Speeches

Mr President, Madam Rapporteur, Commissioner, the application of a precautionary principle with regard to the allocation of custody rights in the context of domestic violence is necessary. The aim is to give priority to the best interests of the child and to ensure his or her protection. The amendments and ideas I proposed concerning children who witness domestic violence, the impact of this situation on their current and future behaviour, and the need to provide them with psychological follow-up have been included in this text. I thank you for this, and I hope that we will be able to make stakeholders aware of the need to act more in the interests of these children, but also of society, because they will be the future actors. Indeed, as I had already pointed out, studies show the causal link between a childhood marked by the vision of scenes of domestic violence and a reproduction of this behavior in adulthood. While I support the substance of a large majority of the proposals in this text, my delegation, in the name of national sovereignty, cannot allow the European Union to interfere in the family and legal policies of nations. We believe that the Union is not intended to interfere in the sovereign policies of the Member States. That is why we will abstain.

Mr President, it is high time to take action to replace animal experiments with more modern and reliable alternatives and to comply with the 3R method, which provides for the replacement of animals where possible, the reduction of the number of animals used when experiments are unavoidable, and the refinement to reduce the suffering of animals during detention and euthanasia, if it takes place. Replacement is crucial, because the technology is progressing very quickly in the field of in vitro experiments, computer modeling or microdosing, not to mention genetic technologies such as CRISPR-Cas9. These new technologies are much more effective in advancing research, but there are blockages, inertias. For example, too often universities use animal testing for lack of financial means to use these new technologies. As for laboratories, they themselves suffer from regulatory inertia. They still need to use animal testing to obtain the valuable marketing authorisations. Sometimes this is a scam as some of these experiments are carried out mechanically to continue to have funding. This is particularly the case for dogs that have been tested for several decades to find treatment for myopathy, with the results we know. It is therefore important to legislate as soon as possible on alternatives to these experiments. Citizens’ expectations, as well as technological progress, are now pointing towards an end to this terrible animal abuse.