Speeches

Madam President, I want to repeat my abhorrence at the atrocities committed by Hamas on 7 October, and what has been done since then by the Israeli Defence Forces is not proportionate. I grew up in Ireland; over 30 years of the conflict on the island of Ireland, 3 500 people were killed, each one a tragedy. In one month, 4 000 children have been killed in Palestine. How is that proportionate? Thousands more have suffered life-changing injuries and trauma. Those who have not been killed or injured are denied the basic necessities of life: fuel, food, water and electricity. How can that be proportionate? I call on other MEPs to co-sign my request for a review of the EU–Israel Association Agreement, Article 2 of which makes respect for human rights and democratic principles an essential element of that agreement. It was the government of Israel that suspended part of that agreement in 2013. Why is it so radical for the EU to review that agreement, given everything that has happened? It is never too late to do the right thing.

Mr President, Commissioner, Presidency, colleagues, in this Parliament, I believe there is a genuine passion for the 2030 Agenda and what it can do for humanity. The SDGs embody the interdependence of nations and represent a towering achievement of diplomacy. The Parliament insisted, in resolutions in 2022 and 2023, that we would have a greater role in consultation with the Commission on implementation. And, in the SDG Summit political declaration from September, at paragraph 22, it acknowledges the important role of parliaments in ensuring accountability and effective implementation. Even in this Parliament, we set up an SDG alliance: an informal alliance of like-minded MEPs to dedicate themselves towards the drive for implementation. So, why was it that the Commission refused to provide any invitation to any MEPs to attend the summit with the European delegation? I managed to get an invitation through a different channel. When I sought a meeting with the Commission in New York in the margins of the summit, that was also refused. It is a scandal that such contempt is shown to this European Parliament. This Parliament is treated as a barely tolerated inconvenience as far as implementation of the SDGs is concerned, despite what we have written in resolutions, despite the commitments in the political declaration of the SDG Summit. The good news is that the political declaration itself contains very important commitments that we in the Parliament will be able to track about better debt mechanisms and payments and restructuring commitments to the SDG Stimulus to address the financing gap. Sadly, it will be the next mandate, in my opinion, before any meaningful engagement will occur with the European Parliament.

Mr President, I’d like to begin by condemning the atrocities carried out by Hamas, including the ongoing hostage taking and sheltering military assets at or near key civilian infrastructure. I assert the right of Israel to defend itself, a right based on international law, specifically the UN charter. But that same international law specifically forbids forced population transfer, collective punishment and indiscriminate targeting, including targeting of civilian infrastructure. International law is all that protects humanity in our darkest hours. I was astonished that President von der Leyen did not take the opportunity to acknowledge the confused communications from the European Commission and the damage that has done to our credibility. The European Union should now support the UN call for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire and humanitarian corridor and take advantage of the global attention on this crisis for a real political initiative to bring peace to the region and end the cycle of violence.

Mr President, Commissioner, Presidency and colleagues, it is a year since the Russian invasion and, according to the OECD, 70% of adult Ukrainian refugees are women, and the war is having a very severe impact, as we know, on women and girls and marginalised populations, particularly in the area of SRHR. The EU has promised to provide refugees from Ukraine with sanctuary and care. This isn’t the case, of course, in every Member State, where they face a range of pre-existing legal and policy barriers as well as cost barriers. In a 2023 report, the Center for Reproductive Rights found that many refugees feel they have no choice but to return to Ukraine temporarily if they require SRHR. Another concerning finding is that, because of the abortion ban in Poland, some Ukrainian women refugees are forced to seek abortion care outside of legal pathways. Clearly, some of these barriers require action at Member State level. However, the Temporary Protection Directive specifies clear Member State obligations in respect of emergency and essential health care provision, and support for survivors of gender-based violence. There has been an outpouring of solidarity for Ukraine since the war began, but Ukrainian women require continued access to SRHR.

Mr President, Commissioner, Presidency and colleagues, Intellexa is the proprietor of Predator and it is a company that’s registered in Ireland. The Irish Government says it doesn’t have a substantial presence there and there’s nothing to worry about. But it books EUR 30 million in revenue through its Irish accounts and a lot of company formation specialists provide the support for Intellexa to be present in Ireland. I put pressure on them. Journalists – including The Currency, an online publication – put pressure on them. And I’m happy to say that, over the summer, Intellexa’s directors resigned, and just last week its company secretary registered its resignation in the companies office. And my message to company formation specialists is: do your due diligence because this industry is toxic. And I’m very concerned that Member States are using spyware for detection, but not for prosecution of crime, because they know it will not survive a challenge under the European Convention on Human Rights. So we need a European Framework, Commissioner, and we need it very, very urgently.

Mr President. I am aware of that, but as I mentioned, a number of Member States have already signed bilateral extradition treaties that would have the same anxiety that you’ve just underlined. According to the Belgian Justice Minister, and I quote: ‘if I talk to my colleagues in Italy, Spain, Germany and France, they all have a wish list of the people that are hiding in Dubai, and they are not able to move on them to see them extradited to Europe’. I do accept points you’ve made, but I just want to add that by way of clarification.

Mr President, Commissioner, I want to ask a question about the possibility of an EU extradition treaty with the United Arab Emirates. As you know, a number of EU countries have already bilaterally signed extradition treaties with the UAE: Belgium, Netherlands and Denmark. A lot of these countries have in common that many of the leaders of organised crime gangs are currently in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. In Ireland, the Kinahan crime gang are a global drugs and arms cartel and their activities have contributed to a cocaine epidemic in Ireland. As I am sure you aware, the ministers from the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Spain and France met in Antwerp in June for a discussion on organised crime and they co-signed a declaration supporting an EU extradition agreement with the United Arab Emirates. So I would be keen to hear your views about whether or not you think this is appropriate. I'm aware of the safeguards that are necessary from human rights and the reciprocal demands from the UAE. But already Member States are doing this and it would be of tremendous help.

Madam President, earlier this year, I published a report with Housing Europe. Most people dismiss the significance of the European Union in housing policy, and five years ago, people would have had the same attitude to the European Union in health policy. But all of that has changed. The report showed the many policy and financing levers that are available to the European Union, whether the EIB, European Social Fund Plus or the Just Transition Fund, but also state aid rules and fiscal rules. The report also lists 19 examples of best practice from other EU Member States from which we could learn. A good example is the Livret A savings product, which has resulted in EUR 19 billion of funding for 80 000 affordable homes in France, and this is the basis for the Sustainable Development Bank policy proposal that I’ve submitted to the Irish government, which has the benefit of not being public debt because it is financed by private savings. But it also has the benefit of being off balance sheet as well, for the purposes of fiscal rules.

Madam President, one of the major problems identified by the Outlaw Ocean Project report is the fact that most major brands rely on ethical trading audits to satisfy themselves that there are no human rights abuses in their supply chain and no environmental damage in their supply chain. But there are major practical difficulties with these audits. How, for example, does an auditor visit a distant fishing fleet? How does a Chinese national call out human rights abuses in a Chinese seafood processing plant? These are the practical difficulties and we all know that Lidl and Aldi and Tesco will have carried out all of these ethical trading audits and were unable to find any of the evidence that was produced as a result of a four-year investigation. So as we move now from a soft law environmental in this area to strict statutory obligations, we really need to support our retailers and supermarkets and our consumers to make good choices.

Madam President, Commissioner, colleagues, the Outlaw Ocean Project published the result of a four-year investigation in The New Yorker last week into the Chinese distance fishing fleet. The report found evidence of forced labour in the Chinese seafood processing factories and evidence that this seafood finds its way into European supermarkets. Names that were published in the report include Lidl, Aldi and Tesco. There have been resignations and investigations and parliamentary hearings announced, and this is a wake-up call for the industry. The shame is that we do not have any international system to stop the enormous damage to marine biodiversity. Bottom trawlers account for 1.5 billion tonnes of CO2 every year – the same as the aviation industry. This regulation and the forced labour ban that we voted on earlier in the Trade Committee and the Single Market Committee will help to stop the human rights abuses in the seafood industry, to stop the environmental damage in the seafood industry, and to provide fairness and an end to unfair competition and subsidisation for our fishers.

Mr President, Commissioner Schinas, I was encouraged by your presentation this morning. You were able to document genuine progress and demonstrated real energy to deliver the Pact. I do take issue, however, with the characterisation of the EU-Tunisia partnership, the strategic partnership, as being necessary and workable. We should have known from Libya that efforts to stop human trafficking resulted in torture in captivity in Libyan detention centres. We should have known from border management funding in other African partner countries that no serious human rights guardrails are implementable. Requests for reports on human rights impacts of these arrangements by MEPs have gone unanswered by the Commission. I come from a country where we had 200 years of mass emigration. Now 40 million Americans claim Irish descent. Many of them emigrated in leaky boats and yet there are many in Ireland who would pull the ladder up behind them. It is for this and many other reasons that the Pact, for all its imperfections, is urgently necessary. I hope you and the Council will approach the forthcoming negotiations with flexibility and pragmatism.

Commissioner, I have a question that relates to the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive. As you know, European companies are preparing for this directive, especially companies with supply chains in China. Many of these European companies rely on ethical trading audits. These audits are carried out by third-party companies, and many of these companies hire Chinese nationals to carry out on-site visits at factories that are within their supply chains. As you can imagine, it is very difficult for Chinese nationals to call out human rights abuses that they may identify in these on-site visits. It therefore underlines the deficits associated with these ethical trading audits. As we transition from the soft guidelines in this area to the statutory obligations in the Directive, I wonder if the Commission is aware of these deficits in ethical trading audits and what supports you can give, and reassurance, to European companies that rely on these audits.

Mr President, I want to take issue with the assertion of MEP Rangel that there is a link between direct democracy and dictatorship. Ireland is the country with which I’m most familiar, and Ireland has more characteristics of direct democracy than any other EU Member State, I would say. First of all, we have real direct elections with no list system, and therefore no barrier between the voters and the elected representatives. Secondly, we have a tradition of citizens’ assemblies like the Agora proposal, which allows very difficult public policy issues to be solved through direct democracy. And thirdly, we’re the only EU Member State that is required to have referendums on Treaty change. I would therefore say that it’s no coincidence that Ireland has the highest approval rating for EU membership and, I would argue also, the highest literacy about the EU and what it can do. So we need to listen to each other, learn lessons from each other, and recognise that the health of European liberal democracy depends on the health of liberal democracy in the Member States.

Madam President, Commissioner and colleagues, many speakers have rightly focussed on the cynicism and implausibility of Russia’s many statements and actions that have led to the discontinuance of the Black Sea grain initiative. As a member of the Development Committee, I want to focus on the extent to which this initiative was literally a lifeline for many of the 345 million people experiencing high levels of food insecurity around the world – very few of whom live in the European Union – and the 24 million people on the brink of famine – none of whom live in the European Union. I understand the focus on the effect of the Russian aggression on European farmers, but I beg you to consider in addition the need to tackle the issue at its root cause to avoid this kind of blackmail, and that root cause is the absence of food security in Africa and the Middle East.

Madam President, it must be very hard to be a conservative during an emergency. The EPP has not really covered itself in glory over the last few weeks, with its very obvious attempts to kill the Nature Restoration Law, with its infantile tweets and intimidation of MEPs. The Parliament sent out a very clear message today, and a very important message, a shot that was heard around the world. The message is that we can deliver for nature restoration and biodiversity. We can do the right thing by our citizens, as we have done so many times with the Green Deal in all its parts. We can pass into law the will of the people, who voted for environmental considerations in 2019. We can deliver on the Green Deal and most importantly, we can do it without the EPP. It is clear that a climate emergency is not a place for conservatives.

Madam President, Commissioner, colleagues, some of this debate has been about the secondary consequences of saving lives at sea, that it will encourage and somehow support the business model of human trafficking. But certain things are so intrinsically right, like saving lives at sea, that secondary consequences should be disregarded. The consequences of not having EU—led search and rescue is an increased numbers of deaths and torture in captivity in detention centres in Libya. These are secondary consequences that we should have regard to, and this is why I requested this resolution along with colleagues in the S&D, the Greens and the Left. The vote in 2019 is a stain on the record of this House, and I would like to encourage all colleagues to do the right thing and correct the record of this House. As long as we continue to allow this senseless loss of life, we cannot claim to be a Union of values.

Mr President, I worked on the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014, and sadly, many of the lessons of that outbreak have not been learned and not implemented. Firstly, the main lesson was the need to strengthen the health systems of developing countries. And yet today, Sierra Leone, the centre of the outbreak, has merely 8 doctors per 100 000 population. That’s compared to 400 in my country. The second crucial lesson is the stigma against early reporting of disease outbreak has not been addressed. Early reporting can stop the spread of disease, but it can have a disastrous effect on the economy, on inward investment and on tourism of reporting countries. So what we need is a new global health security architecture. We need new international health regulations. And above all, we need proper funding for the health systems of developing countries.

Madam President, Commissioner, colleagues, no one disagrees with the principles of the Sustainable Development Goals. They represent an idyllic, almost utopian vision for the future where economic, environmental and social priorities are on an equal footing. You’ll find the SDGs littered throughout countless EU policy documents and Parliament resolutions. But how many of us here are actually willing to fight for these causes? What are we actually doing to address the fact that progress on the SDGs is not just stalled but declining? Quite frankly, I am shocked and disappointed that so few people take any real action when the moment arrives. We saw it last summer with the European Parliament vote on the sustainable taxonomy, where a majority voted to label gas and nuclear energy as green. We have seen it over the years both here and the European Council, where leaders chose not to rescue migrants in the Mediterranean Sea. We have seen countless efforts to water down the farm to fork strategy. Most recently, two committees voted to bin the nature restoration law. Until we had an EU climate law, the majority of our commitments amounted to nothing more than greenwashing. It is my strong belief that the same applies to the SDGs. We are living through an era of SDG—washing and until we have binding targets for each SDG globally, but at the very least at EU level, we will simply not make any progress. I am now convinced that it is the time we came forward with a proposal for an EU SDG law. The time for wishful thinking and self-congratulation is over. If we want to save Agenda 2030, we need SDGs with teeth!

Mr President, Commissioner and colleagues, I would like to congratulate the rapporteur for the extremely thorough work done on revealing the extent and methods of the use of commercial spyware. The report concludes that many of these companies are registered in Ireland, without any substantial presence, such as office space or employees. One such spyware company is registered to a company formation specialist at an office in the centre of Dublin. According to The Currency, an online publication, this company sold its spyware to the rapid support forces in Sudan, the successor to the genocidal Janjaweed. The Irish Parliament’s justice committee has agreed to my request that hearings take place on whether it is appropriate that such companies are registered in Ireland. I say this to illustrate that if the Council won’t act, national parliaments have a critical role to play, to call out the failure to regulate, to protect and safeguard our citizens and our democracy.

Madam President, I'm fundamentally opposed to the use of AI systems and remote biometric facial recognition. In mass surveillance, there have already been too many cases of mistaken identity, there have already been too many cases of abuses of the system to surrender the right of privacy to a technology that is developing and evolving as fast as this. AI's potential for positive transformation is vast, especially in medicine and education, as many speakers have pointed out. However, as the godfather of AI, Geoffrey Hinton has said, AI also presents an existential threat to humanity, or in the vivid words of Yuval Noah Harari, it has the potential to hack the operating system of our civilization. However, let's not forget that AI did not create nuclear weapons, did not create genocide, did not create hate speech. Left to our own devices, we are more than capable of moral collapse, and that is why it is important that the legislation focuses on the intended use of the technology and not on the technology itself.

Mr President, Vice President, colleagues, I want to focus on the aspect of this debate, which is around the humanitarian response, because one of the issues that we have consistently got wrong in the overall humanitarian response is the failure to directly fund local Ukrainian humanitarian organisations. Less than 10 % of all humanitarian funding has gone directly to Ukrainian humanitarian organisations. This is despite the fact that these are the organisations with the closest ties to the community. They can operate quickly. They can operate in a culturally appropriate manner, and they take the greatest risks. Of the 140 humanitarian workers that died in 2021, all but two were national staff. I believe profoundly that Ukraine is part of our European family, the Euro-Atlantic community and the European Union. And I also believe that we should at least trust them to lead the humanitarian response.

Mr President, dear colleagues, all companies carry out due diligence on their supply chains, but only insofar as it impacts the operations of their own company. What makes this proposal radical is that, for the first time, companies will be mandated to carry out due diligence on their supply chain as it affects the planet, as it affects human rights abuses. This has been an extremely divisive text, but I want to set the record straight. Contrary to what you might hear in this Chamber today, SMEs are excluded from the proposal. Contrary to what you might hear today, this is not a regulatory burden. There are already supply-chain laws in EU Member States, so this is deregulatory in effect by creating a level playing field. It is also aligned with the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, and therefore companies not only know what they have to report, but they also know what they have to do. So this provides businesses with the opportunity to take advantage of the European Green Deal. It also gives citizens, for the first time, a very clear choice: it takes human rights and environmental degradation out of our shopping baskets.

Madam President, dear colleagues, recently we marked the 10—year anniversary of the deadliest industrial accident in the modern era. These were 1 134 avoidable deaths, and the Rana Plaza factory in Bangladesh sparked an international outrage and a litany of promises by major brands to clean up their supply chains. This tragedy should have been a wake—up call for citizens, governments and companies that business as usual was no longer sustainable. While there have been some improvements, it is fair to say that, overall, very little has changed. The immediate reaction of global firms was to pledge to clean up their act. And over 200 of them joined the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh, a legally binding pact obliging them to source from Bangladeshi factories that met basic safety criteria. Nevertheless, this still left many holes on labour rights and environmental protection. Many companies still turn a blind eye or simply refuse when it comes to looking after their workers and the environment. Even in Ireland, many of the largest Irish companies score poorly when it comes to what is known as corporate due diligence and human rights policies. A 2021 report from Trinity College Dublin found that 34% of publicly listed companies scored zero against human rights due diligence indicators, while 72% fail to disclose whether they assess salient risks and impacts. The pressures of the garment industry, the lack of regulation and the decision or omission of many large companies to inquire into their supply chain directly has led to these type of accidents around the world. Irish and European companies have enormous leverage over many of their suppliers and subcontractors. The connection of the Irish and EU economy to millions of workers around the world through global value chains comes with a responsibility. It was recently reported in the media that the EMEA headquarters of Shein would be located in Ireland. This is a company with zero transparency and a terrible environmental record, and it will be setting up in Dublin just 10 years after the Rana Plaza disaster. It is for this reason that I would very much encourage colleagues to support the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive that will be before the House tomorrow.

Madam President, I wish to intervene as a member of the Development Committee of the Parliament and passing references have been made by previous speakers about the implications of this issue for our development partners. And I think it’s important, therefore, that we spell it out: developing countries are suffering food price inflation to a very great degree, and it has to be said that lives are at stake. The number of people who are food insecure in Africa has doubled in 2020, and if there has been improvement on the supply of food to our developing partners, it is largely because of the Black Sea grain initiative, which is now at stake since last Monday. I wish to also make reference to the global report on food crises, released this month, which itself was unequivocal. It said: ‘The global food crisis has been partially made worse by the growing number of food trade restrictions put in place by countries with a goal of increasing domestic supply and reducing prices in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.’ So this makes it absolutely clear that, yes, we need a European solution to guarantee support for Ukraine, for legitimate concerns of eastern Central European farmers, but also for our development partners.

Madam President, Commissioner, colleagues, the offer of EU development funding in return for cooperation on returns and readmissions is based on a myth. A myth that such funding can tackle the root causes of migration. The evidence shows that such interventions actually increase irregular population movements in the short term. Why is it controversial to come in here to this hemicycle and insist that we base our policy on evidence and research? If you want to know what externalising European asylum policy looks like, let’s just look at the case of the RSF in Sudan. They have received EU funding to manage migration policy on the Libya-Sudan border. This is the RSF, the successor of the Janjaweed that stands accused by the ICC of genocide. And they are the people that we are outsourcing our migration policy to. That’s what externalising looks like. It looks like what happens in Libyan detention centres, where their gross violations of human rights. So what we need to do is honestly face this issue, express solidarity with those who are facing the challenges, and we also need to bring in the European Asylum and Migration Pact.