What Bas spoke about.

5

Jul

2022

EN Speech

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Objection pursuant to Rule 111(3): Amending the Taxonomy Climate Delegated Act and the Taxonomy Disclosures Delegated Act (debate)

Mr President, it is good to kick off this discussion. Maybe just to start off with, where is the taxonomy for? The taxonomy is very clearly to harmonise claims by investor, what is a green and a sustainable investment. We’re not talking about banning any investment. We are talking about what is a green investment, nothing more, nothing less than that. Unfortunately, in the proposal, and we are hav…

22

Jun

2022

EN Speech

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Voting time

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, calm down, calm down. I think the French elections are over last time I checked. Thank you very much. Every time I hear colleagues talking about ‘reality’ and ‘a realistic approach’, I want to remind you of one thing, and that is the reality outside. The reality outside is that temperature records are being broken on a daily basis almost. Look at the temperat…

7

Jun

2022

EN Speech

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Revision of the EU Emissions Trading System - Social Climate Fund - Carbon border adjustment mechanism - Revision of the EU Emissions Trading System for aviation - Notification under the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA) (joint debate – Fit for 55 (part 1))

Madam President, when we came home from Glasgow last year, the message was that we have saved the 1.5-degree target, that we are still on track. But since then, science has told us that there is a 50% chance in the coming five years that we will overshoot the 1.5 degrees. Climate change is happening and maybe sometimes it is having less attention because of all of the other developments but climat…

4

May

2022

EN Speech

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Discharge 2020 (debate)

Madam President, I will conclude here what appears to be a Dutch round, so I’m the last of the four. We had a lot of discussion on the discharge on the agencies. Of course, a lot of discussion went on Frontex. Well, we’ve seen, of course, some of the developments and Director Leggeri stepping down, but that doesn’t mean that the problems in Frontex are being solved. I really think that also even t…

5

Apr

2022

EN Speech

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Medicinal products made available in the UK with respect to Northern Ireland, Cyprus, Ireland and Malta (C9-0475/2021 - Pascal Canfin) (Rule 163) (vote)

– Mr President, this is an important proposal that is for the accession of medicines to our countries in Ireland, Malta and Cyprus. And for that reason, indeed, it is important that we are voting in favour of that. However, we do have problems that the Commission is again, on such a very important measure, which is having an impact on our internal market, going for an urgency procedure. We are wil…

4

Apr

2022

EN Speech

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Sixth Assessment Report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (debate)

Madam President, we are discussing here now the Working Group III contribution to the Sixth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Assessment Report. And let’s be honest, their messages have been the same now for quite some years. Yes, the climate is changing. Yes, it’s because of human beings. The impacts are severe, and it makes sense to stay below 1.5 °C instead of below 2 °C. And the…

23

Mar

2022

EN Speech

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Debriefing of the European Council meeting in Paris on 10 March 2022 - Preparation of the European Council meeting 24-25 March 2022 (debate)

Madam President, we’ve seen until now a very coordinated and united European response, and that has been very good and very important. However, the hard work still needs to be done, and one part of the hard work is our energy future. We have made a lot of mistakes in our past, but what are we going to do in the future? I thank the Commission for coming up with proposals today for more jointly work…

9

Mar

2022

EN Speech

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General Union Environment Action Programme to 2030 (debate)

Madam President, firstly I would like to thank the rapporteur, Grace O’Sullivan, for delivering a great job on this file on the 8th environment action programme. I had the pleasure of chairing the last negotiation rounds and you really did a very good job, which has led to the result that, for the first time in a legislative package, we really are calling for a clear deadline to phase out fossil f…

15

Dec

2021

EN Speech

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Preparation of the European Council meeting of 16-17 December 2021 - The EU's response to the global resurgence of Covid-19 and the new emerging Covid variants (debate)

Mr President, July 2021: at the G7, Germany, France, Italy and the Commission agreed to commit to achieve an overwhelmingly decarbonised power system in the 2030s. November 2021: the entire world in Glasgow agrees to phase out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies, and the Commission is saying: ‘well, we would have liked to go further than that’. So big words, big statements. And then we are in Decemb…

24

Nov

2021

EN Speech

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Outcome of the COP26 in Glasgow (debate)

Mr President, I think it’s quite obvious in this discussion that it matters very much on your angle as to whether you call Glasgow a success or not. I think, from an international negotiations perspective, Glasgow was certainly a step forward, but I think we all acknowledge that not enough has been done yet to reach and avoid the climate crisis. For that, the coming year will be a crucial year aga…

23

Nov

2021

EN Speech

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Common agricultural policy - support for strategic plans to be drawn up by Member States and financed by the EAGF and by the EAFRD - Common agricultural policy: financing, management and monitoring - Common agricultural policy – amendment of the CMO and other regulations (debate)

Mr President, I think it’s very clear now that we, as Greens, will vote against this CAP deal, and I think one of the big reasons is that there is no alignment with the new priorities of this Commission on the Green Deal, Farm to fork and Biodiversity strategy. But I think, you hear so many different opinions about it. I think the Commission now really needs to make clear, how is the Commission go…

21

Oct

2021

EN Speech

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2019 Discharge: European Border and Coast Guard Agency (debate)

Madam President, thank you Commissioner. It’s a pity that the rapporteur already left, after his speech, because sometimes I’m not quite sure he has read his own report entirely, to be very honest. And the point here is, here we stand again discussing Frontex, and this is not a political issue. This is about the proper functioning of an important European agency. And there are reports indeed by th…

20

Oct

2021

EN Speech

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UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, the UK (COP26) (debate)

Madam President, we now turn to a very important discussion on climate change and the climate conference that we’re going to have in Glasgow in two weeks’ time, which is very clearly going to be one of the most important climate conferences we’ve seen in the last couple of years, where member states of the world need to be stepping up their climate ambition. If you look at climate science and the …

18

Oct

2021

EN Speech

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Farm to Fork Strategy (debate)

Madam President, I have to say I always find a debate on agriculture and our food system quite astonishing. I think we all agree that there are a couple of developments in our sector that are concerning all of us. We see less and less farmers. They have less and less profits. We see that our rural areas are under threat. On top of that, we see the impact of climate change affecting our farmers. We…

6

Oct

2021

EN Speech

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Pandora Papers: implications on the efforts to combat money laundering, tax evasion and avoidance (debate)

Madam President, I would like to thank everyone for, again, another scandal on this matter. I think we all share our frustration about the lack of progress, but we also need to be a bit more precise now on what we are going to do. To the Commission and the Council, I think you need to be better in explaining a couple of decisions that have been made. Therefore, first of all to the Commission, this…

6

Oct

2021

EN Speech

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European solutions to the rise of energy prices for businesses and consumers: the role of energy efficiency and renewable energy and the need to tackle energy poverty (debate)

Madam President, this is a very important issue on the energy prices, and more than 80% of our citizens are concerned by the energy price, and I think that is really a concern for all of us. But then let’s stick to the facts. First of all, there are some colleagues, of course, every time trying to link it with climate change policies. But the analysis clearly show that it’s around 80 to 85% becaus…

15

Sep

2021

EN Speech

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State of the Union (debate)

Madam President, I would like to thank President von der Leyen for her State of the Union, which had quite a lot of good proposals. But of course, in one minute, I will have to focus on the criticism. President von der Leyen, you will understand that. First of all, on the Green Deal, you probably still have to explain to your own group that the Green Deal is the jobs deal – they still don’t get th…

14

Sep

2021

EN Speech

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Presentation of the Fit for 55 package after the publication of the IPCC report (debate)

Mr President, first of all, I would like to thank the Commission for the package that they released on 14 July. We would of course have loved to see a fit for 65 package, but let’s start with the Fit for 55 package. It’s also great to hear that in this Parliament there’s a lot of support for climate action. So let’s see how much is left of that when we really get into the details of the negotiatio…

5

Jul

2021

EN Speech

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Financial activities of the European Investment Bank - annual report 2020 - Control of the financial activities of the European Investment Bank - annual report 2019 (debate)

Mr President, I should like to thank President Hoyer for being here. It’s kind of a yearly tradition, isn’t it ? And also, Vice-President Dombrovskis. I think if you read the reports, both in the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs, where I was shadow, but also, of course, the Committee on Budgetary Control report, you do see that for the Parliament the EIB, the European Investment Bank, is…