Speeches

Madam President, speaking of the need for transparency, I also think it’s incredibly important. And I want to raise an issue that shows a serious lack of it in Ireland. A group of homeowners from Donegal lodged a petition with the Committee on Petitions relating to what’s called the ‘mica scandal’, where there’s a huge lack of surveillance and regulation on quarries in Donegal, and an inferior concrete block was produced which contained mica, which ended up causing serious damage to over 7 000 houses. And people are looking for some recompense from the Irish Government. A report was done which was really critical of how quarries were operated – critical of the lack of regulation – but then when the government published the report, they took out a lot of the harsh criticism. These people are looking for some accountability and they want the Irish Government held to account for their lack of transparency on this issue.

Madam President, of course the multiannual financial framework is a bit out of date and has shortcomings because of COVID and the Ukraine war. The report acknowledges that 21.9% of the EU population is at risk of poverty and social exclusion, and the energy poverty is certain to worsen as a consequence of the war. But what’s the EU doing to end the war? Absolutely nothing. We’re flooding Ukraine with arms at a great cost to our own citizens and at great cost to the lives of so many Ukrainians. Now paragraph 39 of the report calls for an increase in the budget ceiling for security and defence. It advocates spending more money on weapons and war, money that could be spent instead on climate mitigation and adaptation, public transport, health or education. There is no military solution to the crisis in Ukraine, and the policy of flooding Ukraine with weapons is madness. And if we want to fight Russia down to the last Ukrainian and make our own people suffer in the meantime just to support a US—NATO proxy war, it’s about time we copped on to ourselves.

Madam President, everyone is horrified that money in bags was transferred to at least one MEP. I often wonder what planet you all live on. There’s over 12 000 companies registered in Belgium as lobbyists. Now, if we put an average of five persons per company, that’s about 60 000 lobbyists. What do you think they do? What do they do for a living? They lobby. They try to have influence over politicians, over public servants, so that decisions are made that suit their agenda. And if you think that the money related to this scandal around Qatar is an exception, I’d ask you to think again. This has been going on for a long time and it’s nothing new. And there’s a lot of other aspects of what goes on in this House that should be investigated, but probably won’t be.

Madam President, when Nord Stream was damaged, there was uproar from politicians and mainstream media across Europe for about 24 hours, and then it seemed to have disappeared. Now, for the life of me, I was shocked that it could go down the list of major items in the news so quickly. Initially, of course, the Russians were blamed, but common sense kind of prevailed and the talk was that well if the Russians don’t want any gas going through the pipelines, they can actually turn the tap off on their end. And if they wanted to blow it up, I don’t think they would blow it up quite so close to Germany or Sweden. So who did blow it up? This was one of the worst releases of methane in the history of mankind. It was environmental terrorism. I, for the life of me, don’t understand why the EU doesn’t want to know who did it. This is a disgrace. What is wrong with us? This is an unbelievable, destructive act and we all want to know who did it. Is it because we know the answer or is it because it’s the wrong answer?

Madam President, you say that an independent free press is vital to any democracy, and I agree with you. But, sadly, so much of mainstream media across Europe today is either owned or controlled by vested interests. And that’s a huge problem. Big money controls most of our media, or people who have an agenda in how they shape the news. You also said that a journalist should not be punished for doing his work. I also agree 100% with that, but Julian Assange is in prison for over four years, and he was locked up in the Ecuadorian embassy for six years before that. And he is in prison because he spoke the truth. He exposed US NATO war crimes. What have we done here to protect Julian Assange? What have we done to see that he gets freedom and that he is released from prison for telling the truth? I want to know what the EU Commission are actually doing in this area, because I think it’s really, really important. It is the journalistic story of a generation, and we’re doing very little by the looks of it.

Mr President, sometimes I actually feel sorry for the Commission, having to listen to MEPs, appeal to them as to what they’re going to do about Russian interference in the European Union. Now, do Russia and China interfere in matters of European affairs? Yeah, they do. Do they engage in propaganda? Yeah, they do. But you know what? Neither of them were any good at it because we could actually see through most of what they had to say and do. But do you know who is much better at it? I mean, the Americans are way ahead of them, but we don’t seem to have a problem with that. I go to meetings here – committees and delegations – and the lack of balance in the people being brought before us to give us their words of wisdom is shocking. I witness people coming in on a regular basis to promote and defend US imperialism, and there’s no one brought in to question them. I’ve witnessed people coming in to tell us how wonderful things are in the Gulf States, and no one being brought in to question them. Why don’t we start asking who is bringing these people in? Who’s deciding who comes before our committees? Who decides what people should inform us about what’s really going on. This place is a bit of a joke sometimes, and my heart does go out to the Commission.

Mr President, we’re talking about defending the European Union against the abuse of national vetoes. If you want to defend the European Union, how about giving some power back to the people? Because with the Lisbon and Nice Treaties – which we in Ireland voted against on both occasions, but we got the wrong answer and we had to vote a second time – in those Treaties, power was taken from the people and given to the institution, and neoliberalism was enshrined in the European Union. People talk about good actors and bad actors and the abuse of the veto. Who’s going to decide who’s a good actor? Who’s going to decide who’s the bad actor? What’s going on here? When we signed up to the European Union, when we joined it, we understood that we weren’t going to be corralled into being completely dominated by the others. We were going to have a say; we were going to retain our sovereignty. It’s one of the reasons we joined. And listen, you are undermining the European Union by trying to make one big Union? The European Union is not a country; it’s a group of countries. And stop trying to make an imperial power out of it.

Madam President, the US Inflation Reduction Act is essentially a protectionist package attempting to rejuvenate the US manufacturing industry by drawing companies to the US with subsidies and tax breaks, and giving existing US companies an advantage over the EU and others. I’m surprised that the EU is surprised. America has been engaging in protectionism for over the last hundred years and they use it to their advantage as they see fit. And they’ve used the IMF and the World Bank to make sure that others don’t engage in it when it damages US interests. Now, I think we’re a bit taken aback by it because we’re already suffering from America taking advantage of the war. We’re supporting a US-NATO proxy war. They’re charging us four times more for their gas than they’re charging their own. And they’re giving themselves another advantage there. Henry Kissinger once said, ‘America doesn’t have friends or enemies. It has interests.’ And it’s about time that the EU copped on to themselves and started living a more independent existence from the US.

Mr President, the two-state solution has been used as a smokescreen to fake concern for the human rights of Palestinians, while leaving the Israelis to pursue their genocidal treatment of the Palestinian people. The terms of the two-state solution are beyond anything the Israeli settler colonialists would ever entertain, and everyone knows it. Who is going to make them respect the 1967 lines? No one lifted a finger while they evicted Palestinians from their homes and lands, illegally annexed territory and built countless illegal settlements. Why should Palestinians accept the terms of a deal that they know from bitter experience the other side is incapable of honouring? Three decades we have talked about this proposal as it becomes more of a fantasy, while the Palestinians suffered a brutal, grinding reality of apartheid. If this is all we have to offer, then the Palestinians are better off pursuing their right to resist the colonisation of their lands, to fight for self-determination, independence and the right of return for all Palestinian refugees to fight for human rights and freedom.

Madam President, we need to fast track renewables, that’s not in doubt. But the Commission’s attempt to enshrine into EU law the principle that renewables should be considered a matter of overriding public interest sets a dangerous precedent. The proposal takes a sledgehammer to the EU environmental standards. It will roll back hugely important protections under the Environmental Impact Assessment Directive and the Birds and Habitats Directive. This is environmental deregulation; it’s a backdoor attempt to water down environmental protections. Environmental legislation is not an obstacle to the deployment of renewables. We are in the middle of a sixth mass extinction. There is no justification to scrap key environmental assessments. Finally, it’s ridiculous that storage facilities for gas should be privileged in the so-called go—to areas. These areas are supposed to be about fast tracking renewables. There are zero excuses for waiving environmental protections for gas storage facilities.

Madam President, in Latin America in the past week we’ve seen politically motivated lawfare against Argentina Vice-President Cristina Fernandez and a right-wing coup against the president of Peru, Pedro Castillo. The EU shows its true colours in the face of these events, just as it did when they supported the illegal military coup against Morales in 2019 in Bolivia. If the leader had been overthrown, convicted or imprisoned as an indigenous or a socialist, that means order has been restored and lies are repeated to justify the anti-democratic actions. If the leader losing out is white, a capitalist oligarch, a far-right racist or a descendant of colonialists and dictators, the EU is up in arms. Crushing sanctions must be imposed, assets frozen and calls for new elections abound. The corrupt white settler elites and cronies of the political west must be kept in power at all costs. The voice of the people is only respected when it suits. European leaders and capitalist elites do not seem to give a damn about democracy.

Madam President, I welcome the action plan and the Parliament’s report. The report acknowledges that high-speed rail passenger volumes nearly doubled between 2001 and 2018 in the EU, proving that there is a demand for high-speed rail whenever it is provided. However, not all rail services in the EU are equal. Ireland has seen very little improvement in rail service in the same period. The Rosslare to Waterford line closed. Waterford’s the only city in the country that does not have trains arriving in the city before 9 o’clock in the morning. The Rosslare to Dublin line has been managed into decline. Ireland’s rail system is almost exclusively a set of radial lines running to and from Dublin with minimal direct interconnectivity between towns and cities outside of Dublin. If you arrive in Rosslare harbour from France or from the UK, you have to go to Dublin first before you go anywhere else. That’s crazy.

Madam President, the main reason airports are struggling to serve passengers properly is because of labour shortages. These labour shortages exist because airports and airlines have treated our workers so poorly for so long. The air travel crisis is the result of an aggressive cost-cutting measures by airlines and employers for the past 25 years to make the cost of labour as low as possible. This has reduced both the quality of work and the quantity of workers available. And this is not just an issue for airport workers; ground crew and baggage handlers, pilots and cabin crew are also affected. Extreme liberalisation leads to a race to the bottom in airport security, in ground handling, in cabin crew. This fundamentally undermines workers’ wages, conditions and safety, as well as passenger safety. The race to the bottom is total madness, and it has to be reversed.

Madam President, the Commission’s long—term vision for rural areas is welcome. Along with the cohesion policy, CAP will be the main driver of the vision. But the vision contains a central weakness: there is no binding requirement for Member States to integrate the objectives of the vision into their CAP strategic plans. Now, CAP, of course, is fundamentally flawed in the first place. It’s a very unequal distribution system and it’s biased in favour of big agri and intensive farms and feedlots at the expense of small farms and family farms. Europe has lost a third of its family farms between 2003 and 2013. It’s a frightening statistic. To help rural areas, we must stop industrial farm expansion by rebalancing the value chain for the benefit of farmers and by banning below—cost selling of food. Building a new vision for rural areas should start with a radical change in agricultural and trade policy, and that should start with the abandoning of the Mercosur agreement.

Madam President, the EU’s proposal at COP to expand the loss and damage donor pool reinterprets what loss and damage is about. Instead of recognising and acting on its historic responsibility, the rich developed countries want to shift the blame and get other countries that do not have even remotely the same history of emissions or the same emissions per capita to pay into the fund. It’s climate colonialism. The EU proposal was made knowing full well that China and other non—annex countries would never agree, because it does not respect the delineation of the UNFCCC annexes, which create the categories of developed and developing countries. Research shows Annex 1 countries are responsible for over 90% of historic emissions. According to the Overseas Development Institute, the US’s fair share of climate finance is 43%, but the US pays a fraction of this, and getting the US to cough up is probably the biggest challenge for climate victims seeking justice. Now, if we are to get money from countries like Pakistan, countries which are the least responsible for the problems they are facing, suffering from the impacts of climate change, we’re going to have to actually dismantle Bretton Woods. We have to fix our financial system, because it’s broken as it stands.

Madam President, the right to timely access to affordable, preventative and curative healthcare of good quality is enshrined in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The EU and all its Member States have ratified this Convention. Yet, in Ireland last week, the Health Service Executive were forced to apologise to the families of children across the country who cannot access disability services. Earlier this year, Inclusion Ireland conducted a survey among families with children with disabilities. Over 50 % of the families of children surveyed were not in receipt of any disability service. Over 85 % of them have waited for over a year. How in God’s name can the Irish Government stand over this? And is there any way that the EU can actually pressure the Irish Government to do the right thing in the area of disabilities?

Mr President, this report on stability and security in the broader Middle East is incredible for what it manages to ignore and conceal. Apparently in this region, instability and wars just spontaneously happen. It says the underlying causes of instability must be addressed, but there are none in the report. There was no Iraq War, there was no regime change operation in Syria. In this fairy tale, France, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the UK and the US didn’t train, arm and finance al-Qaida and Syria. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, France and the UK have not been bombing the daylights out of Yemen for eight years. Iran, Russia and Turkey are active in Syria, but America and Israelis are nowhere. America and Israelis are not illegally occupying Syria and the Israelis are not bombing Syria every week. And the US and the EU are not sanctioning the Syrian people to death. If we are incapable of talking honestly about our criminal actions, we are doomed to repeat them.

Mr President, the report claims the EU is redoubling its diplomatic efforts to promote peace in Libya. France spearheaded the illegal and unprovoked NATO war of aggression on Libya because it saw Gaddafi as a threat to its interests in the region – in particular, France’s precious colonial cash-cow, the CFA franc. In the process of this war, massive quantities of weapons were pumped into the region by NATO and Gulf states. Today, multiple militias fight each other with these weapons and continue to receive military supplies from European states, Gulf states, Turkey and Russia. Why do these reports always fail to acknowledge our role in the destabilisation we claim to be so worried about? Two years ago, Italy was engaged in a proxy war against France and Russia for control of resources in Libya. How can we square that with the notion that we want to promote peace in Libya? How in God’s name can we have any credibility?

Mr President, there is no legal framework for the EU to recognise a state sponsor of terrorism. You just pulled this antagonistic performance out of thin air. Even the US, who have such a legal mechanism, have refrained from applying the label to Russia. Biden has argued that doing so could impact future efforts to negotiate a peace deal. The European Parliament, instead of pursuing peace and an end to this bloody war – a war that’s killing tens of thousands, decimating European industry and jobs, creating soaring inflation and an unprecedented cost of living crisis – instead of any effort at diplomacy to remedy this disaster, you have voted to call Russia names. What’s worse, NATO is one of the most blood-drenched terrorist groups to curse this earth. It has murdered millions of human beings. The idea that any representative of a NATO member state would label anyone else a sponsor of terrorism before calling out their own state is absurd.

Mr President, large carnivores, such as wolves and bears, are legally protected species in the EU under the Habitats Directive and the Bern Convention. However, many of these large carnivore species have not yet achieved favourable conservation status. Of course, coexistence with large carnivores can cause conflict with human socio—economic interests, but hundreds of wolves are already killed each year in the EU using the existing exemptions in the Habitats Directive. The legal protections for large carnivores must be upheld. Instead of decreasing these protections, the EU and Member States need to more rigorously pursue mitigation strategies to achieve greater coexistence and implement measures to quickly and adequately compensate farmers for any losses. Large carnivores belong to the European biodiversity heritage that the EU has committed to restore and preserve through the adoption of the Habitats Directive and the biodiversity strategy. It is crucial that the Commission and Council reject the concerted and coordinated campaign to reduce protection for these animals.

Mr President, as we sit here having this debate about the Democratic Republic of Congo, I think it’s important to remember that during the scramble for Africa, the DRC was made King Leopold’s personal possession. He oversaw the death of 10 to 15 million Congolese, while enriching himself and Belgium from 1885 to 1906. The genocidal monster is still honoured in Belgium today. Today, France and TotalEnergies are the ones looking to enrich themselves at the expense of the Congolese lives in order to avoid a Mozambique-like disaster, where Total’s reckless activities have created an insurgency. France has been training security forces in the DRC and Uganda in order to secure and speed up the crude oil pipeline projects around Lake Albert. The militarisation has heightened already tense relations between Rwanda and Uganda, and is likely the cause of the revival of the M23 rebel group that is at the heart of the violence in East DRC today. If the EU really wants to help: stop the colonisation and work for the peace process, bringing everyone to the negotiating table.

Mr President, we don’t interfere with you when you’re talking nonsense. Thanks very much, Mr President. Like most countries, Belarus has a lot of problems, and if I was living in Belarus, I’m sure I’d want rid of Lukashenko too. The treatment of workers and the imprisonment of political prisoners is really sad to see. I would call on Lukashenko to release all political prisoners. However, for the life of me, I don’t actually understand how you think that interfering in the place is actually going to help. Can you name one country that you’ve interfered in in the last 50 years where you have helped? All across Africa, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. European countries are pumping arms into Yemen now to help in the Saudi genocide. If you think that Ukraine is going to be a better place after supporting this US-NATO proxy war, with as much money as you can muster, God help us.

Mr President, Afghanistan is not a good place to be a woman. While the Taliban government put in place more restrictions on women’s rights, Western sanctions slowly starve the country to death. We helped to destroy the place for 20 years. Now we have a responsibility to provide shelter to those who are suffering as a result. The EU response to the Ukraine refugee crisis shows what is possible when the political will is there. What we were aiming to do with this resolution is stress the need for similar protection for Afghan refugees. But the big groups in here weren’t having it. They seem content with the two—tier system we put in place all over Europe for refugees and asylum seekers. Nowhere is that more obvious than in Ireland, a country long criticised for its cruel Direct Provision system. We have thrown open the doors for Ukrainian refugees while leaving them closed to the rest. In an interview with The Irish Times, a young Afghan woman talked about the different treatment refugees received, particularly in terms of accommodation, where host families are now paid EUR 100 a month to host Ukrainian refugees but nothing to host refugees from Afghanistan or elsewhere. She said it’s sad that they are seen as less than Ukrainians. It’s not just sad, it’s racism – and shame on all the politicians who are perpetrating it!

Mr President, Commissioner, attending the COP last week in Egypt we heard testimony of el—Sisi’s brutal crackdown on activists and journalists who live in constant fear for their lives. They face intimidation, harassment and surveillance on a daily basis. The harassment even extended to attendees of the climate summit. While we were there, 400 new ones were arrested and three died from lack of care in prison. Egypt’s US-backed regime has effectively banned the right to peaceful assembly and moved to shut down civil society. An estimated 65 000 political prisoners are unjustly detained. Among them is Alaa Abd el-Fattah, arrested for his opposition to the government and imprisoned for over nine years now. His recent hunger strike was ended by being force fed by the Egyptian authorities. Sisi’s dictatorship not only gets a free pass for its repression, last year Macron decorated Sisi with the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour, a praise I imagine France gives to all brutal dictators who choose France as their number one weapons dealer. We never shut up about human rights in here, but we only call for action against enemies of the US. We have zero credibility on human rights as long as the likes of France, Germany and Italy profit from Egypt’s oppression and warmongering. As long as we maintain these double standards, the EU will rightly be seen as a joke when moralising on the world stage. Would it be too much to ask of the EU to ask its US Member States to stop supplying Sisi’s dictatorship with weapons until all political prisoners are released?

Mr President, poverty is not a natural phenomenon that can be fixed with aid. Poverty is a historical and political problem. Poor countries are poor because of the history of European colonialism and because they are integrated into the global economic system on unequal terms. The aid and development narrative hides the deep patterns of wealth extraction that causes poverty and inequality in the first place: rigged trade deals, tax evasion, land grabs and the offshoring of the impact of excess resource consumption in the global North to the global South. Aid and development aren’t working. Since 1960, the income gap between the North and South has roughly tripled in size. A recent Jason Hickel study revealed that the global North’s imperialist financial appropriation from the South is worth over USD 10 trillion a year in Northern prices, and that the South’s losses outstrip their aid receipts by a factor of 30. Poverty is a political problem. Therefore it requires a political solution. Poor countries don’t need our aid – they need us to stop plundering them!