Speeches

We will come to the votes. But firstI have received several requests for points of order and I ask the colleagues who asked for a point of order to be brief: one minute speaking time.

Mr President, Commissioner, Minister, ladies and gentlemen, today my message is directed at our Member States. If patience is to be a virtue, it is, in the context of the horizontal anti-discrimination directive, despicable. Fifteen years of blockage, what a scandal! Yet visible and audible, the discrimination faced by too many of our fellow citizens does not seem to frighten blocking governments. Fifteen years of immobility, inaction by some national representatives, is the result of a lack of political courage. While legislation on discrimination in the labour market has already been adopted in the past, it should still be remembered that we only spend eight hours a day at our workplace. Protection against discrimination must be guaranteed 24 hours a day, both in the private sphere and in the workplace. It is therefore time to sweep our doors and enforce the values of equality within our Union. To this end, we Socialists and Democrats support Commissioner Dalli to ensure that under this mandate a solution is found to adopt a progressive text prohibiting all forms of discrimination in the different spheres of privacy of all those who live in our European Union. Dear colleagues, to all the far-right populist religious extremists who call us – who fight discrimination, who defend women’s rights, trans rights, LGBT rights, minority rights – ideologists, I just want to recall that they are the ideologists. We are just people who defend fundamental rights, and the far-right ultra-conservative politicians, the ideologists, they are against the Union of equality, a Union of equality which Commission President von der Leyen calls for, where Helena Dalli, the Commissioner for Equality, works so hard. Thank you for having presented all this equality strategy. Thank you for defending the concept of intersectional discrimination; by the way, intersectional discrimination is a term which is forbidden from Council language, and this is a shame and this can no longer go on like this. So I call on the Swedish Presidency: please do your best to work on this on this important subject, because fighting for equality, equal treatment is not giving more rights to one or the other, it’s just giving the same rights to everyone. And this is what we need in our European Union.

Mr President, just before you started chairing, the German MEP Christine Anderson from the ID Group, she talked about ‘Regenbogen Mafia’, ‘Rainbow Mafia’. And let me call let me recall the definition of ‘Mafia’. Mafia stands for an organised international body of criminals. And I think that people who defend the rights of rainbow families, people who defend LGBTI rights, they are not criminals. They are just human rights defenders, they defend fundamental rights. And I think that kind of talk is totally inappropriate for this Parliament. And it equals to me to hate speech. And hate speech has no place in this house.

The next item on the agenda is the topical debate (Rule 162): ‘More Europe, more jobs: we are building the competitive economy of tomorrow for the benefit of all’ (2023/2601(RSP)). I should like to inform Members that for this debate there is no catch-the-eye procedure and that no blue cards will be accepted. I would also like to invite the speakers to keep the time as we are running a bit late, so I want you to respect the times.

The minutes of yesterday’s sitting and the Texts adopted are available. Are there any comments on the Minutes of yesterday’s sitting? I don't see any. The minutes are approved.

The S&D Group has notified the President of a decision relating to changes to appointments within a committee. This decision will be set out in the Minutes of today’s sitting and takes effect on the date of this announcement.

We now move to the next item on the agenda: one-minute speeches pursuant to Rule 172.Members are invited to take the floor from their seats. We will start with Mr Sokol. Mr Sokol, the floor is yours.

The next item on the agenda is the report by Urmas Paet on a European Parliament recommendation to the Council and the Vice-President of the Commission / High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy taking stock of the functioning of the EEAS and for a stronger EU in the world [2021/2065(INI)] (A9-0045/2023). Mr Paet is not present yet. We are searching for him, but I do not want to interrupt the debate, so I propose that we continue, and I invite Executive Vice—President Timmermans to take the floor and hope Mr Paet will join us very soon.

Madam President, dear Commission Vice-President, dear Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly, and dear colleagues, first of all, I would like to thank our rapporteur, Anne-Sophie Pelletier, for the excellent work she has done on this file and the shadow rapporteurs, the colleagues, I think we did a good work to make this report a success. Since her first election, our Ombudsman, Emily O'Reilly, has been working on increasing the standards of EU administration. This is not only making us happy here in the European Parliament but this is very important for our citizens and they appreciate it very much, so thank you very much for that work. We, the S&D, welcome very much the hard work of the small office of the Ombudsman that increased its efficiency and has proven to have an important role to bridge the gap between EU citizens and the EU institutions. The structural organisation and the efficiency of the Ombudsman’s office, the need for full transparency, the management of the COVID-19 crisis, the management of our agencies, the avoidance of the risk of conflict of interest for officials from EU institutions – all these are topics covered by the Ombudsman and included also in our report and very important subjects. Transparency is the basis for our citizens’ trust and we must make sure to honour it, especially when it comes to the use of public money. Access to work-related documents is very important and has been discussed in your report, in our report, also including instant messages, the access to which must be included and guaranteed. Indeed, in this particular period, it is important to demonstrate our capability to be close to our citizens. Fundamental rights are the core values of the European Union and they should apply to all of our policies also inside the institution when it comes to ensuring equal access to work and teleworking for all workers, especially persons with disability but also when it comes to the management of our agencies such as Frontex. I am glad to see how the Ombudsman’s recommendation can help to improve our internal functioning in terms of transparency, accountability, but also make our institutions and agencies a better place to work. I would like to apologise to the Ombudsman and to the President that I will leave now because I’m going to the EP Bureau where we discuss cooling-off period, which is also a subject which you are very interested in. So thank you very much and keep on your good work.