Speeches

Mr President, the ENVI report improves the Commission’s proposal to bring the regulation more in line with the necessary transition to zero pollution society. However, perhaps the most significant and welcome aspect of the ENVI report is the introduction of a ban on animal testing for detergents. This is an important victory for animal rights, but let’s not forget that in the farm to fork strategy, the Commission also promised that it would propose a revision of the EU’s animal welfare legislation by the end of 2023. That never materialised. And in the Commission’s work programme for 2024, only one of the four animal welfare regulations the Commission promised to revise was even included – the one on the transport of animals. The promised proposal to transition to cage-free systems remains completely absent.

Mr President, thank you very much. I’m sorry, I am nearly always here for all the debate, but something happened and I had to go. I’m sorry, but thanks for letting me in. In 2023, the IMF said rising corporate profit margins are responsible for almost half of Europe’s inflation. Big business and politicians in suits are forever telling us that spiralling wage demands are the problem. But the real problem is greedflation. Supermarket multinationals are gouging consumers. They’re also gouging farmers. Consumers have been paying crazy prices for a weekly shop and yet farmers are still being squeezed by the same retailers. And let’s not forget that the latest CAP was negotiated based on 2 % inflation. But inflation has been running at close to 10 % for the last two years – tough going for the 80 % of farmers who only get 20 % of the CAP money. Price cuts for consumers cannot come at the expense of farmers and producers. Price cuts must be funded from the margins of the supermarket chains. We have a new agri-food regulator in Ireland now, but if he hasn’t got the power to tackle greedflation for farmers and consumers, then his role won’t amount to very much.

Mr President, it’s been over two years since we passed a progressive text here that offers protection to some of the most exploited workers of our economy, and it’s depressing to see where we are still. The number of workers in the gig economy is expected to rise to 43 million by 2025, of which 5.5 million will be labelled as being self-employed. This allows platform companies to avoid paying the minimum wage, holiday or sick pay, and social security contributions. The lobbying of platform companies such as Uber and Airbnb, both at national and EU level, has been staggering, with Uber increasing their lobbying spend by 1 400%, followed closely by Bolt and Deliveroo. This has led to a butchered and watered-down text and still no agreement. The EU once again finds itself on the side of corporations against the workers, of profit over people. Neoliberalism rules and the workers lose.

Mr President, there are some positive things in this agreement that should increase transparency in political advertising. However, profiling will still be allowed. There will be a ban on profiling from sensitive data, but the targeting of political messages based on the individual preferences, weaknesses, situation and personality of every user will remain legal. Let’s not forget that Cambridge Analytica analysed exactly this non-sensitive data – users’ personalities, not their political opinions. Essentially, therefore, the agreement still permits surveillance advertising. God forbid that we might actually challenge surveillance capitalism and put the interests of democracy before those of Big Tech. So much of the moral panic in relation to political advertising came from the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Yes, the company clearly broke Facebook’s terms of service, but the UK Information Commissioner’s Office found no evidence that Cambridge Analytica misused data to influence the Brexit referendum. The real reason the people of the UK voted for Brexit was because EU neoliberalism was crucifying too many of the less privileged.

Mr President, the publication of the European Central Bank 2023 report comes at a time when European banks are on course to return more than EUR 120 billion to shareholders off the back of their 2023 results, as they pass on the benefits of surging interest rates to investors. Today, most EU banks’ shareholder returns are larger than annual profits and this is something that the ECB and the European regulator need to act on, particularly as these surging interest rates are predominantly linked to the war in Ukraine. Unfortunately, the ECB report appears to be silent on the issue of increased buybacks flowing from massive interest hikes. The ECB has the capacity to intervene – during COVID, the ECB recommended that banks refrain from paying out dividends and buying back shares for the period. The current EU banking model that allows investors to profit off war is abhorrent. If the ECB is concerned with regulating, it should recommend that banks refrain from buying back shares while the war in Ukraine continues.

Madam President, no! This Parliament, Madam President, likes to insist that it respects international law. The EPP don’t want to talk ... (The President cut off the speaker)

Madam President, in just a matter of months, over 100 000 people have been killed, injured or gone missing in Gaza. The ICJ imposed a binding order on Israel to prevent genocidal acts, which has clearly been ignored. We all know that at least 3 600 people have been killed in Gaza since, while aid has been reduced and refugee camps bombed. We have to reconsider our position and insist on an immediate, permanent ceasefire and respect for international law. The last time we called for a ceasefire, it was on Netanyahu’s terms, this time it has to be genuine. For this reason, on behalf of the left Group, I request that we modify the title of this debate to focus on a ceasefire and add a resolution. I would like to vote in two steps, both by roll call vote: first, on the change of title and second, the vote on the addition of a resolution to be voted on in March, regardless of the title change. The new title proposed is the following: ‘War in the Gaza Strip and the need to reach a ceasefire, including recent developments related to the ICJ and in the region’.

Mr President, do I think that there’s a healthy democracy in Venezuela? I actually don’t, you know, but I don’t see one anywhere else, either. As my colleague said, over 7 million people have left Venezuela because of the illegal sanctions that have been strangling the country to death since 2017. The Centre for Economic and Policy Research found that in the two years before Trump further tightened the sanctions in 2019, they had killed 40 000 people. The text not only ignores the carnage the sanctions are causing, but calls for more sanctions, this text today. It blames everything on the Government. But have we any humanity? I mean, we actually have blood on our hands. We introduce sanctions to kill the ordinary people. Sanctions hurt the most vulnerable the most, not the leaders and the wealthy in the country. The most vulnerable and women and children suffer more. Our idea of sanctions is to get the people to bring about regime change. Well, we’ve a terrible way of doing it. You say we want free elections in Venezuela, but the Venezuelan people have been under relentless collective punishment. We’re not going to get a normal election result. Why doesn’t the European Union abandon their like-minded US partner and have a healthy approach to Venezuela and help them to get on their feet? I don’t understand the reason.

Mr President, I voted against the resolution. I found it crazy. I actually thought that it brought the Parliament into disrepute. I was here for the debate this week, and I have never heard such nonsense in all my time here. Where does the anti-Russian rhetoric come from? I don’t like the Russian Government; we opposed and condemned the Ukraine invasion on 24 February 2022, but we also condemn every other war. The Americans killed over 400 000 along with NATO in Afghanistan; the Americans killed a million citizens in Iraq; there were 400 000 killed in Yemen, thanks to our support, but we don’t talk about it. I have no particular liking for any one culture or country over another, but we should treat them all fairly and cut out this racism. We don’t seem to tolerate other countries and other cultures. We call ourselves the civilised people, but we’re not behaving in a civilised manner. We demonise the Chinese and we talk about a genocide in Xinjiang without any evidence, and we ignore a genocide in Gaza. I don’t understand this place anymore.

– Mr President, concerning the association agreements for the participation of third countries in Union programmes, we understood that there were rules and regulations around association agreements. The European Union has an association agreement with Israel, and every rule that you can conceive of has been broken. We have totally ignored our own rules. Israel is committing a genocide in Palestine; Israel has been persecuting the Palestinian people for 75 years, and we have no problem maintaining the association agreement with them. I’d like someone in the Commission to explain that to me, because I just don’t understand it. What does Israel – this apartheid, far—right regime – have to do before we break the association agreement with them? How low do they have to get? 30 000 civilians are dead, 11 000 of them are children, and we have not even contemplated the idea of breaking the association agreement. I don’t understand this.

Mr President, wouldn’t it be terrible if I hadn’t have turned up and yez had no catch-the-eye! Revolving doors, conflict of interest and a lack of transparency: the Commission has been embroiled in yet another scandal, this time with the tobacco industry. Last April, Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly, in a letter to von der Leyen, emphasised ongoing issues with maladministration as far back as 2016, with standard practices such as meeting necessity checks and minute-taking proving to be the exception rather than the rule. A report by Corporate Europe Observatory has found that in its dealings with the tobacco industry, the Commission has failed to limit contact, refused to disclose information and reactive transparency. With the tobacco industry’s ever-increasing influence used to exploit loopholes and spread mistruths, the Commission must make drastic changes to its transparency protocols. I’d like to ask the Commission how they can justify the appointment of Dentsu tracking without a public tender. I don’t understand why no public tender was required.

Mr President, the report argues it is essential the European Parliament have oversight on a third country’s involvement in Horizon Europe. But why, given that the same parliament has turned a blind eye to Israel’s involvement in Horizon Europe? The Euro-Mediterranean Agreement between the EU and Israel establishes the general principles for Israel being in programmes such as FP7, Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe. Israel is in flagrant breach of its obligations under the agreement, and the Parliament has totally ignored this violation. For years, Israeli Government agencies, military and security companies that are deeply involved in human rights abuses have been drawing down billions in EU research funds. The Parliament did nothing. Now they are committing genocide in plain sight and you do nothing. Do you call this oversight? If the Parliament was doing its job, it would call on the Commission to suspend the association agreement now.

Mr President, In Ireland we have a serious teacher shortage also. Many schools say they have been forced to plug staffing gaps by redeploying special education teachers. This will have a devastating impact on more vulnerable pupils. Now we have plenty of people qualifying as teachers in Ireland, and the problem is not the profession: the problem is the chronic lack of accommodation in the country. Many teachers have no option but to move abroad. Sadly, this has all been self-inflicted by successive Irish governments implementing neoliberal housing policies. Between 2002 and 2022, wages in Ireland increased by 27 %, residential property prices increased by 75 % over the same period and rents increased by 90 %. The average Dublin rent is now over EUR 2 000 a month, and that’s equivalent to the entire monthly take-home pay of a newly qualified teacher. Newly qualified teachers in Ireland earn EUR 41 000 per year, but the average salary needed to buy a three-bed home in the Greater Dublin area is EUR 126 000. We have a big problem.

Mr President, I condemn the death penalty wherever it’s used, be it Iran, China, Saudi, the US, or anywhere else. But it would be possible to take the EU’s concern about capital punishment in Iran at face value if this was not the same week that you vetoed the discussion on the ICJ ruling against Israel. The UN’s highest court just ruled that the charge of genocide against Israel has merit, and you flatly refused to put this historic judgement on the agenda. You are showing us that the Muslim life is only valuable to you, to the extent that it can be used as a weapon against your geostrategic rivals. Otherwise, you’re happy to provide the weapons to murder them and cover up a genocide against them. Over 30 000 Palestinians have been murdered by the Israeli regime and we don’t even want to talk about it in here. The hypocrisy is terrible.

Madam President, a few weeks ago, the State of Israel’s Twitter account posted a picture of an Israeli soldier in Gaza holding a Pride flag with the phrase ‘In the Name of Love’ written on it. The depravity of Israeli propaganda knows no bounds. How dare they use the LGBT community as a prop to justify genocide? As if portraying Palestinian society as homophobic would ever justify wiping it off the map altogether. They don’t care about gay rights. They care about salvaging their abysmal global reputation and demonising Palestinians by spreading Islamophobic hate. Colonial powers have long weaponised notions of civilisation and human rights to legitimise their plunder and military rule. Does the pretext of bringing in freedom and culture to racialised communities to justify a genocidal crusade not sound too familiar, especially for Europeans? We can all see through Israel’s lies and pink washing. If the EU truly cares about LGBT rights, they should stand with the Palestinian LGBT community, calling for dignity and self-determination.

– We’re discussing the need to fight the increase of in antisemitism and anti-Muslim hatred. On Monday, you blocked a debate about the UN’s highest court ruling that the Israelis supporting an entire predominantly Muslim population at risk of genocide. Looking at Germany may help us understand this contradiction; it arms Israel and it supported our defeated case at the ICJ. It materially and politically supports genocide of Muslims in Gaza. At the same time, in the name of fighting antisemitism at home, 30% of events cancelled due to suspected antisemitism are actually anti-Zionist events organised by Jewish people. In the fight against antisemitism, German police forces are kicking down doors and beating Muslims in the street for speaking out against the genocide of their own people in Gaza. Anti-Muslim hatred is clearly state—mandated, while antisemitism is being brandished as a stick to attack those who speak out against the crimes of Europe’s Zionist colonial project in Palestine. Not a lot has changed in the past century.

Madam President, bit unfortunate to hear the Irish delegate actually tell lies, repeat lies that were actually in the Irish Times – and they had the decency to withdraw them – but he’s on a different page. ‘Russiagate’, I mean, sometimes this place is beyond belief. The greatest scam of recent times is getting an EU makeover. If you’re worried about Russian influence here, look no further than the MEPs that have been fuelling the war in Ukraine. Russia now has the largest economy in Europe, thanks to the people that are fuelling the war. The German economy is going downhill. How in God’s name? The people that have actually supported the war in Ukraine and didn’t want it to stop, you’ve actually been doing Russia a favour. Are you being paid by Russians? I mean, your incompetence is helping Russia. Putin and his cronies have got complete control of their economy again, thanks to you. You’re a joke, you are. When are you going to grow up? I mean the amount of nonsense we have heard in here today about Russiagate is off the Richter scale. You are like children. I mean, you know what? You wouldn’t get a decent job in the real world.

Mr President, in terms of the headline target, the Commission has accepted the advice of the European Scientific Advisory Board, but it is disappointing that the Commission has retained the net zero or climate neutrality framework. We have been calling for separate reduction and removal targets since the start of this mandate; ideally, we’d have three separate targets: emission reductions, permanent removals and net sequestration in the land sector. The final version of the Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition Directive, which we passed here last month, showed that there is a real appetite in the Parliament and in the Council to tackle offsetting. The next logical step would be to contest climate neutrality and net zero as climate concepts, and as the basis for EU climate policy. The carbon removal certification framework could and should have been used to facilitate a separate EU carbon removal target.

Madam President, this legislative proposal aims to deregulate many of the newer GMO crops. This would mean no risk assessment, no labelling, no traceability and no measures to protect organic and other non-GMO food chains. It’s the result of a massive lobbying campaign from the big seed companies, who stand to make billions of euros from these GMOs because they can all be patented. People want to know what’s in the food they buy and what they eat. GMO labelling is absolutely essential to guarantee consumers’ right to choose. This regulation is a deliberate attack on the rights and freedoms of producers and consumers to be informed and to choose. We are increasing food monopolies and restricting freedom of choice for breeders, farmers and citizens. We are throwing the precautionary principle in the bin with this legislation. There’s something fundamentally wrong with Europe’s agricultural system, and the neoliberal agricultural model has failed the farmers and the planet.

Mr President, at the farmers’ protests last week outside Parliament, a banner read: ‘You promised peace, you promised us prosperity. You have delivered war and poverty.’ Why are we still facilitating this senseless and bloody war in Ukraine? Why did NATO block the peace deal that we knew had both Ukrainian and Russian backing in March 2022? For two years, your decisions on Ukraine are based on the idea that Ukraine is going to win. Well, it’s not looking great. Zelenskyy said at the weekend that the war is in a stalemate. They have a mobilisation crisis. Conscription age has been lowered to 25. Videos abound of young men being kidnapped off the streets and forced to the front. Who’s going to fight your war? Corruption is off the charts. Zelenskyy is about to sack his popular commander-in-chief of the armed forces, Zaluzhnyi, and a raft of top government officials. The wheels are coming off. The war is crippling the EU. Why on earth are we not making the aid conditional on peace? This is absolute insanity. It’s about time you copped onto yourselves.

Madam President, the silence about the genocide in Gaza is deafening. The latest European Council conclusions don’t even mention the words ‘Gaza’, ‘Israel’ or ‘Palestine’. No debate on Gaza in this week’s plenary. A vote yesterday to get the historic ICJ ruling on the agenda was defeated; only 77 MEPs supported it. One hundred thousand casualties in four months, 1.8 million displaced, food-insecure, ethnically-cleansed and now starving. Over 11 000 children killed by the Israeli regime. The UN’s highest court has ruled that the Palestinians in Gaza are at risk of genocide, and we don’t want to talk about it in here. People all across the world have taken to the streets demanding a ceasefire. But the EU stands with the Zionist settler colonial project. Are you censoring discussion on genocide because you are complicit in it? The EU is dripping with hypocrisy and it is dripping with the blood of Palestinian children.

Mr President, another US-backed and funded occupation of Haiti. That it will be lent a black face by Kenya is one of the worst ideas I’ve heard for a while: the Kenyan police are notoriously violent and have a history of working in collusion with gangs, not disrupting them at home in Kenya. Haiti has been occupied multiple times and every time the situation seems to get worse. The crisis today is a direct result of the Brazil-led UN occupation from 2004 to 2017. Haiti doesn’t need foreign forces, it needs the IMF to stop choking them to death. They do not need structural adjustment programs: they need health and aid workers, debt relief and the ability to grow their own food. In the 70s, Haiti was self-sufficient in rice production, now it buys 82 % of its rice from the US. When will the US stop suffocating Haiti, carrying out coups, backing dictatorships and crushing their economy? This mission is a human rights disaster in the making, just like all the previous ones.

Mr President, this cross-border directive is an attempt to force Member States to exchange information in relation to certain driving disqualifications. As you know, if a driver is convicted of an offence in one country, the sanctions only apply to that country at the moment. I’m a bit sceptical of cross-border directives and whether they are required at all. Take, for example, the EU Commission’s flagship cross-border directive on health. Ten years since its implementation, and the Commission itself accepts that the directive has been a failure. If a person has been convicted, for example, of excessive speed – and whatever that means – should they be punished in 27 Member States? It seems a bit mad to me. I think that’s a bit over the top. I’m just wondering, is this part of building a United States of Europe, or is just an effort to increase bureaucracy? It doesn’t make an awful lot of sense to me.

Mr President, first of all, the only thing I know about computers is that you can’t eat them, right? Interoperability, I believe, is the ability of computer systems or software to exchange and make use of information. Now the regulation is linked to an Interoperable Europe Act. The aim of this Act, it says, is to help public administrations and the private sector work together and establish an ecosystem of interoperability solutions for the EU’s public sector. Now, I agree that the public sector, particularly hospitals, should be able to share patient information on a cross-border basis if this can help the needs of the patient. But I’m not convinced of the private sector’s involvement in the proposal. And the idea of the public sector and private sector working together for the benefit of citizens – a bit of a farce. It’s neoliberalism 101, and it generally results in the private sector making massive profits off the back of the public sector, with citizens paying the price.

Mr President, 96% of all solar panels installed in Europe in 2022 came from China. It would be absurd to criticise China for building up a solar industry. China’s solar manufacturing accounts for 78% of the world’s total PV module production. We’d be lost without China’s solar panel manufacturing. China’s industrial policy is helping massively to decarbonise the world. Tariffs on China would absolutely be the wrong approach. Solar Panel Europe, which is one of the largest solar industry representative associations, has been very clear that it does not support trade measures against China. Instead, it wants a relaxation of state aid rules for the industry. It wants resilience auctions and credit guarantees. China has invested over $50 billion in new PV supply capacity – 10 times more than Europe. In a crisis – and the climate crisis is the biggest crisis we’ve ever had to face – we need a strong state and we need strong state supports. If we want good quality, green jobs in Europe, we should follow China’s example instead of giving out about them.