Speeches

Mr President, I think there’s no doubt about it that there is a massive shortage of truck drivers across the EU, which is having a major impact on the economy as a whole. And, as colleagues have said, one of the key reasons for this is the deterioration in working conditions, which is a significant factor on the recruitment problem that we have with new drivers – a situation fuelled by the drive for profits and the liberalisation taking place in the industry. The result of these problems and policies is a massive fatigue among transport workers, whether it’s a pilot in the cockpit or a lorry driver in the cab, long working hours, long periods away from home and poor rest conditions are contributing factors. Now, in 2021, the ETF stated that 60% of lorry drivers say they regularly have to drive while tired, and a third say they’ve fallen asleep at the wheel. These people are literally taking their lives and the lives of others into their own hands and we have shown ourselves unable to properly regulate. The state of rest areas is alarming. Roads are busier, schedules tighter, but there’s little being done to improve drivers conditions, and we have to do an awful lot more.

Madam President, the Energy Charter Treaty really is a bizarre thing. It’s a type of monument to a Robin Hood in reverse, where we rob from the public to line the pockets of big corporations; an international agreement which establishes a framework for fossil fuel companies to sue sovereign states for damaging their profits in pursuing climate action. How did it get to this situation? It really is capitalism unleashed. Parliament has called for a coordinated, EU-level withdrawal. If we don’t leave as one EU bloc, we still have 20 years of insidious lawsuits from the biggest polluters in the planet because of the treaty’s sunset clause. We really do need leadership from the Commission to make this an absolute priority. But we also have to be consistent. If it’s clearly ludicrous to have an investor-state suing mechanism in the Energy Treaty Charter, then it shouldn’t be acceptable in the trade agreements that we are ramming through with the likes of Chile and Mexico that we’re trying to conclude and ratify. We have to learn from our mistakes.

Signora Presidente, glyphosate is the most widely used herbicide in the world, an active ingredient in the weed-killer ‘Roundup’. It kills all life it touches. Only the genetically-modified Roundup-resistant seed survives, and here we are authorising it again for another ten years! The boardrooms of Monsanto and Bayer must be cracking open the champagne to the sound of the death knell of nature. In Europe, we have a full on emergency with the state of our soils. Up to 70% of them are degraded. Unless we seriously put our shoulder to the wheel, ban glyphosate and support sustainable practices, then we’re selling out our farmers – the very ones you’re all claiming to represent – because you cannot farm on dead soil. It is like throwing acid onto the soil and thinking you can farm on it for generations. This is a threat to our long-term food security, our farmers livelihoods. It enslaves them to corporations, privatises seeds, not to mention the impact on our health. We will be co-tabling an objection to this reauthorisation.

Mr President, I have to admit that today’s debate makes me deeply uncomfortable. We have an agreement in here not to try to influence the outcome of national elections by scheduling debates just before national electorates go to the polls. Yet, here we are just two weeks out from the Polish elections, having this debate. With another plenary in a fortnight just after those elections are over, could we not have waited until then? What’s the urgency? Of course, there isn’t any. There’s an investigation underway, and this could have waited until 16 October. Now, it should go without saying that I’m no fan of the Polish Government, or of any other one for that matter, but these days you seem to have to explain everything. I’m not a fan either of this Parliament being used to thumb the scales in a domestic election battle. To do that is an abuse of the Parliament’s position, and if the right wing are the targets today, it will be the left tomorrow and the centre the day after that. Does the Polish Government have questions to answer? Sure they do, on this and a hell of a lot of other things as well. To be honest, they should answer them. There should be an independent investigation and, as a parliament, we can debate the outcome of that. However, to everybody in here who has been clutching their pearls about all of this, I’d say Europe’s border regime is massively and murderously unjust and wrong. Money and power make borders dissolve, and governments from every big political group in here presides over visa and immigration regimes where money, power and whiteness gives you privileged access to the EU. By all means be critical of fraud and corruption in the sale of visas, but while you’re at it, you might turn your attention to the really large—scale problems with Europe’s borders, the ones that most of your governments support and enforce.

Madam President, I would like to make a point of order under Rule 10 of the Rules of Procedures. During yesterday’s opening session, a French ID Group MEP made false and defamatory statements about an event organised by myself and Mick Wallace and those who participated in it, thereby bringing the Parliament into disrepute. Let me be very clear: the speakers at our event, who were former detainees at Guantanamo, were never charged – not to mind convicted – of any terrorist activity. They were the victims of brutal torture and a violation of their rights. And they remain an outstanding example of the resilience of the human spirit. It was an honour for us to share a platform with them and the other speakers whom the gentleman conveniently forgot to mention: current US military and civilian lawyers, a former US military chaplain, the UN Special Rapporteur for the protection of fundamental rights and the prosecution of terrorism, and most importantly, a representative of the families of the victims of 9/11. All united ... (The President cut off the speaker)

Madam President, later today, we will vote on whether to ban the deployment of spyware against journalists in the EU. The Media Freedom Act is the very first time the EU is going to legislate on the issue of spyware, a technology described by Edward Snowden as being like a nuclear weapon. And it is. There are no circumstances where its deployment is in line with fundamental rights. It takes over your devices, spies on your every move, everyone you come into contact with. It can even send messages from those devices. It obliterates the very concept of privacy and undermines the right to a fair trial. And as it currently stands, we are today proposing to empower governments, private entities and more, to use it against journalists. Now, for God’s sake, we never stop talking in here about defending journalists, the danger of authoritarianism, freedom to the media. If you care about defending journalists, you must ban spyware. It’s the least you can do. Support our amendments in this regard.

Madam President, Ravil Mingazov hasn’t seen his son, Yusuf, since he was a baby 22 years ago. A Russian Tatar, he fled Russia because of religious persecution, picked up in Pakistan, sold for a ransom to the US and sent to Guantanamo like so many others. He was tortured and brutalised, released after 14 years without a charge ever being made against him – released under Obama to the United Arab Emirates on the diplomatic assurance that he could rebuild his life and reconnect with his family. That never happened. For the past six and a half years, he’s been a prisoner in UAE. Bear in mind, he has never been charged with anything. The Emirati authorities have said they plan to forcibly repatriate him to Russia, where he faces torture and an unsafe future. The EU must urgently join repeated UN rapporteurs and working groups to call on the UAE to immediately release him and resettle him in a safe third country, preferably with his family in Britain where they reside.

Madam President, I just wanted to make a brief point about women working in the transport industry as part of this important discussion. As a former Aer Lingus employee and airport shop steward, I think it’s really important that the voices of women working in the sector are acknowledged if we are to overcome some of the systemic challenges. It’s no surprise that women continue to be under-represented in aeronautical professions. According to a study last year, less than 6 % of pilots of the world’s major airlines are women. On the other hand, a majority of the cabin crew are women. These women are on the front line, fighting tirelessly for better working conditions against violence from passengers and from colleagues, unbearable working hours and a phenomenal pressure on their personal appearances. In 2018, an association of women in aviation international said 71 % of the women questioned indicated they’d suffered harassment at work. These are huge issues, which need to be tackled. Unfortunately, when it comes to the demands of working conditions in aviation, women, like men, find the regulators often conspicuous by their absence.

Madam President, I think the directive really is essentially technical, but the discussion shouldn’t have been. I mean, in road transport, intelligent transport systems have been developing now for over 20 years. We know that some applications are very widespread and well known: journey planners, travel information systems, intelligent traffic lights, real time traffic information and management. And they are designed and definitely do contribute to making transport policy more efficient, more comfortable, safe and secure in a way. But that’s grand as good as it goes. I mean, we are witnessing new stages of the development. We have autonomous car models and the dangers are so well highlighted by colleagues about the exchange of data in the exchange of information. You know, in some of these measures, if it was being proposed in China, people would be jumping up and down about a massive surveillance scam. So we have to be careful. And I do think the key point is that any discussion on an intelligent transport system mustn’t get us away from the fact that the key objective should be moving away from road transport into rail and into a reduction on car use for public transport.

Madam President, we’re supposed to believe that the economic coercion is something that the bad guys do, and we need this law to defend ourselves. But, of course, everybody knows that’s a barefaced lie. We play the victim while engaging in exactly the same thing ourselves. Josep Borrell told us in March that the EU should be ‘an actor that is capable of wielding influence on what happens in the world, using instruments of coercion, making others behave the way we want them to behave.’ But, of course, that’s just defensive. When we say enlargement is a geopolitical tool, when we bully and blackmail countries like Georgia to do as we say or what else, we’re doing economic coercion. Some people here seem to have forgotten that the law was initiated to counteract US coercion against the EU. A few years on, with the EU companies still victim to US secondary sanctions, there’s barely a mention of it in this document. Instead, it’s all about bending the knee to the US, getting stuck into their tit-for-tat trade war against China. It’s a nonsense and we want no part of it.

Madam President, I think it is really good that we are talking about this rather than not talking about it. But I think we have to be very clear in examining the reality. Asbestos was banned at European level almost 20 years ago, and yet it still remains present in 35 million buildings, killing, as colleagues have said, about 90 000 people in the EU every year. It’s a mini war, a major war against workers, construction workers in particular. And now that so many of our buildings need renovation, we are putting more and more workers potentially at risk of further exposure. So it’s really important that we’re addressing this issue now. And against that backdrop, it is incredibly welcome that the maximum level of exposure of asbestos is agreed at 50 times lower than the current exposure limit. But we have to be clear: the long implementation period means that Member States can weasel out of it. So our job has to be to deliver this in reality, not just on paper, to struggle side by side with the workers and the unions who are in the forefront of the construction industry.

Mr President, they say that you reap what you sow. But the reality is, when Europe’s elite sow catastrophe, it’s the people who always reap it. A recent Ipsos survey revealed that a third of Europeans are currently in a precarious financial situation. That means they can’t afford things like food, travel and clothes. It means they’re living in poverty or teetering on the brink of it. Nearly half of Europeans say they can’t afford to heat their homes and 40% of parents have said they can’t meet the needs of their children. One in three skip meals so that they can feed their kids. Almost everyone is scared. Everyone’s lives are being consumed by anxiety. 60% of Europeans are worried about an unexpected expense that could tip them over the edge. Now big business was already savaging people’s lives before Europe’s powers decided that a permanent war is better than peace. But that decision has made things worse. The people of Europe are paying for this endless war through a cost of living crisis. What’s the point in us wringing our hands if we don’t join the dots?

Madam President, I too voted against this file because while there are a lot of general aspirations about making the EU more democratic, they were absolutely cancelled out by the call to get rid of consensus decision-making and to put in place a system of qualified majority voting, which is ruled by the big boys and is inherently anti-democratic. You can dress it up all you like, but nothing really in this proposal is going to deal with the fundamental absence of democracy at EU level. How is it democratic that the current EU was roundly rejected in democratic referendums on an EU Constitution in 2005, but then repackaged and rammed through by EU elites in the Lisbon Treaty? Three years later, only Ireland got another referendum. But again, wrong answer, so do it all again! That’s so-called ‘democracy’. Nobody voted for Ursula von der Leyen, yet she is supposedly the head of the EU. Elections or not, the truth is that actual democracy would require a hell of a lot more than its offered in this package.

Madam President, I was happy to answer the call of the civil societies organising the coalition for a global and just transition, and vote against this file because, as they say, mining is an act of war; extraction is an act of war. It always means human rights violations. It always means poisoning the air we breathe, the food we eat, the water we drink. Mostly the poison stays in the ground and water forever. We are in a hunt for critical raw materials, trying to decarbonise, but we have to realise that endless and continued growth is not the solution. Some of the proposals in this text are absolutely outrageous, such as the idea that if extraction projects are located in protected areas such as Natura 2000, which involves about 40% of them, then a derogation applies. This is absolute madness. We need to take precautions regarding the environmental, social and economic aspects of extraction, and we absolutely have to tackle the abusive practices of our mining companies outside of the European Union.

Madam President, like everything to do with Travellers in Ireland, Traveller education just isn’t a government priority. Ireland’s last Traveller education strategy was published in 2006. That’s 17 years ago! We’ve been waiting for an updated version ever since. A review was supposed to be published six years ago and it was only started last July. Now it really is a lack of respect for Traveller rights by successive governments that has got us to this situation. Our policy has been characterised by promises, delays, half measures, half implementation. There are no ring-fenced funds for primary or post-primary education for Travellers. Why? Because the government really doesn’t care about it. It’s been left to local Traveller organisations to pick up the pieces. Traveller education funds were gutted in 2008 and they have never recovered. Added to that is Ireland’s system of privatised early childcare years, which means that Traveller children are more particularly excluded thanks to simple racism. It’s hard enough for Traveller children to overcome discrimination and marginalisation without this on top of it. We really have to do better.

Mr President, I think it is ironic that on the day that Ursula von der Leyen delivered probably the limpest State of the Union address yet, while attempting to feign concern for the health of EU citizens and the environment, her political group exposed the con when it came to the votes. There’s a pattern now that every time we go to plenary with an important piece of environmental legislation, there’s a coordinated attack on us led by the EPP. This one, the directive on air quality, was a revision to introduce stricter limits for pollutants to reduce the shocking number of premature deaths from air pollution – 238 000 people in 2020. How in God’s name could anybody object to this? It is a scandal. We, of course, should have air quality limits in line with the World Health Organization’s guidelines. It’s beyond shocking that many people in this Parliament didn’t support that. I’m very glad that I did and I think if citizens wanted a lesson in how big business and sections of this Parliament pander to it, this vote was it.

Mr President, the criminalisation of the purchase of sex is a disastrous policy. It doesn’t eliminate demand, it simply pushes it underground. Not just Amnesty, but PICUM, ENAR, UNAIDS, the World Health Organisation, the International Labour Organisation, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health, The Lancet and sex workers themselves, they all agree: criminalisation policies harm women, that’s just a fact. Everywhere the policy has been introduced, women have been harmed. They’ve been criminalised, imprisoned, deported and put in danger. They they’ve been pushed into precarity and homelessness. If you want to fight human trafficking, fight human trafficking. If you want to stop women being forced into the sex trade, and I’m sure we all do, then make sure you help well-run, well-funded outreach and exit programmes. But above all, you must listen to sex workers. We need decriminalisation. Sex workers need regulation. They need security. They need safety. They need their rights vindicated, not lectures and good intentions. And it doesn’t matter if your intentions are good – our job, if we care about women’s rights, is to protect them.

Madam President, I’m very glad to see that this week, on the 50th anniversary of the US-backed coup against Salvador Allende in Chile, that colleagues from across all sides of the House are taking very seriously the fact that there is an attempt by the extreme right to overthrow the democratic election of President-elect Bernardo Arévalo in Guatemala. Outrageous enough that it was that the indigenous people and CODECA were prevented from standing, the election itself was fair and the outcome was clear. The joint motion, which was finished yesterday, is already out of date because events are moving so fast. Yesterday evening the reports came in of the prosecutor conducting police raids on the facilities where the election results are stored, opening ballot boxes despite having no authority to do that, violating the chain of custody and the physical evidence of this election. This is an absolute outrage. The losing parties are doing everything they can to annul this election. It is an attempt to derail democracy and deny the will of the Guatemalan people. The EU has to make it absolutely clear that it will not support any attempt to overthrow the legitimately elected government of Guatemala.

Madam President, the Commission announced plans for an SME relief package in late 2022, but it’s only now that we are beginning to see some of the details unveiled. It has taken a year to put flesh on the proposal, not to mind the fact that nothing really has been implemented. Meanwhile, business bankruptcies in the second quarter of 2023 were at the highest level in the EU since records began. They’re disappearing even as we stand here. Small businesses really wonder about how important they actually are when they see the speed with which we can deliver: the Ukraine Facility of EUR 50 billion in loans and grants mentioned in June will be voted on next month. They see 500 million for ammunition for Ukraine mobilised in two months, but it’s taken a year before we get any details. Clearly, you get an idea of the priorities of the EU. We’re prepared to shoot ourselves in the foot with self—destructive sanctions that have a devastating impact on the price of energy, affecting small businesses and undermining workers’ pay packets rather than tackling massive profiteering and working to end the war. It’s about time we started to get our priorities right.

Madam President, all sectors that use fossil fuels are facing an enormous decarbonisation challenge, and time is running out. Unfortunately, this text will largely serve the industry’s greenwashing operations. Don’t get me wrong: I want the aviation sector to succeed in decarbonising. I used to work in it. I live on an island on the periphery of Europe, but the threat upon us in the last trilogue was clear: it was either this agreement or nothing. That says to me that it is dominated by the vested interests of the airlines calling the shots and making the decisions. And that just isn’t good enough. Eurocontrol forecasts that traffic will increase by an extra 20 million flights every year. It’s going to put huge pressure on SAF production. The definition in the text keeps the problematic feedstocks that aren’t sustainable either. There’s no cap on the use of used cooking oil, which could lead to European aviation demand exceeding supply, and synthetic fuels, which are supposed to be the most environmentally friendly, could be 100% nuclear. For these reasons, unfortunately, for us, this text doesn’t go far enough.

Madam President, I really think it takes some neck for people to come in here and talk about repression in Belarus, feigned sympathy for Belarusians, while Lithuania, an EU Member State, flagrantly denies the human rights of Belarusian refugees. Of course, you’re happy to indulge Europe’s Juan Guaidó, Tsikhanouskaya. Meanwhile, 1 700 Belarusians are deemed to be a threat to the national security of Lithuania: 900 in Lithuania, many – like Olga Karach – simply conscientious objectors or campaigners for peace. This is deeply troubling and unacceptable. But, of course, what is also deeply troubling are the serious reports of the poor health and dire conditions of trade union leaders Gennady Fedynich, Vasily Beresnev and Vatslav Oreshko, currently in prison in Belarus. We requested to visit these men in the best traditions of international solidarity, having previously visited prisoners all over the world and never been denied. To date, the Belarusian authorities have not granted our request. I want to ask them on the public record: we’re still waiting, what are you afraid of?

Madam President, some of you call Türkiye a NATO ally and fret about their ambivalence over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But meanwhile, France, Germany, Italy and the rest sell weapons to Türkiye, including submarines, combat drones, fighter jets, even as they occupy 36% of a fellow EU Member State, even as they carry out air and artillery strikes, killing civilians in Iraq and Syria. According to the End Cross Border Bombing campaign, last year, twenty civilians were killed, including six children. Fifty-eight people were injured in eleven incidents conducted by the Turkish armed forces in northern Iraq. Six of those involved fire coming from the 60+ military bases Türkiye has built inside Iraqi Kurdistan. One of them targeted a picnic area. Yet today, the European Parliament voted to ramp up defence expenditure even more to support the European arms industry. How many of those deaths involved weapons made here? How many of these new arms will be used by Türkiye in the future?

Madam President, I had the privilege to listen to Bolivia’s President Arce and Colombia’s President Petro at the Cumbre de Los Pueblos in the Parliament in July, coinciding with the EU-CELAC summit. And they made the point that the summit was a dialogue between two very different worlds. For them, they were the governments of the people promoting participative democracy at community level and multi-polarity on the world stage. For them, the crisis of capitalism was showing a way forward. For them, climate change was a living reality, which had completely changed the free market paradigm, and they couldn’t believe that the Europeans were so naive to think that a problem caused by capitalism could be solved by it. President Petro pointed out that for all Europe’s lecturing about human rights, the reality was, and is, that 250 million people cross the dangerous tropical forests of Colombia to reach the US and Europe. But the greatest mass grave isn’t there – it’s in the Mediterranean. They also spelled out that sanctions and embargoes are killing people, they are equivalent of a medieval siege, punishing the people. If we want a partnership with CELAC, we have to lift the sanctions.

Mr President, I support the self-determination of the people and the emancipation of women in Iran and everywhere else against repression, patriarchy and theocracy – something women in Ireland know a hell of a lot about, I can tell you – but I am not a fool enough to think that there will be any help for the people of Iran from a cat’s paw parliament in the lair of imperialism in Brussels or in Washington. We saw that once again in July when a parade of European parliamentarians, including Enda Kenny, Ireland’s former Taoiseach, and a gaggle of MEPs, including some who’ve spoken in this discussion, flocked to the Free Iran World Summit in Paris to rub shoulders with the extreme right in America and support a ten point plan for overthrowing the government of Iran – an event organised by MEK, an extremist cult accused of intimidating, torturing and murdering members of the Iranian diaspora who sided with Saddam Hussein against the people of Iran, showing yet again that despite all your sloganeering in here about human rights and democracy, European elites are just bandwagoners for regime change!

Mr President, I think if you wanted an example of the absolute hypocrisy, arrogance and ‘do as I say, not as I do’ attitude of the European Union, this has got to be it. Yet another grubby EU deal with yet another repressive government: a billion euro promise for Tunisia – that renowned violator of human rights – on condition that it joins Europe’s border guards. I’m sure we’re going to hear an awful lot tomorrow from Ursula von der Leyen about Europe’s values, about the battle between autocracy and democracy that’s being waged in Ukraine. But will we hear about the EU’s cosy relationship with some of the world’s ugliest governments? Will we hear about the people starving to death in Nagorno-Karabakh, thanks to the EU’s friends in Azerbaijan? Will we hear about the tens of thousands dead – massacred by EU values all the way from West and Central Africa to Lampedusa? Like hell we will! Because rhetoric and reality are in sharp conflict in here. Is it any wonder we’ve no credibility? And if the EPP are so concerned about refugees and migrants, stop destroying people’s countries and rolling back on climate change commitments.