What Clare spoke about.

10 May

2023

EN Speech

Belarus: the inhumane treatment and hospitalisation of prominent opposition leader Viktar Babaryka

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Mr President, I genuinely think it’s an awful pity that we weaponise human rights in here. We’ve had multiple motions about human rights violations in China and Russia and Belarus and not a single word about the appalling violations in the US, Israel or our own Member States. Of course, I regret and oppose that there are people in Belarus in prison for trying to change their society, as I do those…

10 May

2023

EN Speech

Media freedom and freedom of expression in Algeria, the case of journalist Ihsane El-Kadi

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Mr President, the sentencing of Algerian journalist Ihsane El Kadi to five years in prison is obviously deeply concerning and indicates the direction in which Algerian society is going: far from the aspirations of the Hirak in 2019. Three hundred political prisoners of conscience, systemic dissolution of civil society organisations, the muzzling of the press, the arrests and intimidation – and non…

10 May

2023

EN Speech

Adequacy of the protection afforded by the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework (debate)

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Mr President, this is actually an excellent report. It makes clear that you can dress it up any way you like, as the Commission is trying to do again, but the unalterable fact is, until the US stops its mass surveillance of EU citizens’ data, then there is no legal basis on which that data can be sent there. Full stop. End of story. This has been going on for a decade. Those facts haven’t changed.…

10 May

2023

EN Speech

Update of the anti-corruption legislative framework (debate)

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Mr President, the Commission proposal for an anti-corruption directive is certainly not unwelcome, particularly coming from a country like Ireland where corruption is actually part of daily life. Names like Liam Lawlor, Bertie Ahern, Ray Burke – names very familiar to our friends in Fianna Fail and in Renew. Denis O’Brien, Michael Lowry – well known to Fine Gael, with the corruption ridden Nationa…

10 May

2023

EN Speech

Ukrainian cereals on the European market (debate)

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Madam President, the key problem here is not actually the war. It’s industrial food production under neoliberal capitalism. The glut of grain on the markets in Poland, in Romania, Bulgaria shows that the ongoing food price crisis is not and never was, about a shortage of food. It’s all about distribution and dysfunctional markets. We have a food system that systematically fails to get food where i…

9 May

2023

EN Speech

2022 Report on Kosovo (debate)

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Madam President, anyone reading this report would think that nearly all of Kosovo’s problems have magically vanished. It glosses over the claims of irregularities in the elections, it passes over the tensions and violence, it minimises Kosovo’s shortcomings in terms of both rule of law and corruption, while at the same time going full—on in terms of the structural reforms which will create a safe …

9 May

2023

EN Speech

2022 Report on Serbia (debate)

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Madam President, for over a decade, the EU has dangled membership to coax Serbia through a hoop of market reforms. Serbia voted at the UN to condemn the Russian invasion. They voted to expel Russia from the Human Rights Council. But for some fanatics in here they are actually pro—Russian because they had the audacity not to impose EU sanctions on Russia – a decision that was patently in the intere…

9 May

2023

EN Speech

Situation in Sudan (debate)

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Madam President, the Western media shows two warlords, two rival military factions, ordinary people, frightened and fleeing, but nothing explains – no context, no responsibility. The European elites throw up their hands and wonder, how shall we swoop in and save the Africans from themselves. But there is no mention of European funding, external border policies, the financing of state forces to rou…

8 May

2023

EN Speech

One-minute speeches on matters of political importance

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Mr President, as we sit cosily here, 30 men languish in Guantanamo. Some of them have been there for 20 years – in most cases without a charge, without a conviction, kidnapped and sold to the US under pretence of being somebody else, sold into unimaginable horror, where torture and degrading treatment was relentless and routine. That torture continues today in a different format. The UN Working Gr…

8 May

2023

EN Speech

Co-management of fisheries in the EU (short presentation)

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Mr President, the management of fisheries in the EU is certainly something that we should be talking about. From EU money buying up fishing rights from poor African countries – calling it aid spending as a cover to hoover up their fishing resources – to a common fisheries policy which has seen fishers in countries like Ireland utterly devastated: our record really isn’t a good one. Whether it’s th…

8 May

2023

EN Speech

Schools scheme for fruit, vegetables, milk and dairy products (short presentation)

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Mr President, I’m really glad we’re discussing the school scheme, particularly for fruit and vegetables. I’d like to see it extended to fortified plant milk, because this discussion is taking place against the backdrop of the World Health Organisation declaring that the EU is facing an obesity crisis of epidemic proportions: 60% of adults are overweight and 28% of children, and that’s where the fa…

8 May

2023

EN Speech

Implementation of the Audiovisual Media Services Directive (short presentation)

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Mr President, this Directive was revised in 2018 to harmonise EU broadcasting rules, and I think as we look at its implementation, it’s worth pointing out that one of its earliest ideas was to promote European work – showing European films and TV right across Europe – which is grand, but it hasn’t really caught on. But what is glaringly omitted is the idea of promoting information on European inst…

8 May

2023

EN Speech

Establishing the Act in support of ammunition production (debate)

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Mr President, so here we are, and the corks must be popping in the arms industry boardrooms all over Europe. A plan rushed through behind closed doors, no public consultation, no public debate, presented as a fait accompli, just waiting for our rubberstamp. A unilateral declaration by an unelected Commissioner that Europe is now a war economy; not a war on poverty or homelessness or on climate cha…

8 May

2023

EN Speech

Methane emissions reduction in the energy sector (debate)

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Mr President, I really want to commend Jutta Paulus for what is really a very good report, despite all the odds. When we are regulating the fossil fuel industry, we’re up against the most organised and well-financed group of disinformation merchants out there. So I really think we’re doing the right thing by introducing this legislation to stop methane leaks from fossil fuel infrastructure and I r…

20 Apr

2023

EN Speech

EU Action Plan against Trafficking in Cultural Goods (debate)

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I thought you were very good as well, Commissioner! Mr President, beyond the human devastation from war, the annihilation of cultural wealth through looting and export really completes the tragedy and represents a crime, really, against humanity’s history. I remember being in Babylon and meeting the guardian of that ancient site whose father and grandfather before him had been there, and he told t…

20 Apr

2023

EN Speech

IPCC report on Climate Change: a call for urgent additional action (debate)

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Madam President, it really is beyond depressing to talk about climate crisis and how reluctant politicians are to do something equal to the challenge. While we’re obviously very happy that we are having this debate today on the latest IPCC report, it really would be a start if some people in here would sit down and read it, because if people did – and if they actually took on board what was being …

19 Apr

2023

EN Speech

EU Rapid Deployment Capacity, EU Battlegroups and Article 44 TEU: the way forward (A9-0077/2023 - Javi López)

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Madam President, I voted against this report. In Ireland we voted down the Nice and Lisbon treaties because we didn’t want an EU army. We were promised that there were no plans for one. Those promises were lies. And if you want proof, you only have to read this so-called Rapid Deployment Capacity, which of course isn’t an EU army, it’s just a permanently available, standing, multinational, modular…

19 Apr

2023

EN Speech

Guidelines for the 2024 budget - Section III (A9-0124/2023 - Janusz Lewandowski)

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Madam President, I voted against this file, it has a foreign policy section that is totally inappropriate. Many days in here the discussion is marked by a delusional sense of self-importance which is disconnected from any reality. But I have to say that yesterday’s discussion on EU-China relations really beat all. People talked about unity while exposing division. They lectured China about peace w…

19 Apr

2023

EN Speech

Deforestation Regulation (A9-0219/2022 - Christophe Hansen)

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Madam President, one of the tricks used to greenwash European capitalism is that so much of our environmental damage is outsourced to the rest of the world. We talk big about being sustainable within our borders, but we have to examine our supply chains and our global footprint. Consumption here depends on extraction far away, and many of the products produced outside the EU are harmful, they driv…

19 Apr

2023

EN Speech

Repression in Russia, in particular the cases of Vladimir Kara-Murza and Alexei Navalny

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Madam President, it’s really impressive that the Parliament has swung into action so quickly in relation to the case of anti-Putin, anti-Ukrainian war journalist Vladimir Kara-Murza, who was given a 25-year prison sentence this week for his journalism, a sentence rightly slammed by the EU as outrageously harsh. It is, but it’s still 150 years less than Julian Assange will get if he’s convicted and…

19 Apr

2023

EN Speech

The crackdown on the right to education and education rights activists in Afghanistan, including the case of Matiullah Wesa

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Madam President, in many countries, women and girls are denied an education, but only in Afghanistan is this gender apartheid a deliberate policy implemented by the state in violation of international law, Islam and all morality. It is, of course, an abomination that educators are arrested and those seeking an education hunted down, and we condemn it utterly, but can we get real here? These issues…

19 Apr

2023

EN Speech

Children forcibly deported from Ukraine and the ICC arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin (debate)

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Mr President, all war is criminal and children its most innocent of victims. Exaggeration isn’t necessary. Even one case of the mistreatment of children is deadly serious. The UN, which deals only in facts, has verified that 16 000 children have been horribly mistreated and concludes that this amounts to a war crime. In an ideal world, all war crimes would be investigated and prosecution cases dev…

18 Apr

2023

EN Speech

Situation in Peru (debate)

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Mr President, since December, 69 Peruvians have died as a result of police repression, most of them indigenous peoples – Aymaras and Quechuas, and thousands have been injured, some mutilated and disabled for life. This repression, as we know, is taking place under the illegitimate presidency of Dina Boluarte, who was imposed following the effective coup against Pedro Castillo, who is currently in …

17 Apr

2023

EN Speech

One-minute speeches on matters of political importance

Watch

Mr President, month after month, people come in here and shout ‘Glory to Ukraine’. The walls and the buildings are decked with flags and slogans: ‘Stand with Ukraine’. But what does that mean? What does it mean for the thousands of young male Ukrainian university students who are banned from travelling abroad to study? Since last September, although enrolled in foreign colleges, they are forbidden…

17 Apr

2023

EN Speech

The implementation of civilian CSDP and other EU civilian security assistance (short presentation)

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Mr President, supposedly, the goals of our civilian security and defence policy include conflict resolution, crisis management, disarmament, all very essential to the security of people and communities internationally. But of course, that’s not actually what we’re doing at all. We’re using these issues as a cover to advance our interests in these areas. There are, of course, positive elements in t…