What Johan spoke about.

Mr President, thank you very much. More than 400 people lose their lives on EU roads every week. It is truck drivers, bus drivers, families with children, someone's friend, parents or children, and it is important to remember that road safety is also a health and safety issue. In Sweden, only in the last ten years 66 truck drivers have died at work and the European Transport Workers' Union showed in a survey that 60 percent of truck drivers regularly drive tired. The problems also risk increasing with the growing platform economy, where workers are usually pushed to the limit. If we are to reduce deaths on our roads, we must focus on all the men and women who drive trucks, buses, taxis or carry out road works. Finally, I would also like to emphasise the importance of standards for crash dummies that represent the entire population. The fact that female crash dummies are not used today is unacceptable and contributes to reduced road safety.

Mr President, thank you very much. The climate challenge is the big issue of our time. If we are to succeed, it is urgent to change the transport sector. Ambitious proposals on sustainable fuels for aviation and maritime transport are therefore welcome. Obtaining binding and ambitious targets for the deployment of alternative fuels infrastructure will be a central part of the work. However, in addition to technological solutions, we will need popular support for the climate transition, which is why we need to distribute the costs of the transition fairly. The one who has the most releases the most and therefore also has to pay the most. The climate transition cannot be financed by car-dependent workers in sparsely populated areas or the assistant nurse's electricity bill. All these people who live on small margins, working poor, poor pensioners, those who need the car in their daily work, cannot bear the great cost. Indeed, without popular support, guided by a just transition in the design of the legislative proposals, we will never be able to become a climate-neutral Union.

Madam President, thank you very much. ‘It has come to our attention that you have written about trade union issues in one of the company’s chat groups.’ This was the first line of an email in which a Swedish gig company called up an employee to the area manager. Colleagues! Hundreds of years ago, Europe’s workers stood with their hats in hand waiting for work – without security, without rights, without a stable income. Through trade union struggles, the right to decent working conditions was won. The hat is back. This time it's in the form of a mobile phone. Sure, there may be reason to praise gig companies for innovative apps, but it's not innovation to oppose union organization. Paying starvation wages is not an innovation. It is not an innovation to let employees take the financial risk of non-driving. It's not the future. That's backing the band for a hundred years. The EU cannot and should not solve all problems. But the EU must guarantee the fundamental rights of its citizens. It also includes the right to unionise. This is a right that platform workers should also have the opportunity to realize.

Mr President, thank you very much. Although the pandemic has highlighted the problems of the aviation sector, social problems are anything but new. Since the 1990s, we have seen a serious deterioration in working conditions, through increased outsourcing and a growing proportion of non-standard forms of employment. An important principle of the European labour market is the principle of equal pay for equal work in the place where the work is carried out. This must also apply to the aviation sector. Temporary staff from another country shall not be paid lower salaries than local staff. It is also crucial that we define the concepts of home base and operational base. Workers must be covered by the wages, working conditions and social security in force in the country where they have their home base, not where the company is registered. An airline should not be able to register in a country where it does not have an operational base, simply to benefit from low taxes and weak labour laws. In this way, the EU becomes a threat to wage earners. The Swedish airlines are not without debt. In order to avoid re-employing its workers after the crisis, the airline BRA chose to set up a temporary work agency to circumvent its employer responsibilities. SAS has chosen to start a subsidiary in Ireland in order to compete with lower personnel costs. Its operational base is in London. Ireland is only here to avoid taxes and labour obligations. In some low-cost airlines, we know that not even half of the pilots have a job directly with the airline. We should not accept this type of business model in the European Union. However, it is not only the airlines that are responsible. The European Commission is also responsible for continuing to duck and delay the much-needed revision of the regulation on common rules for the operation of air services within the EU. So my call to the European Commission is to stop delaying this and present without further delay a revision of the regulation.