Speeches

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 for a possible breakdown in supply chains and on the health strategy in case of pandemics or others, is full of great intentions, but has no budget. That is, the European Union will not spend a penny on any kit of readiness. And where does the money go anyway? For armaments, of course, because there are commitments of many millions. For everything else, less and less. Is protecting supply chains and ensuring health security critical? Yes, yes. Do they invest? No, no. Indeed, and even without assuming it, the Commission is already doing what the Secretary-General of NATO requested. Take to health to spend on weapons. It is a huge irresponsibility, which we will definitely oppose.

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 for a possible breakdown in supply chains and on the health strategy in case of pandemics or others, is full of great intentions, but has no budget. That is, the European Union will not spend a penny on any kit of readiness. And where does the money go anyway? For armaments, of course, because there are commitments of many millions. For everything else, less and less. Is protecting supply chains and ensuring health security critical? Yes, yes. Do they invest? No, no. Indeed, and even without assuming it, the Commission is already doing what the Secretary-General of NATO requested. Take to health to spend on weapons. It is a huge irresponsibility, which we will definitely oppose.

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 obvious. The planet is only one. The goals really have to be met. And what does the Commission do? Ignore the science. It presents the targets after the deadline and in minimum ambition and proposes flexibilization mechanisms that scientists have expressly warned that they do not serve. After all, goals are not to be met. After the withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Agreement, the Commission decides to show that it is also unreliable. For the Commission, everything is negotiated on the market, including the climate. Problem: The planet will not negotiate temperature or sea level with anyone. We will lose everyone, starting with the poorest, who face unprotected heatwaves and storms. But the Commission does not even see them.

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, that is, we condemn those who need care to live closed in an institution. The struggle that people with disabilities have fought for the right to independent living is a struggle for all people, for rights, for all people at all stages of their lives. And coming here repeating good intentions is not the answer. If the Commission wants to fight institutionalisation, I have a shocking suggestion: Stop funding it, stop funding it. Ensure that all EU funding for disability goes to independent living programmes and national care services and not to people's warehouses. The right to independent living, to dignified treatment, is not an absurd requirement. Tailored, supported homes, personal assistance, community support, accessibility, decent care, inclusive urbanism are within the reach of the European Union. There is political will.

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 international humanitarian law. It also denies humanitarian aid. Killing children by the thousands, destroying hospitals, destroying homes and condemning them to starvation are a violation of human rights. Genocide is a violation of human rights. Madam Vice-President of the Commission, there you have the grounds for suspending the Agreement in less than a minute. I don't think anyone will be able to explain at any time how this Agreement remains active. European leaders are already complicit in the genocide and will also have to answer for its crimes.

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 targets, not even enough investment. Just good intentions. The ocean is our last climate protection barrier and the risk is tremendous. Transforming fisheries, supporting fishers, ending industrial trawling and halting the fossil and plastic plague in the oceans must be binding, along with increasing protected areas and banning deep-sea mining. On the way to COP30, a European Pact that evades concrete targets is the wrong signal. Commissioner, I hope we can still correct it.

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 adopt the fascist concept of science: You only find out what makes them right. The issue of academic freedom is not just a problem in the United States, where Donald Trump's administration is persecuting universities and scientists. The interference and threat against universities, the complete disregard for autonomy, the lack of knowledge – where racism, misogyny and homophobia remain, elevated to the criteria of science, which can or cannot be produced – are also already present in Hungary. It is already lurking in so many European countries. Isn't that what we heard here today? The Choose Europe for Science initiative aims to attract scientists from other parts of the world to do science in Europe. And it is good that Europe wants to do so, that it wants to open up to the world and that it realises that science is fundamental. But let's look at what's going on: Insufficient science budget, xenophobia at the heart of immigration policy and, moreover, with the growing coverage that popular and liberals give to the far right all over Europe, who will welcome American, European researchers, wherever they may be, when persecution here also becomes the rule?

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 suffering until a diagnosis is made, the likelihood of therapy being unaffordable for the sick person and their family is very high. As if it were not enough to suffer from a rare disease, you still need to be lucky about the country where you live or are born. Access to timely diagnoses, medication and specific treatments depends on a geographic lottery. Let's see, screening tests on newborns, which are central to timely detection and treatment, range from testing for only two pathologies, as in Romania, or 49, as in Italy. Access to orphan medicines and innovative treatments depends on how quickly each Member State approves medicines at national level, after EMA authorisation, but also on States’ investment in specialised research and care and, of course, on the willingness and interest of the pharmaceutical industry to market these products. And the pharmaceutical industry only gives us proof that it's unreliable. It is time for a European Action Plan on Rare Diseases, a plan that is multidisciplinary and comprehensive, that strengthens public capacity and promotes knowledge sharing, innovation, innovative diagnostic techniques and also access to innovative medicines and treatments for all rare disease carriers without exception. And it is time to create a European fund to finance access to treatment and care, regardless of where patients are born and live, and to impose rules on the pharmaceutical industry.

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 banks or buying weapons, they ignore those same treaties. It is no coincidence that inflation and the cost of living are the greatest concern of the peoples of Europe, together with housing and health. The institutions know the barometer, but choose to ignore it. The European Commission, which says here today that Social Europe is so important and that it was born out of the agreement that included socialists and democrats, greens, liberals, people and part of the far right, is the Commission that abandons both the Social Pillar and the Green Deal. The left does not abandon. Security is not about filling the world with weapons. True security lies in the fight against inequality. It's in salary, home, education, health and the battle against the climate crisis.

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 is the second largest arms exporter in the world. It is only supplanted by the United States. It lacks autonomy, yes, but not weapons. The problem is that even weapons depend on Putin's gas and Musk's satellites. Readiness requires energy transition. Thousands of Europeans have died in climate disasters and the Commission proposes to backtrack on climate targets. It requires public, digital and communications strategy. We are trapped between the apps American, Chinese and Russian, and medicines. The European Union depends on up to 80% of active substances produced in China. We cannot waste on the weapons that we do not need the investment in health that we lack. Readiness is not having medicines for three days, it is having medicines every day.

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 fundamentals? The drug chain is held hostage by large pharmaceutical companies and subject to the will of third countries. Most generic medicines produced in Europe rely on active substances produced in China and India. Ensuring the production and supply of medicines therefore requires transparency, new market rules, including on patents, and public investment. Health ministers from 11 Member States are now calling for this investment to be included in defence programmes. The request puts the finger on the wound. After all, for armaments there are 800 billion euros and for health there are only restrictions. And without sovereign capacity in medicines, such as digital or energy, there is no security in Europe.

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) that a specific strategy is needed for children and young people, and while poverty and discrimination are the greatest risks, digital and social media are responsible for the deterioration of mental health indicators in the last decade; 3) that it is necessary to ensure access to health care. Meanwhile, poverty, precariousness and environmental risks have worsened, discrimination and hatred have grown, social media and digital have moved ahead without rules, education and health are under even more pressure. Commissioner, does it make sense to continue to say that mental health is a priority while making economic and social policy choices that only exacerbate the problem?

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 at its feet during the COVID period and should be ashamed to speak out.

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, those who die of starvation, those who die for lack of vaccines or medical treatment. A politics wrapped in a denialist and conspiratorial discourse with too many allies in Europe. The same people who advertise themselves as pro-life to control and humiliate women make the politics of death every day. Combating them, Commissioner, is our greatest responsibility. Do you want to know how Europe can assert itself vis-à-vis the United States or China? It's this way: Fascism, authoritarianism, negationism. To be the champion of the climate, of health, of peoples. The European Union is the second largest economy in the world. The choices we make here and now will have a planetary impact.

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, chronic diseases and others have only increased. The cost of medicines, equipment and health devices has not decreased either. Absolute faith in the market has allowed big pharma and corporations to make millions, charging states more and more. An unacceptable blackmail that the European Union accepts without blinking. The spending cut was therefore left to the workers. Without decent careers, with low wages and inhuman working conditions and hours, it is not surprising that the interest of young generations in health professions has been declining. Commissioner, to pretend that the problem is training, or mobility, is to reject the fundamental debate. This is the time to recover salaries and careers. And no, there is no digital that dispenses health workers.

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 pyramid scheme, only creators, like Trump, will always come out full of money, but in this case, real money, euros, dollars. The unsuspecting and dazzled will lose everything. Commissioner, by allowing cryptocurrencies under the guise of regulation, the European institutions are normalising the scam, helping to deceive citizens, and by allowing banks to build crypto-asset wallets, they are creating a growing mechanism of contagion to the markets, ignoring even the warnings of the IMF. In the Silicon Valley Bank crisis, we already had a smell of this mechanism. Let us be clear: Regulating cryptocurrencies has to be banning cryptocurrencies, preventing banks from buying them, protecting people from scams, avoiding the next financial crisis.

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 give up on this objective and must act at all levels. I come from a country, Portugal, where super-intensive agriculture condemns much of the Alentejo and Algarve population, including small farmers, to a life without water. What they produce does not feed these populations or leave wealth in the country. Everything is exported, including profits. Only degraded soils remain. So I know that this is not the struggle of ecology against agriculture, it is the struggle of our lives, including food production, against the maelstrom of agribusiness multinationals. That is why, Commissioner, it will take courage to tackle some of the most powerful economic interests.

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 that, from Trump's United States, we can only expect the situation to worsen. Perhaps that is why they dream of space travel to Mars, but it is on Earth, where the 8 billion people who do not enter the space plans of Elon Musk live, that it is urgent to find the path of responsibility. Commissioner, the European Union must set itself demanding targets and must impose them both internally and in its international agreements, because now is the time for us to assume our responsibility.

Mr President, the images of the joy of the Palestinian population at the ceasefire, or of the families of the three hostages released, create hope. But nothing is guaranteed and everything else is missing. We must ensure that it does not turn back and we cannot accept the continuation of the illegal occupation. Trump and Biden dispute who has the most credits in the deal, but are both complicit in the genocide. Netanyahu remains unpunished despite the international arrest warrant. The European Union still does not recognise the genocide and maintains the association agreement with Israel. Meanwhile, Israel maintains laws that impede the action of UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. Even here, there are those who want to cut off your support when you need reinforcement the most. The hope for peace and justice continues to reside in a social majority that maintains the demand for freedom for Palestine and obliges the institutions, including this Parliament, to do something decent.

Madam President, Commissioner, more than a quarter of the European population - almost 30% in the case of women - is barred from basic citizenship rights. Getting out of the house, communicating with a public service, taking a transport, walking on the promenade are activities that can be impossible for many people with disabilities. In the European Union, the second richest economy in the world, there is still not the accessibility promised since the last century. For people with disabilities, there is not even the rule of law. There are Member States, such as mine, Portugal, where women with disabilities are sterilised against their will. And while the disability movement has put independent living into the discourse of the institutions, we still see European funds serving institutionalisation rather than independent living. The disability strategy, rather than appearing, needs to be effective. And we hope, Commissioner, that you will begin the mandate by making sure that these steps are really worthwhile.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, a reconfiguration is under way in the Middle East which involves the annihilation of the Palestinian people and the Kurdish people, and in which Israel and Turkey are allies and count on the support of the European Union, despite international law, the United Nations Charter, the Convention against Genocide, despite the Sakharov Prize for Kurdish women who fought ISIS. I hear democracies against autocracies here, and I see Turkey in NATO, or the European Union, like Putin, doing business with Libya. Who do you want to fool? The so-called democratic right is allied with the extreme right of Netanyahu or Erdogan. And the Socialists and Greens just want to be in the picture of this European governance. I wonder if it doesn't weigh on their conscience. Ursula von der Leyen was in Israel and forgot about Palestine. Yesterday, in Turkey, he forgot about the Kurdish people and women. And the Council, what will it say? Will the choice of Antonio Costa change anything?

Mr President, what makes this Parliament more concerned about TikTok than X or Meta? It follows the agenda of the right, the far right, Trump's agenda, from American warmongering to the trade war with China. The issue of disinformation and the information domain is not new, it is old. The dimension is that it's new, with global networks and billion-dollar investments promoting the far right, because billionaires know who protects them. That's why Musk invested in Trump, to earn even more. In TikTok, Meta or X, self-regulation is just another lie. The networks censor the words "genocide" or "Palestine" while promoting all misogynistic, xenophobic, homophobic hatred. Refusing rules and transparency is not freedom of expression. It is the destruction of democracy in favor of the billionaires' game.

Mr President, the power of the tobacco industry is enormous. Their lies are responsible for countless premature deaths and extremely serious health problems. Its interference in political power is legendary and, if we leave, it has more power than any parliament. As in the past, the tobacco industry today hides the dangers of its new products. Heated tobacco, e-cigarettes and other aerosols have complex compositions that include chemicals associated with a wide range of diseases: cancer, cardiovascular diseases and chronic respiratory diseases. They also hide the fact that these new products also harm secondary smokers. Particularly serious situation for the most vulnerable: children, pregnant women, who have chronic diseases. Parliament’s resolution aims to: tell the Commission that now is the time to update the legislation, considering the dangers we already know. It is not a question of chasing smokers, but of imposing rules on an industry that is very interested in profit and that despises public health. An industry interested in maintaining a cloak of opacity about all this and which, as the debate in Parliament has shown, unfortunately has many allies here. On the left, we demand transparency and action to defend the population.

Madam President, there is silence in this debate. The right, which calls theft the taxes that pay public services, is silent in the face of the theft that hides in the bill of the light that we all pay to the big energy companies. The marginalist model makes us pay for energy that we do not consume. The President of the European Commission acknowledged the problem more than two years ago and has done what she does on these occasions: Nothing. As energy profits skyrocket, there are 100 million people in energy poverty in Europe. In Portugal, a quarter of the population has to choose between eating or heating the house. Privatization of energy was a mistake. Energy is an essential good and should be treated as a human right. It is strategic for the whole economy and critical in the fight against climate change. What to do and now: reducing reliance on fossil fuels, re-establishing state-owned enterprises with ambitious investment plans, regulating prices, capping and taxing windfall profits.