Speeches

The next item is the explanation of vote on the report Georgios Aftias - Mobilisation of the European Union Solidarity Fund: assistance to Italy, Slovenia, Austria, Greece and France following natural disasters in 2023.

The next item is the statement by the Vice-President of the Commission / High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy on the situation in Sudan (2021/2851(RSP)). I give the floor, on behalf of the Vice-President of the Commission / High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, to Commissioner Věra Jourová.

Before proceeding further, I would like to inform you that the EPP Group and the non-attached Members have communicated to the President decisions on changes to appointments in committees and delegations. These decisions will be recorded in the minutes of today's sitting and will take effect on the date of this announcement.

The next item is the debate on the Commission statement on the EU response to the Mpox epidemic and the need for continued action [2024/2801(RSP)].

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, first and foremost I would like to express our full solidarity with all the countries hit, the local authorities, the regional authorities who are on the bridge at the moment to help, and then our condolences to the families who have suffered. I remember that in 2021, I was at this podium, after the floods in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium that killed 300 people. Our European Parliament then adopted a number of reports and advocated a number of measures, precisely in order to be able to transform the European Union Solidarity Fund, which today is neither budgeted nor adapted to this new reality. It is unbearable for the people of the European Union who are victims of these floods that the Union's intervention sometimes comes a year later, and that local and regional territories are destitute. We must therefore make this reform of the European Union Solidarity Fund without delay, and we must also engage in genuine regional climate adaptation strategies. I want to tell you that this is a permanent new deal that is ahead of us. Year after year, floods, cyclones, fires, and all sectors of regional development are affected by these disasters. All our efforts to build, in particular, infrastructure with the ERDF are grounded because these infrastructures are not resilient, and we then rebuild them with the ERDF. The cost of inaction is indeed extremely high. Thus, in the European Union's Green Deal and climate policies, everything is based on a single pillar: that of mitigation, and we have forgotten adaptation. Adaptation to global warming is not, Commissioner, just for the ACP countries. Today, European countries are directly concerned by a major policy of adaptation to global warming. Otherwise, we will enter a period of very serious danger because Europe is the continent that is warming the most in the world.

Mr President, one minute for five years: how cruel the organisation of our work is. However, I would like to take this moment to say how honoured I have been to chair the Committee on Regional Development over the past five years and to thank the members of the Committee on Regional Development for the trust they have shown in me and for their ongoing commitment to cohesion. Commissioner, when we started this legislature, we were very far from imagining what was going to fall on our heads. I want to say that we can be very proud of the immediate responses we have given to the most serious population movement since the Second World War, namely the challenge of welcoming Ukrainian refugees. Our commission has lived up to this historic duty, as we have lived up to our historic duty to mitigate the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Above all, we negotiated all the cohesion regulations on time. We are talking this afternoon about the future of cohesion; But let us not forget the programming that is opening up, that of 2021-2027. The first condition for securing a future for our policy is the success of the current programming. To conclude, Commissioner, as you said, we have new challenges ahead of us: the challenge of enlargement, the climate challenge and the demographic challenge. I believe that our policy has demonstrated its ability to modernize, renovate and rise to new priorities. I am sure that the future European Parliament will rise to all these challenges for our grand policy, which has a very virtuous objective: equal living conditions in Europe, whether in the centre, periphery, north, south, east or west. Everyone in Europe must be able to live the same quality of life.

Madam President, Mr Borrell, what more than genocide is needed for Mrs von der Leyen to finally act and suspend the Association Agreement with Israel? What is more than 34,000 dead, including more than 12,000 murdered children? Just yesterday, a mass grave was found in Khan Younes with more than 200 dead. Is all this still not enough for Mrs von der Leyen to suspend the Association Agreement? If I ask you the question, it is because I wrote to the President of the Commission and received a letter on 5 April in response to my request for suspension of the Association Agreement. President von der Leyen concludes her letter with: "the European Union is not currently considering suspending the Association Agreement with Israel". Circulate, there is nothing to do. This is also the response to your request to our European Parliament that you launch an investigation to see if human rights clauses are violated. I believe that they are, and I believe that today the European Union, Madam President, must suspend this agreement, unless it definitively loses all honour and credit to the peoples of Europe.

Mr President, to prefer life to death, to promote peace, to defend justice and international law, to always be on the side of the oppressed, the colonised and the damned of the earth, to finally refuse to see one’s own humanity and dignity sink, denouncing the crimes committed today in the land of Palestine, unless one is complicit in its silence. This is what makes you in France today, not a just person, but a point of finger, likely to be summoned before the courts, including for political oppositions and candidates in the European elections. The reversal of values is total. He says the climate of intellectual and political terror to muzzle voices of solidarity with Palestinians and prevent criticism of Netanyahu's extremist government. Today, in France, the risk is taken, no matter what the cost to democracy, of undermining freedom of expression.

Madam President, I bring the voices of animals here so that their suffering can be heard. It is a barbaric model, without any other faith or law than the quest for maximum profit, that animals are victims, denied in their suffering and in their condition as living beings. There can be no welfare for animals born to be killed, destined for consumption or become production machines, and no justification for this unnamed suffering until they are killed. So let's step up our efforts in research to move towards another model and get rid of this barbarism. In the meantime, the Commission must, of course, make proposals to alleviate the suffering of animals caught in the production trap. And that time will come, when humanity has reached a higher degree of civilization, for the proclamation of the abolition of animal slavery.

Madam President, allow me, as Chair of our Committee on Regional Development, to congratulate Andrey Novakov on his excellent report, voted unanimously in our Committee. And this unanimity says the very great unity, throughout this legislature, that has allowed us to find solutions, including the COVID-19 pandemic and its repercussions in the regions, but also solutions to help Ukrainian refugees. I would also like to congratulate Commissioner Elisa Ferreira on her extremely important role in the proposals that have been put forward, as well as in her excellent collaboration with our committee. In conclusion, I would like to recall that when Jacques Delors came to head the European Commission, his first decision was to multiply the Structural Funds by three, because he understood that our cohesion policy carries the European idea and the objective of equal living conditions in Europe. He also understood the impact of cohesion policy on the single market. Now we have to think about the future of our policy, with recommendations that I hope will inspire the future European Parliament.

Madam President, it is when war rages that we must have the courage of peace. To say this is neither to be defeatist, nor to be cowardly, nor to play into the hands of the enemy: it is to raise a moral and universal demand high, it is to bring back to the understanding the only rational choice that is worthwhile, that of life against death, to remove from us the absolutisation of a nothingness that awaits, while the risk of nuclear war is high. For humanity, peace is not an option: it is a choice, a vital choice. In both Ukraine and the Middle East, peace is expected. It remains the only possible hope for these peoples, for humanity and for the world.

Mr President, inequality kills. They lead to the death of one person every four seconds. This is our world where today’s inequalities are the largest in the history of human societies. This unworthy, indecent world, where inequalities do not arise from nothingness, but are methodically organized for the benefit of the predation of a few against the greatest number. 1% of the world's population owns twice the wealth of 90% of the world's entire population. Such a system, ladies and gentlemen, is sick, corrupt, gangrene by this economic monster that feeds on the sweat and blood of those who produce wealth that is then seized. The issue of inequality has become by far the main marker of our civilization. Mr President, let’s make equality a new idea for Europe and for the world!

Mr President, history repeats itself sadly. The great return of austerity takes us back ten years to this disastrous troika, this bad Greek tragedy written in Berlin and Brussels. Behind the so-called "structural" reforms lies a much darker plan: weakening the state, public services, destroying the welfare state to make room for markets. In reality, ordoliberalism is the desire to put an end to the history of social progress in Europe. In France, this deconstruction is underway and is accompanied by unprecedented social regression and repression, as evidenced by the announced reform of the labour market, unprecedented and assumed violence. Hold it to yourself and say: In France, the social war is well declared to the applause of McKinsey and BlackRock.

Madam President, throughout Europe, the bottom of the air is brown, nauseating and dangerous. The fanatics of the fascist, racist and anti-Semitic groups run the streets, and racism once again takes its ease in the public debate, in more polite but no less abject forms, between people of good society who, without complexes, invoke the defense of values to legitimize a deep racism. Everything has become good in Europe to overwhelm the Arab, the Muslim, the migrant, treated as less than nothing, but become responsible for everything. Even deviance when expressing horror at the nameless suffering of the Palestinian people is enough to make you a supporter of terrorism or Islamism. Before it is too late, Madam President, everything calls for an anti-racist start to triumph over those who have descended into the sewers of European history.

Madam President, there are rare moments in a life where the events of the world give us an appointment with who we are. In fidelity to these values, Europe was expected to firmly condemn all war crimes. It was expected, it is no longer expected. Rusting with her principles, she killed herself. Through its complicit silences, its convoluted speeches, its refusal to call for a ceasefire, Europe has revealed to the world its duplicity and indifference to the massacre of thousands of murdered women and children. With her attitude, she has revived the painful memory of the peoples of the South, who understand that Europe continues to stand in solidarity with colonial and murderous adventures. By letting Gaza perish, it is civilization that is perishing and heralding the end of an illusion, Madam President, that will leave traces and lead to a perennial divide between the South and the West.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, who would agree, here in Europe, to be deprived of water two days out of three and, in the meagre hours when water flows from the tap, to use brown water unfit for consumption? Who would accept that? This absolutely incredible reality is that of Mayotte, the poorest outermost region of the European Union, but also a territory of a country, France, which is the second richest economic power in the entire European Union. This reality – ladies and gentlemen – is certainly the result of the climatic conditions created by a historic drought, and it is undeniable. But it also refers to the unforeseeability and mismanagement of EU funds by the state, as long-term investments should have been made and completed; They're not. Now, in response to the urgency and suffering of the Mahorais, our REGI Committee has put on the table a proposal: the use of FEAD’s leftovers for the mass acquisition and free distribution of water bottles to the population. Can the Commission tell us whether France has followed this lead? Everywhere in Europe – and the same goes for Roma populations – European citizens must have access to safe drinking water, otherwise they will continue to be treated as marginalised populations.

Mr President, crises are manifold, combine and become a permanent reality, which makes it particularly difficult to draw up the budget: geopolitical crisis, climate crisis (with the multiplication of natural disasters), energy crisis, inflation, explosion of poverty. We have to respond to all these crises, even though our budget is not sufficiently endowed to deal with them. Commissioner Hahn, there is an urgent need to revise the MFF in line with these challenges, and we ask you to hear from the European Parliament. I also want to say that in these tragic moments – especially in Gaza – we have a duty: a duty to provide humanitarian aid. The European Parliament has always lived up to this duty and I hope that we will continue to do so.

Madam President, Commissioner, as Chair of the REGI Committee, I cannot leave your attack in good standing on our committee's position on the closure of programming unanswered. First of all, I want to tell you that the committee has used a budgetary cavalier, by inserting into a regulation with a different objective a provision that concerns precisely technical provisions concerning cohesion – these are very bad methods. But, on the substance, I want to tell you that when we propose an additional year and 100% co-financing, we are responding to the request of more than 13 Member States and we are responding to the request of a very large majority of regions – all the German Länder, and also the French regions. And what is the objective? The objective is the best absorption and avoiding the maximum automatic decommitment. You cannot ignore, Commissioner, that cohesion policy has been heavily involved in this programming. We have responded to all crises, we have been present in all crises (during the COVID-19 pandemic – through the CRII, CRII+, REACT—EU regulations –, when taking care of Ukrainian refugees – through the CARE regulations), and, inevitably, this has created a number of difficulties. So the goal is to do everything possible to make the programming successful.

Madam President, for the revision of this MFF, I am one of those who called for an increase in the Fund for European Aid to the Most Deprived, because poverty is exploding. But did you listen to Commissioner Schmit last night in this gallery? He said: the available money must be spent immediately. There are billions that can be used to reduce precariousness. And Commissioner Schmit urged Member States to consume the available FEAD money. I ask the question: How much is left exactly? So are there millions sleeping in the coffers today, especially for France because they are not spent by the State and have not been given to the food banks, which, as you all know, are now squandered and threatened in their very existence? And if that is the case, it would be a real scandal because the programmes, normally, have to be closed by 31 December 2020. So when we ask for increases, very well, but we still have to spend the funds first and absorb them well.

Madam President, Commissioner, if the world is an island, the world is also a world of islands. From the great Australia to the smallest atolls, there are 300 000 islands and each of them is a world of possibilities still too ignored in the light of the challenges of this century. In terms of climate, biodiversity, control of shipping and trade routes, energy and also the promises of the great ocean depths, each island carries with it a strength and promises that make it new places of grabbing and new points of tension in the geopolitics of the moment. Europe, with thousands of islands, remains an archipelago that ignores itself and remains in an overly miserable vision of insularity. That is why it is time for the European Union to finally adopt a real strategy and island ambitions, and to finally understand that the time for islands has already come.