Speeches

Mr President, more than half the Western Balkans put in the EU membership applications over 13 years ago. Some have lost interest, others doubt it will ever happen. The EU can’t make clear statement on the matter. President Charles Michel said after the summit, ‘there is a desire to work towards progress on enlargement’. After over 20 years of dangling the prospect of EU membership in front of the Western Balkans, vague and distant statements like this must make the people of the Balkan states wonder. The Albanians who put down their weapons in 1999 did so surrounded by promises from the EU that never materialised. What did happen was a string of leaders vetted by the West allowed the market to rip through their most valuable assets. Privatisation and fire sale of said assets has resulted in the disposal of laws that protected workers’ rights and strong education, health and social-security programmes. Prioritising foreign direct investment meant disaster for local industry. The EU asked these accession states to address corruption, if they do then they have to reverse some of the predatory buying of state properties that went to US, EU Member States’, Turkish and Israeli companies for peanuts. For fear more of more eyes turning to Russia and China, our friends in the US now want to speed up things. But much of the trust is gone and, thankfully, a more independently minded leadership is growing in the region.

Madam President, Haiti has been one of the most systematically underdeveloped nations on the Earth since they threw off the shackles of French colonialism in 1804. The empire and its agents in Haiti have made sure that all efforts at land reform and policies that would have lifted Haiti up were stopped. This has meant crushing reparations to France, invasions, US military occupations, five sitting presidents assassinated and countless coups engineered by the US and France. Bill Clinton forced heavy neoliberal reforms on Haiti as a condition for reversing the coup against the hugely popular President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. France and Washington orchestrated a second coup on Aristide in 2004. Under the subsequent brutal puppet leadership, no nation-building has been allowed and the casualties, deaths and the after-effects of frequent earthquakes have been compounded by this legacy of interference that continues today. The good news is that the people of Haiti have never stopped struggling against empire and hopefully are on the verge of taking back control of their country from US and French authoritarianism.

Madam President, there are many positives in this report, which calls on the Commission to propose for the first time a legislative framework specifically for methane, which would set binding measures and reduction targets for 2030, in line with science-based pathways for 1.5 degrees. Farmers often feel that agriculture is the only sector being targeted, but this report acknowledges that methane emissions in the energy sector are also a huge problem. Therefore, we are asking for mandatory MRV, mandatory leak detection and repair, and a ban on routine venting and flaring for all fossil fuels placed on the EU market. But agriculture is still by far and away the biggest source of methane emissions in the EU. We need to reduce livestock production and consumption. We should do this by targeting large-scale farms and by properly supporting family farms to prevent the further loss of family livestock farms and the further concentration and intensification of livestock farming.

Madam President, it looks like the deal between Afwerki andAbiy Ahmed, which won Abiy the Nobel Prize, was a war deal to crush Tigray. We now know that Eritrean defence forces, ethnic Amhara irregulars and the Ethiopian national defence forces have carried out dozens of brutal massacres in Tigray. Not only have Abiy’s decisions caused immense human suffering and death, he appears to have lost territory to Eritrea and the advances of Tigray defence forces are now a serious threat to his government. Eritrea’s Afwerki looks like the only winner. The way out of this conflict is through mediation, not foreign intervention. The last thing that Ethiopia needs is boots on the ground from the US and its allies. But that mediation must have credibility, it must be impartial and it should be for the African countries to sort it out. But neither the African Union proposal of Moussa Faki Mahamat, nor his High Representative General Obasanjo, are a credible start. The EU should encourage the African Union to look again and come up with the necessary impartial approach and structure for mediation to work.

Mr President, the only reason we’re having this debate is because NATO has targeted Belarus for regime change. If the EU cared about human rights, we’d be addressing the plight of refugees and migrants at our borders and police brutality in places like France, Germany and Spain. Tikhanovskaya is a NATO tool: the Belarusian Guaidó. She has Atlantic Council advisers and is close to the likes of the Centre for European Policy Analysis, which is bankrolled by Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, Chevron and the US Department of Defense. And much like Guaidó, Tikhanovskaya has little popularity. According to polling conducted by England’s Chatham House, no less, only 4% of Belarusians believe she’d make a good president, while 23 percent prefer Lukashenko, and Viktar Babaryka is on 25 percent. The protests didn’t start unaided. The CIA caught out: the National Endowment for Democracy admitted to having their people on the ground. This interference should stop. It’s a direct violation of Article 2 of the UN Charter.

Madam President, the latest resolution represents more barefaced interference in the internal affairs of the sovereign state of Cuba. In 1990, a resolution was passed by the European Parliament condemning Operation Gladio and demanding a full investigation into this covert operation. The calls were ignored by both NATO and the US. Gladio is a 40-year-long operation that subverted leftist movements the world over. It involved the CIA and other EU intelligence agencies working hand-in-hand with the Sicilian and Turkish mafias, the Vatican, former Nazis and fascists that were linked to massacres, torture, coups d’état and other terrorist operations in several countries of Western Europe, most famously the assassinated Italian Prime Minister, Aldo Moro. The fight against communism was, and is, a right-wing alliance. It is corrupt, extremist, repressive and is drenched in blood. The right-wing forces in the European Parliament calling for the continuation of sanctions or the overthrow of the Cuban Revolution, or the condemning of other leftist governments, are a continuation of the legacy of Operation Gladio. The EU must stop anti-democratic meddling in the affairs of other sovereign nations and must learn from our past crimes in this respect. The EU should stand up to US aggression towards Cuba and their illegal sanctions, which violate the UN Charter. Operation Gladio should be fully investigated so we can show the full extent of the anti-democratic terrorism that NATO members engage in against our own citizens and sovereign nations around the world. Get real!

Madam President, this debate about Afghanistan is only worth having if we agree that those responsible for this illegal 20- year invasion, occupation, and the deaths of close to a quarter of a million people are held to account for their crimes, and Mr Borrell, you think the lesson from it all is that we need more European defence? We learned nothing from Afghanistan if we do not call what happened by its name: it was war by the imperialist core to advance its geostrategic interest. NATO has to be held to account for its crimes against humanity. We were told by the External Action Service last week that NATO were fighting terrorism, fighting migrants, migration, and fighting the drug trade. Fighting terrorism. You are killing innocent people, women and children. You are creating terrorists. Fighting migration. You are destroying the place. You are creating migrants. Fighting the drug trade. It went from 185 tonnes in 2001 to 9 000 tonnes in 2017. Look at the Sahel. The same thing has been repeated. Phantom soldiers getting phantom training, puppet governments that don’t have the support of their people, the enrichment of corrupt elites and the arms industry. Last year, the EU-trained forces in the Sahel killed more civilians than terrorists. When are we going to stop feeding the arms industry? Stop supporting US imperialism? Stop killing people with arms? Stop killing people with sanctions? Instead, Europe now needs to provide sustainable refuge for those who have fled the mess we helped to create.

Mr President, Commissioner, the execution of Mustafa al-Darwish for taking part in protests when he was a minor is not exceptional in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It’s just another day in the systematic persecution and marginalisation of Shia by the brutal Saudi dictatorship. We will see more executions like this in the months ahead. But the Saudi dictatorship doesn’t care about the scolding of the EU Parliament. Did they give a damn about our Yemen resolution? Yemen is still under military siege and bombardment. Tens of thousands killed by EU, UK and US weapons, hundreds of thousands of women and children displaced and millions battling the starvation imposed on them by the defenders of the so-called rule-based international order. Our friends in the Saudi dictatorship will take these words of concern about capital punishment seriously when we stop profiting off them, investing in their ridiculous projects, legitimising their brutal regime and assisting them as they spread death and destruction and fund violent extremism all the way from Paris to Mali to Iraq, Xinjiang. Italia, in bocca al lupo domenica!