Debate contributions by Manon AUBRY

Madam President, Mrs von der Leyen, your new Commission will be the first union government of the right and the far right in the history of the European Union. The so-called coalition of central groups no longer exists and all the red lines of the so-called progressives have been trampled. We were told that there would be no far right in positions of responsibility: You have chosen as Vice President Raffaele Fitto, the post-fascist also known for his accusations of corruption. You told us that there would be no negotiations with the far right for the distribution of positions of power: In the end, the far right led the negotiations. You told us that there would be no coalitions between the right and the far right: since the beginning of this mandate, they are systematic, as we have seen for example to bring down a text against deforestation. And it was enough to see, just now, the jubilation of Manfred Weber, celebrating his new coalition with the far-right ECR group to be sure. Mrs von der Leyen, the Commission you are proposing is in fact the Commission of the end of the cordon sanitaire. It is the Commission of Shame, which is rolling out the red carpet to the far right by celebrating authoritarian leaders, as in Hungary, Italy, who are attacking women's rights, LGBT people and spreading their racist and xenophobic hatred. So, to my fellow ecologists and socialists, I ask: How can you condone that? All the more so since the whole process of appointing this Commission was a pure democratic scandal. Conflicts of interest have never been seriously studied. One example is enough to understand it: Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra will be in charge of climate and taxation, while he worked for the oil company Shell and had a shell company in a tax haven. The auditions were a laughable circus whose outcome was already known; opaque tricks that ridicule the credibility of our European Parliament a little more, if not completely. I tell you with pride, Mrs von der Leyen: Our group on the left is the only one to have refused this masquerade from the beginning. Because, basically, your political project will also add social unhappiness everywhere. What is your response to the proliferation of social plans across Europe and the increase in poverty? A blank check to multinationals who can touch public money while firing, and a new social bloodletting with your XXL austerity cure. How do you respond to agricultural anger and the climate emergency? The signing, in turn, of free trade agreements, including the one with Mercosur, will probably be one of your first acts. What is your response to the ongoing massacres in the Gaza Strip? A guilty complicity, Mrs von der Leyen, in refusing to take the necessary sanctions against the genocidal Benjamin Netanyahu despite the arrest warrant of the International Criminal Court. So how dare you remain silent after such a decision, when more than 45,000 civilians have already died under the bombs? Mrs von der Leyen, as you will have understood, our group on the left will vote unanimously against your Committee on Misfortune and will be the only credible opposition in this Chamber. With your blessing, the rule of the far right begins today. Finally, I think of the words of the great French resistance fighter Lucie Aubrac: "The word resist must always be conjugated in the present." So, from this Chamber, I launch this great, this beautiful, this powerful call to resistance before it is too late.

Ms Maréchal, in reality – and strangely – you are only interested in women’s rights when the authors are foreigners or Muslims. But you know that sexual violence knows no religion or nationality: Gérard Depardieu, Cauet, Damien Abad, PPDA, Polanski, Nicolas Bedos... I could go on, the list is long. These are Frenchmen like you and me, Madame Maréchal. And the number you come out with, you know very well, is a fake news. Then recognize it: 90% of perpetrators of sexual violence are people close to us. It is clear that this would mean, for you, to get out of your racist ideology. Indeed, the perpetrators of sexual violence are just men, Madame Maréchal. Recognize him!

Mr President, what woman can say that she has never experienced a single gender-based or sexual violence – from a malevolent remark to a non-consensual relationship, from street harassment to a blow, from humiliation to femicide? All these acts are part of the same continuum of violence that is that of our patriarchal society, and that all women suffer until they build coping mechanisms. How is it that we live in a society in which we configure our clothes, our alcohol consumption, our social interactions in the light of the risk of aggression? But our bodies are not freely accessible. Today, I want to tell you about our rage, the rage of women who can no longer endure violence: from the street to our homes, in the public space or in privacy. Because yes, the aggressors are everywhere. Not all men, of course, but all men. They are in our workplaces, in our sports clubs, in our groups of friends, in our families, on TV, and sometimes even in our political parties. And how many times do they defend themselves by saying: "She didn't say no"? Rape is the only crime where the perpetrator feels innocent and the victim is guilty. One need only look at the defence of the accused in the Mazan trial, who claim to be victims or refuse to acknowledge that they committed rape, even though they entered the drugged body of Gisèle Pelicot. Yet while this trial imposes the systemic nature of the rape culture, the new European Commission no longer even has an equality commissioner, nor has it planned anything against gender-based and sexual violence. We could start with one simple thing. The Advocate General in Mazan’s trial made this clear: “We can no longer consider in 2024 that, if she did not say anything,” a woman “agrees”. So let us make this trial history, the history of the inclusion of consent in French law, but also in European law. We can do one simple thing: clearly defining sexual intercourse without consent as rape, a bar point – an initiative that our Parliament had adopted, before Macron’s France allied itself with Viktor Orbán’s Hungary to block it. To put an end to the impunity of sexual abusers, 99% of whom are never convicted, but also to profoundly transform our societies, including in sexuality education – which the extreme right hates so much – so that finally shame changes sides, for good.

Madam President, I am sorry, I would have liked to have avoided doing so in order to be able to finalise the vote, but after verification, the first votes on the deforestation text were reduced to three votes. There were between 625 and 630 voters. You said it yourself, most of the votes... Colleagues, I know very well that you want to kill, absolutely, the forest and this text against deforestation, but do it at least with good intelligence: you could accept that we vote again, if you are so sure of your vote otherwise. So, Madam President, if I may, I would like to ask you whether we can inquire about the Members who were present in the Chamber and whose votes were not counted, and whether we can ensure that, whatever the position of this Chamber on this text, this vote is taken in good democratic conditions, because, moreover, I do not think that we are giving a good image of our Parliament today with this vote.

Madam President, I wanted to make a point of order on the basis of Rule 129 of our Rules of Procedure on the validation procedure for European Commissioners. This article states that we must meet without delay after the hearings. Yesterday, however, some groups asked for a postponement sine die and without any justification for these assessments. In fact, the justification is simple and I will give it to you, here it is: time to spend some small arrangements with friends, completely disconnected from the political content. But in this case, I have a question for you, ladies and gentlemen, why did you spend tens of hours auditioning the European Commissioners if it is to end with a few little tricks of corridors, and moreover with the extreme right? All this is in fact an unprecedented masquerade which has a very concrete consequence, ladies and gentlemen, weakening the weight, role and credibility of our European Parliament. And we cannot sit idly by here waiting for the white smoke of small opaque deals whose terms citizens will never know. Therefore, Madam President, I would ask you to put an end to this farce and to ask that the committee coordinators be able to meet without delay to complete the assessment of the Commissioners.

You say, Mrs Trochu, that abortion is suffering. But how dare you? Tell that to Polish women and the families of Polish women who lost their lives precisely because they could not have an abortion when their lives were in danger. You also say that the life of an unborn child must be protected. So, what to do with women's lives? Those lives that you threaten from this European Parliament, from the comfort of this European Parliament? You see, engraving this right in stone is not an admission of weakness, contrary to what you say. This is precisely what prevents people like you from going back on our fundamental rights. And we'll always be on your way.

Mr President, if I had to have an abortion in Poland, I could have died there. Like Izabela, who was in grave danger after losing water prematurely, but to whom doctors refused an abortion. Like Agnieszka, pregnant with twins, who died of sepsis after the death of one of the two fetuses and whose doctors refused to perform an abortion until the second had died. Like Dorota, whom the doctors also let die, when her fetus was not viable. And again, I am talking here about therapeutic abortions. Even these are restricted in Poland. Even when the woman's life is in danger. Even when doctors can practice it, they let women die instead of saving them, for fear of prosecution. So what about the broader right, still prohibited in Poland, to choose whether or not to have a child, to choose whether or not to have an abortion? How can all these men decide for millions of women what they can do with their bodies? What do they know about the impact of pregnancy on our lives, on our bodies? Since Donald Tusk came to power, who promised to legalise abortion, almost nothing has changed. Promises remained words, and the suffering of Poles a reality. The report of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women is formal: the ban on abortion in Poland endangers women’s health and lives, causes mental and physical suffering and violates their rights. This conclusion, which is true for Poland, is also true, ladies and gentlemen, for many other countries, at a time when the far right is increasingly threatening our rights. In Hungary, women must listen to the heart of the fetus before having an abortion. In Italy, there are so many conscientious objectors that access to abortion is a real path for the fighter. In Malta, the right to abortion is simply prohibited. Not to mention all the states where anti-choice movements are ambush, where they organise themselves to misinform or attack family planning, when they do not sit directly on the benches of the extreme right in this Chamber or orchestrate demonstrations here in the European Parliament. Colleagues, you have heard the rhetoric of the far right: An abortion would be murder, genocide. What are they? What are they doing today? They bear a heavy responsibility: attacking our fundamental rights. Their face here in the European Parliament is very clear. So, dear comrades, dear colleagues, I propose to you, together, a common commitment: to fight here on foot to extend the right to abortion for all, to enshrine it in the Charter of Fundamental Rights, to bring to fruition the European initiative facilitating access to abortion throughout Europe. Because, with all the reactionaries present – too many – here, our body is not assigned to a mission. It is up to each and every one of us to choose our destiny. This is the very condition for our emancipation. So, for Izabela, for Agnieszka, for Dorota, for all those who have not had the chance before us to benefit from the right to abortion, let us fight this fight together and drive the extreme right out of this European Parliament, which has only one obsession: attacking our rights.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, it is a good thing, I wanted to talk to you about democracy and to make a point of order on the basis of Rule 154, which deals with interinstitutional agreements, to talk about the state of negotiations between the European Union and Mercosur. I shall begin, ladies and gentlemen, with a rather simple question: Who finds it normal that the most important free trade agreement ever concluded by the European Union is being signed secretly, without our Parliament having any information whatsoever? Go ahead, tell me who agrees with this and raise your hand. As you can see – and I have done the counting – it has been exactly five years since the European Commission gave or published any official report on the state of the negotiations. Of course, this free trade agreement will have a disastrous impact on our farmers, who are already suffering, on health and on the planet. Ladies and gentlemen, this is also a democratic scandal. How can we accept being kept out of this way? That is why, Madam President, I would ask you to hold the European Commission to account so that it can finally keep us informed, because we cannot allow ourselves to be ‘banned’ in this way. It's time!

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to make a point of order on the basis of Rule 150 concerning urgent resolutions. We are about to vote on three urgent resolutions on three cases of human rights violations. But once again, Gaza and Lebanon are forgotten and none of these texts concern the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe in the Middle East. Let me tell you, this is a scandal. Isn't a genocide in Gaza a humanitarian emergency? Isn't 42,000 deaths in Gaza and 2,000 in Lebanon a humanitarian emergency? Aren't schools, health centres and buildings bombed a humanitarian emergency? This double standard, ladies and gentlemen, is unbearable. International law cannot be variable geometry. I see your reaction: Stop your hypocrisy because a human life is worth a human life, no matter who committed the crimes, no matter where, and count on us to defend those human lives you never want to talk about here.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, do you know how many years it takes for the SMIC to reach the wealth of Bernard Arnault, the richest European? More than 10 million years working at the minimum wage. However, it is not to Bernard Arnault that the European states will make their pockets. No, it is up to the workers, by making them pay for their sick leave, because it is well known: When you're sick, it's a little bit of your fault. It's up to the students, abandoning them to dilapidated universities. It's the pensioners, slashing their pensions. It's even for everyone, increasing the electricity bill. These ideas, in reality, I do not invent them. This is the French government's roadmap to satisfy your sacrosanct austerity rules, which you voted for here, without, of course, touching a single hair of the wealthiest. Yet the cultural battle that has been waged for years is beginning to bear fruit. Even the G20 is calling for taxing billionaires. So what are we waiting for, ladies and gentlemen? That it doesn't take 10 million years, but 20 million years of SMIC to reach Bernard Arnault's fortune?

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Lebanon is burning before our eyes and could become the new Gaza. Yet, once again, the European Union looks elsewhere and shines with its passivity, even its complicity. Already nearly 2,000 Lebanese have died and one million have been forcibly displaced, or one in five Lebanese. It is a widespread exile, with civilians paying a high price. Contrary to what some Israeli army spokesmen say here, Israel is not waging a war against Hezbollah; Israel is waging a war against the Lebanese people and the Palestinian people. Explain to me what role the 87-year-old Franco-Lebanese woman killed in an explosion last week played in Hezbollah's apparatus. This is exactly what happened in Gaza, where Israel does not seek to eradicate Hamas, but to organize the ethnic cleansing of Gazans. When schools, hospitals and homes are bombed indiscriminately, a legitimate war is not waged; It violates the most basic rules of humanitarian law. When doctors, teachers, journalists and humanitarians are deliberately killed, terrorists are not attacked; We massacre civilians and commit genocide. The drama unfolding in Lebanon does not fall from the sky. This is the consequence of your own renunciations, Commissioner. By refusing to lift a finger in the face of the plight of the Palestinians, the European Union is directly responsible for the plight of the Lebanese. If the Israeli far right allows itself to blithely violate international law, it is because it is allowed to do so. If Netanyahu no longer has any limits, it is because no limits have been imposed on him. In Gaza, the IDF massacred 42,000 people, mostly women and children. In Gaza, Europe said nothing. Israel refuses the entry into its territory of the Secretary-General of the United Nations. Europe has said nothing. The Israeli government is setting the entire region on fire and bloodshed. Europe has said nothing. How far? Until the whole region is decimated? Ladies and gentlemen, we have rightly passed dozens of resolutions denouncing the acts of war criminal Putin and taking action against them. Why are we unable to do the same for the crimes of the Israeli army? Are you able, colleagues, to face each other in the morning, when you consider that a life of a Ukrainian is not worth a life of a Palestinian or a Lebanese? This double standard is unbearable. If Europe wants to weigh in on the global balance, it must take its responsibilities, putting in place massive and immediate sanctions to force the Israeli government to finally concede a ceasefire. First, no more European weapons should be delivered to Israel. Emmanuel Macron, the French president himself, has finally called for this embargo. I note that it took more than 40,000 deaths for him to take a stand. Finally, let us move from words to deeds and impose it at European level. Secondly, no more European cents should be paid under the partnership agreement between Israel and the European Union. He must be suspended immediately. I'm telling you with gravity: Every day that passes is an extra stain of blood on our humanity. Everything must be done to stop this carnage. It's time to bring peace.

Mr President, 'three minutes is not rape'. "She was pretending to sleep." "His husband was there, so she was consenting." "You wouldn't have exhibitionist tendencies?" These words and questions of the defendants and lawyers during Mazan's trial, Gisèle Pelicot had to deal with them for hours, after being raped by more than 51 men to whom her husband handed her over by drugging her for more than ten years. They are firefighters, craftsmen, nurses, journalists, in short, all-world gentlemen who used the body of Gisèle Pelicot as an object. This trial is first and foremost the magnifying mirror of rape culture, present on all floors of our society and through which men arrogate power over women's bodies. But how many victims, how many hashtags, how many cases will it take for us to take the measure of what is at stake today in this trial? I want to shout my anger here, but here in this House we can do much more than get angry. We can act to relaunch the fight on the definition of rape as lack of consent, because a sexual relationship without consent is rape, point barre. To finally move from the culture of widespread rape to a culture of free and enthusiastic consent. For shame to change sides for good.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I have a little riddle for you. When you buy an iPhone like this for $800, do you know how much Apple paid in taxes? Two euros, or 0.0005% of its profit and not even in the country where you bought it, but in Ireland. So, after eight years of fighting, we finally won a battle: Apple has to pay a fine of 13 billion euros. Mais la guerre contre l'évasion fiscale est loin d'être gagnée. Every year, multinationals register 1 trillion euros in tax havens, half of which are in European tax havens. And who did the European Commission choose to lead this fight? Wopke Hoekstra, former finance minister of a European tax haven and himself involved in the latest Pandora Papers tax evasion scandal with a shell company, hold on tight, in the British Virgin Islands. We want to cry about it, and unfortunately, that's the case. But while you're at it, ask Monsanto to stop GMOs. Frankly, the message is clear: tax gifts to multinationals and make the people pay the bill. We will not let you go, to put an end to this robbery organized gang.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, put me in no doubt: When Mario Draghi talks about the slow agony of the European Union, is it the agony caused by a worn-out economic model? And why, in this case, not draw all the necessary consequences? Because I looked at the 400 pages of Mr Draghi's report - I would have liked him to be able to sit here to have this debate with us - and one thing that struck me was the level of contradiction. For example, how can we dare to talk about the relaunch of industrial policy without proposing a break with free trade, which installs unfair competition and brings goods from all over the world, whether our clothes or our medicines? Worse, Mario Draghi even proposes to abandon entire industries, such as solar panels. How can we also dare to criticize, rightly, too high energy prices without encouraging people to leave the energy market, the electricity market, and regain control of all essential goods and services undermined by the dogma of competition? How can we then dare to call for additional investment without calling into question the fiscal austerity rules that prevent investment in our public services, our social protection, our infrastructure? How can we dare to speak of ecological ambition without mentioning for a moment the imperative of sobriety, nor propose to subject the private sector to strict ecological conditionalities? Even worse, Mario Draghi even calls for deregulating and burning down some of the environmental laws. In this picture of the future of the European economy, productivity, growth and neoliberalism remain the watchwords, and multinationals, the only masters on board. But I'm going to confide in you. However much you may do, ladies and gentlemen, as I understand it here, about competitiveness, the alpha and omega of all European policies, competitiveness cannot be eaten, drunk, housed or heated, nor can it breathe clean air. So, even if I were to write 400 pages, I would have preferred Mr. Draghi to persist in describing how our economy can meet social needs, eradicate poverty and inequality while responding to the ecological emergency. Because otherwise, it is not a slow agony but a very rapid fall that awaits us.

Madam Speaker, I wanted soberly and briefly to respond to the targeted attack on my colleague Rima Hassan by Ms. Nathalie Loiseau, whose selective indignation comes to the rescue of Mr. Bellamy, who has constantly targeted my colleague Rima Hassan for the simple fact of being Franco-Palestinian, for the simple fact of defending peace in Palestine. And since you are talking about a target, Mrs Loiseau, the only ones who have targets on their heads at the moment are the children, women and families of Palestine who have been constantly targeted by the Israeli government, for what they are and for what they represent, because they have asked to live in peace, asked to live with dignity. I tell you, Mrs Loiseau, with a form of singularity in this Chamber, that you will never be able to intimidate either Rima Hassan or our group as a whole: we will be the voice of peace in Palestine, but also in Ukraine, here in this Chamber.

Madam President, thank you. Mrs von der Leyen, your speech illustrates all the contempt you have for people in trouble. I listened to you: in more than half an hour, you did not mention once the word ‘poverty’, the word ‘unemployment’, but there was one for ‘competitiveness’, ‘prosperity’, to cajole businesses. Mrs von der Leyen, I know that you earn more than EUR 30 000 a month, but do you know that one in three Europeans has to skip meals? That millions of Europeans will once again miss out on holidays because, on the 10th of the month, they are already in the red? Mrs von der Leyen, get out of your ivory tower and finally face reality. Because there is no real reason to be satisfied with your past mandate and even less reason to give yourself a new one. Did you, as we asked you, tax the multinationals that feed themselves and the billionaires, those multinationals that increase the prices of our shopping basket? No, you coaxed them. Did you live up to the climate emergency? No. We were entitled to unambitious measures and greenwashing market ecology. Have you protected our farmers and industry from international competition? No. You have multiplied free trade agreements. Did you save our public services? No. Here, too, you have tightened the austerity rules that are destroying them. Did you act for transparency in the face of the omnipotence of the lobbies? No. Here again, rather than finally putting ethics before money – you have just been condemned, Madam, by the Court of Justice of the European Union for the opacity of contracts for COVID vaccines. Today, Mrs von der Leyen, you should not even stand in front of us, but rather in front of a judge. Mrs Van der Leyen, have you made the voice of peace heard? You say that the bloodshed in the Gaza Strip must be stopped. But the reality is that you, Mrs von der Leyen, have sided with Benjamin Netanyahu, who has blood on his hands and is committing genocide in the Gaza Strip. It is your responsibility, Mrs von der Leyen, because you refuse to take the necessary sanctions, such as an arms embargo. Have you defended the human rights of the exiles? No. Here again, rather than a Europe of solidarity, you have created a Europe of barbed wire. This is your real record, Mrs von der Leyen. It is catastrophic and its direct consequence is the unprecedented rise of the far right. And we should start over for another five years? The victory of the United Left of the New Popular Front in France shows that another path is possible. Because, no, Mrs von der Leyen, we do not fight the extreme right by taking up its ideas: Fascism is defeated if one refuses to give in, even an inch, to their authoritarian and reactionary project. Mrs von der Leyen, we know today that your re-election will only be due to small opaque arrangements between friends. But European citizens are tired of these old methods and want clarity. Our group will reject all these schemes and defend a clear alternative for wealth sharing, climate action, fundamental rights, women’s rights and peace. Of course, as we have done in the last five years, we will vote for all the texts that go in that direction. We welcome the appointment of a Housing Commissioner, but we will not be satisfied with words. We want deeds and we will refuse, as you have understood - I will finish - to participate in the masquerade... (the President invited the speaker to conclude) ...of your deadly grand coalition and my group on the left will therefore vote against your re-election. Your Europe is not ours, Mrs von der Leyen. So, against your Europe of austerity and the market, count on us to defend a Europe of humanity and solidarity.

Madam President, I believe that, unfortunately, it will not have taken more than one plenary session for the far right to show its true face and attack human rights defenders who, like my colleague Ilaria Salis, have been imprisoned by Orban for defending fundamental rights. I have to tell you how honoured it is that she sits on the benches of the Left, and she will be there to fight you and your regime, you and the far right, you and your questioning of fundamental rights, and we will be proud that she sits alongside us here as a Member of the European Parliament, on behalf of everyone, but also of Hungarians!