Speeches

Madam President, Russia has used its actors within the EU institutions to try to legitimise its positions, to undermine sanctions policy and prevent international isolation. Now one way of Russian influence over the past years is through propagating the so—called ‘traditional values’. And ‘traditional values’ mean that women’s emancipation is wrong, and rights of sexual minorities should not be realised. But these restrictive and reactionary values that Russia tried so hard to push have been rejected time and again, also by our Eastern Partner countries, not least by Ukraine, that just recently ratified the Istanbul Convention on gender—based violence. Russia has, of course, labelled this as ‘anti—family’, claiming Europe and the West are degenerated regions, whereas Russia is the cradle of civilisation with a great future. We, of course, have these currents represented in the EU as well in the form of Orbán’s Hungary and others. We need to be quite strict on transparency and tighter rules on political funding, the funding of European political parties, because they are a challenge to these influences.

The next item is the report by Mr López, on behalf of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, on the EU and the defence of multilateralism [2020/2114(INI)] (A9-0172/2022).

The next item is the report by Viola Von Cramon-Taubadel, on behalf of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, on the 2021 report on Kosovo [2021/2246(INI)] (A9-0179/2022).

The minutes of the sessions of yesterday and today will be given to the Parliament for adoption at the beginning of the next session. So if there are no objections, I convey the resolutions adopted in today’s session without delay to those entities and persons that are mentioned in the resolutions.

Dear colleagues, we move to the explanations of vote. So I would request you to leave the room so that we can give space to the 21 Members who want to give an explanation of vote.

Madam President, the first visit of a UN Commissioner for Human Rights to China in 17 years took place two weeks ago. Some of us, like Raphaël Glucksmann and others, we warned her in advance that she should not become the victim of Chinese propaganda efforts. That’s exactly what happened, I am very sorry to say. In spite of common sense, she went on praising the efforts of China in eradicating poverty and all this, but she did not use her authority to condemn clearly what she must have seen during her visit or what she should have seen. I think the European Union should be very careful about her possible second mandate, because we have seen that the Human Rights Council of the United Nations has become vulnerable to Chinese efforts to undermine the post—war established international human rights order. I also want to say that, Commissioner Dombrovskis, we should hurry up with the proposal on the import ban on products produced with forced labour, because that might be a good instrument that would be able to change the situation on the ground in Xinjiang.

The session is closed. It will resume tomorrow, Tuesday 7 June at 9 a.m., with a joint debate on the Fit for 55 legislative package. The agenda has been published and is available on the European Parliament’s website.

The next item is the last item on Monday evening, with one minute's speeches under Rule 172 of the Rules of Procedure. I really want one minute to be one minute.

The next item is the report by Caroline Roose, on behalf of the Committee on Fisheries, on the implementation of Article 17 of the Regulation on the Common Fisheries Policy (2021/2168(INI)) (A9-0152/2022). I now give the floor to the rapporteur for four minutes, Mr Roose.

The next item is Question Time with the Commission (Rule 137). I would like to welcome Commissioner Stella Kyriakides, who has just arrived here. welcome. This Question Time will focus on reducing the use of pesticides and strengthening consumer protection. This question time lasts about 60 minutes. Questions are not issued in advance to individual members. One minute is reserved for the question, two minutes for the Commission's answer, 30 seconds for the supplementary question and two minutes for the answer. Any supplementary question must be strictly related to the actual question and must not constitute a new, independent question. If you would like to ask a question, please register your request now by using the catch-the-eye function on your voting machine after the voting card has been entered into the machine. Instructions are available in the Chamber. I would remind you that you are free to choose your seat in the Chamber, with the exception of the first two lines for group leaders. Interventions for Question Time will be taken from your own place. I urge all speakers to stick to the time allocated to each speaker. Colleagues may need a moment to register their request to ask a question on the voting machine. I would ask you to register your request now, and then we will start with the first question.

The ID Group has informed the President of decisions to amend the nominations of committee members. These decisions are set out in the minutes of today's sitting and will enter into force on the date of their notification to Parliament. The sitting is now adjourned for a moment and resumed at 12 noon with the votes. (The sitting adjourned at 11.48)

Mr President, I want to talk to you about Nadia Murad. She was a sex slave of ISIL. She’s a Yazidi. She got free and she has become a big champion of women and girls raped in war. She has started something called the Murad Code, which means that the evidence on these horrible atrocities and war crimes – crimes against humanity, the systematic use of rape as a war weapon – must be collected as early as possible, because otherwise it becomes very difficult. So I would very much hope that Eurojust and other EU—related bodies would assume this strategy in fighting against impunity for these crimes. I also wanted to mention that we need to see how the command chain can be proven, but we did see that President Putin actually decorated those troops that had been known to have committed these atrocities against women and girls in Ukraine. So perhaps here we have evidence of a very high—level command chain, which would be necessary to prove to bring the real perpetrators and commanders to justice.