Apart from climate change, war is undoubtedly the biggest threat to our human development and that’s why we have Sustainable Development Goal 16: promoting peaceful societies. We know that the SDG Summit in September showed the world how far off we are from achieving the goals, but in terms of peace, we’re absolutely plummeting. By 2020, we have two-and-a-half times the amount of people forcefully displaced worldwide compared to a decade ago, a 50% increase in conflict-related civilian deaths, and events over the past week have exposed that we are part of the problem. The Commission said recently that it’s going to continue to take action in relation to this goal 16. Well, if that’s what you’re doing, God help us, because we have a Commission President who’s been enabling the Israeli Government to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, with no problem whatsoever in sending arms into the conflict zone in Ukraine, while standing in the way of all peaceful resolutions to that conflict. This isn’t serious. We have to do better in relation to this.

Mr President, Article 16 of the Drinking Water Directive is the EU’s response to the European citizens’ initiative on the right to water. And I think, read it and you’ll see that there’s no way that this article can be considered a sufficient response to the demands of the first successful European citizens’ initiative in this area. I mean, Article 16 is essentially the bare minimum obligation to maintain access to water – a suggestion to Member States to maybe try and do their best, maybe put in a few more fountains, and do what you can to promote the consumption of drinking water. Come on! After years of epic campaigning, we can surely do better than this. We need meaningful obligations to enshrine the right to water and the right to sanitation in our laws. In Bulgaria, only 66% of households are connected to a wastewater collection network. There’s a lot more work to be done. We need no cost barriers to accessing drinking water or sanitation and no liberalisation of services.

Madam President, those who told us eleven times that sanctions would bring Russia to its knees, that they were a necessary gesture of solidarity with Ukraine, part of the toolbox to end the war, are still clinging to the lunacy that maybe the next round will work. We’ve heard colleagues say, ‘Ah well sure look it, we know they never fully work.’ Or, ‘Well, we need to add a load of named people to the list. We need to include diamonds. We need to tighten up beyond a WikiLeaks leak. We need to blame China.’ All of it, nonsense! The truth is sanctions don’t work. Everyone, the US, the countries which contain a majority of the world’s population, continue to trade with Russia. Our LNG imports from Russia increased 40% since the war. The Commissioner says the Russian economy is less efficient, it has higher costs, and it’s a war economy. I don’t know if that’s true, but I do know that the European Union economy, which he was very silent about, has certainly got higher costs, is less efficient, and Commissioner Breton tells us it’s a war economy. And with the amount of money we’re shovelling into arms, it seems like it. The Eurozone is in recession. The cost of living crisis is hitting. Ordinary people are paying, while ordinary people in Ukraine pay with their lives. We need peace and diplomacy and an end to this nonsense.

Madam President, I have been involved in politics for 40 years, but I have never seen anything like what is being unleashed in Gaza in full public view while the world watches it unfold. Ten days of relentless airstrikes, 1 in 1 000 people murdered by the Israeli Government in a week, open declarations of siege, 24 hours of fuel, electricity and water left, collective punishment on innocent people, all illegal, all war crimes. And when the EU should have been arguing for a ceasefire, for the upholding of international law, for the protection of civilians, Ursula von der Leyen touches down in Tel Aviv to photo op the preparation of a genocide, and says Europe stands with Israel now and in the days to come. How dare she. She has no authority in foreign affairs matters. She does not speak for me, she does not speak for Ireland, and she does not speak for the citizens of Europe. We stand for peace. We stand for justice for the people of Palestine and for the upholding of international law. It is long past the time that this woman exited the stage. It is time for her to go and for the international criminal court … (The President cut off the speaker)

Madam President, our oceans are in crisis and fishers are suffering the consequences. The common fisheries policy was supposed to ensure that fishing and aquaculture are environmentally sustainable and managed in a coherent way to achieve long-term economic, social benefits and employment. So yes, while we can agree that the agreement on the Fisheries Control Regulation was necessary in order to modernise the EU fleet control system – and absolutely, we needed to have better transparency to reduce hidden overfishing and to prevent products related to illegal fishing ending up on the EU market – we also have to recognise that we are not doing nearly enough on the social and employment fronts. Small fishers have seen their quotas cut by 15% by 2025, as a result of the trade and cooperation agreements. This makes a mockery of development and employment, and when we look at the decommissioning impact, we have to look at situations like those of the Gaffney family forced to decommission the Mary Kate without a single cent of compensation from the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund, despite having an opinion from the Commission. This is … (The President cut off the speaker)

Madam President, behind yet another cute acronym, STEP, this proposal aims, among other things, to allocate yet another EUR 1.5 billion of public money to the European Defence Fund, now totalling EUR 10 billion. For years, the European Union has been militarising, all the while presenting itself as an actor for peace. And now, at a time where there’s an unfolding and escalating crime against humanity in Gaza, we see this enabled by the reckless and potentially criminal actions and statements from EU leaders, and the world can see that our calls for peace are meaningless. What’s happening in Gaza is where the obsession with military solutions gets us. The indulgence of humanity’s worst impulses and the broken bodies of children laid bare in mass graves. It’s unacceptable that we have yet another proposal here to funnel billions into the pockets of the bloated bank accounts of the arms industry. This proposal should be axed.

Mr President, there’s no doubt about it: reconstruction of Ukraine must be dealt with, and the European Union – which hasn’t lifted a finger to work for peace, but has done everything to keep the war going – certainly has a role in that. But I think the question is how and why. And if you read the European Court of Auditors’ report on this, in accountants’ language it is the equivalent of them jumping up and down screaming blue murder that this plan isn’t thought out. It is an opportunity for massive enrichment of a tiny minority of both Ukrainian oligarchs and transnational financial corporations in a country infamous for corruption. If you think about it, on the one hand, we’re giving EUR 50 billion to Ukraine in reconstruction, in loans, which will never be repaid but will hang over the population, at the same time as we’re putting EUR 20 billion to keep the destruction going in arms. It would make you think, ‘Is this some sort of a scam?’ And then you see the EUR 8 billion in insurance to guarantee the investors. Now, we had something like this in Ireland years ago when Irish citizens bailed out German bondholders in vicious austerity. Now it looks like the Ukrainian and European citizens will be bailing out ‘bomb holders’. It is an absolute joke.

Mr President, I’m in favour, in principle, with Moldova or any other country, for that matter, joining the European Union if they want to, but I abstained on this proposal because it contains a lot that is objectionable: demands for deregulation of the economy; banging on the geopolitical drum against Russia when Moldova has been traditionally neutral; expediting the timetable for access talks prematurely. None of this is doing anybody in Moldova any favours. They are pawns, like citizens in the other countries, in a geopolitical game. We all know that of the three countries ̶ Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia ̶ it is Georgia which has met the conditions closer than anybody else. Yet it is Georgia against whom the barriers are being put up because the European Union wants to interfere in the internal affairs of that country, demanding that they must be more anti-Russian. They look to what has happened in Ukraine and they don’t want that. They deserve EU accession. They deserve to have the right to elect their own government and to have good relations with their neighbours.

Mr President, two weeks ago, Azerbaijan launched a military offensive into Nagorno-Karabakh, where most of the people are Armenian. Reports of detention, torture, attacks, 100 000 people, two-thirds of the population have now fled in the space of a week. Caravans of desperate people filling the roads, trying to get out. Ghost cities with abandoned pets left to roam the streets. And last week, the Commission announced that they’d support those who ‘decided’ to flee. 100 000 people don’t ‘decide’ to flee overnight at the drop of a hat. It’s not a road trip. It’s ethnic cleansing. And why do we refuse to call it that? Politics as usual. Because Baku spent USD 2.9 billion on caviar diplomacy to buy influence in Brussels in recent years, von der Leyen jetting off to sign a gas deal. Azerbaijan is our most reliable energy supplier in the game against Russia. The products of our arms industry sold to Türkiye end up in the hands of the Azerbaijani military. We might be playing the peacemaker now, but I don’t think the people of Armenia believe us.

Mr President, I voted for this file because the intention is clearly to stop greenwashing and speed up decarbonisation, which we support. But we have to be honest about it. Climate change, social inequality, and the democratic crisis are all linked to an economic system dominated by financial markets. Global financing is causing a lot of the dispossession of rural and urban communities, destroying lands, rivers and homes. But for the EU, big finance is the solution. And as the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, made the point at a meeting in Brussels in the summer, it’s naive to think that a problem caused by capitalism is going to be solved by it. And that’s the problem with these bonds. They’re designed to finance investments that contribute and address climate and environmental problems. But it’s within the framework of taxonomy where there are problems with clearly including gas and nuclear as environmentally sustainable activities and, crucially, entrusting responsibility for supervision to external auditors. It’s not good enough. The planet is burning, but we’re given the keys to the arsonist.