What Clare spoke about.

14 Jun

2023

EN Speech

Ensuring food security and the long-term resilience of EU agriculture (A9-0185/2023 - Marlene Mortler)

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Mr President, I voted against this report for a number of reasons, but one of them was the complete failure to recognise the responsibility we bear for food insecurity because of illegal sanctions that we impose. Reports from even the World Trade Organization and the World Bank have pinpointed the impact that this has had on the fertiliser market and the consequential exacerbation of food insecuri…

14 Jun

2023

EN Speech

Extension of the mandate of the EPPO with regard to the criminal offence of violation of Union restrictive measures (debate)

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Madam President, I think the real question here isn’t who should enforce the directive, but whether we should be passing it at all. What we’re doing here is creating a new EU crime – violation of sanctions – rushed through without an impact assessment, with almost zero opportunity for stakeholders or rights bodies to have an impulse. But we’re on a crusade and to hell with the consequences! And th…

14 Jun

2023

EN Speech

Implementation and delivery of the Sustainable Development Goals (debate)

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Madam President, talking about the Sustainable Development Goals is a bit like the discussion on child labour the other night. We all wring our hands and say ‘Oh God, isn’t it desperate’. But we never joined the dots. We never ask enough about why are people poor and hungry, and what role did we play in making them so. Because it’s not a random act of God. These are the consequences of our actions…

14 Jun

2023

EN Speech

Make Europe the place to invest (debate)

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Madam President, attracting investment is something which Irish people have a lot of experience in. Irish Government policy since the 1960s has been to bend over backwards to facilitate foreign direct investment. They can pay no tax. They can build what they want, when they want, wherever they want. Ireland can’t build a hospital or a metro line or enough houses, but for businesses, let me tell yo…

13 Jun

2023

EN Speech

Situation in Nicaragua (debate)

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Mr President, the weaponisation of human rights in Nicaragua, this small, poor country 10 000 km away, is really very disgusting as far as I’m concerned. It’s very true that the United Nations report on Nicaragua alleges serious human rights violations; the forced deportation of hundreds of people and the stripping of citizenship cannot be ignored. But what the UN wasn’t looking at and what this d…

13 Jun

2023

EN Speech

Situation in Lebanon (debate)

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Mr President, interesting to see French colleagues haven’t lost their colonialism. So this is Lebanon, where the currency has suffered record depreciation, hyperinflation, where one child in five can no longer go to school, 40% of households cutting back on education spending, where public administration is regularly marred by strikes as desperate workers try to get their wages, a health system de…

13 Jun

2023

EN Speech

Artificial Intelligence Act (debate)

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Madam President, AI is being sold to us as the latest in a series of ground-breaking technological leaps. It’ll make our lives easier. It’ll make the world a better place. Well, don’t believe the hype. Like so much before us, AI will be used for surveillance and control. It won’t give us a four-day working week or longer summer holidays. It won’t solve the climate crisis or redistribute wealth. It…

12 Jun

2023

EN Speech

Implementation of the Regulations on the European citizens' initiative (short presentation)

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Madam President, I think there’s some very good ideas in the report, and they are the absolute minimum really to improve on what could be a good way to make citizens feel much more empowered. And I’d like to pay tribute to all of the people and all of the groups who’ve got involved in this process to date. One of the initiatives which made us, and we all know how much work it takes and how much de…

12 Jun

2023

EN Speech

Large transport infrastructure projects in the EU (debate)

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Madam President. I’m really glad that we are discussing the large-scale transport infrastructure projects and the problems associated with them because, God knows, there are quite a few. And I think the one that we really do need to urgently unlock is the issue of rail transport, which is key against the backdrop of the challenges of climate change. Now we’ve just recently come back from China, wh…

12 Jun

2023

EN Speech

Competition policy - annual report 2022 (debate)

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Mr President, reading this report is really a little bit like hearing dinosaurs roar – competitiveness, productivity inputs, outputs, throughputs, profit, and above all, growth, all the sacred cows of the old and destructive economic model that everybody knows is utterly unsustainable. But we’re still banging the drum for it, and the occasional nod towards sustainability just doesn’t cut it, becau…

12 Jun

2023

EN Speech

EU Day for the victims of the global climate crisis (debate)

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Mr President, I have to say, the brass neck in this place really beats all sometimes. We’re in here to mark EU day to commemorate the victims of the global climate crisis – and, well, we should. It is absolutely right to remember that last year 33 million people in Pakistan, one out of seven of the population, were forced to abandon their homes. They experienced record monsoons, now followed this …

1 Jun

2023

EN Speech

Sexual harassment in the EU and MeToo evaluation (A9-0178/2023 - Michal Šimečka)

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Madam President, I again voted for this report because I think the question is, are we up for the fight against sexual harassment? We know the figures: one in two women in the EU has been a victim of sexual harassment before the age of 15, more than one person in five has been the victim of violence and harassment – whether physical, psychological or sexual – in the workplace. And this could only …

1 Jun

2023

EN Speech

Breaches of the Rule of law and fundamental rights in Hungary and frozen EU funds (B9-0257/2023)

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Madam President, I voted for this report. Hungary is a rule of law basket case, but it’s not the only one. We’ve Spain, where the UN Human Rights Committee has twice ruled that the treatment of the Catalan independence politicians by the Spanish state breaches their rights. In France, we have people’s rights continuously and systematically violated under the guise of counter-terrorism, while prote…

1 Jun

2023

EN Speech

Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence (A9-0184/2023 - Lara Wolters)

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Madam President, I too voted in favor of this report on corporate due diligence, and I would like to thank so many members of our society who lobbied so hard in order to get this past the line. I would absolutely like to share and echo their concerns about the inevitable watering down of this crucial directive by the Council. It is very clear that we need a strong and robust directive that helps p…

1 Jun

2023

EN Speech

Foreign interference in all democratic processes in the European Union, including disinformation - Election integrity and resilience build-up towards European elections 2024 (debate)

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Madam President, President Trump and Brexit should have been a wake-up call for neoliberals, but rather than accept their own responsibility and make amends, they chose to pretend that they hadn’t really lost. They found a foreign scapegoat, ramped up the blame game, and so the myth of Russian interference was born. Does Russia meddle? Of course it does. But the Kremlin did not swing elections in …

31 May

2023

EN Speech

One-minute speeches on matters of political importance

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Mr President, parity is supposed to be the most important right under Community law and an essential element of European citizenship. But for over 30 years, this right continues to be denied to lettori, foreign lecturers in Italian universities. This is the longest-running discrimination case on record, and it has to stop. It’s happening in defiance of four clear court rulings by the European Cour…

31 May

2023

EN Speech

Threat to democracy and the rule of law in Poland, in particular through the creation of an investigative committee (debate)

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Mr President, I am sorry, but the colleague here has just asked me how much money I receive from Putin, which I find highly unacceptable and outrageous, and I would like that remark withdrawn. It’s implying bribery and corruption, which clearly I have never been party to. So could you please clarify your remark and withdraw it? (Interjection from Marek Belka) You asked me how much money I got from…

31 May

2023

EN Speech

Threat to democracy and the rule of law in Poland, in particular through the creation of an investigative committee (debate)

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Mr President, tomorrow Parliament votes on the second Kalniete report on foreign interference – a sprawling paranoid McCarthyist tract stigmatising whole sections of society and opposition politics under the spectre of Russian interference, calling for a battery of repressive measures. Now, here we are discussing the threat to democracy and the rule of law because the Polish Government goes off on…

31 May

2023

EN Speech

Order of business

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Madam President, over 5 days earlier this month, Israel attacked and bombed Gaza 323 times. Ten civilians were killed, 1 100 people displaced. More than 150 000 Palestinian civilians have been killed or injured in Gaza and the West Bank since 2008; 33 000 of those were children. The EU stands by and watches this happen and calls Israel our friend. We construct houses and schools in the West Bank; …

11 May

2023

EN Speech

Towards a strong and sustainable EU algae sector (B9-0233/2023)

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Madam President, they were neglected almost everywhere else while cherished in Asia, but algae are now seen by some as a sort of cure-all, the magic panacea for climate problems. It is true that there are very many opportunities from algae which should be developed in terms of food and feed, medicine, packaging, carbon sequestration and even biofuels. But the statistics speak for themselves in ter…

11 May

2023

EN Speech

Roadmap on a Social Europe: two years after Porto (B9-0235/2023, B9-0236/2023)

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Madam President, I sincerely hope that the nappies were for MEP Flanagan’s daughter rather than himself – but maybe that’s a different discussion! I voted in favour of this resolution, which has some really good ideas about how to make a social Europe a reality. Despite the fact that European competencies in this field are limited, we could be doing an awful lot more than we are at the moment. We …

11 May

2023

EN Speech

Prohibiting chick and duckling killing in EU law (debate)

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Madam President, we’re talking here – as colleagues have said – about the systemic culling of male chicks and female ducklings by way of gassing and grinding. It’s horrific, wanton cruelty and it happens to 330 million day—old chicks annually, and millions of day—old female ducklings: exterminated because they have no economic value to the egg or foie gras industry. Now I’m very glad that five of …

11 May

2023

EN Speech

Protecting and restoring marine ecosystems for sustainable and resilient fisheries - Agreement of the IGC on Marine Biodiversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (High Seas Treaty) (debate)

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Mr President, it really is amazing that so few people know about the UN High Seas Treaty signed in March of this year, because it’s actually extraordinarily important in terms of starting to deal with the protection of the world’s ocean. The ocean absorbs our CO2 and all we give it back is pollution and destruction. We know that the green transition has unleashed the quest for critical raw materia…

11 May

2023

EN Speech

European Citizens' Initiative "Stop Finning – Stop the trade" (debate)

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Mr President, I too want to add my congratulations to the organisers of this initiative. It is no small task and some considerable achievement to pull off one of these, and it really reflects the importance of the issue, on the one hand, but also how much the EU is involved, being one of the largest shark fin exporters in the world. We know that since the 1980s the legal shark meat trade has kille…

10 May

2023

EN Speech

New Oil Drilling in Alaska – impact on the global climate crisis and the rights of indigenous peoples (debate)

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Madam President, the International Energy Agency has made it clear: to reach our climate goals, there mustn’t be any new fossil fuel infrastructure. Yet, as colleagues have said, the Biden administration is giving the green light to the largest oil project in the US, despite having campaigned for an end to any new oil and gas explosion licenses on federal land, proving that he’s not only a hypocri…