Speeches

The Socialist delegation voted in favour of this resolution as it shows a genuine commitment to make significant progress in the ongoing Article 7(1) TEU procedures, in line with its obligations under the Treaties. At Parliament’s request, hearings are not organised in a regular, structured and open manner. We urge future Presidencies to organise hearings regularly and at least once per Presidency. We call on the Council to ensure that hearings under Article 7(1) TEU also address new developments, including those related to violations of fundamental rights. We call on the Commission and the Council to refrain from approving the national plans of Poland and Hungary under the Recovery and Resilience Facility until they have fully complied with all country-specific recommendations under the European Semester and implemented all relevant judgments of the Court of Justice of the EU and the European Court of Human Rights. The Commission's conclusions should constitute sufficient grounds for the Council to adopt recommendations in the Article 7(1) TEU procedure.

Madam President, Commissioner, for a long time and more than ever since the withdrawal of US aid, the European Union has been the world champion of development cooperation and humanitarian aid. Global Gateway seeks to relaunch that heavyweight by asserting the green and digital transition, education and European values not only in Africa, but globally. It has been said here that it tries to compete with the Chinese Silk Road. The truth is that China can afford opacity, lack of visibility and publicity of its projects, but the European Union cannot. Therefore, the European Parliament's message regarding Global Gateway is that it is imperative to strengthen its transparency, to strengthen the knowledge of companies, of the private sector, in the mobilisation of its assets with regard to what is at stake, which is what the European Union represents in the world and, above all, to strengthen parliamentary control so that we can account to the citizens, whom this Parliament represents in a directly democratic way, for the enormity that we invest in the European Union asserting its weight in the world.

Mr President, Commissioner, it is true that the relationship with the United States that we know as transatlantic is important for workers and businesses, because it is not in vain the European Union's first trading partner. And it is also true that the United States is not Trump: they pre-existed him and will survive him. But it has been Trump at Turnberry, on his golf course in Scotland, who has tried to impose on the European Union through President von der Leyen a humiliating agreement. And if President von der Leyen accepts it, she certainly does not represent us, because this Parliament has the final say, under Article 218 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. But this is not the last word, it is a resolution that sets out the European Parliament's position by binding the Council and the Commission to ensure legal certainty and, above all, reciprocity, because respect is either mutual or not at all. Therefore, either legal certainty and mutual respect and reciprocity are guaranteed or the European Parliament will reject it with the Socialist Group voting against.

Madam President, Commissioner, on 16 March last, representatives of the governments of the nine outermost regions of the European Union met in Tenerife, in addition to members of the European Parliament born or resident in the outermost regions and civil society with a shared message: support for the continuity of the OR funds in the next multiannual financial framework, but also support for the contribution of the Government of Spain, expressed by the Minister for Territorial Policy, Ángel Víctor Torres, to the Strategy for the Outermost Regions 2027-2030 with a very specific communication. This communication was, firstly, unequivocal support for the programme of options specific to the primary sector of POSEI; secondly, solidarity in the Pact on Migration, in particular in the external regions and support for relocations in rescues and rescues at sea; and, thirdly, a specific option of intervention of the housing market to lower housing costs in relation to the purchase by vulture funds and by speculative funds.

Madam President, an effective European criminal law directive against corruption is a step forward, but not because it is a response to Qatargate, that whatever corresponds to that name is being prosecuted by Belgian criminal law before the Belgian criminal justice system in the absence of European law. Nor to point to a particular country, as some far-right discourse has tried to infame its own country again. No, it is finally the common definition of no less than six types of corruption-related offences, also imposing minimum penalties, which must finally be uniformly transposed by the 27 Member States into their respective criminal codes. And that is the mission that the Commission has to monitor exactly in order to ensure a common European standard of commitment against corruption in the integrity of the management of public funds that is also decisive for the uniform conduct of criminal justice throughout the European Union.

Madam President, Commissioner Lahbib, what are we discussing here? Incredibly, because it is 2026, that homosexuality is not a disease – homophobia is – and that the so-called ‘conversion therapies’ are not a therapy, are a serious violation of fundamental rights provided for by the Charter of Fundamental Rights in Article 21. In addition, when they are coercive, intrusive and not to say violent, they are torture, prohibited by Article 4 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights. So what do we ask of the Commission? What those signatures - 1 200 000 - that have motivated this petition to the European Parliament ask for: for the Commission to take action, to make conversion therapies a European crime and, therefore, to uniformly impose in all Member States a criminal sanction, in addition to civil and administrative ones, and also to incorporate into the Victims Protection Directive the respect due to those who have been victims of these so-called "conversion therapies" with a very serious violation of their fundamental rights.

Madam President, Mr President Costa, Commissioner Dombrovskis, in this debate on the Council's conclusions there are two elephants in the room. The first is, of course, the war in Iran, which destabilizes not only the Middle East, but the whole of the European Union engaged globally. And we must call things by their name, Council and Commission: we are talking about an illegal war, and we must call by their name Trump and Netanyahu, who are the ones who have caused it. The second elephant in the room is its catastrophic social impact on the economies of households, families and small and medium-sized enterprises and, therefore, the urgency of accelerating the green and just transition in the decarbonisation of the European economy, so that it makes us less dependent on fossil and toxic fuels, but, above all, so that there is a social shield. On both issues is European identity, because on the first is the European Union's commitment to law: international law is the first determination of the European Union's foreign policy, with human rights and humanitarian law in tow. But, in addition, the identity of the European Union is the social pillar. Therefore, we go our lives in it.

Mr President, Commissioner Jørgensen, you have done well to start your speech by pointing out the historical background to the exponential increase in fuel prices: from the Suez crisis to the last aggression of Trump and Netanyahu in Iran, to Putin's aggression against Ukraine, all with catastrophic consequences for the population as a whole and, particularly, for the middle and working class. The second lesson of your intervention is that it is absolutely essential not only to give recommendations to the Member States, but to point out good practices, such as the Spanish one with the Iberian exception, a social shield that protects against the increase in fuel prices, which is especially sensitive in regions that depend entirely on air and maritime transport, as is the case in the Canary Islands. But the third is the most important: there is no way to tackle this if it is not accelerating the decarbonisation of the European economy and, therefore, the green and just transition, and not the opposite. It is, exactly, about breaking with our toxic dependence on easily expensive fossil fuels.

Mr President, it is clear from this debate that this European Parliament recommendation on enhanced cooperation with Canada is loaded with meaning with a perfectly reliable like-minded partner: for starters, in security in the Arctic, when the European Union has attracted so much unity in supporting Greenland, in Danish constitutional law and in international law. Secondly, in upholding the rules of the international community and, therefore, multilateralism – in addition to the World Trade Organization – which therefore prevents the use of tariffs as a tool of trade war that can lead to a war that is no longer just trade. And of course, also, of course, in the reinforcement of that cooperation, which is not only trade, but also political and preferential that CETA expresses, on which many prejudices were also poured, much false news that it was going to mean the apocalypse of the affected sectors. And yet it has been good for citizens, for consumers and also for productive sectors in a relationship of mutual trust.

Mr President, Commissioner, talking about enlargement in earnest means talking about its institutional implications. To begin with, we are talking about eight candidates on the waiting list - nine if we add Turkey, which has never been formally excluded or discontinued - and that has implications: to begin with in this Parliament, with a seismic impact, but also in the Council, questioning the unanimity rule as regards foreign and defence policy, fiscal policy and the defence of national identity. The same in the Commission. It therefore means assuming that the only possible strategy to fulfil the enlargement plan is to plan not only individualised incorporation based on merit, but also long phases of phased transition with strict compliance, subject to conditionality rules to monitor compliance with the democratic values of the European Union. Because this is what must be affirmed, that the European Union is above all a Union that corrects imbalances and inequalities, founded and governed by law, but also committed to values including the rule of law, the democratic values of Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union, whose fulfilment is inexorable in order to belong to the Union.

Madam President, Commissioner, in this debate it is clear that there is a division between those who believe that housing is a right of social content and those who see it exclusively as a market good subject to speculation. The contribution of the S&D Group to the conclusions of the housing committee has an impact on the law, tenants' rights, the right of the homeless and the right of vulnerable people to short-term rentals. But there is one thing that the European Union can do - and only the European Union can do it - and that is to intervene in the free movement of capital to prevent the concentration of housing in the hands of investment funds and vulture funds because that is the real problem of the exponential increase in prices that makes access to housing for the younger generations and the working class prohibitive. Intervening the capital market and preventing vulture funds and investment funds from hoarding housing is therefore an essential part of the solution that only people who need access to housing as a right can expect from the European Union.