Speeches

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner, I thank the Afghan women who have accompanied us and courageously offered us their testimony: We're with you. The recently adopted law on the prevention of vice in Afghanistan blatantly violates women's most basic human rights, attacks their dignity and seeks to alienate them from society. We all agree on this, don't we? However, it is incomprehensible that while this House is supposedly condemning the adoption of this rule, it is at the same time promoting the importation of these cultural practices into Europe. In Spain, France or Germany it is already common to see women on the street completely covered with a niqab. Do you think that dressing like this is the only obligation imposed by the Islamic fundamentalism that we are denouncing today? It would be naive not to recognise that the freedom and dignity of these women is already under attack in Europe. If you don't want these denigrating customs in countries like Afghanistan, why are you here? It is hypocrisy, an incoherence that legitimizes the practices that fundamentalist regimes are imposing on the population, thus completely unprotecting women from them. In addition, the European Union is also complicit when it is not clear or when it supports radical Islamists for political interests who, as in Afghanistan, Iran or Gaza, attack the dignity of their people. Can one condemn what one practices? The European institutions have shown that they have no judgement in this regard. In fact, they themselves act abusively, imposing here a unique model of thinking that does not even allow us to be critical of these practices. Europe must continue to rely on the Christian values that inspired the European project in order to remain the beacon that the world needs. Don't let us bring to Europe what we don't want to see in Kabul.

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the Commission can continue to applaud itself as much as it wants for the management of COVID-19 and for vaccines, but the reality is that if they take to the streets they will see how people have lost confidence in the institutions. We would all like to forget what we experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic, but we cannot. We must not let the same mistakes happen again: a disproportionate restriction of freedoms, and impositions using health as a pretext. We are concerned about the drift that the management of monkey pox by international institutions may take with the approval of the European Union: lack of transparency, vaccines and more vaccines, lack of scientific criteria, diminishing the sovereignty of nations... In this regard, we denounce the amendments to the International Health Regulations that were adopted last June by the World Health Organization and which redefines the concept of emergency and introduces a clause that seriously undermines national sovereignty. It is a grave irresponsibility to shatter the principle of subsidiarity: It exposes us to the risk of being left in the hands of international bodies that may not look out for our interests. We need first to restore trust in the institutions, that there is legal certainty with a framework of competence that does not allow the serious attacks on the democratic order and freedom that we suffered during the COVID-19 pandemic to reoccur.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, after our insistence on the previous mandate, the obvious is now recognised: the policies imposed by the European Union have led to the paralysis and destruction of businesses and jobs. It is impossible to create initiatives, we are no longer a reference in innovation. That's your responsibility. Those who survive today do so by falling victim to a system of subsidies and swallowing up ideological agendas. The logical thing would have been to start the mandate by correcting the line and making the objectives more flexible. But no, you come back with the same thing. The Green Deal – incompatible with competitiveness – is maintained and they are satisfied that there is this debate, that the Draghi Report is published... This isn't enough. The situation is very serious. It is necessary to correct, stop tripping over the same stone. It is time to move from words to deeds. For our companies to be competitive again we need to give wings to talent, remove barriers, reduce regulations and abandon, once and for all, absurd ideological goals that benefit no one but some of you.

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, at our interparliamentary meeting in February, the Belgian Presidency itself announced that Europe was going to suffer an economic one with serious social consequences. The governor of the Central Bank said verbatim that greening would reduce our growth potential, put us at a disadvantage, that there would be many losers and that it was not known how much it would cost or who would pay for it. This mandate has been devastating for Europeans. However, this Declaration of La Hulpe, at the end of the mandate, allows to boast of what is called the social Europe. A new Competitiveness Pact was presented last 18th, which continues to drive the Green Deal forward; a pact that should be repealed. It shows without complexes the intention to continue deepening the problem and then the excuse of the social is used to put the band-aid. Thus, the European Union meddles in the competences of the Member States trying to impose, in addition, a failed socialist model not only in the past, but in the present. My own country is a very clear example. The best social policy is to create prosperity and support the family; that companies can offer jobs, employment. But for this they need an environment in which they can operate competitively, something that during this mandate they have been determined to destroy. They weren't in Brussels on tractor-drive day. They live in a bubble that doesn't allow them to empathize with citizens' desperation. The upcoming elections will be decisive in ending this self-destructive effect.

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, it is dramatic when violence breaks into the home and into relationships of supposed trust. The Internet also exposes us to risks of aggression that should not go unpunished. We must all combat and end domestic violence and violence against women. However, we see that women's safety is increasingly threatened by uncontrolled immigration. Fear already conditions our freedom and our way of acting. We must reflect on the way in which it is being undertaken and even if it is not part of the problem, because it is turning its back on the principles that underpin our culture and protect us, giving way to those who do not respect it. It fosters an instrumentalist and hypersexualized vision of women that already harms us. Gender ideology does away with common sense. It aims to reduce violence to being a woman and aggressiveness to being a man. There seems to be more concern about confronting and generating hatred for men than actually ending violence.

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, thank you to the rapporteurs for bringing together so many views. Trafficking in persons is essentially a perversion of the value of life and, therefore, of the dignity of the person. No one deserves to be treated as an object, let alone an object of compromise. We are all an end in ourselves, and not commodities or useful for others to dishonor our identity. From a culture that denigrates the value of human life, we can expect practices to proliferate that immorally and criminally target people, trafficking in women and children that must be investigated and persecuted. Surrogacy is also a mode of exploitation, where some profit from the desperation of others with proposals that manipulate the will of the parties involved, who are tempted with ways out that – far from liberating them – chain them in great dilemmas and desires always unfulfilled. It can't be any other way. The baby is offered as a design object, susceptible even to rejection. Women are caught in perverse contracts that ignore their freedom and health and promote acceptance of the traumatic tear that comes with separating a mother from her child. Let us hope that this change in the directive on preventing and combating trafficking in human beings will prevent these practices that harm us deep in the human heart.

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, all of us have been created as members of the human family. Our existence does not depend on being accepted or not by others. To consider exercising the "guaranteed freedom" of ending it in the mother's womb, as cited by the change in the French Constitution, calls into question the principles that underpin the rule of law. The European Union must not continue this drift, which entails the degradation of its fundamental rights. In the face of the transcendence of a pregnancy, women need support, information, affection; Because, in the face of helplessness or adversity, the abortion proposal does not allow for a truly free or conscious decision. Let's help women resolve the circumstances that lead them to that dramatic decision: poverty, loneliness, risk of losing their job, fear of not being accepted or losing their freedom. Let's stop seeing motherhood as a threat. Let's appreciate life. We know that no mother regrets being one. The choice of abortion leaves us stranded. It is not a health service, it is the care of pregnancy and childhood. The woman who feels welcomed, dear, does not deny life and can receive it with hope.

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the European Semester is the framework within which the economic and budgetary policies of the European Union are coordinated. It is an interference to change its nature by including matters in which the European Union has no competence, such as the so-called social policy, not to say socialist policy, with proposals for greater public spending, greater debt and subsidy culture, when it is the regulations approved in this House that end any possibility of prosperity and growth and kill the competitiveness of our companies with impossible bureaucratic burdens and with the imposed ecological transition, thus destroying millions of jobs. It turns its back on the fundamental unit of society, which is the family, when it is in the family where life, care, education are developed. We know that it is the best tool for social integration and equality. Not hindering job creation, supporting families and ending ideology are the best and most sustainable social welfare tools. Socialism generates problems and then pretends to appear as the savior. Not the new governance framework that seeks to seize our resources, the resources of our nations, and then hijack our freedom and our sovereignty.

Mr President, Commissioners, ladies and gentlemen, once again such sensitive issues – and of course we are all concerned about them – are used to make proposals that have no legal basis and thus create precedents that disrupt the service relationship that the European Union should provide to the Member States. It is not for the European Union to authorize or not to authorize the ratification of this Convention. This House celebrates on many occasions that in this mandate it has exceeded its competences in the field of employment, not only by ignoring our Treaties but with the intention of changing them through the back door. Many fall into this trap for not challenging fashionable ideological postulates, as has happened with green ideology and happens in this case with gender ideology. An ideology without scientific basis that does not protect women and for which, in my country, citizens are already showing disaffection, because it breaks the principle of equality, confronts men and women and also lacks utility to solve problems such as violence against women. Ireland this past week has shown itself in this same direction. Our group will make common sense to preserve the Europe that has made us great.

Madam President, Commissioners, Members, this report shows the enormous contradiction in which this Parliament is navigating. Life must always be protected and cherished. It is not a right available depending on the circumstances. The pregnant woman and the life of the person in her womb must be protected, welcomed. The practice of abortion that this report raises as a human right is sold as a sign of freedom for women. But, really, it's a pressure against us. It is a contempt for femininity, motherhood and childhood. In Spain we broke records of birth minima. Can we continue to be an international reference? Turning our backs on the most vulnerable shows us the degree of dehumanization of society. You cannot use the pretext of the supposed defense of human rights to cancel those who do not think like you, as we are the defenders of life. This means going against the sense of human rights when, in addition, for example, the persecution of Christians in the world is ignored.

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, once again the European Union is meddling in areas that do not belong to it. Each country has a legal heritage to regulate the relations between companies and workers. It is not surprising that some see this proposal as a hindrance to the challenge of new employment models such as platform workers. Technologies must be used to offer job opportunities and provide services that meet a flexible demand, all with adequate social protection, of course. This proposal does not achieve either because, in addition – as we Spaniards know well – it is a copy of the – as has already been demonstrated, failed – law in Spain, which has increased litigation and legal uncertainty, causing, for example, the emergence of intermediaries who now hire these low-wage workers. Like everything that is treated with a social-communist perspective, it destroys opportunities and worsens the conditions of those it claims to protect. Why not improve the social protection of the self-employed? They deserve it. They are a pillar of our economy. Because many people would see advantages in this regime if it were conveniently protected and valued.

Mr. President, at Christmas we remember the birth of Jesus. They are special days to meet families. This year, on Christmas Eve, as we all celebrated, at least 170 Christians were killed in Nigeria in a coordinated and deliberate attack on Christian village communities on Christmas Eve. In Nigeria, more than 52,000 Christians have been killed by Islamic extremists in the past 15 years, 18,000 churches have been burned and 2,200 Christian schools destroyed. And they question it? Christianity is the most persecuted religion on the planet, also in Europe. The position of this House is intolerable. Attempts are made, first, not to address this issue. When he is scheduled, he is summoned on a Wednesday at ten o'clock at night. And now we have to hear that this is not a religious conflict, but climate change. I don't know if it's the hours, but it looks like you guys are delirious. The attitude of this House in the face of a dramatic massacre against our Christian brothers is shameful.

I've been shocked that wanting to protect women's choices and do whatever they want, why is there a problem with women willingly staying home? Why do you consider it a setback? That same woman who at one point in her life may decide to stay at home, at another time may want to join the professional life. But I am shocked that this alarms and that I consider it a setback for women's rights, because I believe that women should be free to decide where they should be at all times. It seems to me a contradiction, simply. What can you say about it?

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, still millions of women on our planet are living immense injustices: ablations, forced marriages, lack of freedom to work, leave the house or even dress as they please. For them, the United Nations and the European Union have no voice. It seems more important to poison our legislation with a gender perspective and resentment. An ideology that denies the very nature of people, that forces us to reject everything that identifies us as women, discrediting motherhood, despising life, seeing it as a threat. It is even mentioned in this resolution that the protection of life is inhuman treatment. Ladies and gentlemen, there is nothing more human than defending life, protecting it. Abortion is a drama, never a sign of freedom.

Mr President, Commissioners, ladies and gentlemen, in every society the transmission of knowledge is essential to boost the next generation of professionals. However, we find once again a superb attitude with impossible demands that destroy opportunities. It is only intended to favor practices if they are subordinated to ideological agendas, thus despising professions rooted in our traditions, to the point of preventing the legacy of parents to children. Its Green Deal has already had devastating consequences on employment, destroying millions of jobs in the primary and productive sector. Spain has lost 18 500 farmers in the last seven years: 2,600 autonomous farmers close their facilities every year due to the excess of environmental regulation, thus compromising our food sovereignty. It is a fanatical plan of dramatic consequences that only this part of the House has denounced during this term. Only a change of course on June 9 can put institutions where they need to be: at the service of companies and workers and at the service of creating opportunities for our young people, whatever their vocation.

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, if Europe has stood out in anything throughout history, it has been in its splendor and talent in all fields of human activity: science, art... Our universities have been a universal reference. However, today we see a decline. We see how our young people and professionals, despite being well trained, do not find recognition within our borders and many must leave to have space for development... The so-called talent leak. 2023 – the European Year of Skills – has shown only the need to address the gaps in profiles for work aligned with the objectives of ideological agendas, agendas that seek to impose a transformation on us. This shows the scarcity of interests being worked with and how the concerns and vocations of Europeans are not being addressed. This shortsighted vision impoverishes the spirit of the people, limiting our freedom of decision and execution, at a time where just the opposite should be enhanced: our capacity of initiative, of wanting to participate, of excellence, of being creative and innovative in the generation of prosperity. Let's regain our self-confidence. Let us find the deep motivation in each of us, the one we need to boost our lives, to contribute to the common good of our society and to be able to build a future of hope. Let us take advantage of our cultural heritage, faith and traditions that have allowed us to achieve maximum fulfillment as human beings.

Madam President, Commissioners, ladies and gentlemen, we have suffered a rise in the prices of basic goods and energy that has led to a situation that is unacceptable to small entrepreneurs and poverty for European families. Mistaken decisions during the pandemic and an energy strategy that has prioritised completely ideologised environmental objectives have led to scarcity and dependence on third countries. This crisis was not only perfectly avoidable, it has also been warned by our Group throughout this mandate. We have watched in desperation as it persists in the same mistakes. The only perspective that would have avoided this situation is the perspective of common sense. Many European households do not reach the end of the month, and simply assess which group is most affected by this crisis does not solve it. We need energy sovereignty so that each Member State can achieve a mix to guarantee us a generous autonomy at a good price for all. The decisions of this House are partly responsible for this not being the case. On 9 June, we Europeans will be able to choose between common sense and ideology.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, we are concerned that part of this Parliament uncritically accepts an abusive, partial, biased and even contrary to the literal and teleological meaning of the rules. Denying the life to which he is about to be born can never be considered a human right. It is an atrocity to pretend to legitimize it after the ambition to create other supposed rights. It is not possible to raise as a human right what is contrary to the natural order. Fundamental rights must be equally consistent in order to fulfil their purpose of safeguarding the good of our society. Reducing life to an available right corrupts, in essence, our laws and dynamites the security that the rule of law must guarantee.

Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen, a child has the right to know his parents and be cared for by them. Universal Declaration of the Rights of the Child. The protection of minors is already covered by family law, the competence of each Member State, in institutions such as the natural family or through adoption with parental authority. Another way of constructing filiation involves a rupture of a sacred bond through a commodification of relationships and a reification of people who attack dignity. The mother or child ceases to be understood as subjects of law and becomes considered objects of transaction. This creates space for human trafficking networks, unprotecting the most vulnerable. This Regulation can only generate uncertainty with legal and existential dilemmas that harm the one they claim to defend, the child. They also harm the whole of society because they dilute the concept of the family as a necessary reality for each of us.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, I regret that the passing of the Spanish Presidency has not honoured the greatness of my homeland. Perhaps the experience shows that, when the dignity of the person is not respected, there are no limits to its manipulation. We women have it clear. He's left us lying around. Mr. Sanchez, your government has reduced penalties and released sexual aggressors. It does not stop those who denigrate us and justify violations. With this logic, it is not surprising the lack of remorse in agreeing with terrorists and silence in the face of atrocities. Under his mandate, criminals are legitimized; Worse, they are made strong and the victims are forsaken. Yesterday in the Spanish Congress was presented an amnesty law that perverts the constitutional order and betrays our unity. It leaves us behind with greater unemployment, debt, dependency and poverty; the opposite of what he promises. His melody "bla, bla, bla, bla, bla" has stopped fooling. Spain has woken up. And Europe will follow us.

Madam President, in 2006 the European Union adopted a directive on equality bodies. In 2010 this was expanded to extend it to the self-employed. Today both are reviewed, they have merged and their capacity to act has been considerably expanded, promoting a standardization more typical of a regulation than of a directive. For example, agencies can set their own budgets, but have little accountability. A national, regional and local presence is intended, multiplying public spending with duplication, tripling and quadrupling. This is not an efficient use of resources and will place a greater burden on the taxpayer. Equality bodies may even bind other state bodies through regulatory, controlling and sanctioning powers, which may not be in the common good but in the body's own interest, as they have no defined control. They can also make it difficult for companies to operate in Europe, which will be involved in bureaucratic and judicial processes that not only involve burdens, but also legal uncertainty. This can seriously harm job creation. Therefore, we see that this proposal is giving these bodies authority over other bodies, without having legitimacy or democratic control. In addition, the scope of cases of discrimination is not limited to the concept of man-woman, so it can be assimilated through the back door to the Anti-Discrimination Directive, which our States do not see fit. We know that the Committee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality and the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs have a different bias than this House as a whole. This House should therefore enrich and moderate Parliament's mandate. I therefore ask for your vote to give effect to democratic control and revision.

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, we must respond appropriately to the dramatic situation of violence against women. It is clear that current policies have failed to effectively protect women. The data shows us that insecurity has increased. In Spain, 49 women were killed by their partners and ex-partners in 2022. In 2021, 202 143 rapists, 573 sexual offences in packs. In 2023, 1 205 rapists benefited from releases or reductions in sentences. It is a mistake to tackle violence against women on the basis of gender ideology, since it reduces the problem to simple gender stereotypes, to a supposed heteropatriarchy that confronts men and women, without delving into other causes, such as alcoholism, other addictions – for example, pornography –, hypersexualisation, the frivolisation of relationships or the influence of cultures that do not respect or despise women. In Spain we already have experience – almost 20 years – with the most radical gender laws. Some that do not resemble those of any other country. And the result has been terrible. They have failed to fulfil the purported task of protecting women and have undermined basic legal principles, such as equality before the law and the presumption of innocence. And we have something that doesn't happen in any other civilized country: Exceptional courts. Policies such as the "Just yes is yes" or the lack of action against uncontrolled immigration have proven to leave women more exposed to criminals and increase the vulnerability of women. We must ask ourselves why Spain, being one of the countries with the most radical gender legislation, does not manage to end violence? Because the answer must focus on other things, such as resources to protect those at risk, to ensure safety on the streets, to guarantee assistance to all victims of violence, to give value to our social model of family and coexistence – where equality and respect for women are achievements – and to control illegal immigration in our countries; in resources to investigate and prosecute, to ensure that criminals serve their sentences and that they cannot return to the streets to commit aggression. And of course, review the current laws trying to eliminate all ideological biases.

Mr President, the aggression we Spaniards are suffering is existential. We see our soil, our concept of Spain, crumbling. Achievements of generations in a democratic order, blood of compatriots spilled, wasted by an unscrupulous ambition of political parties that have made it clear that they are capable of selling their motherland. For what? Well, not for what they imagine. Do you really think that the Spaniards are going to swallow with what some irresponsible politicians pretend, who have abused the trust of the citizens to, with their votes, betray them? The dissolution of our constitutional order is a precedent that threatens the European Union itself. If there is no strong statement from the Commission, Mr Reynders - we missed it today - they know that similar claims can be triggered in other states. Is that what you're looking for? A weakening of national identity? We will not fail to fulfill our duty to defend our country against those who want to see it split into thousands of pieces.

Madam President, Commissioners, ladies and gentlemen, it is very sad to see how our productive fabric has been dismantled. During this term of office, more than half of this House has endeavoured to make life impossible for companies with unfair and disproportionate demands. Because of its commitment to ideological agendas, it has left behind the one that generates prosperity and jobs. Now, in the end, a few months after the elections, there is talk of relaunching entrepreneurship: because it's a little late, because the damage is already done. To be serious about entrepreneurship, we need a change in the composition of this House on 9 June. Let's bet on who puts common sense and values the initiative of entrepreneurs. We must create a favourable regulatory environment by rethinking legislation and, of course, opening space for creativity, now reduced to the green and digital transitions. If there is no change of course, we will continue in a spiraling degrowth.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to express to you the concern of millions of Spaniards who have been peacefully concentrating for seventeen days in a row to defend our constitutional order. Pedro Sánchez has reached government agreements that corrupt our democratic system, selling the unity of Spain to achieve power. This lack of loyalty is only the beginning of proposals for extortion of separatist groups. Similar situations occur in other states of the European Union. Initiatives such as this one – that of my country – encourage other movements to embark on paths as painful as those we are suffering in Spain. It's an irresponsible current. It is an enormous irresponsibility on the part of politicians who, far from representing their citizens, use their votes to betray them.