Speeches

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 insecurity. Soaring prices and export restrictions have driven potash fertiliser prices to their least affordable level in 15 years. This year, the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, in their Third Periodic Report on Lithuania, pointed out that they were concerned at the measures taken by Lithuania that prevented the transportation of potash from Belarus for third countries in Africa and Latin America, leading to a shortage of fertiliser affecting food security in those countries. They asked Lithuania to change it. The UN Secretary—General said that we must have a solution to the problem of global food security by looking at the reintegration of food and fertiliser production from Russia and Belarus. If you’re giving out about food insecurity, you’ve got to deal with this.

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 there will be consequences. Recently, the UN Special Rapporteur on sanctions published a letter about this directive. She raised a laundry list of rights concerns: due process rights; access to justice; freedom of expression; arbitrariness; fair trials rights; the privilege against self-incrimination. It’s all there. Not to mention the devastating impact that the directive will have on humanitarian work and the people who rely on it. There are 361 million people in need of humanitarian aid right now – 60% of them in countries under sanction. We’re killing people with sanctions, but nobody seems to care. But mass murder, even if you think you’re doing it for the right reasons, is still mass murder. We shouldn’t be passing this directive at all!

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. Sustainable development is an impossibility against the backdrop of unfettered growth, against the backdrop of an economic system which puts profit before people. We talk about peace as being a goal. Well, let’s look at Afghanistan – a country where 47% of the 42 million population is under 15 years old, 15.2 million children are in need of humanitarian assistance and 2.3 million face acute malnutrition. And this after 40 years of conflict, a third year of drought and sanctions. If we want sustainable development, we could start by butting out of these countries!

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 you, it’s a great place to invest. The effect of this runs right through our economy and our society. We see it in our schools. Schoolbooks ditched in favour of Apple iPads, and only Apple iPads, which parents have to fork out hundreds of euros for or take out high interest loans to access the school curriculum. Teachers have to buy their own devices. The schools have to pay for privatised training. And if they can’t pay for the training, it doesn’t get done – tough luck. This is what happens when you surrender your state wholesale to private investment; public services, public goods, equality of opportunity all gets junked. Keep the corporations happy. Keep grease in the wheels. Tell everyone it’s the best small country to do business. And hope no one notices.

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 discussion has left out is the part played in the conflict by the anti—government forces and the international community. The international community is not a bystander, it’s a participant. It has deliberately employed coercion, including sanctions, to intensify divisions in Nicaragua, including pulling society apart, preventing it from developing its own relations with strategic rivals. The issue here is not about what we should do, but what we shouldn’t do. Coercive diplomacy makes things worse. We’ve got to remove the sanctions, stop stoking divisions, and allow peaceful resolution of disputes.

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 deteriorating. And what do we have to offer? Nothing but the same old story. No mention of lifting the sanctions on Syria to allow the refugees to go home and build a life there. No mention of anything but ‘no reforms, no money’. The same old IMF story. Well, we in Ireland know that story very well and ordinary people never benefit from it. It’s about time that we started to recognise the reality: neoliberal economic interference and the role of Israel in this area must be tackled if the people of Lebanon are to be free.

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 won’t make public services better or policing more effective. It will be just more of the same, but faster and probably much worse. That judicial systems around the world are exploring using AI in judicial decision-making should scare the hell out of us. That Ukraine has been held up as a living lab for AI warfare is frightening. We should be approaching this subject cautiously like every new technology. Instead, we’re far too quick to follow industry. Governments across Europe are chomping at the bit to use facial recognition, to hell with people’s rights. The Irish Government, who have MEPs who were in that, coming in here saying they disagree with it, but they’re moving legislation before a possible EU ban. The EPP should be ashamed of themselves for reneging on the hard hours of negotiation at committee.

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 dedication, was the measure to ban the shark fin trade, which we celebrated last week on World Ocean Day, and reminded ourselves of the importance on how we need our sharks. But there’s no point in citizens taking this effort if the outcome is not going to be delivered upon. Now, this vehicle is trumpeted as a way in which citizens can play a direct role in policymaking. If that’s to be the case, then the outcome has to result in an action at the end of it. And I think the measure has to be extended to go beyond just initiating legislation, but also stopping measures that are already in place. It’s a good step in the right direction.

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, where the development of high-speed rail, trains, metro stations everywhere – cities built in 30 years with 30 million people living in them with good transport links. Yet during the same time frame in Ireland, we weren’t even able to develop one metro, not one. For almost 30 years we’ve been talking about it: the plan to develop a metro from Swords, where I live, past the airport to the city centre is still a plan. But the State has spent EUR 300 million on the project so far, without any construction having started, without it even being designed. This is utter lunacy. These are the issues that we urgently need to address.

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, because unfettered growth is fundamentally unsustainable. It’s burning our planet. You can’t window dress your way out of that. You can’t window dress your way out of the savage exploitation of people in the Global South to fuel our growth mania. You can’t window dress your way out of the misery caused to workers all over the world, forced to be more competitive, more productive, work harder, work longer, work faster for less. If we look around at the economic paradigm that we’ve got to, the misery of workers everywhere, a devastated planet, and it promises imminent mass extinction. It has to stop. If there ever was a time to be radical, it’s now. But we’re very much blowing our opportunity.

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 April by record—breaking heat of over 40°C, a terrifying horror inflicted on people who contribute less than 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions. These are the victims of the activities of the Global North. But while we shed crocodile tears for them in here, the same people often are going to come in here and are organising to vote down the Nature Restoration Law – essential measures, which we need, to tackle and help and deal with the climate emergency in order to protect nature and protect the very victims that we are now talking about. If there was a world day to commemorate hypocrisy, we’d certainly be starring in it.

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 be, maybe, the tip of the iceberg because we don’t know the real statistics. So ratifying the various international texts such as the International Labour Organization’s Convention on Violence and Harassment and the Istanbul Convention are very important, but they are not enough. Until we address the deep misogyny at the heart of our societies, then this discrimination and harassment will continue. James Connolly, the great Irish Socialist, said: ‘There are none so fitted to break the chains as those who wear them.’ Well, the victims of sexual harassment and violence are off their knees, they’re not going to tolerate it and they are demanding that action be done.

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 protesters met with spectacular violence. Bulgaria is a catastrophe. Croatia kidnaps and tortures migrants knowingly and gets rewarded by the Commission with Schengen entry. Italy is rounding up and arresting humanitarian workers. The Greek Government is spying on journalists. The Irish Tánaiste is attacking the free press. Latvia is taking elderly people to take language tests or be expelled. And what is Parliament’s response to all of this? The usual cynical nonsense. Political groups blocking debates are only promoting them when they’re a chance for you to have a go against your political rivals. But you reap what you sow in this stuff. If politics is prioritised over the rule of law, then the rule of law breaks down. It’s time to cop on and realise the same rules have to apply to everyone.

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 put an end to the appalling human rights and environmental abuses committed regularly by corporations. But let’s be honest about it: even though we did withstand much of the regressive amendments here today, the text itself does try to give an illusion that these companies are going to police themselves. The recent revelations in Total’s archaic management of the waste generated by the oil extraction process in Yemen in the 2000 are a perfect example of how this is not so. We have had a succession of accidents on the sites, mercury levels well above the standards found in soil and water samples, an increase in cancer cases, particularly among children – join the dots! Total flee the country and left Yemenis under the shellfire with a ruined environment. The fight for justice goes on way past today’s vote.

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 2016. That is a paranoid conspiracy theory and always has been. Every investigation – the Mueller report, the UK ICO report, the Durham report – showed the opposite. If Russia meddled, it had no effect; inconsequential, it is not an existential threat to our democracy. But the big lie is too useful to let go. Russian interference is now the go-to slur for anything or anyone who disagrees. The anti-war movement? Kremlin stooges. Catalan independence? Putin puppets. Journalists, climate actions, trade unions – Russian agents. Every slander more cynical than the last. This is a sign of a deeply unhealthy political culture. We warned at the beginning that this would end in tears. Now we’ve NGOs in uproar over the foreign agents law, the Polish Government accusing the opposition of Russian collusion. I stand by our minority report. This report is a travesty to an open society. Some of its provisions likely breach EU fundamental rights law. If introduced, it will be abused. We need to put a stop to this madness now.

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 Court of Justice against Italy. Twice, rulings were won by the Commission in infringement and follow-on enforcement proceedings. But the injustice remains and the working and retired lettori continue to be robbed of their rightful earnings. Now, the Commission told Italy to pay these workers in March. Yet, in May, the Italian Government brought in a decree-law to legislate for extra time. Extra time? Is 35 years not enough? This is a total sham. Everyone knows it’s administratively very simple to right this wrong. So I echo the call of Italy’s biggest trade unions for the Commission to immediately refer this matter to the Court of Justice. Basta! Paga subito ai lettori.

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 Putin. Zero! What do you think? It’s an outrageous violation and undermining of a legitimate point. You’re as proletarian as your reactionary friends you give out about. You’re a disgrace. You’re just as bad as them!

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 a mad one against its political opponents under the guise of exactly the same thing. For four years now, any time any old rumour of foreign interference has wafted out of the paranoid imaginations of the security sector think—tanks that parade in here day after day, we roll out the red carpet. We encourage, fund and amplify conspiracy theories about Russian interference based on the flimsiest of evidence. From day one, The Left warned that this is a bad road to go down. Learn from history. Counterintelligence paranoia erodes democratic values and the rule of law. For four years we’ve been ignored, we’ve been slandered. And now, four groups, the willing little helpers of the foreign interference crusade, are crying foul: ‘it is being abused’; ‘it’s a threat to fundamental rights’; ‘it’s a threat to the rule of law’. Well remember where you heard it first? We don’t like to say we told you so, but we did tell you so. Pot – kettle – black!

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; the Israelis come and destroy them. We cannot consider ourselves a union of values and continue to call Israel our friend. We need to have this conversation, but in light of the time constraints that we are now already under and the positive remarks by some of the other groups that they will facilitate a full and necessary debate on this in June, I’ll withdraw it on that basis.

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 terms of this potential: worldwide, algae production has increased by almost 75% in the last decade. However, 99.5% of seaweed farming is concentrated in just nine East and South-East Asian countries. It is cruelly underdeveloped in countries like my own, and that absolutely must be encouraged. But we should also learn the lessons from Asia. Algae are already suffering from the impact of climate change. Species are having difficulty adapting to the warmer waters. There are many ecological risks associated with intensive exploitation of algae, which yet remain unknown, both in terms of the environment and biodiversity. So we have to be pragmatic, we have to focus on these issues, but I voted for the report.

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 live in a European Union where 21% of our population are at risk of poverty, where the current generation of young people will be the first to be worse off than their parents. The idea of a permanent pensionable job, a roof over your head are gone. While the Commission insists on maintaining its 3% budget deficit rule, strengthening European budgetary rules, legitimising the war economy and accepting growing inflation which strikes European households, none of these aspirations are going to be achieved – not to mention the naked greed of European capitalists who also stand in the way of achieving it. The only way in which our rights will be protected and advanced is by workers organising. I’m seriously glad to see that happening.

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 our Member States, to varying degrees, have measures to outlaw this process and that other others view a ban favourably. But what does it say about the EU that to move to an EU—wide ban depends on an economic impact assessment; that the Commission do not have a role, we are told, in the killing of female ducklings because it’s not banned in any of the Member States, therefore as isn’t an internal market system and you don’t want to know. So the market trumps everything and animal welfare doesn’t count. That is not good enough as far as I’m concerned. There’s no need for this barbaric practice. As colleagues have said, we need to speed up this process, deliver a full EU—wide ban to stop people exploiting the borders to continue this process, a ban which must include a ban on chick imports from countries that do carry out chick—culling. And while you’re at it, the five countries who do foie gras might consider banning that as well.

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 materials, but this cannot come at the cost of precious habitats, let alone that part of the planet which has the highest diversity of biodiversity on earth: the deep sea. The prospect of deep—sea mining really shows the extent to which profit—seekers are willing to consider the total annihilation of the planet just to boost their bank accounts. The new Treaty on the High Seas introduces an obligation for an environmental impact assessment for deep—sea activities, and that’s grand, but it actually isn’t enough. We need the EU to play a proactive role in ensuring that deep—sea mining does not come to fruition. We need an immediate moratorium on the International Seabed Authority and we need all governments to join the growing resistance to deep—sea mining to protect the ocean.

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 killed around 100 million of these creatures every year; if you count the illegal and undocumented, we could be talking about 273 million. Now those figures are utterly staggering against the backdrop of 60% of shark species being threatened with extinction, which could affect, obviously, the health of our oceans. So I think this is about time that we do something a bit more decisive. We know that in 2013 you banned the separation of shark fins and the disposal at sea, but it would be foolish to think that the regulations don’t have loopholes. We know that Spanish vessels only observe on board about 1-3% of the time. Examples have been given in one month alone of two violations of that. So the only way to deal with it is to stop the trade, better regulate incidental fishing and strengthen the control proceedings so that we can truly protect diversity and human health.

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 hypocrite but an extremely dangerous one. Now there are over a million letters from citizens on President Biden’s desk pleading with them to put the brakes on this oil field in Alaska. But he continues in flagrant violation of the rights of indigenous people and the planet. Tell me, please, how is this any different than the antics of Trump? Now, this Parliament has called for a prohibition of oil and gas exploration in the Arctic, an area of the planet, which must be left undisturbed. Oil infrastructure will soon be a stranded asset. How about the EU delivers a strong message to our like-minded partner that we do not destroy every corner of the planet in the scavenge for an old technology?