What Cornelia spoke about.

25 Apr

2024

DE Speech

Framework of measures for strengthening Europe’s net-zero technology products manufacturing ecosystem (Net Zero Industry Act) (debate)

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Mr President! This last speech in the European Parliament is about the future of European industrial policy. While the US and China are investing heavily in future technologies, the EU is faltering in 27 scattered industrial policies and a state aid law that does not protect the outside world. European production facilities are migrating – like Europe’s most important solar producers in Germany an…

24 Apr

2024

DE Speech

Iran’s unprecedented attack against Israel, the need for de-escalation and an EU response (debate)

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Mr President! The Middle East, home to 350 million people, is a melting pot of the conflicts of our time. Anyone who starts a war here provokes the wildfire. And that's what Hamas' murder and kidnapping of Israeli civilians and Iran's unprecedented drone strike on Israel stand for, as well as Israel's displacement and killing of so many Palestinians in Gaza and shelling a consulate. The EU must th…

23 Apr

2024

DE Speech

EU-Egypt strategic and comprehensive partnership and agreements with key third countries (debate)

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Mr President! What democracy do we actually live in when the President of the Commission drives around the world with her bosom friends and makes deals with autocrats, which we then have to pay for? How democratic is it if the European Parliament only retains the role of a claqueur? For the military regime in Egypt, billions of dollars are to flow in order to keep a useful police state alive. A po…

10 Apr

2024

DE Speech

Screening of third country nationals at the external borders - European Criminal Records Information System - Third Country Nationals - Common procedure for international protection in the Union - Establishing a return border procedure, and amending Regulation (EU) 2021/1148 - Asylum and migration management - Addressing situations of crisis and force majeure - Establishment of 'Eurodac' for the comparison of fingerprints for the effective application of Regulation (EU) No 604/2013, for identifying an illegally staying third-country national or stateless person and on requests for the comparison with Eurodac data by Member States' law enforcement authorities and Europol for law enforcement purposes (recast) - Union Resettlement Framework - Standards for the qualification of third-country nationals or stateless persons as beneficiaries of international protection - Standards for the reception of applicants for international protection (recast) (joint debate - Migration and Asylum package)

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Mr President! This pact is a pact of shame, because the individual right to asylum is abolished, and there remains a right that does not make individual reasons for flight the benchmark, but the lie of the safe third countries, any asylum recognition quotas or the neurotic presumption of instrumentalization of migration. Council and majority of this House do nothing against dying on the high seas …

12 Mar

2024

DE Speech

Artificial Intelligence Act (debate)

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Mr President! Yes, artificial intelligence is a bit like curse and blessing. Blessings to those who live in the ways of God, curse to others who do not do so or disregard and abuse commandments. This is pretty clear: This grandiose innovation is only grandiose in the benefit of all, i.e. also of the least influential. If we as the EU lead by law, for example by better protecting workers in the wor…

28 Feb

2024

DE Speech

Ongoing negotiations on a status agreement on operational activities carried out by the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex) in Senegal (A9-0032/2024 - Cornelia Ernst) (vote)

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Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, This report on the possible use of Frontex in Senegal was deliberately destroyed by the EPP and the extreme right in joint action. Instead of acknowledging facts – that Senegal wants cooperation with the EU, but not such a Frontex agreement – you want to ruthlessly extend the powers of the Frontex Agency, which has a pitiful human rights record. It is your ar…

27 Feb

2024

DE Speech

Multiannual financial framework for the years 2021 to 2027 - Establishing the Ukraine Facility - Establishing the Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (‘STEP’) (joint debate - multiannual financial framework revision)

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Mr President! In December 2022, the Commission President spoke of a common European industrial policy with common European funding through a Sovereignty Fund as part of the MFF review, our European IRA. Not bad, you think. But in the summer of 2023, that was already over. And now STEP took the place of it. The idea: Repurposing existing funds, ten plus ten billion euros of fresh funds – far too li…

7 Feb

2024

DE Speech

Increased number of executions in Iran, in particular the case of Mohammad Ghobadlou

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Mr President! The death penalty is the greatest crime against humanity, breach of any international law, archaic revenge. No reason justifies it – nowhere. The Iranian regime is systematically destroying lives in order to preserve and prolong its own. We will never stop raising our voices against this policy. We support the struggle for democracy and for a life of human dignity with our hearts and…

5 Feb

2024

DE Speech

State of EU solar industry in light of unfair competition (debate)

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Madam President, I am from East German Saxony. In my hometown Dresden, Solarwatt is coming to an end. 35 kilometers further, Meyer Burger will close in Freiberg, another 35 kilometers further Heckert Solar in Chemnitz. These closures would threaten not only East German sites, but also the German and European solar industry. And can you imagine what that means for a region that has already undergon…

17 Jan

2024

DE Speech

Norway's recent decision to advance seabed mining in the Arctic (debate)

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Mr President! I consider the decision of the Norwegian Parliament to be of the utmost concern. The Norwegian colleagues are thus endangering maritime ecosystems. And they do so without need, because there are other ways and means. There would be ways to reduce the consumption of raw materials, not to rely on raw materials from the deep sea. Instead of digging the deep sea, for example, we should e…

13 Dec

2023

DE Speech

Frontex, building on the fact-finding investigation of the LIBE Working Group for Frontex Scrutiny (debate)

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Mr President! All is well and good, colleagues, but enough is enough. The latest Frontex scandal, from these days: A new Lighthouse research shows how the agency and Maltese authorities are collaborating with the war crimes militia of warlord Chalifa Haftar, supported by the Wagner Group, which is intercepting refugees in the Mediterranean Sea. These refugees end up in Libyan prisons, which the Po…

12 Dec

2023

DE Speech

Framework for ensuring a secure and sustainable supply of critical raw materials (debate)

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Mr President! When the Commission proposal was on the table, not only I, but also large sections of civil society were really worried that this law would be a gift to industry above all else. For our group, as for others, it was clear: It requires social, ecological guidelines and stricter requirements for project developers, high environmental standards, good work, respect for human rights. This …

22 Nov

2023

DE Speech

Latest attacks against women and women's rights defenders in Iran, and Iran's arbitrary detention of EU nationals

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Madam President, I met Nasrin Sotoudeh in Tehran in 2013. A warm-hearted, determined woman, lawyer, human rights activist. If you look at her life, you can't believe it: After graduating from law school in 1995, she was refused admission for eight years. When she had them, she defended women protesting the headscarf, oppositionists, dissidents, journalists, religious minorities. She was arrested i…

20 Nov

2023

DE Speech

Framework of measures for strengthening Europe’s net-zero technology products manufacturing ecosystem (Net Zero Industry Act) (debate)

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Madam President, So the best thing about the net-zero industry regulation is really its name. Because the private economy continues to be at the helm of the transformation and not the public sector. As always, instead of enabling massive European government investment in strategic technologies, incentives for private investment – Invest-EU instead of EU investment – are used. It's always the same.…

17 Oct

2023

DE Speech

Urgent need for a coordinated European response and legislative framework on intrusive spyware, based on the PEGA inquiry committee recommendations (debate)

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Mr President! Once again, journalists had to put the problem on the table. Once again, it shows how EU-based companies unhinderedly supply dictators and despots with their spyware, which is not only used for domestic repression – no, also outside the country. And the targets this time include not only MEPs, the Commission, journalists, researchers, no, even our Parliament President. And the fact i…

16 Oct

2023

DE Speech

Establishing the Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (‘STEP’) (debate)

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Madam President, Yes, we need a financially strong, targeted, sustainable Sovereignty Fund. No, it really isn't STEP. Firstly, because the link with the Net-Zero Industry Regulation risks also allowing CCS, nuclear power, so-called alternative fuels, to benefit from public support. That would be a clear misdirection of funding. And secondly: Strong conditions for the award of the Sovereignty Seals…

3 Oct

2023

DE Speech

The 10-year commemoration since the tragedy in Lampedusa(statement by the President)

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Madam President, Ten years after the terrible disaster of Lampedusa, nothing has changed. To date, a further 28 500 people have died in the Mediterranean - of carelessness, racism, died in the floods, dehydration, brutal pushbacks carried out by Member States and tolerated by the Commission. Over the last decade, the Council and the Commission have really done everything possible to criminalise as…

13 Sep

2023

DE Speech

Framework for ensuring a secure and sustainable supply of critical raw materials (debate)

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Mr President! Yes, this law is the first of its kind in the EU: a common raw material strategy with binding targets. And as a left-wing group, we are primarily concerned with a new way of producing and operating. Keyword: Circular economy. We need longer lifespans of products. We need reuse and recycling when we talk about raw materials. And we also need to talk about reducing consumption. At the …

12 Sep

2023

DE Speech

EU-Tunisia Agreement - aspects related to external migration policy (debate)

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Mr President! Ladies and gentlemen, what kind of autocracy do we live in? When the President of the Commission, a resigned Prime Minister and a fascist Prime Minister go to Tunisia and negotiate a deal there, which we should only approve and of course pay for. This is neither democratic nor legal, and it is not at all justifiable under human rights. More than 300 million, of which 105 million euro…

13 Jul

2023

DE Speech

Public access to documents – annual report for the years 2019-2021 (debate)

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Mr President! I enthusiastically agree with Sophia in 't Veld's remarks and repeat once again: Democracy needs transparency, and without transparency there is no democracy. What do I mean by that? Let's take the border agency Frontex. Not only does Frontex have a human rights problem, it also has a transparency problem. Frontex thus acts in the dark, systematically evading parliamentary and public…

12 Jul

2023

DE Speech

The need for EU action on search and rescue in the Mediterranean (debate)

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Madam President, Because their rescue is not a priority in the EU, 10 refugees have died in the Mediterranean every single day so far in 2023. Every 10 days there was a shipwreck with dead. Since 2014, 27 633 people have died in the Mediterranean Sea: Women with their babies in their arms, underage men. Crocodile tears, Commissioner, are of no use to us, because you have to act, you have to do som…

14 Jun

2023

DE Speech

Investigation of the use of Pegasus and equivalent surveillance spyware - Investigation of the use of Pegasus and equivalent surveillance spyware (draft recommendation) (debate)

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Mr President! First of all, congratulations to the rapporteur, who has done a good job. Despite the blockade of the Member States, the U-Committee was able to clearly state that Poland, Hungary, Spain, Greece have used such spyware and Cyprus is involved in trade for the EU internal market. And yes, we know that 14 EU Member States have acquired Pegasus under the guise of national security and cou…

13 Jun

2023

DE Speech

Artificial Intelligence Act (debate)

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Madam President, Artificial intelligence combined with digitalization has revolutionized the history of humanity, comparable to the age of industrialization. AI can make the world better - or deepen the divides between continents and people. AI has no morality, we humans have it, for good or for bad. Because that is so, we have no right to naivety when it comes to AI. Blessings and curses are clos…

12 Jun

2023

DE Speech

Electronic evidence in criminal proceedings: legal representatives directive - Electronic evidence regulation: European production and preservation orders for electronic evidence in criminal matters (debate)

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Mr President! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we have supported the rapporteur in the decision of the EP and have also somehow admired bringing such a decision to a level that has been quite reasonable. But you have to say: After years of painstaking, tormented trilogues with the Council, which are reliably negative, it must be noted that a framework has been created that does not offer sufficient prot…

12 Jun

2023

DE Speech

Order of business

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Madam President, It doesn't matter what the title of this debate is, at all. And it's not about Tunisia either, it's about the entire dirty deal that was decided by the Council last week and is now about to enter into negotiations with Parliament. We would like the “” to actually be in the light here. So that means: ‘in the light of the fact of the abolition of the right to asylum following the co…