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, rights are worth what your guarantees are worth. And if we talk about the rights of empowered women in rural areas and in the outermost regions we have to talk about their guarantees and their financial items reflected in the multiannual financial framework, as is the bet of this European Parliament approved in this plenary: increase the POSEI fiche to €7.3 billion, above the €4.5 billion it has provided for in the multiannual financial framework still in force, because it is precisely a question of compensating for the difficulties imposed by remoteness, insularity, fragmentation of territory, including in rural areas. Therefore, this is a very powerful message of cohesion of the European Union that must be reflected in the survival of the European Social Fund, the European Regional Development Fund and, of course, the specific agricultural item that is POSEI, to enhance equal opportunities and justice that the European Union owes to the outermost regions.

Mr President, the title of this debate, which refers to a humanitarian situation in Lebanon, is once again misleading, because it is not the result of any catastrophe, of any accident, but of an illegal war of aggression perpetrated by Netanyahu with the unconditional complicity of Trump. And yet, not a single reference this morning by President von der Leyen to that illegal war that deserves condemnation, because its continuity is preventing any viable peace deal with Iran in the first place. In addition, it should be recalled that this Parliament expresses its commitment to support UNIFIL and UN officials, who are also – if not killed – harassed by Netanyahu’s aggression in Lebanon. Article 21 of the Treaty on European Union determines the subordination of the entire foreign policy of the European Union to respect for human rights, which means the inexorable consequence of the suspension of the Association Agreement with Israel, the sooner the better.

Madam President, Commissioner, neither the hatred nor the criminal violence it generates can have any place in a European Union based on values and governed by a law that exalts the equal dignity of all people. Jewish communities are an integral component of European diversity – which unites our law – and therefore any discrimination against Jewish communities directly undermines the heart of Europe. We have expressed this in resolutions of this European Parliament and that is the work and objective of the Parliamentary Intergroup against Anti-Semitism that I myself have had the honour of chairing. But just as it is unfair and completely out of place for Netanyahu to label as anti-Semitic anyone who justifiably criticizes, including from this rostrum, his disproportionate and brutal retaliation in Lebanon and his genocide in Gaza, it is completely out of place for Jewish communities that are part of European diversity to have to suffer any discrimination for facts that have nothing to do with them or with them. Therefore, I express a very clear message: Anti-Semitism has to be combated, because it directly attacks the European identity, which is exactly that of its diversity.

Madam President, Commissioner Micallef, is cyberbullying - the cyberbullying— a Europe-wide evil? Definitely. It affects millions of people in all 27 EU states. It is particularly targeted at vulnerable people: women, minors ... without a doubt, and, therefore, not only moves us, but must force us to act. And the answer cannot rest exclusively on parental surveillance, digital literacy or the coordination of national strategies, no. It must have a European scale of response that, first of all, confronts large technology platforms and their unacceptable business model, because it harms absolutely precious fundamental rights, and forces them to comply with the Digital Services Act and all European law with absolutely exemplary sanctions when they do not remove illegal content. But secondly, it must also compel the Commission to take the initiative of making cyberbullying a European crime, with clear definitions, common rules and common penalties in all the criminal codes of the Member States, in order to also criminally tackle cyberbullying, which is an evil that undoubtedly deserves criminal qualification.

Madam President, dear colleagues, we are about to complete a long-awaited, targeted reform of the European Union Electoral Act. And you know what it is about. It is about precisely to meet the needs and the situation of our female colleagues, who are about to give birth or have just given birth, so that they do not have to make a choice between their voting rights and maternity, because they can actually do both by the reform we are about to complete. It was not easy because it is a very special legislative procedure. It took our vote in November largely ‑ a majority vote, and I thank you for that ‑, but it also takes the unanimity in the Council. The Council has taken some months to make up its mind and actually come with some amendments that make sense in order to review also the Rules of Procedure and the Statute of the European Parliament. But now we are having a chance to make the right thing in the right time. Actually, it's long overdue, and I thank you in advance for your kind support for this report that we are about to adopt.

Madam President, Commissioner, this is one of these occasions when the title of the debate deceives rather than explains: "EU strategy in response to the current crisis in the Middle East". This is a strategy that does not yet exist and does not call the Middle East crisis what it really is: an illegal war unleashed by Trump and Netanyahu, with very damaging consequences for European citizens. For there to be a strategy, there should be, to begin with, resources for repair from a tax on the extraordinary profits of the big oil companies. Above all, however, the double standard must be exceeded, which threatens the external credibility of the European Union and its internal legitimacy, because it is unacceptable that in von der Leyen's speech there was not a single mention of the suspension of the European Union's agreement with Israel, which violates human rights and therefore breaches the agreement with the European Union; the denunciation of the attack on Lebanon of the illegal war in Iran; and, of course, neither of the death penalty imposed by the apartheid Israeli anti-Palestinian population in the Strip. It is therefore unacceptable...

Madam President, Armenia is a democratic state: Member of the Council of Europe, concentric circle of the European Union, committed to the rule of law, democracy, human rights and the peaceful resolution of conflicts; I mean, peace. And yet, within the Council of Europe, Russia made war on Georgia, Azerbaijan made war on Armenia, and now Russia makes war on Ukraine, also a member of the Council of Europe. The lesson is clear: We have to support those who are really committed to a democratic transition based on values in which we recognise ourselves – and this is the case in Armenia – but we cannot at any time neglect the rights of the displaced people of Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian minority that was in that enclave inside Azerbaijan. Therefore, the commitment continues, with support for the restitution of the rights of these displaced persons and for the efforts of democratic stabilization with all the difficulties of the legacy of the extinct Soviet Union that we hear here in his narrative, live and live, to the Prime Minister of Armenia in this plenary session of the European Parliament.

Madam President, Commissioner, both the first von der Leyen Commission and the second - of which you are a member - have been able to see that this Parliament, in a clear and consistent majority, has spared no effort to restrict any scope for impunity for war crimes perpetrated since Putin's aggression against Ukraine. From the activation of the Temporary Protection Directive to protect displaced persons to the launch of Europol investigation teams in cooperation with the Prosecutor's Office of the International Criminal Court to uphold the indictment for war crimes and crimes against humanity against Putin himself, we have done everything in our power, in addition to, of course, supporting the 20 packages of sanctions. But, in order to have credibility, consistency is necessary, with which we must also condemn the genocide in Gaza as a war crime and support the officials and judges of the International Criminal Court accused by the United States for doing their job, in addition to, of course, being willing to condemn equally the war crimes that are being perpetrated in the aggression in the burning Middle East, against Iran, by those who commit them.

Mr President, Commissioner, with this 2025 annual report on the rule of law in the European Union, we are consolidating an institution that we invented and launched in 2019, and there are six exercises already in which we examined – together with the state of the Union – each of the 27 Member States in terms of separation of powers, judicial independence, information pluralism and anti-corruption strategies. But this report does more, rapporteur Arvanitis, because this report also deals with discrimination against vulnerable groups, against vulnerable people, gender equality, women's equality, sexual orientation and, of course, ethnic minorities, and also with the hate speech that spreads in the networks. They are sufficient lessons to conclude that, at this stage, we can say that there are no double standards, that the rule of law concerns the 27, but neither can there be any political instrumentalization in the service of any cause other than the common values that bind us and that are also required of the applicant States. With a view to enlargement, the examination has to be verified with regard to compliance with the values of Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union.

Mr President, Commissioner, we are debating the annual report on the situation of fundamental rights in the Union by the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs, which responds to ongoing concerns in the S&D Group: protection of minorities from discrimination, including migrants and asylees, and gender equality and sexual orientation. But it happens that we are not discussing – as this debate has shown – the annual report of the Committee on Constitutional Affairs on the state of implementation of and respect for the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, which, incidentally, marks 25 years since its drafting and 16 years since its entry into force with the Treaty of Lisbon, with the same legal value as the Treaties and therefore binding on the European institutions and the Member States in compliance with EU law. Why don't we discuss it? Because it happens that the rapporteur - who was our colleague Alessandro Zan - has seen his report replaced by an alternative report that the PP has negotiated with the three groups of the far right, completely subverting the constant commitment of this European Parliament to fundamental rights.

President, Vice-President Ribera, the European Union has taken care of the transfer of trade data in the transatlantic relationship. That is why he has negotiated a safe harbor, a shield of protection and a data transfer agreement that Biden approved by executive order and that Trump has not repealed. However, the large technological platforms protected by the US Administration are resisting as a belly up cat the acceptance of the European rules of our Digital Agenda: the Digital Markets Act, the Data Act and the Artificial Intelligence Act. And that's what this debate is about: implementation. Execution is not implementation, it is not application: enforcement, which falls to the Commission as guarantor and guardian of the Treaties. Therefore, that is what we expect and what we want to sustain with our votes: that the European standard of demand should not be lowered against anyone - even against the big American technology giants - in the application of the rules that we have given ourselves and that we have voted for in this European Parliament, including the Digital Markets Regulation.

Mr President, Commissioner, the Committee on Constitutional Affairs of the European Parliament, in this debate on the multiannual financial framework 2028-2034, stresses, first of all, that, according to the Treaties, this European Parliament is the budgetary authority and therefore has to be consulted and informed in a timely manner at all stages of the implementation of the cycle in order to be able to demand its political responsibility. Secondly, it expresses its concern about the structure of the fund and demands that the common agricultural policy, cohesion policy, regional funds, the structural funds on which the OR funds depend continue to exist by name, because their dissolution into national envelopes undermines transparency and, consequently, the exercise of the prerogatives of parliamentary control vested in the European Parliament. Thirdly, it stresses the importance of conditionality, strict compliance with the rules of the rule of law for access to European funds and, consequently, the information and parliamentary scrutiny of this Parliament. Finally, it requires that the conditionality of the approval of the financial framework be subject to compliance by the Council with the unblocking of the still blocked legislative procedures and initiatives of the Committee on Constitutional Affairs, including the reform of the Treaties and the right of inquiry.

Madam President, Commissioner, how many times has this European Parliament called for European digital literacy programmes as an essential tool to protect citizens' rights from the injuries imposed by the business model of addictive algorithms and big tech platforms? What this program wants is financial literacy (financial literacy) to better protect especially vulnerable people. Let us think of single women, elderly people, people in rural areas and young people who also have the right to be protected with a European step in their savings and investment strategies, without being exposed to the cybercrime posed by financial scams on the net, which includes financial influencers who have unconfessed interests in these investments and the scams they can entail. Therefore, the right way forward is indeed for the European Union to launch a financial literacy programme, without neglecting its duty to supervise the financial markets, which is an obligation.

Mr President, Commissioner, as Chair of the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs, I had the honour of being the rapporteur for the directive on the fight against fraud to the Union's financial interests by means of criminal law, which is the basis on which the European Public Prosecutor's Office (EPPO) was established, with the aim of increasing that competence, in cooperation with OLAF and, of course, with the responsibility of the Commission itself; that the fight against fraud should not therefore rest in the Member States; and to have its European step of responsibility. This report therefore misses the opportunity to call for this broadening of the criminal law base of the fight against fraud in the European Union, particularly in the management of funds, to link it with the Conditionality Regulation so that access to funds is suspended for those who fail to comply with the rule of law and the role of civil society, non-governmental organisations and investigative journalism in the fight against fraud in the European Union is recognised, thus demanding a genuine European anti-corruption strategy that is not only that stemming from the strategies of the Member States. That's the missed opportunity, Commissioner.

Madam President, Commissioner, those of us in the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs who took part in the legislative procedure for the adoption of the Criminal Directive against violence against women are well aware that we are not completing the work because of the Council's resistance to accepting the consistency of this European criminal legislation with the Istanbul Convention, which is 25 years old, and that it makes it clear that any form of non-consensual sexual relationship, which is not based on free consent, is rape and that, therefore, it is urgent, at last, that any sexual assault that goes against free consent is subject to European criminal legislation and harmonisation, with harmonised criminal rules, and that, in addition, it goes beyond the obsolete law that still in Member States of the European Union says that not enough resistance, through paralysis or fear, can amount to consent, which is absolutely unacceptable. In addition, it is essential to complete it with compulsory sex education and sex training for lawyers, prosecutors and judges, who are the legal operators who avoid and have the duty to avoid impunity for any violation against women's sexual freedom.

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.