Speeches

The Conditionality Regulation was to be a historic step for the protection of the rule of law in Europe. That was not the case. More than a year after its entry into force, Hungary and Poland continue to undermine the rule of law, and the Commission is turning a blind eye. So here we are, yet another time, in plenary to repeat to you what you already know: dura lex sed lex. The law is tough, but it has to be enforced. We were first told that we had to wait for the Guidelines and then that nothing could be done before the Court’s decision. Unsurprisingly, the Commission has just confirmed the legality of the Regulation. So what are we waiting for? Meanwhile, Hungary and Poland are replacing judges, closing universities, prosecuting journalists and peacefully discriminating against minorities, as I saw during a visit to Hungary and Poland last November. I say to you firmly, we have wasted enough time! This regulation is the last bulwark against these states that ignore European values. Let’s act before it’s too late.

Madam President, a few months ago we adopted a report on Chinese fisheries and their influence on illegal fisheries. Since then, new evidence of forced labour on board these vessels, notably in the south-western Indian Ocean area – it is the vessels fishing for tuna – has been provided. We are talking about blackmail, bullying, assaults, sexual assaults, salary deductions, months spent aboard Chinese boats, far from families, far from everything. You think that in the middle of the oceans anything can happen. This is what the Foundation for Environmental Justice’s survey, published last week, revealed. In the value chain of seafood production, which arrives on the plates of Europeans, there are also traces in China of the slavery of North Korean workers. This has been revealed by theOutlaw Ocean Project. This week we are going to have a historic vote – even two with corporate due diligence. So, Mr Vice-President, let us ensure that, in particular with the regulation combating illegal fishing, we can combat this modern scourge which is still in the middle of our oceans and which is a disgrace to humanity.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, yesterday, it was through the voice of a Member of Jordan Bardella’s group that transphobia broke into this Chamber. In the aftermath, I shared the episode on social media, on my Twitter account. Since then, it has been a surge, a surge with, every three minutes – every three minutes! – a new transphobic comment which is published in reaction to my tweet. More than 600 in twenty-four hours. I would like to thank STOP Homophobia, who took care to report to Twitter already more than 400 of these comments. I thank you for reading them, except for one of them, who says the following: No woman, no man, no human being. It is this dehumanisation peddled in hate speech that inevitably leads to physical violence such as that perpetrated in Thessaloniki a few days ago. Words can be weapons, weapons for what? Here, like the US fundamentalist right, the European far right uses trans people as an electoral weapon.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner, why create a new European statute for associations? Because in Hungary, for example, the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union has called on us to help the government, which is slowly killing civil society. They needed this European framework to continue defending democracy. Because in Poland – another example – where abortion was made illegal by the far right when it was in power, our associations, whether French, Spanish, Swedish or Danish, must be able to go and protect women in that country. This new status was necessary, but we cannot allow extremists or fundamentalists to divert it to propagate their hatred across Europe. That is why, together with my group, Renew, I have proposed the signing of a mandatory declaration of respect for the values of the European Union and the possibility of suspending European funding or even dismantling associations that do not respect those values, as France has been able to do with the CCIF. Because, ladies and gentlemen, civil society will be all the more lively and stronger if it is based on what brings us all together: our European values.

Madam President, Commissioner, for the past five years, things have happened! We have pushed back with you the LGBT-free areas by suspending European funds for Polish communities. Here, ladies and gentlemen, we have declared the European Union an area of freedom for LGBT people. You have – and we have supported you – brought Hungary before the Court for its law to combat the so-called ‘LGBT propaganda’. We have supported homoparental families here thanks to you, too, thanks to the text you have tabled. We voted for the universal decriminalisation of homosexuality. We? Not everyone... Not everyone, as we had to fight the extreme right and sometimes, unfortunately, the right, when they do not like this extreme right on the subject. I am thinking, for example, of colleagues like Nadine Morano or Brice Hortefeux, French elected representatives, who voted against this resolution, against the decriminalisation of homosexuality. When we see that 13 people have been sentenced to death in Yemen, what do we think of that? Of course, I am also thinking of Jordan Bardella, who opposed adding homophobic crimes to the list of hate crimes in the European Union. Well, ladies and gentlemen, let us be proud of what we have done. But, above all, let us be aware that the fight continues and that we still have many actions to take.

Mr President, Commissioner, over the past few months or even years, people have been gathering all over the French coastline to look at marine areas by marine protected areas, Natura 2000 areas by Natura 2000 areas, how we can reduce the impact of fishing on marine ecosystems. This is called ‘fishery risk analyses’. In concrete terms, how does it look? In concrete terms, it is fishermen who have knowledge of the activities in these areas, who know what is happening, who discuss with scientists but also with agencies of the French Biodiversity Office – to whom I would like to pay tribute and particularly to whose work I would like to pay tribute – who have precise knowledge, precisely because they have been made marine protected areas, the nature of the funds and who together look at how to ensure that fishing activities are limited, eliminated, reduced and possibly prohibited. This is how we protect our ecosystems. What I simply mean is that we must not make announcements from Brussels. We must not over-administer fisheries. It is from the ground with the fishermen that we have to work.

Mr President, Commissioner, this report, if you want to sum it up, simply says that the common fisheries policy, as adopted ten years ago, works in an ideal world where the ocean is made up of a species of fish with a large boat fishing for it, it works. Except that the world is not ideal. The world lives on realities. Fishing, the realities, it has taken them in the face in the years that have just happened. We talked at the moment about the crises that have been experienced – I am thinking of Brexit, then Covid, then Ukraine. The fisheries sector has been deeply shaken, and at the same time as this policy called for the adjustment of this fisheries sector, it had to face the needs of resilience, the needs of decarbonisation. This morning, in the French press, it is written that the fishing sector in the Basque country is ready to falter. The reality is that the entire sector is poised to falter. So if we are not able, in the coming years, to put concretely on the table sounding and stumbling euros to finally renew an ageing fishing fleet and almost on the verge of bankruptcy, we will not succeed. In any case, one thing is certain: fishing will not endure another crisis, its foundations will be too shaken.

Yes, one point of order: the interpretation was unavailable in French throughout the speech by our colleague Gabriel Mato, so we could not benefit from the speech by Mr Mato. I'm sorry.

Mr President, I would just like to point out that I have asked for the floor on a blue card question for the previous speaker. You did not give it to me, and I regret it. As our debates are not a succession of interventions, I cannot, as it stands, ask my question. I would like to remind you, however, that the blue card questions are of right, so if you have a good reason for refusing it to me, I would like to know about it.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner, we are about to vote on a text that is absolutely essential for the rights of a number of families in Europe and, above all, for the rights of a number of children. And I'm amazed to see one simple thing: this is the very idea of a motion to reject before any discussion. Obviously, the Rassemblement National takes a liking to the motions of rejection – it is a purely national remark –, a motion of prior rejection, without even discussing, even though we want to simplify the lives of families, to ensure that children do not lose their parents by crossing a simple border. But deep down, in Motion to Reject, the important word is rejection, this is rejectionQuite simply, what is not ‘classical’, what is not ‘normal’, what is not ‘like the others’. You simply reject those families who have two dads and have two moms. Well, I'll tell you: together with my political group, we are proud, proud to carry this text and to support it, to support the European Commission in this proposal. We are proud to have made the European Union an area of freedom for LGBT people. We are proud to have fought against LGBT-free areas in Poland and we are happy with this change, namely that the far right has finally been kicked out by the Polish voters. We are proud that this Parliament is working so that tomorrow we can make life easier for these families.

Mr President, Madam Vice-President, I have just given you my phone for the simple reason that, since I learned that I had been the target of a cyberattack and warned the European Commission – on several levels – no one at the European Commission has cared whether my phone had been infected. Maybe my phone is, as I speak to you, listening to what we are saying, maybe the Vietnamese government knows exactly what we are doing. No one cared; And yet, from whom do we derive our legitimacy here, as a Parliament and as elected representatives of this Parliament? Well, treaties. And who is the guardian of the treaties? This is the European Commission! In other words, the integrity of the elected representatives of this Parliament, the legislators, should be your concern. It has not been! I wrote to the High Representative asking for his reaction to the Vietnamese government, at least for him to convene the Vietnamese Ambassador to the European Union. No response, no reaction! This deafening silence is more than shocking. Maybe you'll find it nice that my little private conversations end up on the web. Maybe you'll find it nice. But in the run-up to the European elections, I fear the worst. I have been targeted, you should know, because I have been fighting illegal fishing since the beginning of my mandate, whereas Vietnam is targeted in this regard and has received a yellow card. Today we voted on a report on China that denounces these illegal fishing practices. Well, know it, I'll go on. But, Madam Vice-President, I finally ask that the European Commission come out of its deafening silence.

– Mr President, since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the rise in gas oil prices, fishing has faced a sharp rise in its costs. It has taken full advantage of this increase in energy costs and has been accompanied by it. It has been widely supported throughout the European Union, and as we arrive soon in 2024, it is time for this support to enable the transition to models that will put it in a position to face the challenges of tomorrow, in particular the cost of energy, but also decarbonisation. Decarbonisation is precisely the key element, the strong element that the Committee on Fisheries wanted to highlight in its opinion on the budget. More specifically, we propose – which, on behalf of the Committee on Fisheries, I am proud of – to set up the demonstrator of a fishing vessel, which will be able to experiment, in practice, with different fishing techniques, but also with a new engine, and will make it possible to move – with just over EUR 2 million – on one level towards the long term. This is necessary for our fisheries sector, as well as aquaculture, to continue to be sustainable.

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, you know that between 1983, when the common fisheries policy was established, and today, 40 years later, the share of Chinese fishing in world fisheries has increased from 5% of catches to 15%. However, many government or non-governmental organisation reports point to a number of practices that raise questions: cases of illegal fishing – we were with the PECH Committee in Ecuador, where we were confronted with the concerns that this caused – cases of practices such as shark finning or the extinction of positioning tools, illegal or predatory practices that jeopardise the food security of some coastal countries – we were also with the PECH Committee in Senegal – and then cases of forced labour. As such, the international survey published last week by the Outlaw Ocean project on these practices, both on land and at sea, must draw our attention. China has not ratified the International Labour Organisation’s Work in the Fishing Sector Convention or the FAO Port State Measures Agreement. So, of course, China has made progress. Moreover, since we drafted the report, China has ratified the WTO Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies. But that said, Commissioner, I have a question for you: Can you assure me that the seafood that is currently on the table of Europeans – they are eating it – does not come from a Chinese company engaged in forced labour at sea or on land or illegal fishing? We certainly have instruments in the European Union: the regulation against illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing and the regulation establishing a global human rights sanctions regime – we adopted them in 2020 – but they are clearly not enough. We need to strengthen, through three axes – transparency, traceability and control – our capacity to implement them. Transparency: According to the Chinese government there are 2,900 long-distance offshore vessels, according to the FAO there are 17,000. How many are they? Where are they? How many grants? And who does what in the waters of the countries with which we ourselves have fisheries agreements? À qui appartiennent ces navires? We were in Senegal faced with this industrial fishery whose capital is Chinese but Senegalese flags. Traceability: we have just mentioned the extremely important regulation against illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing. We have the CATCH system, which allows for digitalisation and traceability – this has been a struggle of my group around all this work, and I thank the rapporteur, Clara Aguilera, for the work she has done on this issue of traceability. Control, always: it makes no sense to impose drastic control criteria on our fishermen if the rest of the world lives under the law of the jungle. However, we need – and this is the meaning of our report, of our proposals in the report – to encourage the actions of the Member States (as with the Pescao project, which was carried out in the Gulf of Guinea), which could mobilise their national navy control fleet in addition to anti-piracy actions. Finally, I would say that, despite everything, we must first and foremost cooperate with China. This is the meaning of the partnership we have formed with Beijing and about which I would have liked to have a report from Commissioner Sinkevičius – but I imagine, Commissioner Hahn, that it is you who will do it to us. Cooperate to implement management plans in the countries where we fish together, in the waters where we fish together, to protect the resource, to protect our fishermen, in fair competition. Finally, we need to work with China to push it to ratify the conventions I mentioned on working at sea and combating illegal fishing. So, will that be enough? No, no. It is likely that the vote that took place today in the joint IMCO-INTA committee on the creation of a specific binding instrument to combat products made with forced labour – this will also have to apply to fisheries – should also be mentioned in order to go further beyond this report. I will end with the following: European companies also need to clean up their homes. This is the meaning of the Corporate Due Diligence Directive that we have adopted. Throughout the value chain, they will have to do the work of effectively verifying whether the fight against illegal fishing and the fight against forced labour are among the elements that are particularly looked at.

Mr Ilčić, I would like to know one thing. You reproach us, in any case you reproach me, for having included this debate, stating that it is not urgent. But I would like to know in this case if you consider that the impeachment of 33 families in Italy, because they are made up of lesbian mothers, by the Meloni government this summer was urgent. I would also like to know whether the tabling of these anti-LGBT amendments by four Forza Italia MPs against LGBT couples on TV was also urgent in the midst of the migration crisis. Can you tell me?

Mr. Speaker, could Mr. Jean-Paul Garraud tell us whether he considers a couple of women or a couple of men raising their children to be a family?

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, I have noticed something: every time I pronounce the four LGBT letters behind each other in this Chamber, I get a flood of messages in my mailbox or on social media asking me why I am still talking about LGBT issues? I'll tell you, I'd be happy to talk about something else. I'd be happy to talk about something else. But the reality is that it is not me who is obsessed with the subject, it is those who, for years, as has been pointed out by my colleagues, have made it a real obsession, and in particular the hardest right in the European Union. I want to talk about LGBT-free areas in Europe, I want to talk about LGBT anti-propaganda laws in Hungary but also in Lithuania, the banning of LGBT flags in Spanish municipalities, some municipalities that have come under the control of Vox. I also want to talk about changing child birth certificates to remove a mother from same-sex families in Italy. And in fact, every time, the hard right tries to camouflage its socio-economic or political failures by compulsively coming out of its LGBT obsession. But I want to warn us of one thing, ladies and gentlemen. Whether it is on the benches of the right, which there alliances with Vox in Spain, which here alliances with Fratelli d'Italia in Italy, but I also want to warn the left which, unfortunately, with Mr Fico who seeks to make a majority with the extreme right, tries to reach out for electoral reasons to this extreme right which will always make the LGBT community its victim and scapegoat anyway. That's it, they want to invisibilise us, they want to hide us, well, we won't go back to the closet. (The Chair withdrew the floor to the speaker)

Madam President, I would point out that Mr Fico is not yet the Slovak Prime Minister and has therefore not yet had the opportunity to implement any measure. I just want to point out to you, if it is acceptable to all of our colleagues, that we could replace the words ‘hard right’ or ‘far right’ with ‘populist’ – I see no problem with that.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, I do not know if you have noticed, but every time the hard right wings in Europe are in trouble, whether politically, economically or socially, they always return to a good old and sure value of the far right: homosexuals as scapegoats. In Italy, last week, in the midst of the migration crisis, MPs, backers of the Prime Minister, tabled nothing less than amendments to outright ban the broadcasting of LGBT content on Italian public television. Let's say it again: LGBT people are not an ideology, they are people, and respect for people is too important to make it a political scarecrow intended to hide the failures of this hard right and its disunity. Our Parliament has always been, ladies and gentlemen, on the side of respect for fundamental rights. That is why, under Rule 158, the Renew Group proposes – we propose – to add a debate on the dissemination of LGBT anti-propaganda laws by hard-right parties and governments in Europe.

Madam President, rapporteur, if there is one thing I agree with you on, it is that if surrogacy is a couple buying an egg and renting a belly to make a child, it is indeed a horror, it is exploitation and it is unacceptable. However, in your speech, what particularly shocked me was that you were not even able to imagine that some women might have a sincere desire to place their bellies at the service, generously and altruistically, of certain couples who cannot have a child. You even made these contemptuous remarks about women, referring them to the pecuniary aspect. This is outrageous, because you think women are minors. In countries that are governed by your parties, it is always the same – take a step back from abortion rights. In the same way, the belly of women is something you will say, but the belly of a woman belongs only to her. Therefore, if surrogacy puts around the table not two people who buy benefits from two others, but people who simply express the desire to lend this belly, which will make it possible to give birth to a child, and to give this oocyte and two people who will have the desire to make the child grow, well, maybe we have an ethical surrogacy model here.

Mr President, I shall take the floor again. I understood that I had not spoken very loudly and that, therefore, many people had not heard me. Rest assured, I will not repeat what I said. Commissioner Kyriakides has simply spoken much louder, but there are things I have not heard. Commissioner, I have not heard you condemn this law. I did not hear the Commission condemn this law. I have not heard the Commission request the withdrawal of this law. “Reconsider...” Reconsider, it means rethinking and modifying, not withdrawing. Nor have I heard you talk about the steps you would take if this law were enacted. Commissioner, I have heard about the strategic partnerships that the European Union intends to have with Uganda. I want to tell you that your intervention, having regard to what I heard there and, above all, what I did not hear there, well, it shames us!

Mr President, who am I, who are we to tell others what to think? Who are they who hear people say what they should be or how they should love? In the world, no one can, no one should arrogate to himself the right to tell the other who he is. This is not about the freedom of what you want to do; it is about the right to be. To be who we are. To live your life the way you are. To love as we are. It is about respect, respect for the right to be straight, gay, lesbian, bi, trans, to be as one was born. It is simply about being. To be who we are. To be alive. To live. Therefore, ladies and gentlemen, in the world we should not be in prison for what we are. You should not be sentenced to death for who you are. This is what we are talking about today, only that. And that is why here, in this forum of European democracy, we must together call for the decriminalisation of homosexuality and trans-identity.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner, in this report we find solutions or avenues for solutions - and thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for putting them together - to the various aspects of small-scale coastal fishing and the challenges it must address. But finally, honestly, this report should above all be a self-criticism of what is happening, of what we have been doing for years on small-scale coastal fishing. Besides, communists, you know what self-criticism is. So we should have gone further. In fact, it is a pale self-criticism of reality. The reality is that we have made life impossible for small-scale coastal fishermen. We have accumulated regulations. When you look at the tons of paperwork they have to fill out, the tons of regulation they have to read, finally you have to be bac plus ten to understand things. Quotas, licences, zero rejection, no rejection. Commissioner, you discussed access to the fund. But this is a joke. This is a joke. I want to know and I will ask the European Commission to tell us what is the proportion of the EMFF, the previous fund that was allocated to small-scale coastal fishing. The reality is that it is inaccessible. Guys, they're all alone on their boat. What are they going to spend their time filing files that make pages and pages? I am very angry because I managed these EU fisheries funds in my region. This was impossible to do. Our colleague Bijoux will talk about what is happening overseas. What are we doing overseas? I went to Guadeloupe. I went to Reunion. I saw those fishermen who did not understand why they were being pushed underwater at that point. You are talking about the freezing of inshore fishery products. But finally, Commissioner, I am sorry. Tell your colleague, too. These products, which have a high added value, are not frozen. It doesn’t make sense. I'm sorry to say that. The Commission is next to the plate. It is time for us to wake up and get our heads out of the dogmas we have had for years. Because small-scale coastal fishing is what sustains our coastlines and we are out of the question to pay for it.

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, it must be said that the family is in danger. It is under attack from all sides by those who wish to impose their ideological vision on us. Children’s rights are at risk, flouted by the whims of these same ideologues who want to deprive children of their origins, even if they deny them. Colleagues, of course, here I want to talk about Sarah, this child we are talking about, and her family. Sarah was born in Spain. She has a mother from Gibraltar and a mother from Bulgaria. Bulgaria, in fact, has been refusing him the transcript of his birth certificate for several years, despite a ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union. Sarah's three. She has no nationality. She has never been able to leave the country where she was born and she has never been able to see her grandparents, who are too old to travel. Sarah is the victim of a fury by self-proclaimed ideologues who defend the family. So here, we're not going to have to be wrong. There is evidence that we are the true defenders of the family. We are the real defenders of children’s rights. So, Commissioner, we are counting on you. Don't disappoint us. Make us this proposal for a law on the mutual recognition of ties of filiation. Be on the side of the family, be on the side of the children.

Mr President, Minister, Commissioner, we have now returned to the so-called sixth mass extinction of species on Earth. The fifth, the previous, is the one that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. For several years, the climate change crisis has covered – if I may put it this way – the awareness of the ongoing biodiversity crisis. Basically, moreover, these two crises are linked, as you pointed out, Commissioner. These two crises, climate change and biodiversity, feed themselves and each other. As much on climate change, I was going to say that it is not complicated. When you see the difficulties we have to move forward, in fact, it is complicated. But basically, we know the causes, we know the consequences. We can act on biodiversity. This is very complicated and requires us to mobilise even more. A few years ago, at the invitation of the European Commission, I attended a conference called HOPE. I like to point it out because she says it all: Healthy Oceans – Productive Ecosystems. Well, I think that by thinking in this way, by putting ourselves in a win-win situation, by understanding that the development of our activities, the development of humanity can and must be done in a healthy environment, we understand that we are in a situation where we have to move forward on this issue of biodiversity. As you said, Commissioner, we must also make sure that indigenous people, who will be the first to win if we make an effort, must be included. This is the Aarhus Convention to which we are committed. Through Mrs von der Leyen, we have made the very bet that the European Union will be the most advanced territory in the world on this subject. Well, Commissioner, we are counting on you in Montreal to carry this message and we have full confidence in you.

Madam President, what is the risk to European footballers of wearing a rainbow armband in stadiums? Get shot like five people who died in a gay bar in Colorado Springs? No, no. Do they, like their Iranian colleagues, risk their skin? Those Iranian colleagues who behaved with remarkable bravery this afternoon? The answer is again no, they risk nothing. They are not at risk of making people talk about homosexuality and respect for LGBTI people on football pitches. Because, finally, homophobic insults are ubiquitous on football pitches. The captain of the French team was even able to declare that this was part of folklore. Well, FIFA gentlemen, as long as it is part of folklore, we will continue to press for that folklore to be part of a distant and bad memory.