Speeches

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, first of all, I would like to thank the rapporteur, my colleague Isabelle Carvalhais, Martin Häusling and the other Members who have done this excellent work in the AGRI Committee, which, as you recalled, makes it possible to have a success where, ten years ago, there was a failure. This success is linked in particular to the collective capacity to provide a legal framework that secures the reproduction by farmers of seeds for their own needs and exchanges between them. This is a key element and this Parliament will have to resist the ridiculous last-minute pressure from Copa-Cogeca to table amendments against it. The second balance we have all found together is a balance between innovation and protecting seed availability in their diversity. It is this biodiversity that is the main resource for adapting agriculture to climate change. Much more than the new GMOs, it is biodiversity and the fight against the stranglehold on life that will help agriculture adapt to climate change. I am pleased to have been able, together with the ENVI Committee, to contribute to this collective success.

Madam President, they want to impose on us here a reform of the common agricultural policy, without debate and without a vote. We want to get rid of the ecological aspect of the CAP, without debate and without a vote. This was the case with the delegated act on the reversal of permanent grassland proposed by the Commission and for which the Agriculture Committee voted an early non-objection. This morning you opened the procedure to oppose it. I am pleased and honoured to announce that tomorrow morning there will be more than 80 signatures by Members to oppose this early non-objection and to ensure that we have a debate and a vote in April II in Strasbourg.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, ecology is not the enemy of agriculture. The enemy of agriculture is liberalism, liberalism that leads to a decline in agricultural income. Income, income, income: This is what should be at the heart of our debates. For this, we will need another CAP, because aid per hectare and the sale of products on unregulated and unpredictable markets do not work. But right away we can: – change the implementation of the CAP by capping support to better support smaller farmers and breeders; – use European market regulation and anti-speculation tools, including rehabilitating stocks; – impose a distribution of value vis-à-vis industry and distribution, which guarantees farmers’ income; – suspend free trade agreements and generalise mirror clauses and the carbon remedy at EU borders to combat unfair competition; – Finally, to pay farmers for their work in protecting nature and removing pesticides and glyphosate. Yes, agroecology needs to translate into more income for farmers.

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the Global Gateway strategy is an ambitious initiative to support the development of the Global South, which is to be welcomed. However, it is not so simple to understand what underpins it from a strategic point of view. Is it about competing with the Silk Roads? Taking positions in critical resources or infrastructure? To accompany a geopolitical priority that could – in my opinion – be Africa? Or to meet the basic needs of the population? The interventions of my colleagues reflect this form of indeterminacy. Beyond the strategy, its implementation sometimes raises questions. Massive investment alone is not a policy. What is our understanding of the partnership associated with this deployment? Are we really supporting projects that are linked to a global sustainable development strategy and that have the support of civil societies and people? Finally, do we not run the risk of promoting inequalities in access to credit ourselves? We know that a lot of aid goes to the most advanced countries at the expense of the most fragile, to which private investment does not turn. In conclusion, I believe it is important to put Global Gateway into perspective in a comprehensive development assistance strategy and to ensure that official development assistance is reinforced as a complement to that strategy.

Thank you, Mr Dorfmann, for talking about wine, and that was my question. Can you tell me how the new GMO-NTGs will affect the wine sector? If you have a Chardonnay NGT, will a great Chardonnay-based wine still be a Chardonnay? Or will the specification for the geographical designation have to be redrafted?

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I am in favour of innovation and NGT legislation. New genomic techniques are certainly useful, but I refuse to play the apprentice sorcerer and to take away all freedom of choice from consumers and peasants. In the debates on this text, we have made progress on some points: for example, on the non-patentability of these new GMOs, which the rapporteurs have not defended before the Commission and which I am defending here. But we need to go further: ensuring traceability, informing consumers, effectively protecting non-GMO sectors, including organic farming, and monitoring environmental impacts. All this is common sense, it is prudence, it is fidelity to decades of struggle by this Parliament, which has always fought for consumer rights and for recognition of the diversity of agriculture. So the European Economic and Social Council agrees with what I have just said. The European Committee of the Regions agrees with what I have just said. Tens of thousands of citizens are speaking out and sending you – sending us – emails to say so, and should we remain deaf and blind to this mobilisation? No, no! The worst part of this debate is that we will vote tomorrow. While the scientific underpinnings of the Commission proposal are in full scientific controversy, the French agency ANSES has published a study that radically challenges the criteria proposed by the Commission to distinguish between categories 1 and 2. This study must be serious as we will discuss it in the ENVI Committee after the vote. It must be serious since Parliament will ask EFSA for a scientific opinion on the ANSES opinion, which will have to be delivered in July. You can clearly see the absurdity of this debate to be voted on while the very terms of the vote are still in full controversy. So yes, this situation is absurd, but yes, we must give tools to farmers, but yes, we must be accountable to citizens, because they will not want to eat GMOs without choosing it and without knowing it. They're also holding us to account. The appointment for the accounts, it will not only be tomorrow, it will also be June 9.

Mr President, a fraud, a lie, a failure. I would like to refer here in this Chamber to the situation of Nestlé Waters, which for years has concealed the use of prohibited methods for its mineral waters. This company filtered and purified its mineral waters like a vulgar tap water, but selling it a hundred times more expensive. The French government covered up this scam and was preparing to legalise these practices, which deceive and steal from consumers. These frauds must be punished. But how many brands and sources are involved in Europe? We do not know, we urgently need an investigation by the European Commission. Why did they do that? Because water quality is declining, because pollution is increasing, because pesticides are everywhere. Thousands of jobs are now at stake because we have failed to protect the environment. A lesson to remember in the midst of the agricultural crisis: the massive use of pesticides is a danger to health, the environment, but also to employment.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, on 29 November the European Commission reauthorised glyphosate. This decision was taken by the Commission on the basis of an incomplete risk assessment and incomplete information. It did so on its own because the Council was unable to take a decision, and it did so without complying with European case-law, the Blaise judgment, which states that a full assessment of the co-formulants of a product such as glyphosate is absolutely necessary. This Parliament had the opportunity to oppose it and to request an appeal. He didn't. But this fight continues, we will not leave Europe condemned to another ten years of glyphosate. What Parliament has not been able to do, I hope that European civil society, NGOs and citizens will do and I will be, together with my colleagues from the Socialist Group, committed to stopping the use of glyphosate in Europe as soon as possible.

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the general debate on pesticides is interesting, but the practical debate on glyphosate is even more interesting. As a new Member of Parliament, I have been very surprised in recent weeks to see that the Commission’s proposal never changes. You have never taken into account the positions of Member States, the positions of parliamentarians and the positions of stakeholders. I have found a form of blindness and stubbornness that will lead to legal action and I call on all parliamentarians to support the approach taken before the Court of Justice, in particular by the toxic secret associations. You tell us that decisions are based on science. Many of us consider that we are in a situation of scientific uncertainty and controversy. The Director-General of EFSA told this Parliament that the resources mobilised to assess the risks associated with pesticides were insufficient and that his agency did not have the means to work properly, 80% of scientific publications are now excluded from the databases taken into account by EFSA to assess the risks. So no, Commissioner, we do not consider this opinion to be based on science. You did not even take into account the EFSA opinion, you just handed over the baby to the States, which will have many difficulties in doing better than EFSA to assess the risks related to the products and protect health and the environment.

Madam President, Mr High Representative, ladies and gentlemen, have we made a cross on 1.5 billion women and men, who will soon be almost twice as many? Have we decided to remove an entire continent from our horizon? When we talk about a geopolitical Europe, we should look to the future and face the obvious: Africa, Africa, Africa. Everything brings us closer to this continent, and our destinies are linked. But do you want, do we want partners at our borders or a barrel of powder ready to explode in our face? Have we decided to leave Africa to its chaos, to leave it to Russia and China? So the question before us, Mr High Representative, is the one you mentioned earlier: What do we have to offer? After the bad drama of the signing of the post-Cotonou agreement, with our contested development aid policy – because it serves only our interests –, with the French bankruptcy in the Sahel, the question is how Europe can take up the torch of this partnership fight with Africa and affirm a new Euro-African policy.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner, we cannot condemn Europe to ten years of glyphosate, ten years when there are so many uncertainties! Ten years when there are so many dangers! Ten years as science advances every day and brings new information! There is a double failure in this case. A failure of the risk assessment. Because EFSA did not give a red light, it did not give a green light. And in France, when the fire is orange, you don't go to the crossroads because it's dangerous. It was said by my colleagues, lack of information, lack of protocol, but on what subject? Human exposure through food, water protection, health of small herbivorous mammals, protection of aquatic plants, impact on biodiversity. And all this while EFSA has not been able to evaluate the reference product and its co-formulant. And before this Parliament, the Director-General of EFSA told us that he did not understand the gap between the place of pesticides on the European political agenda and the weakness of the resources devoted to risk assessment, including the resources given to his own organisation. And the second bankruptcy is a bankruptcy in risk management because you are discarding the Member States. What are you actually proposing? You tell the Member States: Take each EFSA alert and manage to integrate it into the assessment of the products that will be placed on the market. And what do they say to you? How would we do better the work that EFSA has not been able to do? And that's why many of them today refuse your proposal. So the dramatic difficulty we are facing is that we no longer know who in the Commission is defending the precautionary principle. Who, in the Commission, defends the highest possible level of protection of health and the environment. So you, the Council and the Commission, are about to abandon the precautionary principle. We will object and say no.

Mr President, Commissioner, I would like to begin by welcoming all those who have fought in Europe in the face of disasters and by welcoming the European Mechanism's response to crises. But the reality, as you said, Commissioner, is that you lack the means to deal with crises. The reality is that we do not know the vulnerabilities in Europe. The JRC is developing a tool – the vulnerability index – but it is not or little used. The reality is that in Europe there is no planning for adaptation to climate change and no real mobilisation for the preparation of societies. The reality is that your policy on disaster resilience objectives, which should be our common basis, remains siloed and essentially intergovernmental. The reality is that within this Parliament itself, the issue of civil protection has a marginal place. I would like to make two proposals today. The first is that in this Parliament there is a cross-cutting working group around the ENVI and REGI committees to address these issues as a whole. The second proposal would be that in February 2024, one year after the publication of your “disaster resilience targets”, there would be a high-level conference with the Council, the Parliament and the Commission to give – without waiting for the elections – a new impetus to this policy to finally change scale and model.

Madam President, dear Frans Timmermans, thanks to this morning's vote, the Green Deal is moving forward and that is good news. Now we need an agricultural Green Deal. The current blocking situation cannot continue. This morning, the whole agricultural part of the law was pushed back and that is not good news. The agricultural world must no longer delay change, but commit itself fully to it, because its future depends on it. For our part, we have an obligation to use all means, including financial means – and you mentioned this – to accompany them. And this morning, the right rejected any mobilization of the CAP and any new financial tool. So tonight I ask the question: How to reopen the discussion? How to rebuild trust? How can we equip ourselves for an agricultural Green Deal? For my part, I am convinced that this requires a new common agricultural and food policy, radically different from the current one, to restore nature and ensure Europe’s food sovereignty.

Mr Kuźmiuk, when you are heard, it is never the right proposal, it is never the right time. You always have to wait. You always have to go slower. You always have to do less. You just have to trust farmers and what's already started, as if everything is going well. So I have a simple question for you: When will it be the right time to act more strongly? Will this be the time when it's too late?

Madam President, after the COVID-19 crisis, health must once again become a priority at the heart of the Sustainable Development Goals. What will be the next epidemic, and therefore the next crisis? We do not know, but to believe that there will be none would be a serious mistake. Since epidemics come from outside, it is in Europe’s interest to mobilise for rapid progress in health around the world. First, push the One Health approach, which combines environmental health, food health, animal health and human health. Secondly, to structure mechanisms for rapid response to the emergence of epidemics, which are currently non-existent in many countries. It is also necessary to strengthen the resilience of health systems, both to deploy vaccination campaigns and to cope with an influx of patients. Finally, make essential medicines accessible. Opening up the intellectual property of vaccines is not the only answer; it is also necessary to allow on-site production of vaccines, medicines and medical equipment at appropriate prices. If we want to be at the rendezvous of the SDGs, we must open two paths: on the one hand, preparing societies for crises and making them capable of dealing with them in solidarity and cohesion; on the other hand, developing health sovereignty everywhere to enable effective local responses and avoid global chaos.