What João spoke about.

16

Dec

2025

Questions PT

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Presentation of the European Affordable Housing Plan (debate)

16

Dec

2025

Questions PT

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Presentation of the European Affordable Housing Plan (debate)

16

Dec

2025

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EU Defence Readiness (joint debate)

15

Dec

2025

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One-minute speeches on matters of political importance

Mr President, Commissioner, valuing work and workers must be a criterion and a benchmark for development. There is no country that can be considered developed with its workers devalued, despised, without meeting their needs. However, the policies of national governments and the coverage that the European Union gives to these policies go exactly the opposite way. In a number of countries, including my own country, Portugal, processes are underway to amend labour laws that attack workers' rights, facilitate dismissals, make employment precarious, attack maternity and paternity rights, and jeopardise the reconciliation of family and personal life of workers and their working hours. These are options that run absolutely counter to the sense of development and social justice, which we must challenge. The general strike that took place in Portugal last week provides a strong response from Portuguese workers in rejecting these policies and confronts the Portuguese government – but also the European Union – with the need for another path that is by valuing work and workers as a criterion for development.

15

Dec

2025

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Incentivising defence-related investments in the EU budget to implement the ReArm Europe Plan (debate)

Madam President, EUR 800 billion in rearmament spending gives the magnitude of the drift of this warmongering madness and militarisation of the European Union to which we are being directed. The effort with the agitation of ghosts and boogeymen regarding external security risks is the example of the investment being made in propaganda to sustain the diversion to war, to the arms race, of resources that are still needed to build houses and to respond to unemployment, the need for wage increases, economic and social problems that affect the peoples in all the countries that make up the European Union. A legislative package to create more privileges and benefits for large arms multinationals is truly the goal behind the use of this figure in the package. omnibus. More privileges and more benefits for the big multinationals who make war the engine of their profits, war the engine of the concentration of their wealth. The path of militarisation of the European Union is a path that does not serve the peoples and jeopardizes their future.

15

Dec

2025

Questions PT

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Incentivising defence-related investments in the EU budget to implement the ReArm Europe Plan (debate)

Mr Germain, you have come to announce to us the idea that peace within the European Union is achieved by investing resources from the European Union budget to arm ourselves for a confrontation with Russia. And the questions I ask you are these: How do you think peace is achieved with the threat of a military confrontation, especially with the threat of a military confrontation with a nuclear power? How far can a nuclear confrontation guarantee peace? What role do you think there should be for dialogue, for diplomacy, for the political solution to conflicts? And do you really think that the European Union budget should prioritise spending on armaments, with so many social problems to be solved across Europe?

27

Nov

2025

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Fur farming and the placing of farmed fur products on the market (debate)

27

Nov

2025

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Outcome of the UN Climate Change Conference - Belém (COP30) (debate)

27

Nov

2025

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Development of an industry for sustainable aviation and maritime fuel in Europe (debate)

26

Nov

2025

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Protecting citizens' right to make cash payments and ensuring financial inclusion (debate)

26

Nov

2025

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Fishing opportunities 2026: ensuring the sustainability of fish populations, marine ecosystems and coastal communities

26

Nov

2025

Questions PT

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Fishing opportunities 2026: ensuring the sustainability of fish populations, marine ecosystems and coastal communities

26

Nov

2025

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Defence of Democracy package (joint debate)

26

Nov

2025

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EU strategy for the rights of persons with disabilities post-2024 (debate)

26

Nov

2025

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Implementation of the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement (debate)

26

Nov

2025

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EU position on the proposed plan and EU engagement towards a just and lasting peace for Ukraine (debate)

26

Nov

2025

Questions PT

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EU position on the proposed plan and EU engagement towards a just and lasting peace for Ukraine (debate)

25

Nov

2025

Speeches PT

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Increasing the efficiency of the EU guarantee under the InvestEU Regulation and simplifying reporting requirements (debate)

Madam President, Commissioner, the nature of the InvestEU programme is clear, and its conditions have never left any doubt as to who is benefiting and who is paying the benefit. Instead of supporting and financing public investment with direct public grants, the European Union has opted with InvestEU to provide public guarantees for private investments. The conditions of this program are those that are usually prepared in these schemes: risks are transferred to taxpayers so that profits are private, but losses are socialised. The consequences of these options are well known. In Portugal, moreover, we have several examples of this in the scandals of BPN, BES/Novo Banco, Banif or the privatisation of TAP, in which the current PSD-CDS government once again insists. This so-called simplification package omnibus shows what these simplifications of the European Union are for and to whom they are for. This proposal reduces transparency by exempting transactions below EUR 300 000 from reporting, compared to EUR 100 000 before, and simplifies it by weakening democratic control. The level of financial risks that are assumed is increased by reducing the level of confidence in the loss provision from 95 % to 90 %, and the transfer of risks to taxpayers is maintained, with the risks of assuming the losses of private businesses financed with public money. These are not options that serve economic development and justice.

25

Nov

2025

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Digital Package (debate)

Mr President, deregulation in matters as sensitive as artificial intelligence, the protection of personal data or e-privacy makes these proposals unacceptable. In artificial intelligence, we want to reduce requirements for high-risk systems and transparency requirements, we want to postpone the entry into force of control and protection rules, we want to delay and weaken rules that were already provided for in the Artificial Intelligence Act that did not come into force. In personal data, it is proposed to reduce the scope of protected personal data, limit the information rights of individuals and allow companies the legal possibility to circumvent consent requirements. On ePrivacy, general authorisation is given to create and access information on end-user devices for audience measurement, facilitating tracking and profiling of users. The proposed amendments to the AI Act and the GDPR would still have an unacceptable impact on workers. Companies would be able to collect sensitive data from employees for various purposes, including the training of artificial intelligence, without asking permission from the employee and promoting the commodification of their personal data. They would also allow this to be done by jeopardising trade union action in workplaces and whistleblowing. This is not a way to ensure progress. This is a way to impose the digital jungle.

25

Nov

2025

Questions PT

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Protection of minors online (debate)

Honourable Member, you spoke about the need to introduce restrictions on young people's access, particularly by controlling age, introducing age verification criteria. My question to you is whether or not you think those solutions should be made compatible with requirements to protect the private and personal lives and privacy of young people and of those who use those commercial platforms, or whether you believe that those age restrictions can be placed independently of those limitations.

25

Nov

2025

Speeches PT

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2026 budgetary procedure: joint text (debate)

Mr President, Commissioner, the position that came out of this Parliament on the 2026 budget of the European Union kept wrong choices and did not include aspects that were essential to meet the needs of the peoples. The conclusion of the discussion with the Commission and the Council confirmed this result: the detailed changes introduced at the final stage of the discussion of the 2026 Budget do not change the substantive options that go in the wrong direction and contrary to the needs and interests of the peoples. The final version of the budget continues to leave behind the response in improving wages and living conditions, fighting poverty, housing, social cohesion, investing in public services to ensure access to health, education, social protection, transport or culture. The caricature of this option is a last-minute increase of EUR 1 million in the European Social Fund Plus. Today, another debate has criticised the European Union's dependence on and critical delay in matters of industrial production and technological development. But the budget continues to deny support for national policies to harness productive capacities and resources, environmental and ecological balance. On the contrary, this budget reflects and deepens the options made in the mid-term review of the current multiannual financial framework, accentuating the diversion of resources from the budget towards militarism, war and the arms race, towards policies of public financing of multinationals and economic groups, towards the policy of expulsion of migrants outside the borders. These are the options that absorb the lion's share of the EU budget. Even cohesion funds are used to finance militarism. The peoples needed a budget for progress, development and social justice. This is not that budget.

25

Nov

2025

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Effective use of the EU trade and industrial policy to tackle China’s export restrictions (debate)

Honourable Member, the situation with regard to semiconductors, which is really at the heart of this debate we are having here today – there is no point in deluding ourselves with that – is truly revealing of two things: On the one hand, the critical dependence of the countries of the European Union on issues that are absolutely essential for industrial and technological development and, on the other hand, the profoundly negative consequences of the European Union's subordination to the United States, when, in particular, it meddles in the trade war between the United States and China. And the question I ask you, starting mainly from the example of Nexperia, with all the negative impacts on the automotive sector, is whether the Honourable Member believes that this position of the European Union is correct, and whether it is right that workers should pay for it.

25

Nov

2025

Questions PT

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Effective use of the EU trade and industrial policy to tackle China’s export restrictions (debate)

Madam President, honourable Member, before Donald Trump came to power and the threat of sanctions on China, there were no disruptions in international supply chains. And it is precisely the fact that the European Union puts itself in a subordinate position vis-à-vis Donald Trump in this trade war with China that leads to artificially created crisis situations, such as the one we saw recently in the Netherlands regarding the Nexperia company. And the question I want to ask you is this: Is the role of the European Union of subordination to Donald Trump, with all these damages, really the right option?

25

Nov

2025

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European Defence Industry Programme and a framework of measures to ensure the timely availability and supply of defence products (‘EDIP’) (debate)

Mr President, Commissioner, sacrificing the answer to social problems to subsidise arms production is the great message of this programme of the European defence industry. And the European Union's options are clear: Spend money making weapons, but not building houses. When we talk about the Child Guarantee, the doors to the budget are closed. But if the topic is the arms race and the militarisation of the European Union, there are EUR 1.5 billion to spend by 2027, and at least EUR 131 billion from the Competitiveness Fund in the next multiannual budget. And even money from the European Social Fund or the European Regional Development Fund can be diverted. Instead of producing what people lack to improve their lives, the European Union's choice is to get European industry and factories to produce what will destroy lives. Tax benefits, public support, European funding – all serve to drain public resources into the billion-dollar business of arms, death and destruction. The door is opened to corruption and influence-trafficking, with an opaque policy linking political power and arms economic groups. The militarisation of the European Union is a futureless policy that undermines and threatens the future of the new generations.

24

Nov

2025

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30th anniversary of the Barcelona Process and the new pact for the Mediterranean (debate)