Speeches

Madam President, the workers are the forgotten ones in this speech. A mention of politeness, nothing more. For you wages are a detail, pensions an economic problem. The proof that earning €30,000 per month, it totally disconnects you from reality. Soon we should celebrate 30 years of the internal market, you say. This will be an opportunity to measure the joy of our destroyed and privatized public services, I suppose? On vaccines, you claim that the EU has "supplied" vaccines to the world. In reality, the Union has mostly "sold" them, often to the richest countries while you prevent other countries from producing them. Then let's talk about climate. Talking about "Fit for -55%" when the scientific consensus requires a reduction in emissions of -65% is painful from a com point of view. And the lesson you learn from 20 years of military intervention in Afghanistan and an unnamed disaster? Make more military interventions, more bombs and more wars. Frankly, your European Union, built by states at the request of European employers, is a social disaster and a climate failure.

The latest COVID variant omikron boosted the stock prices of Pfizer and Moderna considerably. Pfizer saw its share close 6.1 percent higher, about $17.5 billion in additional market value. Competitor Moderna even saw its shares increase by 21 percent. A virus variant such as . This is particularly cynical. After all, it is precisely Big Pharma's patents that make new variants more likely. Patents shield vaccine technology from other countries and companies. This limits vaccine production and increases global shortages at the expense of global health. In poor countries, only 3% of the population is fully vaccinated. These vaccine shortages facilitate virus circulation and hotbeds for new virus variants. The Omicron variant shows how urgently this needs to change. A open source-approach could allow researchers around the world to work on adapting the vaccine to new variants. This would allow the activation of unused production capacity and the creation of new production units within a few months. The removal of patents has never been more urgent. This Parliament has already voted in favour of it three times. What are you waiting for? Are Big Pharma's profits really that much more important to you than human lives? Basta lockdowns. Basta pandemic. Share the technology. Save lives.

We are asked to fast track an Act in Support of Ammunition Production. Commissioner Breton wants to give huge amounts of taxpayers’ money to extremely profitable multinational companies, but refuses any democratic debate. Let us be clear: this proposal goes far beyond supporting Ukraine – it aims at creating a European network of arms producers, a proper EU military—industrial complex. The proposal diverts funds away from economic recovery and the green transition towards arms multinationals that are already making massive excess profits because of the Ukraine war. The proposed act also explicitly undermines workers’ rights. Article 18 proposes to bypass the Working Time Directive, which imposes minimum daily and weekly rest periods, annual leave, breaks, maximum weekly working time and night work. This way it sacrifices social rights for militarisation, giving a free pass to industry to introduce working weeks of over 48 hours. The Treaty on the European Union, Article 41.2, prohibits expenditure arising from operations having military or defence implications from being charged to the EU budget. Labelling this act as an industrial project, the Commission deliberately circumvents these provisions. Let us build peace on our continent and invest in socio—economic recovery, and a public switch for the climate.

Mr President, Mr Costa, Mrs Kallas, last year the President of the European Commission, Mrs von der Leyen, was in Washington and took some orders. We saw her with her little notepad. How many American weapons do we have to buy? Okay, it's okay. How much of your gas? Okay, okay. And how much do we pay him? It's okay. Total bid. We fell silent when the United States spied on our leaders. We fell silent when they bombed eight countries in a single year, from Venezuela to the Middle East. And even today, while Trump says he wants to annex Greenland, the president of the European Commission comes here saying: But we are still aligned. But Stockholm syndrome, it's powerful, it's very clear. If we make so much carpet, necessarily that we end up on the menu, it does not surprise me. Today, American imperialism has the honesty to say that it is the greatest threat to peace and security in the world. So what to do with it? Unite with others. Americans are powerful, but they are not all-powerful. And all over the world, from Brazil to China, from India to South Africa, the powers of the South are fed up with American imperialism. So let us unite, let us make the United Nations for peace. Ah but the United Nations exists, let's go!

I think the question is not "are we in solidarity, yes or no, with the Iranian people?" That, we are all and also the left. So what you're saying from that point of view is a lie, let's say. The real question I would dare to ask you is this: Why do you mind the Iranians being killed today, but a year ago, when the Israelis killed them, you didn't mind? Why do the Iranians, their dead, today worry you, but the Palestinians, you had no problem leaving them and seeing them massacred? Because that's double standards, sir.

Mr President, it might have been an interpretation problem, but I heard my colleague, Ms Latinopoulou, claim that the left was a cancer for Europe. I would like to have an investigation into these words, because I think that's absolutely inappropriate language that is not to be used. I would like to submit this to the presidency, because if there's one problem in Europe, it's been their complicity with Israeli crimes in Gaza and not the solidarity we have here with all the people. But it's mostly about the formal language. This cannot pass in this Parliament. We cannot treat each other this way, and we will not stand for this kind of fascist intimidation.

Mr President, colleagues, High Representative, we have seen the images, and the inhumane killing of thousands of innocent Iranians is vile, shameful and unacceptable. I hear your call for more sanctions, however, academic literature has offered a damning assessment of European and western sanctions so far. Since the 1990s, Iran developed very elaborate middle classes that became the backbone of a number of reform movements, like the so-called Green Movement. But since 2011, western sanctions have crushed those middle classes, pushed millions into poverty, trapped students, destroyed local businesses, with food prices skyrocketing – and who benefited? The IRGC, the military revolutionary guard that had the networks to control trade, to manage import and infrastructure. So the sanctions weakened the forces of social change inside Iran, fostering inequality, corruption and the militarisation of the Iranian economy. Sanctions do not birth democracy, sanctions breed chaos. Our double standards, as well, have been used against us as an argument. When the US-Israeli strikes killed Iranian civilians, this Parliament failed to condemn it. The Israelis announced covert operations in Iran and we were not able to condemn it. All of that plays into the card of the hardliners in Iran that claim the West cannot be trusted. Dear colleagues, Europe has claimed to stand for democracy in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya. Where do those countries stand now? If we want to support the Iranian people, we need to stop punishing them. Lift sanctions that hurt the civilians in Iran, restore those cultural exchanges and apply human rights consequently to all and everywhere, and we have the United Nations mechanisms to also apply to Iran.