What Maria spoke about.

22 Jan

2025

EL Speech

Failure of the negotiations in Busan for a UN plastic treaty and the urgent need to tackle plastic pollution at international and Union level (debate)

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Madam President, the failure of the negotiations in Busan on the UN Treaty on Plastics is a scandal. How much longer will we tolerate the interests that are polluting our planet? How much longer will we let our oceans drown in plastic and our communities pay the price? The European Union must stand up, take action now, adopt a directly applicable regulation for all Member States that holistically …

22 Jan

2025

EL Speech

Addressing EU demographic challenges: towards the implementation of the 2023 Demography Toolbox (debate)

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Mr. President, why don't people have children? Because they live in despair. You supported the elites, the rich, and imposed a relentless neoliberalism that crushed peoples, wiped out the welfare state, plunged citizens into poverty. In Greece public hospitals do not have staff, materials, infrastructure, school units do not have resources and teachers. Parents are struggling to pay tutorials for …

20 Jan

2025

EL Speech

Heat record year 2024 - the need for climate action to fight global warming (debate)

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Mr President, Commissioner, is temperature change another natural phenomenon or the result of your policies? For decades you have ignored the warnings of scientists and environmental organizations. You have chosen to finance polluting industries and ports, helped those who profit from the disaster, and let citizens pay the price with their lives and properties. This is the climate collapse caused …

18 Dec

2024

EL Speech

Tackling abusive subcontracting and labour market intermediaries (debate)

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Mr President, I do not understand why we are not abolishing subcontracting altogether. Any employer who wants to hire an employee to hire him directly with structured labour rights. In Greece, especially in the areas of cleaning, warehousing, distribution, even in banks and air, land and sea transport companies, exploitation through intermediaries is widespread and subcontracting was created to br…

18 Dec

2024

EL Speech

Promoting social dialogue and collective bargaining and the right to strike in the EU (debate)

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Mr President, the rule of law in Greece has collapsed when the right to strike is criminalised, collective bargaining is prohibited, courts serve repression and not justice. Why is Europe covering the Mitsotakis government? Together you are responsible for the measures taken against the workers. Why did you demand in the memoranda that collective bargaining on the minimum wage be abolished? Why di…

16 Dec

2024

EL Speech

Right to clean drinking water in the EU (debate)

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Madam President, the Greek Government is promoting policies that undermine citizens' right to clean, cheap and adequate water. The revival of the Acheloos river diversion project with European Union money violates European Directives 2000/60 and 2001/42, destroys Natura 2000 sites and ignores sustainable management. Instead of pharaonic projects, direct investments are needed in infrastructure for…

27 Nov

2024

EL Speech

Presentation by the President-elect of the Commission of the College of Commissioners and its programme (debate)

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Madam President, you agreed among yourselves behind closed doors and brought us spectators to a rigged game. Hearings are a cheap show and you untalented actors in a badly played play. You have not kept your pretexts, since you have not cut a single Commissioner. There are "appointments" by the governments themselves, such as the Greek Commissioner Tzitzikostas in the Transport portfolio, with who…

13 Nov

2024

EL Speech

One-minute speeches on matters of political importance

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Mr President, the Tempi tragedy, with 57 dead and 180 injured, is the biggest railway accident in Europe. A terrible crime of corruption and state responsibility, with the protagonists of the New Democracy government and its executives. Despite the initial resignation of Transport Minister Costas Karamanlis, the government intervened in the judiciary and tampered with the crime scene, with funds e…

22 Oct

2024

EL Speech

Situation in Azerbaijan, violation of human rights and international law and relations with Armenia (debate)

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Mr President, I received an e-mail from the Azerbaijani Ambassador to Belgium, in which I was notified along with 20 other colleagues. He was replying to a letter from a fellow Member, which had never been sent to me, and he was replying in an intense, almost threatening tone to the introduction, in order to follow his narrative. Obviously, he included me in the notification because I signed a tex…

22 Oct

2024

EL Speech

Guidelines for the employment policies of the Member States (debate)

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Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the employment guidelines are nothing more than the wishes of Members of the European Parliament, which are usually ignored by the Member States. In Greece, free collective bargaining has been abolished since 2012. The Minister of Labour decides the minimum wage. We were subjected to further restrictions on the right to strike, six days and eleven hours. Employe…

9 Oct

2024

EL Speech

2024 Annual Rule of law report (debate)

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Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Greece is in a new dark age of encroachment on the rule of law. The surveillance with Predator and EYP was not just a scandal. It was the means for the government to gain full control over the institutions. The government of Mr. Mitsotakis controls the judiciary and the major media, intervenes in the work and composition of independent authorities, such as the A…

16 Sep

2024

EL Speech

Outcome of the Strategic Dialogue on the Future of EU Agriculture (debate)

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Mr President, what future of agriculture in Europe are we talking about today, when in Greece in 2024 farmers and stockbreeders are still claiming what is given in all the countries of Europe? Last year Thessaly was destroyed by the bad weather Daniel, animals were lost, drowned, production will take years to restore, and this year the plague in animals finished off what was left. The government's…