Speeches

Madam President, I am a member of the Development Committee here in the European Parliament, and I want to recall Article 208 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, which states that the primary objective of our development cooperation policy is the eradication of poverty. The Council conclusions make reference to the use of NDICI—Global Europe funding for migration purposes. It is possible that it is a secondary objective of development cooperation. It is possible. But what was astonishing about these Council conclusions is that it doesn’t make that other argument. It’s fine to talk about returns, it’s fine to talk about safe countries of origin, but there’s nothing about illegal pushbacks, there’s nothing about the horrible conditions in Libyan detention centres, there’s nothing about restoring search and rescue, and there’s nothing about condemning Fortress Europe and the building of walls. It’s fine to have these points that vindicate the far right, but you also have to have the other narrative, which is about a humanitarian European migration policy.

Madam President, I also want to express my condolences to the people of Syria and Türkiye. I have to take issue with the MEPs who have characterised the slow response as being attributed to the sanctions. Repeating the Assad narrative, effectively. Yes, there has been a slow response, yes, we need to have a debate about sanctions, but the two issues are not connected. If there is a slow response, it's because there are too few border crossings and they've been blocked by Russia and China at the bidding of Assad. If the response has been slow it’s because the Assad Government has deliberately targeted civilian infrastructure without stopping for a decade, deliberately, this is not an indiscriminate bombing. This is directed at bakeries, at health facilities, at hospitals and at schools. And it's hardly surprising, therefore, that the earthquake has had such a devastating effect. And NGOs are really struggling. Bab al-Hawa has been blocked by virtue of the earthquake. All of the roads are blocked as a result of the earthquake, and I have to say a particular word of condolences to an agency I used to work for, Gold, who lost 28 staff over the last week. But they I know they will redouble their efforts to try and provide the greatest relief possible.

Madam President, Commissioner, colleagues, I spoke in the January plenary imploring NGOs to stay the course and to fight the ban on female staff working in NGOs in Afghanistan. NGOs were right to suspend programmes, and in many cases, of course, they had no choice. Now there is some progress, and I commend Martin Griffiths and Amina Mohammed of the UN for taking the time to visit Afghanistan. Clearly they have extracted some concessions. It’s also clear that the Taliban is not homogenous and that there are agreements being made at local levels and that they have extracted guidelines from the Taliban to allow exemptions for female workers. Humanitarian principles, however, should be applied, and principled aid means female workers and practical aid means female workers. I would also commend the idea of humanitarian visas for Afghanistan, but would also suggest there is no reason why we should not apply the Temporary Protection Directive to those who are now almost inevitably fleeing Afghanistan.

Mr President, I just want to make one point. Many of the speakers this morning have characterised this initiative as a foreign policy instrument, but it is based on the use of funds that are intended for development policy. And I think that’s the big misunderstanding here. This is based on EFSD+ and the use of NDICI Global Europe funding, over which there are very clear regulatory controls, supervisory controls and oversight by the European Parliament. It has characteristics of a foreign policy instrument, but it is funded from development policy and we have to be very careful to make sure that it continues to pursue the objectives of development policy.

Mr President, more than a year has passed since its announcement, and no one is really sure what the real purpose of Global Gateway is. Is it an attempt to rival Belt and Road? Is it a development cooperation initiative, as many insist it is, or is it simply an investment strategy for European business? Perhaps it’s none of those things. Perhaps it’s all of those things. We should be brave enough to go beyond traditional policies and methods when necessary, but to what end? At its most basic, a policy is a statement of intent, but instead of intentions or indeed an overarching goal, Global Gateway has five key areas of partnership based on six principles as outlined earlier. Other than the goal of mobilising EUR 300 billion, there are no clear targets, no indicators: Global Gateway simply has no clear purpose. And in our efforts to be more geopolitical and competitive, I think we have lost sight of one of the most fundamental principles – the reason we have Article 208 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union in the first place. I’m referring to the eradication of poverty, the very purpose of development cooperation, and indeed the first of the Sustainable Development Goals. I do not see this – the SDG 1 or Article 208 – articulated anywhere in this project, which I believe is a tragic oversight. At best, it is a lost opportunity to give the Global Gateway a clear and strategic purpose, which would surely dovetail with other objectives, such as creating jobs, boosting education, connectivity and creating investments. But Global Gateway has a potentially more sinister problem, which is summarised in one word, namely the lack of accountability. Ironically, given that democratic partnership is among the six principles of Global Gateway, there is no dedicated mechanism to scrutinise the implementation or indeed the articulation of projects. Yes, there is a business advisory group, but there’s no CSO advisory group quite ironically. My intention is not to criticise just for the sake of it. It is in the interest of all of us that Global Gateway is a success. So let us make this something we are proud to defend.

Mr President, Commissioner and colleagues, one of the central arguments, I think, that’s been ventilated by the ECR and ID is that search and rescue carried out by NGOs is a pull factor for irregular population movement, and this is sadly also repeated by Frontex, who say that this has been done unintentionally. However, research has been done which demonstrates this is not true, based on data going back to 2014, carried out in the European University Institute. The research found, and I quote, ‘no relationship between the presence of NGOs at sea and the number of migrants leaving Libyan shores’. The same holds true in the eastern Mediterranean, in Spain and in Morocco, where there was a 50% increase in population movement despite the absence of NGO boats. In fact, the only thing that changed when NGOs were not present was that the fatality rate increased. I think what we should do in this Parliament is revisit the resolution of Mr Lopez Aquila, and to wipe from the record of this Parliament and this mandate that shameful vote in 2019.

Mr President, I want to take this opportunity to raise the very tragic decision by the Taliban to ban female staff from working for local and international NGOs in Afghanistan. This is the decision taken on 24 December. It has had obviously tragic consequences, especially for female staff who were the only breadwinners in their households. It’s had very ridiculous consequences; for example, men giving breastfeeding classes to men in Kandahar, according to some reports. But ultimately, of course, it is a tragic breach of international human rights law. And now NGOs are faced with a terrible dilemma. Do they continue to muddle on? Do they continue to provide services, or do they take a stand? And this is a country where two thirds of people rely on aid. So it’s not an easy decision. So I just want to take this opportunity to commend the EU representation in Kabul for staying the course, to call on Martin Griffiths and David Bennett and Richard Bennett and all the local and international NGOs working in Kabul to stay the course and to take on the Taliban on this key issue.

Mr President, Commissioner, I just wish to make one point. Freedom House has pointed out that democracy has been in decline across the world for the last 17 years consecutively. And it doesn’t happen dramatically, like we saw last Friday; it happens incrementally. We’ve seen over the last month – it’s easy to forget – we had a sophisticated cyberattack on this Parliament just last month. It’s easy to forget that. It’s easy to forget about Predator and Pegasus spyware and how that’s attacking journalists and MEPs. And the only way we know about these things is because of investigative work being done by journalists. And we had a European Court of Justice ruling earlier this month which undermined the registers of beneficial owners of companies, the very tool that journalists are using to shine a light into the dark corners of the corporate world in Europe. Even in my own country, in my own Member State, we have a Russian Embassy which is widely recognised as a listening post for the entirety of Europe. There are 28 registered diplomats in the Russian Embassy in Dublin for a tiny country, almost the exact same as in the UK. So we have to stop being naive about this. We have to stop allowing a permissive environment for foreign interference in our democracy. If it’s worth having, it’s worth defending.

Madam President, since the European Parliament issued its report on Pegasus last month, many people are stunned at the depth of the scandal. Since then, there have been two further reports on Predator software, published by Lighthouse Reports and the New York Times. Most Irish people were shocked to learn that an Irish holding company, Thalestris, was responsible for surveillance spyware used against MEPs and journalists and, incredibly, sold to the successor of the Janjaweed in Sudan, which committed so many war crimes. This latest information was contained in a report in the Currency, an Irish online publisher. Thalestris should be investigated by both the Irish Revenue and the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement, and I would also encourage the Irish Parliament to investigate links between Ireland and the surveillance spyware industry. Ireland should not become a haven for companies involved in violations of human rights around the world and the provision of corporate services to those companies. Sadly, the Irish Government has shared very little information with the European Parliament inquiry and has continued to assert national security when asked if it uses this spyware.

Madam President, Commissioner, colleagues, I listened to your speech and I was struck by how you characterised the achievement of loss and damage. And it is an enormous achievement because one felt immediately afterwards that it wasn’t presented in that way by the Commission, that somehow or another the G77 position was challenged and maybe there was a better way to do it than loss and damage. And I listened to the distinction you draw between 1992 and today and different developing countries, and all of those are very legitimate. But this is an enormous achievement – what has been done at COP27 – because for the first time it recognises those who pollute more, those who possess more must do more, and that if you break it, which we did, you fix it, which we should, and that is now locked into the principle of how we’re going to approach this issue. It’s about climate justice, something that my compatriot Mary Robinson has spoken so passionately about over the years. And it’s an achievement because we have a credibility problem in the European Union. I’ve just come back from Marrakech, where I had discussions with my African liberal colleagues over two days, and they are struck by the fact that we’re opening coal mines, you’ve mentioned it yourself, Commissioner, they are struck by the fact that we’re pricing them out of the LNG market, that we have allowed for loopholes in relation to gas exploration, and they are challenging us to be real partners on this issue. And I sincerely believe that we have to get over the credibility issue that is really challenging the European Union. And I will say, finally, that I think you are correct in saying that we have made a solid achievement here, but we also cannot gaslight G77 countries with the positions that they rightfully took.

Mr President, I think one of the major problems in this space is that almost nobody in international development understands finance, and very few people in international finance understand development. So there’s a major knowledge gap, there’s a cultural gap, I would say. And we have to work very hard to address the scepticism. I think people have mentioned already the European Court of Auditors’ assessment of EFSD+, which was very negative, and academic papers that were presented to the Development Committee, which were very negative on EFSD+. So I welcome the focus of this resolution, but I really think we need to have a debate on global gateway, because it’s central to everything we’re doing around the financial architecture for development. It is supposedly a bolt—on to NDICI, and yet it has none of the safeguards of NDICI in terms of transparency and parliamentary oversight. And we were also presented, when we had a public consultation on the European financial architecture for development, was that either we set up a European development bank or we expanded the mandate of the existing ones. And EBRD has failed to expand its mandate to sub-Saharan Africa. I understand the reasons why, but it needs to happen at its next annual meeting in 2023.

Madam President, Commissioner, colleagues, the previous EU policy on search and rescue attracted criticism for incentivising human trafficking. Unfortunately, the current EU policy on search and rescue promotes torture in captivity. One injustice has replaced another, and the stories that are emerging from reception centres in Libya are truly chilling – so much so that the United Nations fact—finding mission has concluded that these stories are so widespread and so compelling as to be suggestive of crimes against humanity. And this is a phrase, of course, that is not used lightly. As regards search and rescue, sometimes, in my view, the intrinsic rightness of something is impossible to ignore. It’s impossible to consider the secondary consequences. And I would have thought, uncontroversially, that rescuing somebody from the sea is intrinsically the right thing to do. So I would urge the European Union to restore search and rescue. I would urge the European Union to legislate for the Migration and Asylum Pact, and I would urge the European Union to cooperate with NGOs.

Just for clarification, the memorandum of understanding is between the United Nations and the Russian Federation, and it is to allow for the exports of Russian fertiliser and food. And it’s obviously really important for the importing countries, particularly the most food insecure. So I just wanted to know if you could brief the Parliament on the operation of this MOU, particularly whether or not insurance companies, maritime insurance companies and export credit companies are prepared to operate within the context of the MOU? If you don’t have that information, I’m happy to get it in written form.

Mr President, Vice—President Borrell, last week I launched the Global Hunger Index with Welthungerhilfe, Concern Worldwide and ACT Alliance. It was the 2022 index, and naturally it was very negative. It was based to a large extent on data from 2021, before Russia’s war of aggression, and naturally the most insecure countries are the most reliant on Ukrainian and Russian imports and there is an anticipation of a worrying deterioration next year. That’s why it’s particularly worrying that in the EU’s budget for 2023, the largest drop is in Heading 6, which includes humanitarian aid. So I very much welcome the reinstatement and the extension of the Black Sea Grain initiative. My question relates to the memorandum of understanding that was signed on the same day in the same place between Russia and the UN on Russian exports of fertiliser and food. The memorandum of understanding was signed on 22 July, and my question relates to the operation of that – if you could broadly brief Parliament on the operation of the MoU, with regard to whether or not reinsurance companies have come back in, whether or not export credit agencies and finance agencies have come back in.

Madam President, Commissioner, this is a landmark directive and it’s very welcome. And as we’ve heard many times, there is vast research and evidence which demonstrates the economic value of increasing representation on boards. In Ireland we have made great progress over the last very short period of time. Irish PLCs already have 32% female representation on boards. Ireland also leads the way with women in top jobs. A survey of 24 countries showed that Ireland actually leads these countries – including the UK, the US, Canada, Australia and Singapore. And perhaps it’s no coincidence, despite the dire warnings we’ve heard about the performance of the economy, that Ireland is the leading economy in the European Union over the last couple of years. And I wanted to pay tribute to the rapporteurs and everybody that has been involved in this, but also to Renew Europe, because it was a Renew Europe priority for this parliamentary term. I want to pay tribute to my colleagues, Samira Rafaela and to Karen Melchior. And before I finish, I want to say we should focus as well on representation in politics. It’s important that we do this in economics, but some of the most important boards in the world are governments. And just look at the last G20, where there were just two female leaders present among the 20.

Madam President, Commissioner, I just want to pay tribute today to the footballers of the Iran national team, which showed incredible courage to stand up to their regime today in the face of very, very grave danger when they return to their countries. It stood in stark contrast to the English team, which refused to wear a simple armband. While they might have lost on the field today, a very profound victory will long outlast when the game itself is forgotten. But we should not be surprised by sports watching, particularly in football. No company would get away with the reputational damage that FIFA is experiencing right now. FIFA gets away with it because it’s a cartel, and the European Commission has to seriously consider the relationship that it has developed with UEFA around the promotion of the European Green Deal. I think that really has to be looked at. In the same way that some carbon consumption is unavoidable but can be offset, my message to those who feel they have to watch this is that you can offset your watching of this by making a contribution to some of the great human rights defenders organisations around the globe.

Mr President, I want to address the issue of the recently announced peace deal in northern Ethiopia. While it was announced seven days ago, there is still no humanitarian access to Tigray. The question I want to raise is impunity. Many experts have given evidence that genocide has taken place in Tigray. The crimes committed by the Ethiopian National Defence Forces amount to genocide – an attempt to destroy the Tigrayan ethnicity. Of course, there has been violence on all sides, but only the charge of genocide is laid at the door of the Ethiopian state. Genocide is a crime of universal jurisdiction so that any Member State has the capacity to investigate, but I’m not filled with hope. My own country, Ireland, was the only one to denounce the Ethiopian regime forcefully and was targeted, threatened and subjected to diplomatic expulsions. Our first priority must be humanitarian access and sustaining the peace, but surely the European Union cannot let genocide go unpunished in 2022.

Madam President, Commissioner and Rapporteur Durand, congratulations on your work. I would agree with Mr Biedroń and Ms Wolters that sustainability goes beyond merely green issues and environmental issues. We talk about tackling greenwashing, but we could be talking about tackling ESG—washing. Whatever we call it, what it means is companies talking a good game and failing to deliver. At best, this is mis—selling of products and services by companies. At worst, it’s fraud. And that’s why regulators are getting tough, and that’s why this directive is actually revolutionary, and it’s why 50 police officers went into DSW, a subsidiary of Deutsche Bank, earlier this year. It’s why a USD 1.5 million fine was applied to BNY Mellon by the Security and Exchanges Commission. I welcome the clarity, the strictness and the enforceability of this and I would remind the Commission, as we prepare the standards that are going to be applied, that there is already an internationally agreed framework for those standards, which is the Sustainable Development Goals. And I would also agree with Ms Wolters that it’s not just about companies reporting better, but acting better. And that’s why it needs to go here with a corporate sustainability due diligence directive.

Mr President, Commissioner, in the last global food security crisis, in 2008, 40 countries experienced civil unrest directly as a result. So when it comes to global food security, we as a Parliament have to ask ourselves one question. Should the European Union do all it can to ensure that people have physical and economic access to safe food? And yet the humanitarian financing gap, the difference between needs and resources, has never been higher. Europe is clearly not doing everything it can. And while the commitments made by the G20 agriculture ministers are very welcome, there is clearly more to do. According to the World Hunger Index, published last week by Concern Worldwide and Welthungerhilfe, levels of world hunger are becoming catastrophic. Forty-four countries are facing serious or alarming levels of hunger. And just this evening, reports say that doctors on the ground expect a famine to be declared in Somalia next month. And how has Europe responded? Well, we have responded by cutting development and humanitarian aid in the ongoing budget negotiations.

Madam President, Commissioner, I very much welcome the European Political Community (EPC), not least as a way to re—engage with the United Kingdom. The new Prime Minister has made some fairly poor decisions in the last few weeks, but this was a good one – to attend the EPC with immediate benefits for the UK, including hosting an EPC meeting next year or the year after, re—joining PESCO on military mobility and re—joining the North Sea Energy Cooperation Group. Prime Minister Truss said, ‘We always believed we would find new ways of working that reflected our shared values and interests.’ She is partly walking back to the realisation that the pursuit of these shared values and interests require rules, they require cooperation and enforceable rules, and those enforceable rules require institutions, the very institutions that the UK walked away from just six years ago. It is slightly ironic that while the UK liked the single market and disliked the European political union, now they are outside the single market and inside the European Political Community, and I don’t want to be too glib about it because it is an excellent platform, not least for the improvement of Anglo—Irish relations.

Mr. President, Commissioner, as a member of the Development Committee, I wish to express my deep dissatisfaction at the wholly inadequate allocation of humanitarian aid funding for 2023. I do so in the context of the vast increase in humanitarian need: a further 40 million people in humanitarian need this year alone. I do so in the context of the many resolutions that we have passed expressing our solidarity with the women and girls of Afghanistan, with the floods in Pakistan, with the humanitarian consequences of the crisis in Ukraine. And I do so in the context of your own commitment, Commissioner, on 7 June, that the amending letter would be to better account for the impact of the war on humanitarian needs and food security. And yet the proposal still stands at less than the 2022 allocation despite those factors. I recognise the difficulties that the rapporteurs have had to deal with. I recognise the collaborative approach of Mr Ștefănuță, and I really, really welcome that, and I acknowledge the difficulties here. And I know that everyone loses in budget negotiations, but if we’re not careful, people will lose their lives because of this allocation.

Madam President and Commissioner, it’s important at times like these to remind ourselves of the humanitarian principles, that is the obligation on humanitarian organisations to demonstrate independence, impartiality, humanity and neutrality, to deliver aid to the places where it’s needed most and to be completely neutral in armed conflict. The reasons for this are to ensure that aid gets to the people who need it most, but also to protect humanitarian workers. But it is relevant in the context of this debate, because humanitarian organisations are relied upon to create humanitarian corridors, but also to access prisoners of war on both sides of a conflict. We know that’s not happening right now. We don’t get the information we need because Russia has no respect whatsoever for humanitarian principles or international humanitarian law. So that’s why we need to have a discussion with humanitarian organisations so they can set out to us here in the European Parliament, or our committees, exactly what steps they have been taking to try to access the two million children that have been deported out of Ukraine into Russia. We need to hear exactly their evidence. The second thing we need to do is not to cut our humanitarian aid budget. At the moment, the Commission are proposing the highest cut of any proposed cut under any heading to the 2023 budget to our humanitarian aid budget. We need to put our values in monetary terms sometimes.

Mr President, Vice-President Šefčovič, in the UK, the stigma against breaking international law, domestic law and constitutional norms has been significantly eroded since Boris Johnson became Prime Minister. The events of the last 24 hours demonstrate that for many, enough is enough. Freedom House reported last year that it has been sixteen consecutive years of decline in global freedom. This matters because the pattern of decline has been gradual in most countries, and that’s why it is so important to call out the erosion of democratic norms at the earliest possible time. The charge sheet against the UK is long. It was proroguing Parliament with the Internal Market Bill and now we have the Protocol Bill. Jonathan Jones described this as even more brazen than the Internal Market Bill and noted that the UK has shown the world that it is prepared to walk away from important treaty obligations on the flimsiest of pretexts. In addition to that, despite what Minister Vicky Ford said yesterday, assuming she is still a minister, the European Convention on Human Rights is something the UK Government is proposing to walk away from, even though it is so firmly part of the Good Friday Agreement.

Mr President, Commissioner, I think we are all agreed in this House that we are approaching a food catastrophe in developing countries. And I believe that the European Union should take a ‘whatever-it-takes’ approach to the impending crisis. And this could be a turning point in our relations with Africa. We started out with President von der Leyen at the beginning of her mandate defining the partnership with Africa. So it’s important that we take stock right now and imagine where that partnership is. We changed from DEVCO to INTPA; that was good, but we have migration conditionality in the Global Europe Instrument. We have automatic safeguards and mirror clauses in GSP. We have lost the battle on the issue of vaccine equity. We have a diversion in specific Member States, and a lot of African states are not convinced about Global Gateway. So we can’t afford to get this wrong, because I believe that the partnership that we have with Africa is at a very low point. The European Union must lead on this issue.

Mr President, I want to commend the report by Mr López, particularly the references to the Sustainable Development Goals. I think the report doesn’t quite capture the degree to which the SDGs are in crisis. There is no way that we will achieve Agenda 2030. There is no way that we will be able to mobilise the finance for the SDGs or even to monitor the implementation of the SDGs when we don’t even have a strategy and an implementation plan for the SDGs. I want to also mention Syria. It’s a conflict that once had the full attention of this House, and it’s a conflict that we’ve turned our back on, quite frankly. The UN Security Council has until Sunday to renew the cross-border resolution that delivers food and humanitarian aid to 4 million people. I think all of us know, frankly, that there is very little chance that that cross-border resolution will be renewed. In my opinion, there is obviously no rationale for reducing humanitarian aid in circumstances where even more people are in need of it now and there is absolutely no alternative.