What Catarina spoke about.

9

Oct

2025

PT Speech

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World Mental Health Day - addressing the socio-economic factors (debate)

Mr President, Commissioner, not being able to pay for the house, living in an overcrowded house and postponing life projects puts mental health at risk. Working underpaid, with long hours and precarious contracts, puts mental health at risk. When education is a competition, rather than a learning, it puts mental health at risk. On top of all this, having homework and care tasks, without the suppor…

8

Oct

2025

PT Speech

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Second World Summit for Social Development (debate)

Mr President, Commissioner, when the Second World Summit for Social Development meets next month, 30 years will have passed since the Copenhagen compromise, without us being able to live up to what was required. In a world of growing inequalities and growing political forces betting everything on putting workers against workers, and following Donald Trump’s decision to end USAID, which is estimate…

7

Oct

2025

PT Answer

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The EU’s role in supporting the recent peace efforts for Gaza and a two-state solution (debate)

I am sure that the European Union has not done what it should have done. The European Union did not do what it should to defend the humanitarian flotilla, because I do not forget that the Mediterranean is full of Frontex boats that could have accompanied the flotilla boats, broken the siege and brought humanitarian aid to those in need. Did the European Union not do what it needed to do to defend …

7

Oct

2025

PT Speech

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The EU’s role in supporting the recent peace efforts for Gaza and a two-state solution (debate)

Madam President, tested in a real scenario, it is the hallmark of Israeli weaponry. A business that grows like never before. Europe is the main buyer, but there are also Arab countries to buy. Palestinians are dead. Gaza is the testing ground of the death industry. A peace plan tailored to this business is not a peace plan. In Trump's and Netanyahu's plan, the Palestinians are not even heard. War …

9

Sep

2025

PT Speech

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Devastating wildfires in Southern Europe: the need to strengthen EU aid to restore the massive loss of forests and enhancing EU preparedness (debate)

Mr President, Commissioner, in 2025, Portugal was the Member State with the most burnt area in the whole of the European Union. Hundreds of firefighters risked their lives, and populations were left alone fighting the fire to save their villages. The Portuguese government failed, devalued, did not prepare, called for international help too late, was not able to provide a coordinated response. He l…

9

Sep

2025

PT Speech

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Gaza at breaking point: EU action to combat famine, the urgent need to release hostages and move towards a two-state solution (debate)

Madam President, Mrs Kallas, it is genocide, not conflict – it is genocide. Twenty-eight children die every day in the Gaza Strip, at the hands of Israel and at the hands of all those who are complicit. Do not come here to mourn the millions of humanitarian aid that are rotting because Israel has decided to starve to death in Gaza. In fact, what I needed to be doing was supporting those who are tr…

10

Jul

2025

PT Speech

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Endometriosis: Europe’s wake-up call on the gender health gap (debate)

Mr President, menstrual pain has historically been made invisible. The devaluation of menstrual pain and endometriosis is yet another expression of the inequality imposed by patriarchal society, which continues to devalue women's health, and this prejudice must be combated. When cells in the endometrial tissue, the tissue that lines the uterus, grow abnormally and elsewhere, menstruation is painfu…

9

Jul

2025

PT Speech

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Arbitrary arrest and torture of Belgian-Portuguese researcher Joseph Figueira Martin in the Central African Republic

Mr President, Commissioner, Joseph Figueira Martin is a member of an NGO, FHI 360, and worked in the Central African Republic when, more than a year ago, he was arrested by the Wagner Group and then handed over to the authorities. More than a year later, despite many allegations by the Central African Republic government, no charges were brought against Joseph Figueira Martin. There has been no tr…

9

Jul

2025

PT Speech

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Presentation of the Stockpiling Strategies - strengthening response capacities for a changing risk and threat landscape (debate)

Mr President, Commissioner, in order to ensure preparedness in the event of a disaster, you have asked the population to have a kit able to meet basic needs for 72 hours and many people, all over Europe, bought lanterns and batteries, water, cans and, of course, medicines. But the Commission seems to have difficulty in following its own advice. Today's strategy, both on the creation of reserves fo…

8

Jul

2025

PT Speech

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Revision of the European Climate Law (debate)

Madam President, Commissioner, do you believe that the Earth is flat or does science still have a place? The Climate Law established a scientific body to inform about decisions and the reduction target. Scientists have said one fundamental thing: Reducing emissions in one place to increasing emissions in the other does not solve it. Emissions trading, it is proven, does not work. Sounds pretty obv…

7

Jul

2025

PT Speech

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From institution to inclusion: an EU action plan for deinstitutionalisation, family- and community-based care (debate)

Mr President, Commissioner, the lack of responses of dignified care, respectful of autonomy in the various stages of life, frightens Europe and there are objective reasons for this. There is abandonment of people, abandonment of families, abandonment of women, of families that carry a burden that is not theirs and, often, the alternative to this abandonment is the institutionalization of people, t…

17

Jun

2025

PT Speech

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Situation in the Middle East (joint debate)

Mr President, Mrs Kallas, I only have one minute and I think that in one minute it is still possible to evaluate the association agreement with Israel and decide to terminate it. Come with me. The second article of the agreement reads: ‘Relations between the parties shall be based on respect for human rights’. And what is Israel doing? It indiscriminately massacres civilians and is in breach of in…

17

Jun

2025

PT Speech

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European Ocean Pact (debate)

Madam President, Commissioner, there are two forms of irresponsibility: climate deniers – who are represented here by the far right – but also good intentions, without realisation, which the right has come here today to welcome. The Oceans Pact suffers from this irresponsibility for inconsistency. When it comes to changing something, in what is most urgent, there are no concrete and binding target…

22

May

2025

PT Speech

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Choose Europe for Science (debate)

Madam President, Commissioner, this debate is a parade of horrors. A far-right group arrives and advocates cutting funding to universities that position themselves against the genocide in Palestine. Soon after, another of the far-right groups is advocating cuts in scientific research on women. As if that were not enough, the third far-right group in this Parliament is coming and is proposing to ad…

3

Apr

2025

PT Speech

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European Action Plan on Rare Diseases (debate)

Mr President, Commissioner, we cannot continue to abandon patients with rare diseases. Rare diseases affect 36 million citizens of the European Union, 8% of the population. We are talking about a spectrum of about 7,000 diseases, most of them chronic, disabling or even deadly. 95% have no specific treatment and the diagnosis is often late (on average, it takes five years). And after all the suffer…

2

Apr

2025

PT Speech

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Topical debate (Rule 169) - Social Europe: making life affordable, protecting jobs, wages and health for all

Mr President, poverty and unemployment are called adjustment, precariousness is called flexibility and deregulation is called simplification. More than a decade ago, austerity arrived via the international financial crisis. Now, it's for weapons blackmail. When people and their rights need to be protected, the European institutions explain that the Treaties do not allow it. When it comes to saving…

1

Apr

2025

PT Speech

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EU Preparedness Union Strategy (debate)

Madam President, Commissioner, I do not see your video on the kit Survival for 72 hours is just an unfortunate joke. It is part of a strategy to impose on public opinion the inevitability of war. Twenty years ago, the war industry invented the lie of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, now it's the supposed lack of weapons in Europe. The European Union has the second largest defence spending and i…

11

Mar

2025

PT Speech

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Presentation of the proposal on Critical Medicines Act (CMA) (debate)

Madam President, Commissioner, medicine shortages are a growing problem in the European Union, there are shortages even in cancer medicines, and to have access or not is a geographical lottery. And the definition of critical medicines itself overlooks some rare diseases or women's reproductive health. Action is therefore urgently needed. But does the Commission's proposal respond to the fundamenta…

12

Feb

2025

PT Speech

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Silent crisis: the mental health of Europe’s youth (debate)

Mr President, 'You are not alone' is the first certainty that we must leave to all people, especially the youngest, who are facing mental health problems. Worsening mental health conditions are a societal problem and require a global transformation. In 2003, the European Commission already stated: 1) that there is no solution without responding to social, economic and environmental determinants; 2…

12

Feb

2025

PT Answer

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US withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement, the World Health Organisation and the suspension of US development and humanitarian aid (debate)

I understand that you do not like science, you do not like conspiracies. I must tell you the following: When children die of vaccine-preventable diseases because deniers deny vaccines, they are making the policy of death. When Bolsonaro, in Brazil, denied the oxygen needed to respond to COVID and denied vaccines, he was making the policy of death. The far right has hundreds of thousands of deaths …

12

Feb

2025

PT Speech

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US withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement, the World Health Organisation and the suspension of US development and humanitarian aid (debate)

Madam President, Trump, like all the far right, despises life and, above all, despises the people. Whoever is rich will eventually be saved, everyone else is expendable. The Paris Agreement, the World Health Organization and international humanitarian aid are global mechanisms for the protection of human life. Abandoning them is the policy of cruelty that despises those who die in fires and floods…

11

Feb

2025

PT Speech

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The need to address urgent labour shortages and ensure quality jobs in the health care sector (debate)

Mr President, there is a shortage of health workers because workers have been cut off. After all, what did the European Union think was going to happen when it ordered the Member States to cut structural expenditure, including health expenditure? Health problems have not diminished, on the contrary. With the ageing of the population, very intense work rhythms, increasing pollution, climate change,…

23

Jan

2025

PT Speech

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Cryptocurrencies - need for global standards (debate)

Madam President, every epoch has had its bubbles and financial frauds. Today, it is cryptocurrencies, a scam disguised as investment, that generates a mountain of pollution without producing a pin. Unsurprisingly and unscrupulously, Trump has just announced the creation of his own cryptocurrency, which will be governed by the rules he will create as President of the United States. As in any pyrami…

23

Jan

2025

PT Speech

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Combating Desertification: 16th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP16) of the United Nations Convention (debate)

Mr President, over the next 25 years, three out of four people will be affected by drought worldwide. It's a disaster and it's here. Europe is warming faster than the rest of the world and the prolonged drought has arrived decades ahead of schedule. For this reason, and despite the veto of the United States and Japan on an agreement for a global drought resilience regime, the European Union cannot…

22

Jan

2025

PT Speech

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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)

Madam President, while some in this debate are upset because plastic caps are now attached to bottles, there are parts of the planet that are literally submerged in plastic seas. If nothing is done, production will triple, when scientific studies are already showing how microplastics are infiltrating our brain tissues and even breast milk. It is true that international agreements are blocked and t…