Speeches

Mr President, dear Commissioner, dear Minister, dear colleagues, we worked hard for more than two years on the Platform Work Directive. New rules that would give workers who drive us around, deliver our food or clean our homes through an app, access to basic rights, such as minimum wages, sick leave. And rules that would give workers insights in why they get a certain task or why they get paid a certain amount. And twice we managed to reach a deal with the Council presidency that does exactly this. But apparently, Macron and the German liberals find the profits of the big platforms more important than protecting precarious workers. They prefer to reward the aggressive lobby tactics on which big platforms such as Uber, Deliveroo and Bolt spent millions of euros. It’s a shame that we can’t find an agreement on a directive that would help some of the most precarious workers in Europe, a directive that could have set a precedent for the future of work and how we deal with algorithms instead of people as managers. I call on all Member States to stop blocking progress, to the liberals to stop choosing profits for big companies over people. Talking about a more social Europe doesn’t help anyone. Let’s take action.

Mr President, in 1954, war-ridden France was experiencing a serious housing crisis. It was a freezing winter and thousands of people were sleeping on the streets. On 1 February, Abbé Pierre, outraged by the death of a homeless woman that still carried the eviction notice on her, launched a radio appeal for solidarity. Seventy years later, still, every night homeless people are dying in our cities. Every single night, 900 000 people sleep on the streets or in shelters. We could lose all hope and accept this as a fact of life. But it doesn’t have to be this way. We have the tools to halt growing rates of homelessness in the EU and even end homelessness for good. We see in Finland, with the Housing First approach, that this is possible. We need to move away from ‘managing’ homelessness and ‘charity only’ to solving it. This was also recognised by all Member States in the Lisbon Declaration that took on board the call of the European Parliament to work on ending homelessness by 2030. Several countries since then have adopted new strategies and work at the European level to better coordinate action, share knowledge and streamline funding has started. On Friday, I will represent the European Parliament at the ministerial meeting on homelessness hosted by the Belgian Presidency. This will be a key moment to ensure that the platform on combating homelessness is continued and strengthened in a new mandate, with a new work plan and a dedicated budget. The ministers gathering should agree to work on Council recommendations on homelessness to underpin the work of the platform and give guidance to the strategies of EU countries. Furthermore, we have to make sure that we continue combating the housing crisis, because solving homelessness can’t happen if people are continuing to become homeless. Also, knowing that the EU’s five richest billionaires increased their wealth since 2020 –from EUR 244 billion to EUR 429 billion, at a rate of EUR 5.7 million per hour – I think we simply cannot accept the most extreme form of poverty to continue to exist.

Madam President, in 2020, 23 years after the founding of our Parliament’s LGBTI intergroup, the European Commission published their very first LGBTIQ equality strategy. And it is truly a victory for our community to see this allyship from the Commission. And some very good first steps were taken. But I’m asking you now, please continue having our backs. Despite the growing backlash, despite the fact that my community is scapegoated for political gains and despite the increased hate against us, please continue to work with a new commissioner responsible for equality and a new strategy. Because we are still far away from a Europe where we are truly equal, where we are truly safe. We deserve to be treated equally. And for this we need the horizontal anti-discrimination directive to be unblocked. We want to be able to move throughout the Union without fear of losing our legal rights as partners or as parents. Our intersex siblings need to be protected with a ban on genital mutilation. Our trans siblings deserve to have a passport that reflects who they are without going through long and medicalised degrading processes. And we want a ban on the torturous practice of conversion therapy. In other words, we would like to have our basic human rights to be respected in the EU. So, I count on you to continue fighting together with us towards that.

– Mr President, how do big platforms make money? Well, they sell ads, or rather, they do everything they can to keep us all glued to our screens for as long as possible so that they can sell more ads and keep their shareholders and investors happy. They use multiple addictive design tools to do so, but their main money-maker is their hyper—personalised algorithm, based on clicks, interaction and tracking. You might ask why this algorithm is addictive. Well, it shows you content that agitates you, content that makes you feel emotional and angry. Every time you scroll down, you will see something that gives excitement to your brain. In short, big tech algorithms are designed to show you extreme content; middle—ground content where people have a middle—of—the—road opinion simply doesn’t do the trick. This is where big tech companies are shaking the hands of Putin’s disinformation tactics and far right campaigns. These algorithms are rapidly pushing people, and especially youngsters, into extreme content and far right or misogynist posts. We see a rise in hate, both online and offline, against activists, women, the queer community and journalists, and we see more and more distrust in democratic institutions. With the EU elections upcoming, the EU can no longer be naive. We urgently need action to protect our democracies. That’s why I call on you, Commissioner, to make sure these platforms turn off these polarising algorithms, either with an update to the code of conduct or with a crisis measure, because our democracy and these elections are too important to be based on what makes the most profit for big tech companies. We need to protect our democracy.

Mr President, dear Commissioner, dear colleagues, I heard that the European Commission has a fun idea to make sure that young voters vote in the European elections: we should make Taylor Swift tell them to vote. I love a bit of Taylor – absolutely – but here’s another idea for you, bear with me: maybe we could actually listen to young people for once? Because for more than ten years, young people have been asking us to end the exploitation of young people in internships and traineeships and we, the European Parliament, have stood by their side and repeatedly demanded legislation to ban unpaid internships. Then we had a European Year of Youth. We thought, ‘this is the moment’ – and nothing happened. But next month, the European Commission will finally present our plans for better internships. Better late than ever! So, Commissioner, if you want young people to have some faith in Europe, I would propose a ban on unpaid internships.

Madam President, dear colleagues, freedom of speech doesn’t mean the freedom to spread hate. But increasingly the LGBTIQ+ community, people of colour, migrants and other minorities encounter hate speech, especially online. This hate is fuelled by the far-right groups and amplified by social media algorithms. The purpose of this online hate is clear: they want to silence us and turn minorities into scapegoats. We know that online hate does not stay online: we see a stark rise in violence against the LGBTIQ+ community, with recent years being the most violent in ages. This is a danger both to the safety of individuals and to our democracies. Europe has to send a clear signal to society and to online platforms: there is no place for hate speech and hate crimes in the EU. So, to the Council: act now, add hate speech and hate crimes to the list of EU crimes, make sure everyone can feel safe everywhere in Europe and act against the amplification of hate and disinformation by social media’s algorithms.

Madam President, go for the cheapest option. Ask any public authority what the European rules for buying goods and services dictate, and they think that’s what they have to do. And we are talking about 250 000 public authorities in the EU who spend around EUR 2 trillion per year through public procurement. That’s a two and then 12 zeros. It’s EUR 2000 billion. And we could use this money, which is 14 % of the EU GDP in a strategic way. We could try to achieve our social and environmental ambitions through public procurement. But in more than one third of Member States, up to 95 % of tenders are awarded solely on the basis of the lowest price. And this is because social award criteria are voluntary, and using them is considered a legal risk by many, many authorities. But we cannot accept that public money is being spent on cheap tenders and just let workers pay the price. Cleaners, call center workers, nursing home workers, security guards and other essential workers are employed with precarious working conditions with our public money. And because these are huge contracts, they’re impacting entire sectors. Our national and local governments are fueling a race to the bottom on wages and working conditions. But we can set strong social objectives in Europe. But then if social dumping is government sponsored, a true social Europe is very far from being realised. If the Commission is serious about promoting a social market economy, it should value social progress as much as the functioning of the internal market. So let us use all the tools we have in our toolbox to end precarious work and not stick to the voluntary approach for social conditionalities in procurement, which is doing the opposite. I call on the Commission to start preparing a revision of the Public Procurement Directive now, and present it early in the next mandate. We need to ensure that there will be no more public contracts granted to companies that have no collective agreements with their workers. And meanwhile, while we change the Public Procurement Directive, maybe we can also stop government sponsoring of the climate catastrophe.

Mr President, ‘if you are a parent in one country, you are a parent in every country’. Dear colleagues, this quote from Ursula von der Leyen, from 2020’ was maybe one of the most hopeful messages we as the LGBTI+ community got from this Commission because, I hope, we all agree that family life shouldn’t be a privilege, let alone something that we deprive a child of. Unfortunately, right now it does not reflect the situation of many rainbow families. So let’s foster the hope of all these families. I can’t wait for rainbow families in cross-border situations to get the recognition and protection they deserve, to know that they will be recognised as the parent of their child. I can’t wait for rainbow families moving to another country to choose it based on whether they like it, and not based on whether they will lose the rights over their child or not. I truly hope that I and rainbow families all over Europe don’t have to wait long for approval, and that the President of the European Commission will play her part in ensuring that ‘if you are a parent in one country, you are a parent in every country’.

Madam President, in the last decade, home ownership among people under 30 has sharply declined. And whilst home ownership is not the Holy Grail for ensuring decent and affordable housing for all, we know that the alternative today is relying on an overheated private rental market, where rents have been steadily rising and tenants’ rights and long-term rental contracts are under pressure. At the same time, youth unemployment remains a lot higher than average employment and young people are stuck in a cycle of internships and precarious jobs. Generation Rent is fed up with the fact that they can’t afford a decent place to live anymore, that serves as a launching pad for the rest of their lives. This is why young people are taking the lead of housing protests all over Europe. From the Woonprotest in the Netherlands to the Italian students denouncing that the student housing in Italy’s beautiful old university cities have been turned into tourist accommodation rented out on Airbnb, leaving them out on the streets. If Europe does not want to lose the trust of a disillusioned young generation, it is high time for the European Union to step in with decisive action to tackle the European housing crisis and pay particular attention to the needs of young people.

Mr President, dear colleagues, receiving a phone call from your boss while on holidays, or spending time with friends or family on the weekend; sitting on the couch and routinely checking emails, leading to interrupting your series, and then starting to work for half an hour anyway; having messaging apps dominated by work-related chats. It sounds all too familiar for a lot of workers in Europe. On top of increasingly using digital tools, the pandemic has installed remote working as the new normal, and the increased flexibility also has come with further blurring of boundaries between private and work life. A right to disconnect is a 21st century working right that we should ensure for all European workers, so that they can get the rest they deserve. The European Parliament already voted in favour of having an EU law at the beginning of 2021 that would tackle this always-on culture, which leads to physical and mental health problems. Companies and Member States have shown that it’s possible to put this into practice. But now that the negotiations between social partners have not delivered a result, the Commission shouldn’t wait, and make a proposal as soon as possible to ensure the right to disconnect to all workers. The burnout pandemic needs to be stopped as quickly as possible.

Madam President, dear colleagues, today is a historic day. The European Parliament leads the way and is the first parliament in the world to call for action against addictive design of apps and smartphones. No self-discipline can beat Big Tech’s addictive design tricks we are all subject to on a daily basis. It affects the attention span and brain development from a young age. We see especially youngsters glued to their phones, with 16 to 24 year olds spending an average of seven hours on their phones per day, potentially leading to a bigger risk of depression, anxiety and even attention disorders. If we do not intervene now, this will have an enormous impact on generations to come. We set rules for slot machines, but every time we open our apps, scroll down or refresh our social media, the same thing happens in our brains. This is why we have to ban the most addictive design features, such as the endless scroll, tackle addictive algorithms, and introduce a right not to be disturbed. So, it is up to you, and not the tech companies, to decide exactly what attention-grabbing features you want on your phone and when. The time is now to step up our game against the toxic business models of Big Tech. The Parliament is clear, and now it’s up to the Commission to make proposals to tackle addictive design for us and all generations to come.

Madam President, Commissioner, with the help of software, your boss can know exactly how many emails you sent, how many keystrokes you make per hour, even where your gaze is fixed, or whether you’re moving through a warehouse fast enough. The promise of technology at work was that it was going to make our work easier and more fun, and it would free us from boring administration or dull, repetitive tasks. Instead, algorithmic management is being used by bosses to treat people like robots. With new technologies, managers can constantly surveil people, micromanage their teams, and put their people under huge pressure. This constant stress and loss of autonomy impacts workers’ mental health and increases the risks of burnout. The rapid development of new technologies will only increase this if we do not set strong rules now. We are working on an important first step with the regulation of algorithmic management for platform work. But the use of technology at work is a problem for warehouse workers, office workers and workers across the board, too. Where the AI Act sets a horizontal legal framework on how these systems can be ethically designed, we now need EU rules on how these systems can be ethically used at work. Because at work specifically there is a total imbalance of power. So, we cannot simply rely on consenting to algorithmic management or the processing of your data. People need to be protected at work, so we need to set strong rules and clear limits to how these systems can be used on the work floor. So, dear Commissioner, I have been asking for these rules since our work on the Special Committee on Artificial Intelligence in a Digital Age, with a majority of the Parliament, and I am happy to hear you are closely monitoring this. But when will the Commission present legislation for the use of technology at work?

Mr President, the past week we have seen unprecedented levels of disinformation on social media about the terrible events in Israel and Palestine, further fuelling fear, confusion and hate among the people affected, but also within Europe. The extreme amount of disinformation is polluting our debates, further sowing polarisation and driving people into opposite sides. Actors intentionally spread disinformation to win sympathy, justify actions or cast doubts. For citizens, this makes it nearly impossible to follow this conflict and know which sources to trust. But the fact is, innocent people are being murdered. These were people in need of care at the hospital, people at festivals, people scared, looking for shelter from violence in their own homes. This has to stop immediately. Fighting terror with terror will not save any civilians life. We need to stop this war. We need a ceasefire now. And we need to work towards peace and end the occupation. But polarising the rules, be it through spreading disinformation or paying for ads to show the gruesome effects of war, will not bring peace closer. We need a world of sense united against terror and violence. We need facts, context, quality journalism as the basis for informed public debate. But as long as online platforms make profits by amplifying hate, extreme content and disinformation rather than quality information, our democracy, the rule of law and even peace are under threat. That is why the Commission urgently needs to act. I keep hearing that the DSA and Code of Conduct already work perfectly against disinformation, but it’s hard to believe when our social media are flooded with it. We cannot rely on X or TikTok to demonetise disinformation. The EU needs to be able to act against the spread of disinformation immediately when tech companies do not. We don’t have time to wait until they reply to their letters. So I ask the Commission, do you really consider the rule strong and fast enough to deal with the imminent threat of disinformation? Are we doing everything we can to prevent online platforms from adding fuel to the fire?

Madam President, ask any youngster or teenager on the street to show you their screen time, and they easily spent seven hours on their device. While kids are glued to their devices, there’s a big chance they are constantly being shown more shocking content just to keep them online, and even slowly being dragged into funnels of extremism, hate or misogyny. The super addictive design of games and online services impacts children’s ability to focus in schools. Problematic use can have serious mental-health effects, like risks of depression, anxiety, and even effects on brain development. A better and safer internet for kids shouldn’t only be about restricting children with age restrictions or better parenting. Because no one can beat the armies of psychologists and strategists that design manipulative big-tech tricks to keep us online at all costs. We need to fundamentally tackle the system behind it, because the internet should be safe for everyone. Therefore, I call upon the Commission to present rules against addictive design of online services and stop dangerous recommender systems.

Mr President, dear colleagues, when I discovered the lesbian TV show in my teenage years, I finally understood I would not only be able to find love with a woman, I would even be able to find a community. When I saw for the first time, I realised I wasn’t the only lesbian with a complicated dating life. Being represented in the media matters. But the far right now wants to take this away from all the young people that are trying to make sense of their identity and their place in the world. But when you ban LGBTIQ content, you are simply telling them that there are none. It’s a message plenty of people in our community already heard at home, at school, and – shamefully – in this Parliament. For a kid, seeing someone represent you on television offers validation. It shows you you are not alone. It can validate your struggle seeing Eric in Sex Education coming to terms with his black queer femininity. It can empower trans youth to feel like they are worthy to be seen when they see strong trans characters like Angel and Blanca in Pose. It can also create a sense of community being able to ask whether Willow was someone’s favourite character in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And it can give hope to see Bette and Tina in Generation Q finally getting married. I don’t think anyone should have the right to take this away. I believe we need to protect this and we need to protect the rights to being represented in the media. Actually, we deserve more representation in the media.

Madam President, almost three years ago, I stood here as rapporteur when we adopted the report on decent and affordable housing for all. And I’m still proud that the European Parliament put housing as a human rights central. We’ve seen some progress in certain areas: our call to end homelessness by 2030 was adopted by the Commission and Member States in the Lisbon Declaration, and we are now cooperating at European level to achieve this goal. We also soon will have rules that oblige Airbnb and other platforms to share data with cities so that their rules on certain rentals can be enforced. But I said three years ago that I witnessed that everywhere in Europe, more and more people simply couldn’t afford a decent home anymore. Since then, the rents and house prices have only gone up, and this is just one element of the cost of living crisis. There are now 900 000 homeless people on any given night in Europe, and it is estimated that up to 125 million people in Europe live in energy poverty. But we’re also seeing another trend, because people are not accepting this rising cost as a fact of life anymore, and they are going to the street to demand action. Primarily, they demand to be protected. They want to be protected from vulture funds buying up their neighbourhoods to turn them into luxury apartments, from being evicted under the guise of renovation and then having their flats turned into a short-term rental, and from being disconnected from energy. We have to listen to them and we have to act, because we are still confronted with the myth that nothing can be done on housing at an EU level. But it is simply not true. Climate policy is housing. Monetary policy is housing. State aid rules are housing. The capital markets union is housing. We need a European housing crisis response now. It should focus on putting a stop to turning housing into an investment product and it should ensure more European investment in social and energy-efficient homes. Because homes are for people, not for profit.

Mr President, dear colleagues, since what sex workers want and deserve is not considered in this report, I have asked them so it is at least mentioned in this Chamber. Sex workers need full social and labour protection. They need access to justice without the need for fear, hesitation or stigmatisation. They need a clear legal status, without discrimination in law or practice. They have the right to privacy and need digital rights. There are entitled to self-determination and self-organisation. They deserve respect and recognition, not contempt and exclusion. They would like us to hear them and look how we can further their rights that are also clearly voiced by human rights organisations, such as Amnesty International. Let’s stop talking about them and start talking with them. Sex work is work. End the stigma!

Mr President, Commissioner, Europe wants to be a leader when it comes to ethical AI, and that’s why I’m really happy we are taking the lead in the international context. But Commissioner, I’m also worried: international efforts on voluntary agreements are crucial, but they are also inherently untransparent and they should not be used as an excuse to hollow out regulation. Commissioner, can you promise us here today that during the AI Act negotiations on binding rules for foundational models, we will not hear, ‘Oh, we already have international voluntary agreements’ or ‘we already have to converge with the international voluntary agreements on generative AI, so let’s not regulate them’. Because experts have long warned us of the dangers and risks of generative models such as Chat GPT and Bloom. And our citizens too really want us to take the lead and regulate these large models as soon as possible. So let’s make sure that any international agreements follow Europe’s strong lead, not the other way around. Because there’s only one group of actors in the world that does not want strong EU rules for large AI systems, and those are the companies that want to make obscene profits by building large AI systems in the most cheap and reckless way, using private data and infringing copyrights. And they believe that if they dump the whole internet into their systems, it magically won’t discriminate or produce disinformation. And on top of that they emit hundreds of tons of CO2 just to train their systems. The European Parliament chose to put people and a planet ahead of profit. And that means we don’t make the same mistakes as we did in the past. We make strong rules and we can hold companies accountable and we don’t trust them on their beautiful words of ethical AI, because Europe can both be a leader in generative AI and protect our society, democracy and the planet, but only if we strongly regulate it.

Mr President, what do we want the future of our society to look like? Let's let computers determine who is right or wrong, who will be a fraud or a criminal, based on where you live, which sports club you are a member of and what profession your parents have? Or do we start from the good in people and give everyone a fair chance? Do we choose a society where people are continuously followed by so-called smart cameras, so that governments and companies know exactly where you are and what you do every day? Or do we choose a society where you can walk freely? Due to the rapid rise of artificial intelligence, we have to make fundamental choices about our future. Do elected representatives determine this by drawing up firm rules? Or do we put the future of our society in the hands of big tech companies under the guise of innovation? I say: let us steer artificial intelligence in the right direction, towards technology that advances people and the environment and minimises risks when using AI for human rights. After a year and a half and hundreds of hours at the negotiating table, I am also really proud that the European Parliament is now making choices and tomorrow is voting on a strong right to information and explanation, so that when using AI, people never stand empty-handed in front of a computer and know when an algorithm is being used. A mandatory human rights test before we deploy risky AI. Strict obligations about how you design and train your systems and how you handle data. Because what you put into an AI system also comes out. The same applies to discriminatory data and disinformation. And that we set limits within the rules instead of self-regulation for large models such as ChatGPT. For the first time worldwide, we are going to report on the environmental impact, and we want to make the environmental standards for systems such as ChatGPT mandatory. We also want to ban unethical technologies such as emotion recognition, gender or sexuality recognition and real time facial recognition in public space. Europe must choose its own path between China's surveillance and America's tech capitalism. By setting our own conditions for new technologies, we ensure that these technologies are reliable, ethical, safe and environmentally friendly in Europe. Only in this way do we protect our democracy and ensure that technology is used in the service of people and the environment instead of the other way around.

Mr President, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. But in many places in the world, our community is far from equal. Even worse, being who we are or loving who we want can put us into jail or can lead us to being sentenced to death. This new law in Uganda is another example of a law that criminalises people for being who they are. It’s a de facto blanket ban on being anything but straight or cis, with death as the ultimate penalty. We cannot stand by and not recognise that this limited view on what or who a person can be is, in many places in the world, including Uganda, a result of colonialism and is currently also promoted and funded by Western evangelical churches. This is why we in Europe should also take our responsibility and why I’m very happy that tomorrow we will call on the European Commission to establish an EU strategy for the universal decriminalisation of homosexuality and transgender identity, to ensure that everyone in the world will be able to live and love freely. Know that we in the European Parliament will continue standing by the side of the LGBT community all over the world. We will fight for you when your rights are under attack, like in Uganda or Ghana or the United States. But we will also celebrate with you when progress is made, like this past weekend in the Cook Islands. Because when we all stand together, a world where all human beings will truly be born free and equal in dignity and rights can be just around the corner.

Mr President, ‘You explain to my son that I am not his mother’ – this was written on one of the signs in Milan where thousands of people joined the protest against the restrictions of same-sex parents’ rights. And we should all ask ourselves this. How should a parent explain to their child that in the eyes of the administration they are not a family? How should a parent explain to their child that they can no longer pick them up from school or take them to the doctor? And how can we explain to children that their parents are being scapegoated and that their rights are taken away to hide the political failure of a right wing government? And this strategy to attack and dehumanise our community for political gain and to take away our rights isn’t new. We have seen where it leads to in Hungary and we have seen where it leads to in Poland. And we can’t accept yet another country, one of our founding Member States, backsliding on equal rights. And we continue hearing the same narrative. They claim that they are protecting the children, but the only way to protect children is by ensuring their parents have the legal rights to take care of them, in all Member States. These are European children. These are European parents. And we, as European legislators, are obliged to protect their rights. To all mums and dads, current and future, and all the rainbow children in Italy: we love you, we have your backs and we will try to do what it takes to protect you.

Mr President, rapporteur, Commissioner, . This also applies to the design and safety of products, because the average white man of 1.80 m and 70 kg is now standard, while a product that is safe for a man, that is certainly not automatically also for a woman. While consumers in Europe need to be confident that the products they buy are safe, this is not the case for half of society time and time again. For example, during the coronavirus pandemic, protective equipment, such as suits and masks, was not available in the right size for women, while it is often women who work in the care sector. As a result, they were at a higher risk of corona infection. I am therefore very happy that we now have product safety rules that are of today and in which gender is taken into account. The struggle against patriarchy must resound everywhere: in the streets, in the parliaments, and when writing a gritty European law on product safety, so that it contributes to gender equality. I therefore hope that the Commission will take this as an example and put on gender spectacles in all legislation.

Mr President, if you brush your teeth with a smart toothbrush, that data is not yours, but the toothbrush manufacturer's. If you want to have your electric car repaired, you have to go to your brand's garage, because they can't get into your car's computer. And your robot vacuum cleaner collects data about your house all day long, which you are not allowed to access. It's pure data hunger under the guise of innovation. This, of course, is the world upside down. The data you produce must be yours. Well, fortunately, this law is a first step for that and I am happy that there are no shortcuts for companies to collect even more personal data. Personal data does not belong in a data market. Let's look at the data of companies, such as in energy use or production processes. We can collectively learn from this to make processes more sustainable and to find solutions to the climate crisis faster. Let's make that data freely available. Data can bring us a lot, but individuals need to be able to decide for themselves what they want to share, no matter what device they purchase.

First of all, I never said there was an increase in violence, but there was violence all over the place. What the fact that the Istanbul Convention is not ratified by these other Member States says is that they don’t care. And also, I have said that we need also on top of that, a directive against violence against women. We need to work on every level that we can to ensure that women can be safe in our streets, at home and at work. As long as governments refuse to say even that they want to work on that, that they want to ratify something as crucial for us women as the Istanbul Convention, we cannot say that we are doing everything we can to reduce violence.

Mr President, one in three women in the European Union is a victim of gender-based violence. In the Netherlands, a woman is murdered every eight days, simply because she is a woman. Meanwhile, the European Council has been waiting for six long years to ratify the Istanbul Convention. The Council does not seem ready for the directive against gender-based violence either. All apologies from our governments not to pursue this issue give us women only one message. Are we safe at home? Not important to you. Are we safe on the street without keys between our knuckles? It's not important to you. Do we have to warn each other about that one colleague in the workplace? It's not important to you. What about all the victims of femicide? You also close your eyes to that. Actions are stronger than words. Ratify the Istanbul Convention and work towards a strong directive against gender-based violence. (The speaker accepted a "blue card" response)