Speeches

Madam President, it’s hard to believe we’re heading down this crazy path with China. The invasion of Ukraine by Russia was 100% illegal. Sadly, it was precipitated by US meddling and NATO expansion into the region. NATO boss Stoltenberg has even boasted about strong NATO involvement in Ukraine since 2014. The Russian stated their red lines with regard to Ukraine, but they were ignored. The same thing is happening with Taiwan. The US is repeatedly violating the red lines articulated by China. US special forces have been deployed to the island. The US have conducted naval military exercises and military build—up in the region and engaged in provocative diplomatic visits along with billions of dollars of weaponry sales annually. We already have a war where the main losers are Ukraine and Western Europe. The US is attempting to open up another battlefront with China, pushing China closer to Russia. If the situation escalates any further, the EU will suffer even more than it is suffering at the moment. Climate system breakdown shows us that never before has international cooperation been so important. And yet NATO and the US are driving us in the opposite direction.

Mr President, forest biomass should not be part of the Renewable Energy Directive. In 2019 when I was a member of the Irish Parliament, the then Forestry Minister told me that Irish forestry was occupied by 51% Sitka spruce and he actually boasted that 42% of this was used to harvest for energy. So, in other words, in Ireland we burn a quarter of our forests. And he went on to say that this was an important contribution to Ireland’s renewable energy targets. This is the kind of insanity that the Renewable Energy Directive encourages, unfortunately. Forests are not renewable. Forests are ecosystems. You cannot replant a forest. You can replant trees. It just takes minutes to burn forest biomass. But it takes decades and centuries for tree plantations to sequester the carbon again. We don’t have time for this, it’s an insanity and this is an emergency, but some people don’t seem to be copping on to it just yet.

Mr President, the text is a good one. It further increases the energy-efficiency targets and, most importantly, makes the national energy-efficiency targets legally binding for the first time. It increases the targets for public bodies to reduce their energy consumption and also increases the yearly renovation requirements for public bodies. The new detail in Article 11 on data centres is very welcome. It introduces possible sustainability criteria for data centres and a possible assessment by the Commission of the feasibility of a transition towards net-zero data centres. In Ireland, we have a huge problem with data centres. It’s estimated that by 2030 the demand from data centres could account for up to 36% of Ireland’s electricity demand, driven by the government’s disastrous data-centres enterprise strategy. However, any future sustainability criteria for data centres must insist that data centres are powered directly by onsite renewable-energy generation or at least new offsite renewable generation.

Mr President, like the Pegasus spyware manufacturer, the Predator manufacturer has deep connections with Israel and the Israeli military. Israel is an apartheid state with an appalling human rights record, but it’s not the only offender in terms of hosting and supporting companies that manufacture this type of software. It might come as a surprise to some people in Ireland. Ireland also has a very disproportionate, outsized surveillance industry, given its relative size. Dublin is among the top five HQ cities for surveillance companies in the EU. Cyber capabilities proliferate on international arms markets. Part of our problem is the increasing role of the arms industry in the international trade, in surveillance technology, and their role in exporting sophisticated surveillance capabilities. The reform of the Dual-Use Regulation last year is not near enough to halt this proliferation. We need an international agreement restricting the production, sale and use of these technologies. Otherwise, we are once again just paying lip service to fundamental rights and freedom. We must reject the increased militarisation of the EU, which is at the heart of all this.

Mr President, EU consumption of commodities like beef, soy, palm oil, rubber, maize, timber and coffee fuels deforestation and forest degradation, as well as the destruction of other vital ecosystems like grasslands, wetlands and peatlands. But the text we established with our vote in the Environment Committee in July is a very good one and has the potential to bring real change. It establishes clear rules for companies to ensure products sold to EU consumers meet strict deforestation—free requirements. It includes human rights protections and extends the scope to several more commodities and products. It extends the scope from only deforestation to also include degradation of forests and other wooded lands. It also includes the financial sector. It reinforces and speeds up the review clause, which will extend the scope further to other vulnerable ecosystems. It is crucial that the ENVI position is upheld in the plenary vote, and the Commissioner’s comments that hundreds of playing fields of forest are destroyed every hour should frighten plenty.

Mr President, the EU forest strategy for 2030 is positive in its vision of a new commercial forestry model based on protecting soil, water and biodiversity instead of the blocks of monoculture, cash crops and clear felling that have caused so much harm in the past. But for all that is welcome in the strategy, it would be seriously undermined if we fail to end the crazy and completely unscientific policy of treating biomass as being carbon-neutral in the revision of the Renewable Energy Directive In Ireland, more than 40% of all Sitka spruce grown is harvested for energy purposes. Half of all of Ireland’s total forested area is under Sitka spruce. Therefore, an enormous amount of Ireland’s forests are burned as biomass; 42% of all the Sitka spruce in Ireland is released back into the atmosphere as carbon. We need to stop incentivising the burning of wood for energy by stopping counting it as a renewable and stopping subsidising it.

Mr President, I think your point was very good, but I would actually make an even better recommendation: I think the two gentlemen should (inaudible) ...

Mr President, Mr Dzhambazki’s point is a relevant point, and it actually emphasises the fact that it’s absolute madness that we actually come here all the way from Brussels most of the time, and that we should actually stay in Brussels and we wouldn’t have to be coming down here on public or any kind of transport. Secondly, I was very interested to hear Joachim Kuhs tell us about his bike being stolen and giving up cycling at the time. For the record, I’ve had four bikes stolen in Dublin, so maybe things mightn’t be quite as bad in Germany. And also, for the record, I have to say that I’ve never seen Clare Daly on a bike in my life. If the Commission are serious about a bike strategy, it’s a win-win in every way. And you’d like to think that the vested interest won’t be pushing quite as hard against you, but the infrastructure isn’t there. You have got to start spending money to make it really serious. And I’d like to think, as well, that it wouldn’t have quite as much opposition as what we got yesterday in the vote on taxonomy, where the lobbyists hijacked the place and made gas and nuclear green.

Madam President, UNICEF reports that every minute a child is pushed into hunger in the 15 countries most ravaged by the global food crisis. And it’s an interesting list of countries. Four of them – Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali and Niger – long—suffering prisoners of France’s criminal colonial currency system in the Sahel, and for a decade dealing with the fallout from NATO’s war of aggression on Libya. Yemen, reeling from seven years of embargo and US/EU-made weapons intentionally dropped on their food and water production infrastructure. Haiti, whose last independent leader in 2004 was removed in a coup by France and the US. This country will never stop being punished for their revolutionary spirit. Afghanistan, who after 20 years of illegal occupation and bombing by NATO forces, was sanctioned and robbed by the US. Now 93% of Afghans are facing hunger and we can’t even help them. Not only does this report ignore the fact that we imposed the sanctions that have caused the present food crisis, it also ignores the principal role the political West has played in ensuring that so many of these countries face hunger.

Madam President, this report talks about preserving a system of multilateralism that we are presently busy destroying. What is multilateral about a block of colonialist countries, their colonial outposts, and their conquered and occupied puppet regimes conspiring together to maintain a dying global order? We unilaterally impose crushing sanctions regimes against out-of-favour states and their populations, sanctions that are killing tens of thousands of ordinary people each year. How can we even pretend the concept of EU respect for multilateralism or human rights has any meaning anymore? The G7 and NATO-aligned countries, which collectively represent a minority of the world’s people, want to contain Russia and China and stop EU-Asia integration. The BRIC countries, which represent a larger portion of the world’s people, are not calling for this break – for isolation or for containment. They are clear that they want to maintain a world where multilateral institutions such as the UN are respected. The EU seems to want world domination. The Global South really wants genuine multilateralism. We should listen to them.

Mr President, a windfall tax on energy companies would be welcome, but it’s not a silver bullet; a windfall tax is just a short—term solution. It would be far better to remove windfall profits through price regulation than by taxing these. France has one of the lowest inflation rates in Europe, at 5.8% annually up to May, compared to the EU average of 8.8% and an Irish rate of 8.3%. A big reason for this is the energy price controls France has introduced. Ireland’s electricity prices increased by 41% from January to May. The average EU electricity price increase is 29% for the same period. France is only 6.5%. Energy poverty is first and foremost a political failure which requires an adequate political response which tackles the root causes of injustice while ensuring a fair and sustainable future for all. Energy is a public good, but we need to start treating it as such – because we haven’t been doing so.

Mr President, this debate is testament to how authoritarian the EU has become. This McCarthyite hysteria is deeply anti-democratic and a bit scary. That there is a war at all is a monument to how inept, unqualified and compromised EU leaders and diplomats are right now. War is a failure of diplomacy, of dialogue and attempts at understanding. If we want to stop the bloodshed and destruction and all the terrible ramifications of the war, people need to sit around tables and talk. But the US and NATO don’t want the war to stop. In the words of Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff, ‘The United States aids Ukraine and our people so that we can fight Russia over there and we don’t have to fight Russia here’. We need more diplomacy, not less. We have two powers. The US and Russia have an awful lot in common. Both are run by monopoly capital, run by oligarchs on both sides. We have two imperialist powers fighting each other in Ukraine, and only working class people are dying. But the EU has done nothing to stop it! So many people in here are glad the war is taking place. But the biggest threat to diplomacy and democracy in the EU today is coming from the people who pretend to defend it!

Mr President, calling something sustainable doesn't make it sustainable. Calling fossil gas and nuclear energy green. It's like me saying black is white. This taxonomy that you have proposed is a work of art and deception. And it suits some to accept it. We're not voting on whether nuclear and gas should be part of the energy transition. We're voting on whether we want to greenwash them, categorise them as green at the same level as renewables. No one in their right mind could agree with that. Expert analysis concludes that most Member States will not get any financial benefit from it, but France will. So we are just greenwashing. Just to please French nuclear interests. Can somebody explain to me? This resolution is calling for the Commission to respect science. Commissioner, you said your position is pragmatic for the uncertain times we're living in. But Commissioner, the war in Ukraine is not the biggest crisis facing this planet. Climate change is. Cop on to yourself.

Mr President, the Russian rouble is at a seven year high. Inflation reached a record high in the eurozone in June. The people of Europe are struggling to survive due to the crushing cost of living, compounded by sanctions on Russia that are not of any use to the people of Europe. We are letting the warmongers ensure the destruction of Ukraine and the collapse of living standards across Europe, and driving millions into poverty in the Global South. We are spending billions of euros making sure the war in Ukraine continues. We’re spending billions of euros on the militarisation of the EU. Since the invasion, NATO countries have committed billions to military equipment in Ukraine. War is a profitable business. The shares of BAE Systems, the largest weapons manufacturer in Europe, have risen by 32% since the start of the war. The best way to deal with the cost of living crisis is to stop prolonging the war. The people of Europe favour peace, even well above punishing Russia. We can do something positive about bringing an end to the war. To date the EU has made no serious effort for dialogue and diplomacy. We have prioritised the military dimension from the start.

Madam President, the NATO summit in Madrid was a big love-in for the supporters of the military-industrial complex. NATO is not a defence alliance, it’s a war machine. Ask the people of Afghanistan, Iraq or Libya. NATO’s real goal is the defence of a waning US hegemony and a unipolar world system. That’s what NATO exists for. Any discussion of that is silenced, chilled in this land of free speech. The war in Ukraine: NATO’s loving it. Like the US, the Russian economy is dominated by monopoly capital. Both countries are run by oligarchs. Now we have a US-NATO proxy war against Russia and Ukraine, two factions of capitalist imperialism waging war against each other with millions of workers caught in between. A survey by the European Council on Foreign Relations showed that a vast majority of European citizens want peace rather than promoting a war that punishes Russia. But NATO never wants peace. What I want to know is, what does the EU really want?

Madam President, I thank the rapporteur. India is going to be a massive player. It will probably have the biggest population in the world pretty soon; I think it’ll outpace China for population. It’s a developing economy and I think the EU could develop a very good, healthy relationship with India. There’s obviously things that we need to keep in mind, and too often when we have done trade deals and arrangements with countries a lot poorer than ourselves, very often the people lose out. I suppose I am referring in particular to many of the African cases, where very often we still behave like colonialists. I think we need to treat the Indians in a fair manner. I think you mentioned human rights as well, I think it’s very important that we make sure that human rights standards are maintained at all stages. But you also mentioned the geopolitical nature of it: I think India is going to do a business with everybody, whether it’s the Russians, the Chinese, the Americans or the Europeans. We should be independent of all that and do our own business in a good way.

Madam President, I welcome the report as well, and it was glad to hear the rapporteur bring a bit of common sense to the equation and also respect the One China policy. It’s a bit of a contrast to what we had to listen to at the Madrid summit, where NATO listed China as one of its strategic priorities for the first time, saying ‘Beijing’s ambitions and its coercive policies challenged the Western bloc’s interests, security and values’. And its Secretary-General, Jens Stoltenberg, went on to say China is ‘substantially building up its military forces, including nuclear weapons, bullying its neighbours and threatening Taiwan’. My God, I mean, these are our biggest trading partner and we want to fight with the Chinese. What’s in it for us? The Chinese haven’t dropped the bomb on anyone in 40 years. The Americans still spend three times more than they do on military hardware. What’s wrong with us? Are they in the ocean of America? I don’t think so.

Madam President, people are saying that we shouldn’t allow Russia to use Interpol to fight political opponents. But I mean if you ban Russia from the Interpol system, what are you doing? Is it not the same thing? Listen, I condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine as well. I think it’s terrible the things that are happening. Russia is behaving like an imperialist power, doing what it likes in Ukraine. But come on, are these the only ones you are going to throw stones at? Why weren’t the Americans thrown out of Interpol when they killed a million citizens in Iraq? A million innocent civilians! Why weren’t they thrown out of Interpol? Why aren’t Saudi Arabia and the UAE and the Americans and the French and the UK, for supporting the genocide in Yemen today? Are you going to throw them out of Interpol? You’re making a joke of Interpol if you’re going to use it as a political football yourselves. That doesn’t make any sense!

Madam President, I welcome aspects of the report in addressing poverty gaps in Europe. Yet, I fear it’s not enough for the most economically marginalised groups in our societies across Europe: migrants. The treatment of migrants in Europe is a humanitarian crisis, there’s no question about it. Non-EU migrants, and in particular migrant women, experience significant limitations in access to the labour market, shocking levels of homelessness and impoverished living conditions in refugee camps. Women refugees in Europe face double discrimination. Things are not much better in Ireland, where we have rightly welcomed Ukrainian refugees and treat them well. Migrants and refugees of a different colour and religion have been herded into areas called Direct Provision Centres, which are essentially a form of state-sanctioned poverty. When we talk of women’s poverty in Europe, spare a thought for the women in Ireland’s Direct Provision Centres.

Madam President, the EU spends billions paying lawless militias and third countries to intercept, sometimes kill, arrest and detain migrants and refugees indefinitely in inhumane conditions. This is to ensure that they cannot reach the EU, where they can avail of international law rights due to them. EU countries were among the most brutal when it came to genocidal colonialism in the past. Today we maintain a system of capitalist exploitation, theft and crushing debt arrangements that inhibit the ability of many former colonies to provide basic public services for their own people. And if people try to leave this cage that we have made for them and come to the land that survives on their stolen futures, they face the most extreme hurdles imaginable. The deaths at Melilla were border killings: Fortress Europe has been causing death at our borders for a long time. What has happened to our humanity?

Madam President, the US Supreme Court has dealt a devastating blow to abortion rights. It’s a dark development and could have been prevented. In 2008, when Obama was canvassing for election he promised that: ‘the first thing I’ll do’, he said, ‘as President, is sign the freedom of choice act’. Yet, just a year later, he said, ‘the freedom of choice act is not my highest legislative priority.’ The hypocrisy was scary. Now we have a Supreme Court that the far-right has packed with Christian fanatics, and still the Democrats have made no real effort to protect abortion rights. It makes clear what we’ve known for a long time: it doesn’t really matter which corporate-owned party is in power in America – be it Republican or Democrat – human rights are now being dismantled and the Democrats have refused to call the Republicans to heel. They’re too busy waging war themselves and prosecuting journalists for exposing war crimes. This is a human right. How can we listen to the Americans talk about anyone else’s treatment of human rights?

Madam President, the relation of the EU to the continent of Africa has been, and still is, one of brutal capitalist exploitation in the service of maintaining Western corporate profits. This criminal history cemented in place a structure of intentional de—development that saw the enormous wealth of Africa flow directly into European coffers for hundreds of years, and little has changed. The unmentioned spirit haunting the aspirational language in this text is China. China has approached many African countries with more attractive ways of doing business, and if Europe wants to compete, it’s going to have to change its approach. If all the recommendations in this report were followed to the letter, the world would be a better place. But the report does not go nearly far enough. There is no mention of France’s colonial currency, no mention of debt cancellation. We are continuing to pauperise the global South. We enrich ourselves at their expense morning, noon and night.

Madam President, the report’s proposal for a new governance scheme for the Sustainable Development Goals at EU level is positive and ambitious. The emphasis on the well—being of the economy and the need for the Commission to quickly deliver the beyond—GDP indicators is welcome. However, the report ignores the fundamental problem with the SDGs themselves. Goal Number 8 calls for continued global economic growth equivalent to 3% per year to achieve the human development objectives. The SDGs assume that efficiency improvements will be enough to reconcile the tension between growth and ecological sustainability. Of course, regional development in the global South must continue, but global economic growth is incompatible with many environmental targets. Even if absolute decoupling of growth from resource consumption is theoretically possible, its success must be measured in terms of climate targets and whether it fits with limiting global warming by 1.5 degrees. There is simply no scientific basis for not questioning the growth imperative.

Madam President, the EU could have offered Ukraine conditional European Union membership in exchange for restoring neutrality in Ukraine and ending the war in the Donbas long before now, in line with the Minsk Agreement. It would have avoided the present war. The EU has spent EUR 15 billion on ‘Ukraine’s reform process’ since 2014, and yet only last September, the European Court of Auditors deemed Ukraine the most corrupt country in Europe. Zelenskyy has now banned nine opposition parties and most of the opposition media. Is Ukraine a democracy? We need a negotiated peace now. Polling shows that the majority of people in Europe are in favour of peace rather than just punishing Russia. Macron, Schulz and Draghi went to Zelenskyy’s Ukraine with a view to actually encouraging some negotiation, but were quickly followed by the UK Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, who put him off the idea. He wants the US—NATO war agenda instead. Are we going to let the warmongers ensure the destruction of Ukraine? Are we going to let the warmongers collapse living standards in the EU and cause the starvation of millions in the global South?

Mr President, of course we should legislate to stop all forced labour. But how many times have we had to listen to accusations about China, backed up by nothing more than the say—so of weapons—industry—funded think tanks and groups on the payroll of CIA cut—outs like the National Endowment for Democracy? Where are the full and rigorous investigations, the evidence? Screaming, unsupported accusations is not how to conduct international relations. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has just visited Xinjiang, has had discussions with many groups and representatives there, and hopes this is the start of a fruitful process towards transparency and high human rights standards in China. For this stance, which shows goodwill and respect, some of the most rabid anti-China voices have called for the High Commissioner to step down. These are McCarthyite smear tactics, which expose the racist and fanatic ideology driving the groups making these claims. We have clear evidence of widespread slave labour in the world’s largest prison system in the world’s most repressive police state, the United States of America. Can we start talking about them?