Speeches

Mr President, technological advances, the digitalisation of various sectors of activity and, more recently, the use of modalities such as teleworking, rather than alleviating the workload with further reductions in working hours, contribute to increasing the pace and exploitation of workers. The right to disconnect, starting from just concerns and attacks felt by workers every day in their workplaces, is framed in an ingenious process, both perverse and perverse, where, instead of demanding strict compliance with the schedule, fighting abuses, one starts from the idea of unlimited availability that will be necessary to mark. Let us be clear: The requirements are simple and well-established. Working time is fulfilled without more or less. Combat abuse. Ensure material, human and financial conditions for labour inspectorates to fulfil their function. Promote reconciliation of work, personal and family life. Reduce the working day to 35 hours per week. And so, clearly, without subterfuge, we fight the increase in exploitation, we guarantee more mental health and better working and living conditions.

Madam President, the dramatic situation facing the National Health Service requires an immediate response. The Portuguese – and it is their health care that we are talking about – can no longer withstand the news of the emergencies that close, the family doctor that they do not have, or the surgery or specialty consultation that is postponed. In this scenario, either health falls into the background and the disease worsens or access to health remains for those who can afford it. And, this seems to be the goal outlined by the government: disinvest, dismantle, denigrate the services in order to be able to deliver parts of the National Health Service to the private sector, which is like saying to the disease business, to which 8 billion euros of the State Budget for Health are already going. But let those who want to bury the National Health Service be deceived. They will have to face the struggle of health professionals, the mobilization of the populations that will continue to defend it, demanding the reinforcement of technical and human resources, the valorisation of their professionals and their careers, guaranteeing the constitutionally enshrined right to health. And it is by your side that we are.

Madam President, this report insists, among other things, on the creation of transnational lists for the European Parliament, to which it is intended to associate putative candidates for President of the European Commission. In addition to introducing distancing between elected and electorate, such proposals would accentuate imbalances and distortions that already exist today in the distribution of seats in the European Parliament, represent an artificial creation that does not correspond to the reality in Europe and run counter to a Europe of cooperation between sovereign states and equal rights. What is needed is a redistribution of mandates in the European Parliament that compensates the countries that have suffered the most from the redistribution of power in the Council and mandates in the European Parliament, in the context of successive enlargements of the European Union, as is the case with Portugal. What is required is not the abdication of more sovereignty to the institutions of the European Union, dominated by the great powers and the interests of economic groups, but respect for the sovereignty of states and democracy. What is needed is not more liberalism, federalism and militarism in the European Union, but a Europe of cooperation, social progress and peace. (Applause from the gallery)

Mr President, here we are in yet another debate marking the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. For us, it is not just a question of evoking yet another anniversary, but of expressing our support for and commitment to the struggle of women against labour exploitation, inequalities, discrimination and violence. Violence against women is expressed in several ways: domestic violence, dating violence, female genital mutilation, bullying, sexual and work-related harassment and prostitution, among others. They must all be recognised as extreme expressions of injustice, inequality and discrimination, which manifest themselves in humiliation, disrespect for the physical and psychological integrity of the women who suffer them, and which undermine the dignity, social status and rights of all women. The autonomous treatment of the various forms of violence against women should be ensured by creating intervention tools aimed at recognising the impact on women’s lives, prioritising their prevention and combating and aiming at their eradication. It is also crucial that Member States strengthen victim protection mechanisms through the implementation of a decentralised public network articulated with the entities involved in this area, to ensure the proximity and equal access of women to information, referral, referral and protection of victims. Measures which, in order to be implemented, require robust budgets and political will. Violence against women does not suffer from delays and delays. We need to move from words to deeds. There can be no more excuses.

Madam President, the unsustainable use of pesticides is causing serious environmental, public health and food safety problems. It is important, with a view to progressively reducing the incorporation of these compounds in agricultural activity, to implement the precautionary principle with regard to pesticides and other agrochemicals, given the harmful impact that the use of pesticides has on the health of workers and populations. We defend the need to reconcile productive activity with environmental quality and the socio-economic value of small and medium-sized farmers. The intensive and super-intensive model that the European Union promotes, based on monoculture, runs counter to these principles, exacerbating environmental and socio-economic problems and highlighting the need for another development model based on the valorisation of national production and food sovereignty. The promotion of greener and more sustainable practices should be supported so that small and medium-sized agriculture does not disappear, valuing ancestral practices and traditional and native species, and promoting the occupation of rural territory, while contributing to the defence of more and better local public services.

Mr President, once again we want to bring to the debate the serious housing situation in Portugal. Today we bring our solidarity with more than a million families who, in Portugal, are confronted with the brutal increase in the benefits of the house. We therefore appreciate the protest that the activists of the Door to Door, House for All movement organised last Wednesday in Brussels, in front of the European Parliament, demanding that the policies of the European Union that directly impact on housing be reversed, and starting from the outset by lowering interest rates, which guarantee millionaire profits to banks on account of the payment of housing loans, while more and more families are unable to pay their homes. Lower interest rates, regulate rents, ban evictions without a decent housing alternative, create and increase the public housing stock – these are some of the urgent measures they advocated. As we said at the protest, you can count on us to reject current policies that deprive people of that constitutional right and to fight for the right to housing for all.

Madam President, it is our responsibility today, as always, to demand from governments and institutions that the plans set out in the Convention and in the Declaration of the Rights of the Child be implemented and that they even go further so that children can develop fully as human beings, ready to transform the world. The words of rulers on a beautiful theme, which has the potential to melt the harshest heart, must be linked to political decisions and can never be just blossomed. The report on which we will be voting tomorrow has nowhere to go. It is essential to replace the so-called economic governance of the European Union with a coordination of public policies that puts children and their families ahead of certain designs of accounts, which have little. The European Semester and the Country Recommendations, as instruments that castrate Member States’ capacity to invest in quality and universal public services, have contributed to the deterioration of children’s living conditions, particularly those at higher risk of poverty. In my country, Portugal, this is clear from the current situation of the National Health System, with emergency closures, particularly for children, or the public school, with an alarming number of students with a lack of teachers in at least one discipline or with a shortage of response from public nurseries. We cannot accept the path of privatisation, with the complicity of the Commission and national governments, in various strategic sectors and in the public interest. Putting another policy into practice in a Europe of workers and peoples is key to letting children be children, to ensuring that they dream, that they play, that they grow up healthy and happy. I will conclude by thanking the shadow rapporteurs and their assistants, the secretariat of the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs and the various political groups and, of course, my team, Luís Capucha Pereira, Afonso Marques and Sofia Silva.

Madam President, we have begun work on this report in a context of deteriorating living conditions for workers, with the serious increase in the cost of living recently felt. Child poverty is a multidimensional phenomenon that stems from household poverty and therefore needs a multidimensional response that necessarily involves increasing employment and job security, valuing associated incomes and investing in public services. For children to have rights, parents must have rights. Accompanying the growth of children is not only the rights of parents, it is the rights of children. It is not possible to talk about children's rights without talking about their parents' wages, hours and job stability, in particular by contributing to the end of job insecurity, the deregulation of working hours, low-paid work, low wages, wage discrimination, as well as high costs of housing, transport, crèches and education or health expenditure, which consume a considerable share of household income. Dear Colleagues, it is up to States to formulate universal and structural policies that guarantee the integral development of children, ensuring the resources and instruments that fit the multiple responses that children, their parents or their families need to fulfill this purpose. The report we are going to vote on tomorrow proposes a number of measures which, if implemented by the Member States, will have an impact on combating child and family poverty. In this sense, we advocate: increasing investment in universal, public and quality public, health or education services that ensure that the needs of children and their families in their diversity are met; increasing the public and universal provision of crèche and pre-school education services; the connection between the realisation of children’s rights and the realisation of their parents’ rights, including through the defence of work with rights and fair wages, as well as access to parental rights, including breastfeeding; valuing tools and practices to combat multiple discrimination and violence against children; the defense of the right to play as a structuring measure of the integral development of children. The first years of life have a decisive impact on the integral development of children, as they develop essential skills in these first years. We have long drawn attention to the importance of crèches and the requirement to provide support equipment for children and families as a condition for integral development from an early age and the articulation between the personal and emotional life of families and work. In addition to being universally free, we believe that access to crèche must go far beyond a purely custodial social response, since it must also, or above all, guarantee a quality educational response that promotes the best education for all children, and therefore regardless of the respective economic and social contexts of families, with a view to the full and equal enjoyment of the right to education constitutionally enshrined in countries such as mine. Free access to pre-school is also essential for all children from the age of three. Education systems at all levels should promote a universal culture focused on the integral development of individuals. Madam President, Commissioner, because today marks the Universal Day of the Rights of the Child, let me also talk about children in the context of war. According to the organization Save the ChildrenMore than 4,630 Palestinian children have been killed in the past month by Israeli forces, more than the total number of children killed in all conflicts worldwide since 2019. In order for the number of victims not to increase, so that no more children die at the hands of Israeli atrocities, it is necessary to implement the ceasefire. Children have the right to grow up and live in peace. Let us therefore mobilize for the end of all wars, for the establishment of relations of peace, friendship and cooperation among all peoples. Finally, I would like to thank you for your cooperation... (The Chair took the floor from the speaker)

Madam President, there are more and more people whose right to housing is being questioned or, in increasing cases, denied. In Portugal, INE data for August 2023 point to an average increase of 41.4% in the house benefit compared to the previous year, with an average of 57% of this benefit going to the payment of interest. While this happens in the lives of millions of families, bank profits continue to increase. Almost €2 billion in the first half of the year in Portugal, €11 million in profits per day. The ECB is making the lives of millions of families hell to defend bank profits and that has to stop. Thousands of people take to the streets, also in Portugal, to give voice to this problem and it is with this strength that we will continue to demand the necessary responses to this scourge. Increase the public housing stock, increase wages, put profits to pay the increase in installments, reverse the increase in interest rates.

Mr President, the social and cooperative sector, too, is facing a difficult situation as a result of the sharp increase in the cost of living. The means, which were already often scarce, are increasingly scarce. There are more and more difficulties. Governments need to find answers to this. Access to Community funds is also difficult for these institutions. The red tape involved in the application processes and the need for co-financing are barriers for these institutions to access them. We must not underestimate the role of social and cooperative sector institutions, but we must clearly state that they must not replace the public services of the States, but complement them. The burden of ensuring social rights and social protection is primarily the responsibility of states, including for ensuring quality, free, universal and community-based public services. The social sector must also provide a quality, universal, close and generally free response that complements the welfare state. But today we also want to talk about workers in the social sector, who must be guaranteed the highest standards of labour and social rights, decent and fair pay and continuous training. In the contacts we have made in Portugal, within the framework of the PCP Members' Days in the European Parliament, the demands of workers in the social sector are several: better wages; the need to guarantee the right to a break; alleviating the burden on workers in the social sector, which is often felt due to the lack of workers; high turnover due to precarious working conditions; the need to reduce and regulate working hours. Responding to the social needs of populations cannot be seen as mere acts of welfare, charity or philanthropy. What is needed is an honest and genuine commitment on the part of States to combat poverty, inequality and the unjust distribution of wealth. That the social sector does not serve to disempower states to make the necessary public investment in their social functions.

Mr President, valuing agricultural activity, starting with a fair income for producers, is essential in order to attract young people to agriculture and to keep small and medium-sized farmers active, who are now almost paying to produce. The difficulties are not current and relate to fair-price disposal, high production costs, climate change, damage caused by wild boar and other wildlife, discrimination in the allocation of CAP funds, dismantling of public services in rural areas, among others. Nowadays, access to land to produce is also increasingly difficult, with the occupation of land with agricultural and forestry skills by huge photovoltaic plants for carbon credits and for the installation of super-intensive industrial crops in the hands of large multinationals. There is an urgent need to reverse policies that favour and promote large-scale agribusiness, young or old, which squanders natural resources, damages the environment and tramples on the fundamental rights of small and medium-sized farmers and undermines the food sovereignty of peoples.

Mr President, under the pretext of fighting disinformation and fake news, the path is being taken in limiting freedom of expression and/or promoting censorship, determining which information channel we should follow or which digital platform we should use and that platform decides what is legal or not. We are concerned that the so-called fight against disinformation is becoming a manipulation of information, with the silencing of certain opinions and events considered bothersome or inconvenient; focusing on the secondary at the expense of the essential; decontextualisation of the reported facts, removing their true meaning or even lending them a different meaning; providing forecasts and scenarios or conducting manipulated surveys with the aim of conditioning decisions or attitudes towards future events; The fabrication of facts, particularly political ones, intended to create a false reality that is then presented, cited or commented upon as the true reality. All without any real effect in combating the spread of fake news. All very independent and out of democratic control, but well subordinated to the power of big capital.

Mr President, periods of drought are becoming more intense and inevitably have very negative effects on economic activities and the life of communities, causing various difficulties in people's access to water and in farming and livestock farming. The consequences of the lack of strategy and solutions to address drought issues are, inter alia, a lack of water storage capacity to meet needs, poor sustainable water use in the different areas and the undermining of some important economic activities. We advocate the development and implementation of an integrated plan in which the needs of water use for multiple purposes are correlated with adequate and possible storage capacities, promoting the rational and efficient use of water as a factor of economic and social development, based on universal access to this resource, its public management, to the detriment of its massive use and exploitation on a private monopoly basis.

Madam President, we are in favour of a general increase in wages of at least 15% and at least EUR 150, because this is an urgent, fair, necessary and possible measure. It is urgent, because workers and families need conditions to face the brutal increase in the cost of living, with the escalation of prices of products and essential goods, including housing. It is fair, because the share of wages in national income has declined in recent years and workers are entitled to a fairer distribution of wealth. It is necessary, because it is necessary to stop the economic model based on low wages, which increasingly forces more workers to have two or more jobs, with the profoundly negative impacts that result. And it is possible, because it has been proven that there is money to raise wages, and this is demonstrated by the large economic groups that continue to accumulate wealth in an obscene way. And it is because it is fair, necessary and possible that wage valuation is urgent and must be a reality.

Mr President, it would be easy to foresee the social consequences of rising interest rates: the impoverishment of large sections of the population, especially workers, while ensuring a huge transfer of wealth to the financial sector, banks, the economic slowdown, the risk of recession and rising unemployment. The reality is showing that your policy is intended to premeditately affect the living conditions of workers, women and young people. This is the fallacy of the independence of the ECB, which is ultimately at the service of the interests of banking and financial capital. There it is being demonstrated how the application of the same monetary policy has a different impact on countries with different economic and structural situations. Portugal and the Portuguese are among those who suffer the most, as the European Commission itself has already acknowledged. It is enough that they are always the same to pay. In addition to immediate, urgent and necessary measures, the situation demonstrates the need to restore monetary sovereignty and ensure democratic political control over decisions that profoundly affect people’s lives. I'm sorry I'm getting sleepy.

Madam President, from here we welcome the thousands of people who took to the streets on Saturday in 20 Portuguese cities for the right to housing, against increases in interest rates that stifle more than 1 million families, against the liberalisation of the rental market, for the reduction in the value of rents, against property speculation, for more public housing. These are demands that reinforce the need for concrete responses: reduce interest rates – while this is not the case, that it is the profits of the banks that pay for this impact and not the budget of households, that the public bank takes a clear option to lower the costs of credit, namely in spreads, commissions, etc. – protecting tenants, halting rent rises, stabilising contracts and rejecting once and for all the evictions law passed in troika times. Eliminate tax benefits for large speculator owners, such as real estate funds and others, increase the provision of public housing, increasing the resources for this purpose, first and foremost at the level of structural and investment funds. There are four proposals that give voice to the popular demand.

Madam President, transport is a central issue for people's lives and for the daily lives of hundreds of thousands of workers. It is important to recognise the importance of a policy to promote public transport for the improvement of the environment, health and quality of life and to promote mobility. It is essential that public transport policies respond to the needs of the population, workers, in particular women, young people, the elderly and people with reduced mobility. We believe that it is essential to ensure equal access to employment, including in the transport sector, and that women working in the transport sector are guaranteed their rights, decent working conditions, equal pay and more opportunities for career progression. However, the policies of the European Union that have promoted the privatisation, liberalisation and commodification of the transport sector and that have forced the destruction of large state-owned enterprises, without contributing to the necessary responses, are also at the root of many of the problems faced by populations and workers, including women.

Mr President, since September last year we have been permanently working days in Portugal and have had the opportunity to meet thousands of people. The increase in the cost of living, with essential goods reaching prices that those who earn the minimum wage cannot afford, is what worries people the most. Housing, food, energy, communications. And while some, the workers, make sacrifices, the big economic groups continue to exhibit and accumulate exorbitant profits at the expense of those who are going through serious difficulties. In addition, public services such as health and education follow the path of divestment and dismantling in the good way of the Brussels booklet. The workers and the people do not need further propaganda statements. Instead, they call for urgent measures to deal with this situation, which necessarily involve raising wages and pensions, controlling and setting prices, reducing VAT on gas, electricity and telecommunications, and uncompromisingly defending the right to healthcare, housing and education.

Mr President, I invoke Rule 195 of the Rules of Procedure to report once again on the presence of rats and rats in our offices. It's the second time in a year that we've found rats and rats and their droppings in our offices. It is not only in ours, but in our floor there are also rats and rats and even in other floors, until the new floor of the Madariaga building, the presence of these animals has already been reported. We believe that it is a public health problem that cannot be solved by placing traps and therefore we call for appropriate measures, namely the deratisation of that building, which should have occurred in August and, regrettably, did not occur. We therefore call for appropriate measures. (Strong applause) (Exclamations of approval)

Madam President, every summer there is a resurgence of discussion about firefighters for their pivotal role in combating forest fires. In addition, they guarantee daily, among many other population support services, pre-hospital emergency services, rescue and rescue of victims of road accidents and the transport of non-emergency patients. We value the importance of the recent World Health Organization classification, which identifies occupational exposure as a firefighter or firefighter as potentially carcinogenic. We now need concrete measures aimed at their protection and health, promoting the improvement of their working conditions. However, the fight does not end there. The improvement of the working conditions of firefighters, their protection, also depends on the sufficient funding of their corporations and humanitarian associations of firefighters, a wide restructuring of the civil protection system in force in Portugal, a different and better management and planning of Community funds, among many other measures that we have been advocating and proposing. In order to carry out their mission safely and successfully, firefighters must be valued. And it is in this fight that today, as always, we are engaged.

Mr President, the promotion of books and reading is a fundamental axis of any policy aimed at building a cultural democracy. We advocate a real book and reading policy that covers the areas of book publishing, distribution and marketing, including support for small publishers and independent bookshops – which survive with extreme difficulty and many of them have even closed – and for booksellers and small booksellers who resist, despite difficulties, some of them related to prices that impede urban rents. a policy on fair remuneration of authors, translators and proofreaders; enhancing public libraries, school libraries and municipal libraries; the creation of literary events; The Defence of Languages. Promoting books and reading requires concrete policies on the part of the Member States that foster, from an early age, a taste for reading, including active reading and reading aloud. Access to books, reading and literacy cannot be a privilege for some. It has to be everyone's right.

Mr President, we are here not to stigmatise or criminalise women in prostitution, but to fight for their rights. We consider that prostitution is a form of violence and exploitation that particularly affects women and girls and that its legalisation is intended only to legitimise this extreme expression of exploitation, oppression and violence. The pimps become entrepreneurs, legal cover is given to their activity, the increase in human trafficking associated with it, money laundering related to other criminal trafficking. And women continue to be the target of violence, whims, exploitation. What some want to classify as sex work is not compatible with fundamental rights, such as the rights to dignity, health, social security and equality. We defend the opposite path: the adoption of policies committed to combating the causes that push women into prostitution and concrete measures that promote the autonomy and emancipation of women, the criminalisation of those who exploit this sordid business and the adequate protection of prostituted women. We are here to stress the importance of adopting exit programmes, so that women, who understand this, have the confidence and support of States to start a life project, free from violence and exploitation. We are here to say, once again, that the bodies of girls and women are not commodities. Prostitution is neither a choice nor an inevitability. It is violence, exploitation and a form of slavery that attacks the body and dignity of women, corresponding to a brutal violation of human rights. And we're here to fight it.

Madam President, we wish to recall that, despite Parliament's refusals to discuss the issue, the judicialisation and irregularities of the electoral process in Guatemala did not occur only after the elections. In fact, and among other things, there were several candidacies that were prevented from voting, already in the first round of the presidential elections, which took place on June 25, which shows the deep judicialization of a process that should be fundamentally political. The successive attempts to disqualify candidates, cancel the registration of political parties such as the Semilla Party, or prevent Bernardo Arévalo, the winner of the elections, from assuming the presidency, are an expression of undemocratic behavior that does not accept the result clearly stated at the polls by the Guatemalan people, in a country with deep social inequalities, marked by the promiscuity between political power and economic power, corruption and the consequences of decades of right-wing policies. From here we express our solidarity with the Guatemalan people and reaffirm our confidence that, with their struggle, it will be possible to build a sovereign Guatemala, free from external interference, democratic, justice and social progress.

Mr President, today we are debating the so-called New Agenda of the European Union for Latin America and the Caribbean which, as in previous years, Mr Borrell has dubbed 'rediscovery'. A strategy that, in our opinion, is fundamentally determined by the interests of the large economic groups of the countries that make up the European Union, which aim to exploit markets and resources, promote old and new economic dependencies and even, in the pretense of some, unequal relations disguised as neocolonial. Despite the almost triumphant speech on the results of the EU-CELAC Summit, we know that they fell short of the objectives that the EU was aiming for. A summit where, despite attempts to limit the expression of some of the representatives of the Latin American and Caribbean countries, despite attempts to condition the participation of some of the organisations from those countries, their voice was heard, including at the Peoples' Summit, a voice that demanded and defended mutually advantageous relations between the countries that are part of CELAC and the countries that are part of the European Union, based on respect for the sovereignty and independence of each country, on the right of each people to freely choose its path of development and social progress, rejecting external interference, sanctions, blockades, that is, rejecting relations that are not based on sovereign equality and rights.

Mr President, today exactly 50 years have passed since the fascist coup that overthrew the Chilean people's government, led by President Salvador Allende. At a time when some seek to whitewash fascism and its crimes and when deeply reactionary far-right and fascist forces are promoted, we must remember Chile's fascist military coup, Pinochet's cruel, violent and bloody dictatorship, the nefarious consequences of the brutal application of Chicago's neoliberal theses for the Chilean workers and people, but also the persistent and courageous resistance of the Communists and other Chilean democrats and progressives against the fascist dictatorship. Bearing in mind all the solidarity expressed in Portugal, particularly by the April Revolution during those dark years in Chile, in the 50 years of a crime that must not be forgotten, we remember its victims and reaffirm our solidarity with the workers and the Chilean people and our confidence in the construction of a sovereign, democratic style of justice and social progress.