Speeches

Mr President, the role of the European Union in resolving humanitarian crises by identifying people missing in wars and conflicts and the dictatorships that have ravaged the Member States of the European Union is not only fundamental, but also fully consistent with our values, as well as imperative. And it is clear that memory, reparation and truth are the way, as demonstrated in Cyprus - for which I have had the honour of being this Parliament's rapporteur on missing persons - and it is the right way pointed out by the Spanish Law on Democratic Memory. The opposite path is indicated by the autonomous communities governed in Spain by the right and the extreme right, which have canceled the census of victims, which have eliminated the programs of exhumation of mass graves and elimination of the symbols of the dictatorship. To do justice to the victims it is essential that we combine these three virtues: memory, repair and truth.

Madam President, we are debating in this plenary session the increase in organised crime in Sweden, but, in reality, we are talking about a syndrome that runs throughout Europe: First of all, organized crime is the crime of our time. Secondly, there is an increase in the number of adolescents – minors – involved in the commission of these crimes, recruited by mafias. And thirdly, the recruitment technique consists of Instagram and social media. This is not happening in all the Member States of the European Union, there is no room for any demagogy - such as the one used, incidentally, by the right against the Swedish Social Democratic Government - when the truth is that, under the Swedish right-wing government supported by the extreme right, this criminality has only increased. Therefore, the recipe is in sight: increasing specialised police and judicial cooperation. Secondly, to use all the experience of Eurojust and Europol to confiscate not only firearms, but also illegally obtained profits and their laundering. And, thirdly, digital specialization in the fight against this crime: digital evidence and thus increased technology in crime effectiveness. And - I cannot help mentioning this - we must also combat segregation, the exclusion from which inequality comes, from which the increase in crime comes.

Madam President, Commissioner Brunner, why are transnational criminal organisations that traffic in people a lucrative business? For two premises that need to be expressed. The first is despair. Last week, fifty Pakistanis lost their lives trying to reach the European Union through the Canary Islands from the coast of Mauritania. It takes a lot of desperation to explain that sequence. But the second, undoubtedly, is the complicity of the negative view with which the European Union punishes the act of migration for the absence of alternatives. People fleeing despair are forced into the hands of illicit trafficking and the exploitation of people – particularly cruel to women and unaccompanied minors – by agents complicit in these criminal networks in the European Union itself. Therefore, we must change our eyes and it is essential - I am talking about this morning in which we heard such a pro-European speech by Prime Minister Tusk - that it be said that any look at security that is not compensated by an effort of cooperation and development aid that makes the best sense of the European Union's investments to offer opportunities and recruitments at source, as well as the inclusion and integration of migrants in the European Union, will be a profoundly wrong look. Therefore, it is essential to change it.

Mr President, Commissioner, it is impossible to tackle the European demographic winter without changing our eyes to migration and, by extension, to asylum claims, because there is no issue in which the contradiction between the real interest of the European Union and the perceived interests is so striking. The real interest is that there is regular migration, with respect for their fundamental rights, that contributes with their taxes and contributions to the demographic greening, in addition to the support of our social model. And the perceived interest is fueled by lies, hoaxes, prejudices and demagogy, with a refractory and negative look at the contribution of migrants. And therefore, if we do not tackle all the keys to the equation, including this one, it will be impossible for the European Union not to continue declining in gross domestic product, in participation in world trade and, consequently, to ensure its future and the support of its social model. Changing our eyes to the migratory event is, therefore, absolutely imperative to tackle the demographic winter.

Wow, what a situation. Now what? N have to wait for the go. That's it. Okay. Okay. Juan Fernando Lopez Aguilar. We did. translation. Madam President. It's possible. Could I start again? Thank you. President Antonio Costa. Blanca. ESTA masada. Ninguna concession. transition. autonomy. State innovation. Madam President, President Antonio Costa, the best response to Trump's return to the White House is to establish a relationship based on mutual respect, which requires the European Union to respect itself and its legislation: no concessions; no backsliding on the commitment against global warming and the just green transition; no backsliding on strategic autonomy, which requires innovation, but also investments – including the defence strand; and, above all, no imitation of Trump in his cruel agenda against migrants. This requires that the Council and the Commission have absolute competitiveness and that Member States effectively comply with their legal obligations with respect to each of the regulations of the Pact on Migration and Asylum. And, since the Council is so obsessed with returns, we can only remind them that making them operational requires negotiating mutually beneficial agreements with countries of origin and transit, and that can only be done with the incentive of hiring at source and legal and safe ways that give workers a chance, who will otherwise risk their lives in the hands of criminal organizations to reach the European Union, where they have guarantees, security and a perfect respect for their dignity and their fundamental rights.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen of the Council and the Commission, we are debating Hungary again. We may be talking about breaches of the judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union; we may speak of systematic, persevering and persistent disregard for European law; we may talk about non-compliance with the obligations of all Member States in the Pact on Migration and Asylum; We may be talking about Pegasus, or we may be talking about spying on OLAF officials, an EU office whose investigations deserve respect. Whatever it is shows that Hungary is in breach of its obligations with regard to European law, transparency and, therefore, sincere cooperation – which is a mandate of Article 4 of the Treaty on European Union for the European institutions – as well as, of course, the rule of law, that is, the subjection to legality that binds all Member States as a rule of membership of this club, which is not only of rights, but also of obligations relating to European law.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, representatives of the Council and the Commission, slandering, defaming, spreading those lies that you call disinformation, hatred and confrontation is not freedom of expression and is not protected by the Charter or by the constitutions of the Member States. And yet that is exactly the design of addictive algorithms, in the hands of an oligarchy of far-right tycoons, erected as warlords against values and against European law. The European Union cannot kneel, surrender or abdicate its legislation and therefore the first obligation of the Commission is to enforce the Artificial Intelligence Act, the Digital Services Act, the Digital Markets Act and the General Data Protection Regulation, which offer the highest standard of protection in the world. And, as long as those fines that have to be imposed on anyone who violates European law and those demands that judges impose restrictions on the designs of those tycoons behind social networks arrive, there is something else the European Union can do: put in place European social networks with transparent algorithms, which guarantee a public debate worthy of the name of democratic and participatory citizenship.

Madam President, at the December plenary session I spoke about the disaster in Mayotte with fatalities and, the next day, many colleagues asked me whether that island in the Indian Ocean is a European Union. Of course it is, along with five other French regions, two Portuguese and the Canary Islands in Spain; the only regions qualified by European law to obtain solidarity – where, when it is most needed, interregional solidarity is the raison d’être of the European Union. Now also here in Strasbourg, the annual Conference of Presidents of the Outermost and Canary Regions is entitled to a unique response - as the European Union's external border - to the migration spike on the deadliest route to the European Union, which claimed no less than 50 lives last week. Once again, it is essential that the European Union responds in the outermost regions not only to climate emergencies, to natural disasters, but also to this vulnerable condition of the European Union's external border region.

Mr President, Commissioner, all Member States' constitutions prohibit discrimination on grounds of sex, as Article 21 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union categorically does. However, with just five years left until the expiration of the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations 2030 Agenda, which enshrine access to equality, the United Nations itself declares that we are three centuries away from eliminating all barriers to discrimination, including the gender gap, which is the pay gap that shakes the European Union the most. I am sure that the European Union will be worthily represented at the next UN Commission on the Status of Women in 2025. But that's not the challenge: the challenge is a commitment by the European Union to monitor any backsliding, any backsliding, particularly on women's sexual and reproductive rights in the European Union. Women's rights are an enshrinement of equality, which is a founding value of the European Union alongside democracy. It is a question of democracy and therefore a defining issue for the European Union under Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union.

Madam President, Commissioner, the rights of people with disabilities – more than 10 million across the European Union – are fundamental rights. This is clearly stated in Article 26 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, which is binding on all Member States. In addition, it says the obligation of the European Union to comply with the EU Strategy on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities for 2021-2030, in which there is a whole set of mandates to move in the direction of ensuring inclusion and personal autonomy. The card of people with disabilities that we approved last legislature addresses the care dimension, guaranteeing public employment places, guaranteeing quotas in the public service, guaranteeing parking spaces and guaranteeing special prices in public transport. But it is not enough, because we are not only talking about its care dimension: We are talking about that dimension of fundamental rights that has been reflected in the reform of the Spanish Constitution, which has been carried out this year, not only to update the lexicon, but to reinforce precisely that dimension of fundamental rights, without any form of discrimination, particularly sensitive to the disability of women and minors.

Mr President, Commissioner McGrath, it does not fail: in every Strasbourg plenary session, whatever the pretext, there is no agenda that is free from the cacophony of criticism poured into Spanish from all right-wingers against Spain and its government. And it's not only sad, it's outrageous. First, because they are worth every falsehood, every lie, every defamation and every slander in what has been described in Spain as the cycle of the hoax. Second, because it takes cynicism to charge honorable people without evidence by covering up confessed criminals and far-right organizations. Thirdly, because it is difficult not to recall here that the last People's Party Government had three ministers who have served long prison sentences, that there are two others who are designated for criminal prosecution and that the national treasurer of the People's Party has just been released from prison. The latter, a senator with a sentence of twenty years for illegal financing of the Popular Party, was convicted on a lucrative basis for having financed his own national headquarters with black money. And fourth, because we did not come to talk about this, but everything they have told proves precisely that in Spain there are independent judges and prosecutors who do not obey orders, even when they are subject to the principle of unity of action and hierarchical dependence, in accordance with the Spanish Constitution. The Spanish Parliament is the seat where you can evacuate the rosary of nonsense that you leave here. A little respect for the European Parliament would free us from the suspicion and ridicule to which you plunge in every plenary session without fail, without fail, without respite, without pause and driven by your obsession to attack your own country and the reputation of Spain, to the European image of Spain that we struggled so hard to raise. Ladies and gentlemen, Spain is an open and inclusive society, a country of full freedoms, which advances the recommendations of each rule of law report by protecting and reinforcing the veracity of information and the defence of innocent people against online slander. It is a country that grows, that generates jobs like no other European economy, that increases the minimum wage and pensions, benefits and social protection, and that reduces debt and deficits, and aspires to a coexistence based on respect and values of pluralism and diversity with which you are taught every time you go up to this rostrum.

Madam President, immediately after the overthrow of the Assad tyranny in Syria, several governments in the European Union have rushed to urge the four million Syrian refugees in the European Union – more than three million of them in Germany – that it is time for them to return. Fortunately, we have heard sensible words from President von der Leyen: such returns must be dignified and voluntary. But for this to be possible, it is essential that the European Union develop a diplomatic architecture of return agreements, encouraging countries of origin and transit with legal and safe routes, humanitarian corridors and humanitarian visas. In short, it requires the implementation of the Pact on Migration and Asylum, on which we have worked so hard in this European Parliament for two consecutive legislatures, with an acceptable balance between shared responsibility and mandatory solidarity between Member States. There is no more urgent task for this legislature than to ensure that all Member States faithfully and rigorously comply with their legal obligations towards the legislation we have put into force.

Mr President, Commissioner, this debate shows the good reasons for pursuing a European tourism policy, because it imports more than 22 million jobs throughout the European Union, more than 12% of employment and more than 10% of gross domestic product and, in some specialised regions, such as the Canary Islands, more than 30% of GDP and more than 35% of employment. Therefore, when it collapses to zero, despite all the problems that deserve discussion, it is missed. In the pandemic we had a strategic resolution on the importance of tourism exactly to recover it, and we proposed a European refund guarantee fund, a European mechanism for financing tourism policies and a travel guarantee fund, as well as a European framework for the rights of workers in the tourism sector, who matter a lot, but, above all, a European Tourism Agency to guarantee planning and social and environmental sustainability - a European agency to which, by the way, the Canarian community submitted its candidacy, as it happens. We therefore have very good reasons to move forward, into the future, and to give tourism as a strategic sector of the European Union the European responses it deserves.

Mr. President, Commissioner, cyberviolence and cyberbullying against women and the dissemination of discriminatory, defamatory and sexist content against women, particularly when they participate in electoral processes for representative positions or political responsibility, are not exclusive to neighbouring countries or candidates for European integration. It also happens in the European Union itself. That is why the report of Irene Khan, Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, is particularly relevant when she points out that there is a systemic problem that is part of a strategy of intimidation and threat to women participating in politics and, in general, against equality. And equality between men and women, although never stressed enough, is also a founding value of the European Union enshrined in Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union. It must therefore be made quite clear that the European Union must take initiatives because discrimination against women, discrimination in all its forms, is a problem of democracy and is contrary to European law.

Mr President, in this very plenary session we have discussed and welcomed the reform of the Emergency Regional Support Regulation (RESTORE) and situations such as the La Palma volcano, the fires in Madeira and now this cyclone in Mayotte, with a hundred fatalities, were mentioned in that debate. What are they telling us? That if with someone the European Union has to have a regional policy with sufficient funds, agile and repairing the devastation, it is with the outermost regions because, when a catastrophe occurs in an outermost region, as is the case of the Canary Islands, as is the case of Madeira, as is the case of Mayotte, in France, which also happens to be the poorest region in France, there is no escape. And this is the moment when the European Union can prove its best raison d'être, which is interregional solidarity. I therefore urge a substantial increase in the amounts earmarked for reparation after natural disasters, because the best European Union is the Union that lives up to its solidarity with those who need it most where they need it most.

Madam President, Commissioner, we were talking a while ago in this very Strasbourg plenary session about the power of disinformation and the threat it poses to the founding values of the European Union. But when we talk about Russian-made disinformation, this issue reaches its peak, its paroxysm, because Russia has a long history of falsification of narratives, from the concealment of the Holodomor – the great famine in Ukraine – to Storm‐1516: a massive spread of ultra-counterfeiting and cyber-operations that multiply the toxic power of disinformation in the service of the most shocking concentration of power on Earth, which Vladimir Putin currently holds over all powers in Russia. Therefore, the European Union must arm itself not only with its Cybersecurity Strategy, the banning of Russia Today and Sputnik as propaganda platforms of Putin's Russia in Europe, but with the arrest, deactivation, dismantling and sanctioning with accountability demands of platforms that disseminate toxic content and disinformation.

Mr President, Commissioner McGrath, disinformation on major technology platforms poses a dark side and a threat to European values and rights, not only to the integrity of electoral processes – as evidenced by the presidential elections in Romania – but to the entire European framework of the rule of law, fundamental rights and democracy: against the rule of law because technology platforms resist obedience and subjection to the law regulated by the European Union, even when it does so with ambition on a global scale, and particularly in those cases; against fundamental rights because they devastate the dignity of individuals, the confidentiality of personal data and the right to one’s own image, maximised by artificial intelligence; and against democracy, because they prevent rational deliberation, the exchange of ideas and, consequently, political pluralism through the invasive vertigo of addictive algorithms that trivialize increasingly intransigent and incompatible segments of society. Therefore, we are facing a threat before which the European Union has to act and before which only the European Union can act, with digital education and with a strong antitrust right that fights the oligopolistic side of the great social platforms, but also by thoroughly using the sanctioning and even criminal law against the flagrant breaches of European regulation in which the tycoons who are behind the digital platforms, usually ultra-right, incur.

Mr President, you are well aware that one of the formats of activity in this European Parliament is the formation of intergroups: meetings of Members of the European Parliament from different political groups but united by a common interest. During this parliamentary term, this Parliament has decided to form an Intergroup on Cohesion Policy and Outermost Regions – the only ones mentioned by name in Article 349 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union – not only to single them out in the application of EU law, but also to adopt measures that precisely protect their specificities in the face of challenges such as their economic or social transformation, the scope of the future, the green economy, the blue economy and the circular economy. Those of us who are going to join this Intergroup on Cohesion Policy and Outermost Regions are well aware that it is more difficult now, in a Union enlarged to 27, than when it was a 12-member European Union with three Member States that have outermost regions: Spain, France and Portugal. But precisely because of this, we are ready to recall that cohesion policy underpins the interregional solidarity that must be at the heart of all European policies.

Madam President, Vice-President Fitto, this amendment to the regulation on regional emergency assistance in the event of natural disasters will make it possible, in an agile manner, to mobilise up to 95% of co-financing in the framework governing aid for disasters such as that suffered by the Valencian Community, where more than 220 deaths have received the solidarity of this European Parliament, or as in the case of the hundreds of deaths from the hurricane on the island of Mayotte. It will also allow 10% pre-financing and up to a grant that will combine the Cohesion Fund, the Social Fund and the Structural Fund to support the repair. But, in addition to that, we must increase the amounts, because I want to remember that there was also a natural catastrophe on the island of La Palma, a volcano for which only the remnant of up to ten million euros could be mobilized, a staggering amount in relation to the needs raised. Therefore, it is not only agility that we celebrate, but a massive substantive increase in the amounts destined for solidarity in the face of the increase in natural disasters.

Mr President, Commissioner Dalli, academic freedom is not the freedom of academics, but of students, teachers, researchers, at the service of innovation, knowledge and, therefore, well-being and progress. And in May 2023, the Special Committee on Foreign Interference in All Democratic Processes in the European Union, in particular Disinformation, of which I had the honour to be a part, clearly concluded that both academic freedom and scientific research, in such sensitive areas as neuroscience, quantum technologies or civil and military research, are threatened by foreign interference, notably by China, which forces all Chinese researchers to share their knowledge with the state. It is therefore absolutely essential that, in compliance with the conclusions of that special committee, the next Commission - the von der Leyen II Commission - should take all necessary initiatives to protect the integrity of scientific research, academic autonomy, academic freedom from its enemies, from foreign interference that seeks to undermine the foundations of the European model of coexistence.

Mr President, Commissioner, as evidenced by the intensity of this debate on the 35th anniversary of the adoption of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, we have nothing to celebrate: is a location for pressing challenges in this legislature. The first, against the 20 million children at risk of social exclusion: demanding implementation of the Child Guarantee with sufficient funding of the relaunched European Pillar of Social Rights. Secondly, in the face of rampant online abuse against minors and sexual abuse against minors: the Council must be required to adopt a common position on the legislation adopted by this European Parliament;. And thirdly, the Pact on Migration and Asylum: we have endeavoured to adequately address the rights of minors. Their solidarity redistribution is urgent where there are external border regions, as is the case in the Canary Islands, where they are stacked – without solidarity, to begin with, from the rest of the autonomous communities in Spain, but also from the Member States. Therefore, programmes of rehousing in solidarity and respectful of the rights of all minors arriving at the external borders of the European Union.

Madam President, Commissioner Dalli, after 15 years of validity of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union – with the same value as the Treaties – there is a very clear lesson, which is that those governments at the extreme right that harass the LGBTI community or restrict the rights of those people pose a systemic problem to the rule of law, judicial independence, pluralism of information and fundamental rights enshrined in the Charter – that of non-discrimination to begin with – but also to the right to privacy and the best interests of minors, because the country that does not recognise same-sex marriage, however, does not allow the free movement and residence of married persons of the same sex, and because, in addition, it also infringes on the right to the best interests of minors that discriminates against minors, born or adopted within a same-sex couple, on the grounds of their origin. Therefore, Commissioner Dalli, you have done an outstanding job – which we recognise and thank you for – to tell your successor to commit to the LGBTIQ Equality Strategy 2020-2025 and to commit to completing the work of making hate crime that incites hate violence against LGBTI people a European crime incompatible with European law.

Mr President, Commissioner, this debate is not only timely, but necessary in view of the chilling intelligence report of the Europol unit on child recruitment in the European Union, which shows that up to 70% of criminal activity – particularly in cybercrime and drug trafficking – involves or involves minors with the economic incentive, in addition to the difficulty of linking them to international organised crime networks and prosecuting them. A first recommendation would be to harmonise the laws of the Member States on the criminal liability of minors. But above all, action must be taken to implement the roadmap adopted by the European Commission to prevent organised crime and drug trafficking insofar as it strongly affects minors. And a clear lesson is prevention: in addition to intelligence and judicial cooperation, sharing intelligence and information to prevent the involvement of minors in drug trafficking must become an absolute priority of criminal policy at European level, in which this Parliament has been a criminal legislator since the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon.