Speeches

Madam Speaker, stigmatizing people for their essence, for their identity, is called racism and it is reprehensible by law. I deeply regret that these remarks can be made in this Chamber without being sanctioned. It is absolutely intolerable what you have done, Madam, and I hope that the hatred you bear will return to you as a boomerang, because it is absolutely intolerable. In France, Angela Rostas, seven months pregnant, was murdered last year – not in the shadows, in broad daylight; Not by chance, but because she was a Roma victim of the hatred we just talked about. This is what antigypsyism actually produces. 6 million people in Europe are Roma, Sinti or Travellers. We are here 720 and yet not a single Roma voice. Why? Because antigypsyism does not belong to the past; it is there, it is systemic and it is tolerated. Roma families across the EU are still segregated in housing, education and access to care. Children are still placed in separate schools and walls still divide our societies. These are not opinions; These are documented facts. Sometimes rescue workers cannot even access reception areas, such as in Villeneuve-d'Ascq, France: Firefighters are blocked and Roma's right to life is violated. So, if our values make sense, let's prove it. Let us make European funding conditional on respect for the right to non-discrimination. Let us enforce European law, systematically initiating infringement procedures when equality is violated. Let us demand that all Member States finally recognise the forgotten genocide of Roma populations.

Mr President, the crisis we are going through again puts us before our responsibilities and these are historic, because, because we have not separated sufficiently quickly from fossil fuels, energy prices are skyrocketing and our citizens are suffering as a result: plus 70% for the price of gas in the EU, €2 per litre at the pump in France, it is untenable. With each crisis, we realize the colossal cost of our addictions and the economic and social catastrophe that stems from our addiction to climate-killing energies. Commissioner, it took a war for us to finally get out of Putin's gas, but then you offered to put us in Donald Trump's gas hands. Do you realize today how serious it wasn't? So I'm asking you three things. Firstly, when several Member States want today, together with the majors oil, open new fossil fuel wells, your responsibility is to oppose and ban them. Everything must be devoted to the ecological transition. Secondly, because citizens do not have to pay the price for European mistakes, you must tax the superprofits of these war profiteers, the oil companies; plus 50% profit for Total, this is not possible. Finally, and thirdly, to introduce a right of social veto, so that no more European decisions will harden the living conditions of Europeans.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, our dependence on fossil fuels destroys the climate, undermines our sovereignty and is extremely expensive for European citizens. The soaring prices at the pump still make this clear today. With the Green Deal, we took a step towards decarbonisation: energy efficiency, reducing gas consumption and supporting renewables rather than fossil lobbies. Now is not the time to back down. However, the European Commission is now proposing to develop new fossil infrastructure for nearly 80 billion euros, to finance Melita despite the scandal surrounding the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia, to finance EastMed which would draw from the disputed waters between Israel and Palestine. In all, less than half of the funding on the PCI list is earmarked for electrification, with less than half including projects that are devastating to nature such as BarMar, Kaunertal or Kemijärvi. We MEPs can relaunch the Green Deal, we can refuse to waste public money. Let us demand 100% green, 100% sovereign and 100% purchasing power investments.

Madam President, the European Commission is now using the European Semester as almost the only steering tool for Member States to work first, and unfortunately perhaps only, on competitiveness rather than on improving the lives of European citizens. Yet well-being and economics are far, far from incompatible. We should indeed pursue our fiscal policy with a key aim, that of placing humanity between a ceiling of natural resources that cannot be exceeded and a floor of non-negotiable fundamental social rights. Commissioner, we are waiting for the European Union's first ever strategy to combat poverty. Will the Commission ask Member States to ensure that their own budgets do not contribute to precariousness or inequality? Basically, this principle should be clear: no fiscal policy should be adopted if it makes life even more difficult for Europeans. In the same way, climate change and exceeding planetary limits must be at the heart of our concerns and guide our budgetary choices to allow the necessary investments. Otherwise, the European Semester will remain an indifferent tool to the real concerns of our citizens.

Madam President, millions of Europeans are no longer able to find a decent home. More than a million people now live on the street. This situation should have prompted our Parliament to claim the right to dignified housing. And yet, the European right is now proposing that we roll out the red carpet to finance at the expense of Europeans. Bank deregulation, unconditional public subsidies, relaunching securitisation, the precise recipe that led Europe right into the wall of the 2008 financial crisis. We know what's ahead of us if we walk this path: skyrocketing property prices, ever-increasing rents, and ever-increasing suffering for millions of families. As for the homeless, the only proposal from the European right is to criminalise them and ask Europol - just that! – to make them look like criminals. So I turn to my socialist colleagues. It is incomprehensible to see you adopt a report that prefers the right to property to the right to housing, evictions and predatory landlords to respect for the rights of tenants and ignores the issue of unhealthy housing that makes more than 70 million Europeans live in hell. Another European housing policy is possible, so vote with us against this report.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner, 'it is not poverty that is shame, it is abandonment'. This sentence, pronounced from the working-class districts of Nîmes, reflects the experience of more than 93 million Europeans today, in 2026. Abandonment is therefore a political choice. Poverty is a political choice, to eradicate it too. Today we are proud to call for a first-ever European strategy to combat poverty. So let's live up to it. This strategy cannot be a declaration of intent. It must be binding. We cannot set ambitious social goals on the one hand, and at the same time relegate the social issue behind competitiveness, trade agreements or profits that are never shared. Let's be clear: we will not eradicate poverty if this objective is, on the one hand, without a budget and, on the other hand, does not irrigate all our policies. No European policy should aggravate the most precarious situation. This is the purpose of the social veto that I propose. And let's be clear, nothing should be done for people in precarious situations without them. It is thanks to them that we understand in particular that poverty is not only monetary, it affects dignity. The permanent stigma experienced by people in precarious situations must be condemned by law and by Europe. Poverty violates human dignity, let us eradicate it.

Madam President, Commissioner, you have a lot of responsibilities and, on our part, a lot of expectations, because it has been decades since the European Union has made commitments to social rights, objectives and, unfortunately, has not achieved them. This oral question is therefore intended to ask you how we will achieve them, but perhaps also to affirm our determination to work alongside you. The Union’s responsibility is indeed to deliver, to achieve the objectives that we have set ourselves. However, while employment rates are rising, poverty, lack of training and poor housing are also rising. We must therefore change our compass and equip ourselves with binding tools to fundamentally reorient EU policy. The European tool today is its European Semester. It focuses on productivity and growth rather than well-being or health. This is not inevitable. Yes, we can integrate the issue of housing and poor housing into European concerns. Yes, we can integrate the issue of inequalities and their extent into the European Semester. Yes, we can and must question the impact of all our policies on the most precarious and refrain from adopting legislation that would worsen their living conditions, which no public policy should be able to do. Today we need to enshrine a real principle – do no social harm – in European law: This is what I call a ‘social veto’.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, today we honour the memory of Mehdi Kessaci, a 20-year-old man who was cowardly murdered in the street by men who were, in reality, after his brother, Amine Kessaci, who was committed against drug trafficking. As you know, Amine is with us in this Chamber, and I believe he does not want me to talk about him, but rather about his brother. So let me tell you a few words. Mehdi was a happy young man, he was sensitive, he was gentle, he wanted to put his life at the service of others. After thinking about becoming a nurse, he finally decided to become a peacekeeper. He is dead and he will no longer be able to offer flowers to his mother, Ouassila, this woman so dignified in suffering, so beautiful in struggle – a warrior. Nothing will console her brother either, because, as Amine Kessaci says, "Mehdi died for nothing." So, Amine, you said you wouldn't shut up. You have chosen to continue to tell the reality of the living conditions of families hit by drug trafficking. You stand up to the "Narcocracy", which enslaves young people from the working classes all over Europe. You held on. You keep doing it and, I know, you'll keep doing it. I saw your mother asking you not to stop your fight. We urge you to keep your mouth shut: Well, no, you raise your voice even louder and invite us – basically force us – to do the same for all of us. In tribute to Mehdi, so that no more lives are lost, your strength and courage require us to continue to lead the fight with you. Then we too will be there, with you, today and tomorrow, and we tell the assassins that their bullets will not make us back down, because – I quote you, Amine – ‘you cannot kill an entire people’. We are here, we will be there, and I call on everyone in this Chamber to be dignified in the way we will approach the commitments of our Chamber in the coming months.

Mr President, November 2025: the climate is getting out of order, forests are burning, disasters are multiplying and hitting, as always, first and foremost the most vulnerable, and global climate action is a halt. But perhaps worse for us here in this Chamber, November 2025: another COP, and the European voice is extinguished, because of its procrastination, its hesitations, its national egoisms – like that of my country, France, for that matter – and its compromises, and the compromises of the right with the extreme right to destroy the European voice on the climate, the forest and the European voice at all. So I say this clearly to the alliance of the right wings sitting in this Chamber: When you give in to the wishes of the major foreign powers, destroying at their request the European model of social and environmental protection, offering at their request to Donald Trump and Qatar the annihilation of the climate bonds of oil companies, or Lula Mercosur without regard for the deforestation of the Amazon, you cannot claim to defend the climate, but you cannot claim to defend Europe either. They order, you obey, the climate suffers and Europe disappears. So either Europe becomes the engine again, the leader of the just transition, or Europe is indeed doomed to vassalage. For the climate, for our economy, for our sovereignty, it is time to straighten our heads.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to remind you of the Rules of Procedure, Rule 40 on fundamental rights, because at the last plenary session we adopted a text that is essential for soil health, and therefore for human health. Yes, European soils are contaminated: by industry, but also by hazardous pesticides. This is the case for soils in Guadeloupe and Martinique, polluted with chlordecone, or Réunion, polluted by glyphosate, used for sugar cane, and so on... But during the trilogues, France quietly introduced a clause that excludes the outermost regions from mandatory monitoring of soil health. This is a colonial clause, and while Article 349 of the European Treaties allows the Union’s programmes and budgets to be adapted to these territories – welcome and welcome – there is nothing in the Treaties that would allow the rights of those who are full European citizens to be graduated or weakened. On the one hand, lives do not matter and on the other, lives do not matter. I therefore call on this Chamber to be vigilant in recognising and guaranteeing genuinely and fundamentally equal rights for European citizens.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, there are events that forever hurt our memory, and this is the case of the unprecedented terrorist violence that shook France and left its mark on Europe ten years ago. I obviously remember that day as if it were yesterday, the anguished calls, the fear in the belly and the frightened eyes of the children, who offered long and their nights and days to the darkest nightmares. On this day of commemoration, our thoughts go first to the families and loved ones of the families of victims struck by barbarism. We owe them a tireless fight against jihadist fanaticism, against those who want to annihilate culture and joy, against those, all those, who want to divide us to better destroy us. On this day of commemoration, I also want to celebrate our spirit of resistance. We did not give anything up. Yes, we have chosen over and over again solidarity rather than division, dignity rather than fear and republic rather than hatred. Do not give in to fanaticism; not to crumble in the face of jihadist hatred, but to fight it with the strength of democracy; To stand firm in the face of hate preachers and refuse to look down in the face of those who want to stand against each other on all sides: This is what we will continue to do.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner. His name was François, he was only 23 years old and he was preparing to receive his diploma when, this Monday, this alternating in the building perished, crushed by a crane, caught in a tornado in the Paris region, a region not supposedly affected by extreme weather events. So, we could devote this minute to paying tribute to him and to saying our solidarity with his loved ones. I will use it to say that urgency is no longer an abstract concept, but today a brutal reality. Devastated territories, homes that disappear and lives forever destroyed. The science is clear. 2,000 scientists have just reminded us: Reducing our greenhouse gas emissions by at least 90% by 2040 is imperative. But Europe is late. It has still not set its targets for either 2040 or 2035. And this delay is criminal. So I appeal in particular to Emmanuel Macron. Mr Macron, you are the main reason for the European blockade and sabotage, while our country is the parent house of the Paris Agreement. It is up to us to be exemplary. Don't kill the Paris Agreement, unblock the Union and let us save the climate.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, there is no love, there is only evidence of love. And if I begin today with this rather well-known French poem, it is to ask the question, Madam President: What proof of love is this new weakening of the deforestation law that you have proposed to us today, despite all your promises. And here I want to remind you that, like love, trust must be expressed by deeds. But let us come to the work programme that you are proposing for next year. And you see, the first environmental tipping point was surpassed last week, scientists told us, with the widespread decline of corals, while poverty continues to condemn millions of Europeans. Our conviction, therefore, is, it will not surprise you, that this programme must take resolute action to protect what we hold most precious: life, justice, dignity. Not to deregulate with a new wave of omnibuses, but to accelerate ecological transformation in social justice. We are delighted to see a project to adapt to climate change and accelerate actions in favour of energy efficiency or renewables, or finally, a plan to phase out fossil fuel subsidies. These are measures that protect. But we must also give ourselves the financial means to achieve our objectives. And on this side, the bast hurts a little. You are announcing an omnibus on taxation, but will it aim to tax multinationals fairly? Will it aim to ask billionaires to contribute to ecological transformation in social justice? And we are also worried, worried about this 28th regime that you are announcing, which we have no guarantee will not again participate in deregulation. Worried because, if we welcome the anti-poverty strategy with great hope, how can we understand that it is not followed by any legislation? How can we understand that, in the equity category, there are three texts, but none that are binding? So we call on you to resist the sirens of the union of the right, who are not here today, who want to put down the model of social and environmental protection and to choose solidarity rather than fear, justice rather than resignation, Europe simply.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner, this debate is being held on the occasion of the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, which is still indispensable because billions of people around the world, hundreds of millions in Europe, are still suffering from hunger, lack of a decent roof over their heads, decent jobs or the humiliation and contempt associated with their condition. Yes, poverty is a political choice. Eradicate it, too. So we must change our compass, put the eradication of misery at the heart of all our actions. This requires, in the first place, putting the voices of the people concerned at the heart of public policy. Because it is those who experience poverty who know it best. Popular expertise must be at the heart of all public decisions. Secondly, I also want to tell you about the contempt of the poorest people. Because being poor is always being suspected of being responsible for your situation, guilty of your condition. The poorest are crushed under the weight of prejudices when, on the contrary, the burden of misery should be removed from their shoulders. The hand of institutions comes down smoothly on families in difficulty, for example. Too many children are still placed in Europe today because of resource constraints. We must put an end to this policy of institutionalized social violence, because that which tolerates contempt for the poor lets injustice cover the world. Thirdly, we must equip ourselves with binding tools to ensure that the fight against poverty truly becomes the backbone of the European Union. So let us endow ourselves with a right of social veto so that no more measures, no more policies are adopted if they aggravate the living conditions of the most precarious. Finally, I obviously want to talk to you about ecology, because some here, in these ranks, few in number today, come to fight nature and dare to claim to do so on behalf of the popular classes. So I want to make it clear to you: Your fight against ecology is a fight against the most vulnerable that leads to the worst environmental injustices, to the sacrifice of the health of Roma and relegated travelers, to the abandonment of working-class lives whose bodies are permanently polluted and contaminated, to the physical and mental exhaustion of the most precarious. Social justice and ecology are not two separate battles, they form one, only one, that of human dignity.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner, I am addressing the far-right group that has asked for this debate. You claim to be patriotic, you claim to want to save the European car industry. But all this is powder in the eyes. Your Green Deal cabal actually leads you to fight against the general European interest, not only against the climate, but also against our economy and our jobs. Over the past decade, China has expanded its grip across the entire value chain, from OEMs to the latest generation of batteries. European jobs, on the other hand, have been largely sacrificed, relocated with our know-how, without this having anything to do with the ‘all-electric’ goal in 2035. Evidence: 100 000 jobs were destroyed in France alone between 2010 and 2020. Did you hear the dates? This was before the adoption of the 2035 target. The reality is that the automotive industry you claim to defend today has suffered from its shareholders’ obsession with short-term profitability. We see exceptionally high rates of profit in this sector, despite the destruction of jobs and a counterproductive business strategy, the very one you advocate, which preferred high but short-term margins on polluting high-end vehicles, rather than investing in the lower but more sustainable margins of small, light and affordable commercial vehicles. Saving the car industry requires investment to make these vehicles even more affordable. This requires strict conditionality of public aid and a crucial European preference, not to mention making workers the engine of European car transformation.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner, we are here to talk about the European internal market and its contribution to our common prosperity. The state, like Mario Draghi, considered Europe to be a unique asset in a chaotic world, but on one condition sine qua non: the strength of our social and environmental model. But where have these crucial concerns gone? No, Europe does not need deregulation. It cannot survive if our common market is built by pulling down all our social, environmental or fiscal standards; whether it adds to fiscal austerity a ban on states going further in framing polluting companies or digital platforms; or, if it imposes the lowest social price through a 28e a system which would be there to diminish the social rights so dearly acquired in our Member States. On the contrary, we need to harmonise from above our laws on pesticides, taxation of the richest, renewable energy, and so on. Take the best in Europe to build the common. Our compass must be the affirmation that Europe’s strength lies in its ability to rely on people, their health and the living.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner, the right to healthy housing should be a fundamental right. It is unfortunately being flouted for millions of Europeans, for the million homeless in Europe, as well as for the tens of millions who suffer from poor housing or live in thermal fogs. It is a fact that Europe is subjected more and more often to increasingly hot heat waves and, in times of heatwaves, everyone is looking for a place to breathe, where to avoid heart disease, where to rest, where to preserve their lives. This summer, we deplore more than 1,000 premature deaths in Spain. Health, Commissioner - and I count on you to convey this message to your colleagues - must be the compass at the heart of European housing policy. It will be necessary to combat energy poverty by renovating housing, but without increasing rents, by equipping with shutters all those people who lack them, by prohibiting power cuts so that everyone can have access to a fan, by guaranteeing green spaces, especially for working-class neighbourhoods that are deprived of them – and, Mr Pelletier: environmentalists, do not live in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, I grew up myself in the city of Aubiers in Bordeaux – and finally by guaranteeing access to drinking water, particularly in Mayotte or Guadeloupe. Europe must act, failing which it is guilty of non-assistance to anyone...

Mr President, we must make the digital giants pay: Google, Amazon, TikTok, Meta and others. These companies plunder our data, spy on us, trample on nature and human and social rights, and then go into hiding in tax havens, sometimes even in the heart of Europe, Commissioner. While Europeans struggle to gather enough to live in dignity by the sweat of their foreheads, the "tech bros", Musk, Bezos or Zuckerberg, continue to earn billions, and this by paying almost no tax. Is that right? No, no. And that has to stop. We, the European Parliament, have repeatedly called for these digital giants to be taxed at international level, it is true, but already, yes, already at European level. And all without further delay. A 5% European tax on digital services is simple, it would be 37 billion a year from 2026. Can we seriously, reasonably afford to do without this precious money? But here appears Mr. Trump, their knight serving. And when Mr. Trump barks, the Commission fades away. Our question today is therefore more urgent than ever: Do you intend, Commissioner, to stand up to Donald Trump? Do you intend to defend European sovereignty against the United States? What do you propose concrete to stand up to the digital giants?

Madam President, Madam President von der Leyen, Europe is going badly and, forgive me for telling you, but you have a lot to do with it. You come today to meet the European Parliament, with a mouth full of promises, but your words ring hollow. The reality is that the liberalism you defend as the only possible path has led us, and subjected us, to Russian and now Chinese and American neo-imperialism. An hour and thirty minutes of speeches, Mrs von der Leyen, and only two minutes on the agreement you signed with Donald Trump and the disgraceful 750 billion you promised him for his climate-damaging energies. You gave in to a man who wants to vassalize Europe. But, then, what is your Europe for? Is it in your eyes only the recording chamber of the violence of the world? Yet no, we are not condemned, not condemned to see our social and environmental model explode in flight, not condemned to the extinction of Europe's singular voice in the world. It's time. It's late, but it's time. So turn your back on austerity that is exploding precariousness, shutting down businesses and hindering the ecological transition. Make climate and social justice your compass, and defend international law by, for example, supporting parliamentarians on humanitarian flotillas like Benedetta Scuderi and acting as forcefully in Gaza as in Ukraine, and then Europe will not be lost.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, here we are one year after the Draghi report, which was so warmly received at the time. But where are we today? Where are the investments promised to embark on the much-needed ecological transformation, including decarbonisation? Where are the billions of euros needed to preserve jobs in Europe and get rid of our multiple dependencies, for example in rare earths or critical metals? Because it is a fact that European companies are closing down. Nearby, in Hagondange, NovAsco employees, who dream of continuing to produce green steel, will see their jobs – 450 jobs – go up in smoke because Europe has failed to protect them. While on the silicon side, to name but a few, Ferroglobe is suspending its activities in Europe, making us even more dependent on China. Why? Lack of investment. Because, in addition to the austerity measures that the Stability Pact imposes on the Member States, the European Commission has done little or nothing to free up the public investment needed to bring private investment with them. This position of the European Parliament is therefore timely: recall the urgency, recall that European economies are extremely fragile in the face of climate change, as well as the urgent need for private investment, but also, and above all, public investment.