Speeches

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner, let us be serious: with the Clean Industry Pact, the Commission has still not understood anything. It continues with its neoliberal strategy, which merely recycles measures from the past that have pushed European industry into the wall. No lessons have been learned on the electricity market, as has been said, based on gas price coupling – which is blowing up bills; none on the public financing of the industrial transition, which is still framed in this area by the austere and absurd rules of the Stability Pact; none on the lack of protection of the European market against foreign competition; none on the involvement of workers and their trade union organisations in the development of the industrial strategy. However, solutions to the crisis, Mr. Séjourné, exist; but this implies a change of ideology – yes, it will be difficult. There is an urgent need, for example, to plan democratically for the modernisation of the industrial tool and to take over strategic sectors from the public authorities. The challenge is simple: rebuild a European industry at the service of workers and citizens, not profits. We're a long way from that.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, I have one minute to tell you about a man, Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, whose name I am proud to pronounce in this Chamber. Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, a Lebanese communist activist and long-time defender of the Palestinian cause, has been imprisoned since 1984: Forty-one years in the jails of the French State. Yet here there is no expression, no resolution to demand his immediate release, that of the oldest political prisoner in Europe. Not a word for George Ibrahim Abdallah, yet liberated for twenty-five years. Here, it is always the same hypocrisy of the well-thinking bourgeois and their ‘double standards’. The Paris Court of Appeal, which was due to rule on his release on 20 February, postponed its decision until 19 June. The continued detention of George Ibrahim Abdallah is a state scandal and a disgrace to the French state. Enough hard work! Release George Ibrahim Abdallah! Release George Ibrahim Abdallah!

Yes, I cannot fail to react when I hear you, Mrs Rechagneux, as I have heard your colleagues from the European extreme right: You dare here in this Chamber to talk about sovereignty. You are the first, with your organization, to sell French and European sovereignty to Trump, Musk and GAFAM. You speak, you defend Mr Séjourné's simplification, but this simplification is the one that concretely attacks the labour code, the collective agreements, the workers' rights that you claim to defend. When will you and your colleagues, Mrs Rechagneux, get out of the duplicity of the speech?

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, let us say it straight away, the compass for the competitiveness of the European Commission is a scam. What is coming, the shock of simplification, as you call it, is massive deregulation that will tackle environmental and social standards to the detriment of workers and to the benefit of lobbies and bosses. Nothing on the reform of the European electricity market to lower household and business bills. Nothing about the necessary measures to protect European industry. Nothing, or so little, on increasing public investment to boost innovation and the decarbonisation of European industry. Nothing about collective bargaining with unions to raise wages and improve working conditions. Proof that your compass is ineffective: ArcelorMittal, the world's second largest steel group, is threatening to relocate certain activities from Europe to India a few days after the announcement of your compass. Your policy, Mr. Séjourné, is irresponsible, it will amplify the social and economic crisis. It is urgent to get out of it.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner, in the capital-intensive organisation of labour, subcontracting is a practice that reduces employer responsibility and, conversely, increases the exploitation of workers. I come from a region, Champagne, where the employers of the wine sector, which had a turnover of more than 6 billion in 2022, excel in the use of subcontracting. For example, for the cascading recruitment of a precarious workforce, still often paid by the job and not by the hour of work, but also – a lesser known phenomenon – for the accommodation of its harvesters and for the organisation of their meals and transport – all producing often unworthy working conditions, where accidents at work and forms of modern slavery are multiplying. To combat these effects of subcontracting, it is necessary to extend the number of companies subject to European due diligence and to include in this duty the possibility for labour inspectorates to directly question the responsibility of contractors. Listen to the unions! Let's adopt a new regulation on subcontracting chains! There's an emergency!

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the situation is terrible. In Europe, every day, nine employees die at work, and every year nearly 3 million workers are victims of accidents at work. This hecatomb remains invisible and shamefully considered an acceptable risk by a large part of the bosses. And what to say in the face of these lives lost or wounded forever, to the families of the victims who are often alone and destitute in the face of justice and institutions. In France, in a decade, Hollande's and Macron's policies attacked labor regulations by removing, for example, health, safety and working conditions committees in companies, resulting in an increase in workplace accidents. In Europe, Vision Zero, the outcome of the European Parliament's 2020 resolution to eliminate deaths and reduce occupational diseases by 2030, has already failed. Making the formal right of Article 31 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights a reality means putting an end to the liberal policies that govern here in Brussels.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, there is one aspect of mental health that is too often overlooked, the one whose stage is played out at work, behind the doors of companies. In France, for example, it is up to the employer to take the measures, I quote, 'necessary to protect the mental health of workers'. However, this principle often remains theoretical and the means of labour inspection are derisory. We also note the lack of tools, in practice, to enforce the right to disconnect or to implement a genuine policy to assess psychosocial risks at work – two subjects on which we are still waiting for the Commission's initiatives. What about burnout, related in particular to the loads, pressures and work rates weighing on workers? This burnout is still not one of the conditions listed in the table of occupational diseases in France and in many EU countries, an essential step to allow compensation. However, these care failures have disastrous effects for workers, in particular by increasing the risk of suicide at work or because of work. There is an urgent need for action.

What a shame! What a shame to have allowed the genocide in Gaza and the war in Lebanon to kill tens of thousands of people through your policies and the support you have given it for over a year today. It is your actions, the unconditional support you have given to Netanyahu's far-right policies, which today make us aware of the situation that you say you deplore, but in which you have participated. Shame, yes, but shame on you, Mr. Bellamy.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, on 18 September I went to the Mulhouse prison, where I was able to talk to Christian Tein, the chairman of the Kanak National Liberation Front and socialist of Kanaky-New Caledonia. His name may not be known to you, and I am extremely proud to be able to pronounce it in this House. New Caledonia is still included today in the list of territories considered non-decolonized by the United Nations. On May 13, the French colonial state attempted a coup by proposing the thawing of the electorate, brutally breaking the 1998 Nouméa Accords. The social protest in Kanaky made it possible to obtain the abandonment of this reform. But the toll is heavy: Hundreds of wounded and thirteen dead. The French state chose repression and deported several Kanak militants to France, more than 17,000 kilometers from their homes. France must release Kanak political prisoners. Only respect for the process of self-determination will enable the sovereignty of peoples and the construction of the peace of tomorrow.