Speeches

Mr President, Commissioner, there is no doubt that this has been the women's legislature. We have ratified the Istanbul Convention, we have called for gender-based violence as a Eurocrime, the reform of the Treaties to incorporate sexual and reproductive rights and gender-based violence or the inclusion of abortion in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. We have just approved the amendment of the Directive on preventing and combating trafficking in human beings and protecting its victims and tomorrow it will be the turn of the Directive on combating violence against women and domestic violence. We could not continue with insufficient data, without homogeneous criminal types or common tools to prevent, protect and support victims. Rape is outside the criminal part, not the preventive part and support for victims, because France and Germany have wanted to sell us as a legal problem what is nothing but an incoherence, an arbitrariness and a great lack of commitment to women and girls. But it's only a matter of time. We leave a more feminist Europe and that seed will end up bearing fruit. This directive will change the lives of millions of victims, curb gender denialism and prevent the regressions that some dream of. Today we are saving the lives and taking care of the health of all European women. And we can be proud. Thank you, ladies. Long live feminism.

Mr President, it has already been said here: When we talk about trafficking, most people often think of victims of sexual exploitation because they are the majority. Many of them are women and girls. One also thinks of those who are forced to commit criminal acts or begging because they are more visible. But let us not forget that this directive also pursues labour exploitation, which is sometimes practised in the very halls of houses or in one's own businesses. There are enslaved inmates who have been literally kidnapped, locked up without documentation and without receiving any salary with the idea that it was enough to give them bed and food as if they were pets. We are also talking about temporary workers who have suffered forced labour in the countryside and who, in many cases, have also been subjected to sexual violence. These are people whose irregular situation takes economic advantage and with whom it is marketed as if it were a dispossession. There are thousands of people subjected to a permanent circle of sexual or labor violence, dehumanized and reified, turned into a safe and enduring commodity. In short, it is clear that selfishness and greed feed cruelty, predatory and slave culture. And that doesn't stop with just one law, however comprehensive it may be. A strong legislative architecture must be put in place. That is why it is so important that this directive is considered in connection with the Anti-Violence Directive, the Istanbul Convention or ILO Convention 190, for example, which we have also worked on in recent years. Although it is sometimes difficult, we must continue to believe in humanity in order to save it. And I am confident that tomorrow we will take a step in the right direction. There would be no better brooch to end this legislature. The world could be a little better from tomorrow. Thank you again, Commissioner. Thank you, Malin. Thanks to all the shadow speakers. I really hope tomorrow it starts all over again.

Madam President, it has been 12 years since the Directive on preventing and combating trafficking in human beings was adopted, and it had to be reformed because trafficking was becoming increasingly sophisticated and our means of combating it were increasingly rudimentary, ineffective in detecting and prosecuting barbarism, identifying victims, protecting them, supporting them and repairing them. We haven't even managed to decrease demand. So the Commission decided to make us a proposal that we – I believe – have improved with boldness and ambition. We gained the support of a large majority of the two committees involved and have been guided by this strong mandate. The proof is that the text that we are going to vote on in this plenary session bears its stamp and rubric. To the forced marriage and illegal adoption that the Commission incorporated as forms of trafficking, we have managed to add surrogacy when the requirements of the criminal type of trafficking are met. We will not deny that this required a pedagogical effort, but this form of reproductive exploitation is going to be pursued in Europe. In Spain, a couple raped an extremely vulnerable migrant to get pregnant in exchange for EUR 20 000 because artificial insemination was more expensive. The prosecution understood it to be a case of trafficking, but had difficulty fitting the conduct into the surrogacy. You paid for raping and stealing a baby. Trafficking is torture and torture is not only the property of States. Parliament has also incorporated the online dimension: misleading offers, ignorance, coercion, economic needs, etc., which now become a digital business that must be eradicated. And the non-consensual dissemination of images, videos or similar material of a sexual nature will aggravate the penalties. The Council opposed mandatory sanctions for legal persons benefiting from trafficking, but thanks to the work of this Parliament its exclusion from tendering procedures, grants, concessions and licences was strengthened. And the permits and authorizations are over. Take note of the clubs of alterne, the brothels in which the legality is not complied with. There are them everywhere, and many of them are black holes in which sexual services are not distinguished from others, or who provides them, or under what conditions. We know that there are people who are not there because they want to. And do not forget that – according to this Directive – if the sexual services of those persons are requested knowing that they are victims of trafficking, a crime is being committed. It is something that must be kept in mind, for example, if you are in front of a girl. Parliament also expanded the principle of non-prosecution and non-punishment of victims for their involvement in criminal activities by incorporating other illegal activities. If you are paid EUR 4 000 for transporting drugs, you are a victim of trafficking, but if you are forced to prostitute yourself on the street, you are also a victim of trafficking. You can not suffer a penalty of 30,000 euros that, in addition, increases the debt you have with your pimp, as happens in Spain with the gag law. If there is something serious in penal law is to confuse victims and perpetrators, lose sight of the fact that the perpetrator is the one who must pay for what he does and the victim must be compensated for what he suffers. This Directive proposes that assistance and support to victims should always be specialised and offered with a gender, child, disability and need-centred approach. And, if there is intersectional discrimination, it requires redoubled efforts. But it is clear that we are not left over from training and sensitivity. The impunity enjoyed by pimps and traffickers also has to do with the way we have normalized them, through ignorance or bad faith, and with xenophobia and racism. That is why the treatment of those in need of international protection had to be changed. Borders are a limbo if we talk about human rights, a niche to hunt people merchandise and a real business of death. Little can be done against trafficking if the right to asylum and refuge is not respected. Institutions have been too absent for too long. That is why we have created the National Anti-Trafficking Coordinator and independent bodies can be established to monitor the implementation and impact of this Directive. National plans will be mandatory, and no more knowing. There will be statistics to assess whether the fight against trafficking is working or not, so I think, dear Malin, that we have done a good job that we can be proud of. And to our dear shadow speakers, thank you very much.

Mr President, as far as the right to abortion is concerned, the European Union has an outstanding debt to women. Because those who shield themselves in state competences in health are still tolerated to hinder access to legal and safe abortion, delay its exercise or promote witch hunts; to those who, in their fervent defense of the life of the unborn, support practices that constitute torture and inhuman and degrading treatment. And we already know that behind that defense what really hides is the sacredness of the conventional family, where dad is the owner and mom the property. No more half-measures. The right to abortion must be incorporated into the Charter of Fundamental Rights as an autonomous right linked to life and dignity. And states have to constitutionalize it. There is the notice to sailors of the European Court of Human Rights with the anti-abortion policies of Poland. For Izabela, for Dorota, for Justyna, for Andrea, for Antonia. The ones they're gone for. For them, for us and for those who will come.

–Mr President, Commissioner, despite whoever you are, for the last four years we have seen that there is life beyond neoliberal dogmas. Faced with austerity and its severe social consequences, the suspension of the Stability and Growth Pact offered oxygen to our governments in order to cushion the consequences of successive crises. And yet today we see that, despite the fact that exceptionalism is becoming more and more time-consuming and that investment needs are multiplying, the European Union has decided to return to its usual role. The Stability and Growth Pact has returned and they offer us a new economic framework of governance that is nothing more than the same dog with a different collar. We of course support reforming the Semester so that it integrates the principles of the social pillar and assesses the risks to social convergence. But precisely for that reason, we insist that, without a radical transformation of the rules of economic governance, that mechanism will remain the stick with which to discipline our societies and tension our democracies. It is clear that we do not learn from our mistakes.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen of the People's Party, I am afraid that you have chosen a bad day for this debate, although for you none would have been good: cases Bárcenas, Gürtel, Punica, Palma Arena, Lezo, Erial, Kitchen, Taula, Tandem... I'm running out of time. Today they have in Madrid Mrs. Diaz Ayuso, who is a real prodigy: her father, her mother, her brother and now her boyfriend have been involved in irregularities related to the Administration that she herself presides over. Are you going to question it? It is clear that the pandemic was a disaster for all and a loot for a few. But why does the People's Party reject a congressional commission that investigates all cases? And why bring them to a Parliament from which nothing can be done? Look at: corrupt outside. Neither one nor the other, nor seats to protect themselves, nor judges in their service, nor pardons for cronies. Independent bodies and mechanisms to monitor public procurement and the use of European funds. Investigation, judgments and demanding laws that are applied forcefully. And do yourself a favor: Get rid of your gulfs, your sausages and your looters.

Mr President, Commissioner, in Europe the majority of those who suffer violence and harassment at work are women. They work in the service sector or informal sectors, have a precarious contract, are migrants, apply for a job or are apprentices. That is, they are vulnerable because of sex, social class or origin. If you are a woman, you have to add sexual abuse to labor abuse. If, in addition, you are poor and a migrant, working can be an ordeal. 55% of women in the European Union have been sexually harassed and in 32% of those cases the harasser was their boss, a colleague or a client. Although there is not only abuse of power. Harassment also occurs in horizontal relationships, even in those that we consider private or intimate. That is why Convention No 190 is so ambitious. It protects those who work, but also those who seek work or have been laid off in the public, private, informal, rural or urban sectors. It extends harassment to all relationships, out-of-office meetings, work trips, job training courses or digital communications and enters the very living room of our homes. Today we have to thank the thousands of women, actresses, athletes, domestic workers, agricultural workers or hotel workers who, since 2017, have occupied the public space on a planetary scale to shout "it's over". In Spain, "it's over" in women's football - thank you, dear Jenni Hermoso - and now it's up to the cinema. Bosses, comrades, colleagues, deputies... we are not your maids and we are no longer afraid of you. Today in Europe, too, "it's over".

Mr President, I am afraid that the agreements with Chile are flawed in the same way as the other free trade agreements that we know of: socialization of losses and privatization of profits both there and here. On both sides of the ocean, the losers and winners are the usual ones because they prioritize extractivist investments and trade flows that violate social and environmental rights in one place and sink prices in the other. The farmers are telling us. With these agreements, the oligopolies win above all, at the expense of small and medium producers, and speculative practices are stimulated. There has been a lot of talk with Chile about mirror clauses and sustainability chapters, but these chapters are not binding and are postponed in perpetuity. If identical rules on imports are not guaranteed, there will still be dumping, labour and environmental exploitation and cheap consumption based on poverty and disadvantages suffered by others. We are going to vote against these agreements because I know that they have been worked on but, even modernized, I fear that they will continue to make the poor poorer and the rich richer.

Mr President, with the geographical indications system, our farmers can bet on quality products and get a fairer price for them, improving their position in the value chain. It is not that this solves all the demands of the field, but, in the face of the idea of agriculture as a simple extractive industry, it favors family and social agriculture and offers it tools to resist the plunder of investment funds. The reform we are adopting today also strengthens the role of producer groups, improves protection mechanisms and ensures that wine remains an agricultural policy under the CAP. In Spain, thanks to the designations of origin, there are small wineries rooted in the territory that generate employment, adapt to the environment and preserve it. Geographical indications are not those intellectual property rights with which everyone appropriates what they produce: because they not only value the product, but also the way it is produced, which due to its often traditional and situated character, links with the collective knowledge of rural areas. The survival of the countryside also depends on the wisdom of those who live and work it. It is true that, in this reform, the sustainability measures are not those set out in the Farm to Fork Strategy, because some are still committed to confronting the countryside with the conservation of soil, water, nutrients and biodiversity. But despite that, we have taken a step forward in favour of farmers. Let us hope that others will be able to do tomorrow what we have not been able to achieve today.

Mr President, we are before the last Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) of our mandate and the issue cannot be more appropriate considering the current times: pay gap, pension gap, care gap; male violence; privatisation of the most basic services; climate change; energy crisis; intersectional discrimination; barriers to accessing sexual and reproductive rights; Free trade agreements with dire consequences for the lives of millions of women and girls and so on. The causes and consequences of the feminization of poverty are more than clear and, needless to say, they are not resolved with specific and decontextualized measures. We are in the usual: we don't need to invent the wheel; what is needed is political will to, among other things, advance the European Social Pillar with feminist measures; have European Union budgets that seriously incorporate the gender perspective; prioritise investments in social infrastructure and strengthen public services; advancing the care strategy; have an ambitious feminist foreign policy that has nothing to do with the politics of war or border closure; implement the Pay Transparency and Conciliation Directive and – if all goes well – in the coming weeks the directive on trafficking and gender-based violence. And in this agenda those who are left over are the deniers of gender violence and climate change, who do not want to understand the reasons why women are poorer. Hopefully this CSW will open new horizons of freedom and equality for women and girls around the world.

Mr President, Spain is the second European country with the highest water stress. 75% of our territory is threatened with desertification and 44% of our aquifers degraded by overexploitation or pollution. We have suffered a long-lasting drought since December 2022. Today Catalonia is going through the worst drought ever recorded after forty months in a row with hardly any rain and regions such as Andalusia or Extremadura – which is my home – are on a similar path. We need to take measures that go beyond efficiency, savings and new infrastructure. And, above all, we cannot ask people to consume less water and farmers to lose their crops while water is privatized, irrigation and intensive crops proliferate, illegal wells are allowed and lithium mines are bet on that desertify the territory. We want a European strategy that changes the production model and guarantees the human right to water. Anyway, give it a little desire, coherence and common sense, because people are tired of inflating the pockets of those who leave us without resources. No wonder many farmers today are blocking the streets with their tractors.

Mr President, ten years after the adoption of the directive on public procurement, we know that almost half of the tendering procedures in the European Union are still resolved exclusively on the basis of price. When sustainability criteria are introduced, their content is limited by the interpretation of free competition and, in addition, since they have to be linked to the subject matter of the contract, general clauses on human rights, workers' rights or women's rights are excluded. Wow, it's easy to boycott the directive through the back door, ignoring that social dumping is also a form of unfair competition. We are talking about an instrument that represents almost 15% of European GDP, so it is high time to assume the need for its reform, Commissioner, and to recognize that, without the imposition of obligations, nothing will change and that many other objectives of that social Europe that is being hailed so haphazardly - such as the coverage rate of collective bargaining, for example - are nothing more than empty slogans if we do not have instruments that make them effective.

Madam President, welcome, Mr President Sánchez, the expectations for this Presidency were enormous and it has been lived as an opportunity for social progress, despite the fact that the "many Spanish" right wings of this House have tried to boycott it. Today we take stock and Europe is more social, green and feminist than it was. Social dialogue, democracy at work, occupational safety and health, care, the Nature Restoration Act or green collective bargaining have been promoted. Of course you can always go further. We take ILO Convention 190, but we could weaken the Directive on combating violence against women if we do not incorporate the "yes is yes" principle. The emphasis on strategic autonomies has become overly dependent on questionable trade agreements such as Mercosur's, and the urgency to advance the Pact on Migration may jeopardise the right to asylum. The reform of the electricity market that drives renewables has been agreed, but we run serious risks of replacing coal mines with lithium mines or fertile fields with solar megaparks. All in all, we can be proud. In Spain and Europe, the right wing is only fought with social policies. Noise does not improve anyone's life.

Mr President, we want to live better, with safety and health at work, but also with time to take care of, reconcile and gain autonomy. Technological transformations cannot serve to camouflage new forms of exploitation: marathon schedules, houses turned into factories, continuous pressure, stress, anxiety, abandonment, loneliness. The Commission's commitment is welcome, but it must present as soon as possible a proposal for a directive on teleworking and the right to disconnect in order to overcome the blockade that has been imposed on us by a narrow-minded employer; a proposal recognising the voluntary and reversible nature of teleworking and ensuring equal working conditions, prevention of mental health risks and protection of the right to privacy. And, with all the more reason and speed, it should facilitate the implementation of the sectoral agreement on public administrations, which has been frozen for a year, by adopting the corresponding legislative initiatives. For work to be not alienating, but a source of emancipation, less work must be done. We need time to be free, not to remain servants and slaves to a few. And technology has to help us achieve this, no matter how much the employer wants to continue abounding in the labor schemes of the nineteenth century.

Mr President, today we are celebrating the last International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women of this mandate and I have mixed feelings. We in the Committee on Women's Rights have made a tremendous effort to punish abusers and protect victims, but, despite our insistence, we have not succeeded, for example, in transposing gender-based violence as a Eurocrime and that has, in part, hampered the directive on combating violence against women that we have in our hands, a directive that, even with its limitations, we have to take forward. How can it be that we have States that are still reluctant to incorporate rape as a criminal offence? We cannot afford a directive that is below the standards of the Istanbul Convention. If there is sex without consent, there is rape. What part hasn't been understood? Yes, yes, yes. It's simple. We are also amending the Directive on preventing and combating trafficking because we know that traffickers are hardly punished and victims are not compensated. And it turns out that resistances persist. Women have to deal daily with the misogyny and denialism of the far right, its allies and its many friends. And it is a terrible sign that they are increasingly present in the institutions. In Spain, Vox has ordered its councilors to rescind the institutional acts by 25-N. How can such a pedagogy of cruelty and psychopathy be allowed? It terrifies that selective indifference in the face of murders. We know that our conquests are precarious, but they must know that we have already survived many setbacks and that we are the engine of history. Here are the feminists!

. – Mr President, third instalment of the parody that the People's Party has been representing in this House since the beginning of the legislature. It is entitled: Spain breaks down and the government is illegitimate, unless it's mine. She blushes, embarrasses and grieves, but no longer surprises. Ladies and gentlemen of the People's Party, retain this idea: Spain would be Poland if you ruled, but you don't. Control your frustrations and learn to lose. Amnesty is an extraordinary mechanism, but it is no stranger to our legal tradition. It is fully standardized in Europe and endorsed by its courts, and in Spain it has been used for more than a century. It fits our constitutional system and in our democracy it began with the 1977 amnesty, endorsed by the courts. Of course, you didn't like the Constitution, nor did you like that amnesty. They prefer tax amnesties or mass pardons without parliamentary control. Remember that, in a single Council of Ministers, Mr Aznar pardoned 1,400 people, more than he could now amnesty a law that would require very large majorities. By the way, you have pardoned abject crimes. This Spanish law is an instrument to retrace a path that should never have been traveled, necessary to guarantee coexistence. It does not attack the rule of law, but guarantees it against those who trivialize it and believe that they can use judges as they please. They have made the General Council of the Judiciary no longer worthy of its name. We are interested in dialogue and what interests you we have already seen these days: Locusts, hatred and polarization.

Mr President, Commissioner, there are two facts here that are clear and incontestable. One, the situation of refugee women from Ukraine is worrying in terms of their sexual and reproductive health and rights. Two, the European Union has room for manoeuvre to address many of the barriers these women are facing. The list of grievances is long: non-compliance with the right to receive medical care under the Temporary Protection Directive, delays in access to health care, poor care with direct consequences for their health and well-being, financial burdens, lack of access to information in languages comprehensible to them, institutional racism and intersectional discrimination. A whole race of obstacles to access contraception, prenatal care and abortion. It is intolerable that the only way out for these women is to return to the same place from which they have been fleeing, to continue with an unwanted pregnancy or to assume a forced motherhood. What is the use of our directives? Let's act at once and take ourselves seriously. And above all, let's stop messing with people's lives.

Mr President, Commissioner, spurred on by climate change, the European Union is facing a real water crisis, in the form of droughts and floods, but it also has a serious pollution problem, because untreated discharges affect flora, fauna and even human health. Some autonomous communities and local authorities in Spain are a good – bad – example of this. And the situation, in autonomous communities such as Andalusia or Extremadura, illustrates how the inadequacy of purification infrastructure enables serious environmental attacks on water bodies. This can also be an example of a phenomenon such as the eutrophication of the Mar Menor, caused by the combination of intensive agricultural processes with turistification and uncontrolled urbanism, and that only the citizen response is managing to face thanks to the mobilization of Murcia. The new directive therefore poses major challenges for treatment plants, in terms of adaptation to infrastructure, and this needs to be financed. I would therefore like to stress the need not to dilute the extended producer responsibility system provided for in the Commission's initial proposal. In short, the financing needed to meet the new obligations lies mainly with companies, where most of the macro- and micro-pollutants originate, and not with the price of water. Because the road to a circular economy must also be socially responsible.

Madam President, Commissioner, in Europe we are experiencing a widespread housing crisis that not only affects the most vulnerable sectors. Exorbitant prices – the result of property speculation and inflation – combined with ridiculous wages leave people literally out in the open. We must increase investment in public housing and non-speculative cooperatives, limit tourist rentals, change the tax policy from tax breaks to foreign investment. But above all, we must bet on a limitation of the price of rentals. In Spain, this has not been done – despite our efforts – and 39% of tenants and almost 50% of those under 35 spend 40% or more of their income on housing payments. And something similar happens in Greece or Portugal. The contrast with countries where the rental market has been regulated is evident. In Finland the percentage stands at just over 15%; in Austria, 16 %; in Germany, 13%. No one should spend more than 15% of their income on shelter. Access to housing is a necessity and a right. We have to stop marketing with life. We are not here to guarantee the unreasonable benefits of a few.

Mr President, a sexual relationship cannot be the subject of an employment contract, even if there is consent, because that contract is always a violation of sexual freedom. And in the same way that no one can freely give himself in slavery, he cannot appeal to his own sexual freedom to leave it in the hands of a third party. Those who defend that prostitution is a job, precarious and feminized, like so many others, also forget that it is not the same to work with your body, even in conditions of exploitation, that your body is the workplace. A woman in prostitution cannot be a salaried worker because she herself is the means of production. It's not that my body is mine, it's that my body is me, some feminists said. And identity is inalienable, it cannot be made a product from which to profit. Prostitution is not only a radically capitalist institution, but it would not exist if patriarchy did not exist, because the only thing that makes sense of it is the masculine fantasy of domination. Normalizing it means institutionalizing the sexual privileges enjoyed by men and consolidating the structural subordination of women. Prostitution is a school of egolatry, narcissism and psychopathy in which it is taught that women are simple biological entities to dispose of at will and in which the pedagogy of cruelty is practiced. Their normalization empowers men and exacerbates women's vulnerability. For them, it is not and will never be a source of rights or citizenship. That is why, as a feminist, I will vote in favour of this report.

Mr President, we are stunned by a new wave of repression one year after the assassination of Mahsa Amini. His family members have also failed to fulfil their right to truth, justice and reparation. The situation in the country is very serious: repression of protests, arrests, arbitrary imprisonment, sexual violence, torture, enforced disappearances. The violence and discrimination suffered by women is bleak. Punishment for being unveiled includes imprisonment and lashes. The use of facial recognition technologies to identify and detain women and girls who violate discriminatory laws has been denounced and hundreds of companies have been closed precisely for refusing to apply them. Women have no right to education and many girls have been poisoned in schools. They also cannot access banking services or public transport. The bill to support the family by promoting the culture of chastity and hijab was the latest nonsense. A barbarity that the UN has described as a form of apartheid gender. Faced with the cry "woman, life and freedom" of thousands of women who rebelled, the Iranian regime has established a regime of terror. However, Amini's memory and the Iranian revolt is still alive. They'll win. We'll win.

Madam President, according to the ILO, if the temperature were to increase by one and a half degrees, Spain would lose about 7,700 jobs every year and in some precarious sectors with high accidents, such as construction or agriculture, for example, there would no longer be talk of losing one's job, but of losing one's life and health due to heat, thermal stress and other risks associated with climate change. It is clear that, in the area of occupational safety and health, simple guidelines are not enough, we need binding rules, including instruments such as ILO Convention 184. In Spain, thanks to the Ministry of Labour, the working day has to be adapted to weather conditions when they are extreme. Prevention has been chosen over an occupational risk assessment that considers both the characteristics of the work and the worker. Now we want to implement a national strategy that includes measures of this type, because any work that does not adapt to climate change will be precarious work and because, if we do not seriously bet on that adaptation, the ecofascist exits that we have seen in Texas, where workers can not stop working or drinking water, will be imposed.

Madam President, irrigation in Spain already accounts for more than 85% of total water consumption and the area irrigated has continued to increase in recent years. Greater efficiency in irrigation has not contributed to reducing its consumption, but to increasing it, more and more in a world in which there is less and less. This is what happens when water is conceived only as a factor of production, which feeds its irresponsible and environmentally unsustainable management. Desertification and land degradation are current and growing threats in the European Union and are consequences, in large part, of this distorted and short-sighted view. Three quarters of my country is at risk of desertification, a process that has accelerated over the past twenty years and is influenced by droughts, high temperatures, fires, over-exploitation of groundwater, intensive irrigated agriculture or irresponsible urban development. Now we are seeing it in Doñana, where a legislative proposal of the Popular Party threatens to desiccate everything, by declaring a waterless area irrigable to favor a few. A fantastic proposal that will leave the area and its products without a future. For these reasons, it is vital that the European Union has a clear idea of what bad water policy means and that appropriate measures are taken. Consistent measures, as required by the Court of Auditors, which also take into account the medium and long term. It is not just a matter of revising our water policy with the Framework Directive or the Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive, but we need to move along the path of the Green Deal that some want to dismantle. The misconception that farmers do not benefit from environmental practices continues to spread, but in cereal areas, for example, the Sun has also burned the Earth due to excess chemistry and the absence of fauna and flora has broken the cycle that guaranteed water reserves. It is true that in Spain some things have been done well, but we still have to end the overexploitation of our aquifers, their pollution by excess nitrates, soil degradation or the loss of biodiversity. And let's not deceive the farmers, because if we do not do all this we will be condemning them to the desert, more in the south than in the north, of course, but we will be generating poverty, displacement and despair. If we can't look any further, that's what awaits us.

Madam President, children a la carte. Surrogate pregnancy is a eugenic practice that consists of dividing the role of the mother into three – adoptive, pregnant and donor – and searching for eggs with a certain genetic load and breasts of women with a specific personality. In some countries, the pregnant woman may even be forced to abort or not abort, in certain cases, to feed in this or that way, or to exercise or not, because what they call "gestation service" must be developed with all the guarantees so that the resulting product is not defective. To this are added the conditions of economic inequality in which these transactions usually occur, aggravated by the incorporation of an endless number of intermediaries. Finally, it is curious that surrogacy often appeals to the transgression of the traditional family, when that transgression ends up resulting in a family nucleus also conventional, only articulated from the exclusive biogenetic link of a father, without a mother. Let us not deceive ourselves, surrogacy does not endow women with agency, rather it makes them invisible and exploits them, especially if they are vulnerable.

Mr President, beyond good words, any recommendation adopted by the Council must serve to promote effective social dialogue. And that is only achieved by including guarantee mechanisms, infringement procedures, condemnation of anti-union conduct and promotion of incentives in public procurement. Or promoting sectoral bargaining as a priority bargaining area for workers. It must be recognized that, at the time, it was a mistake to bet on lower wages and labor costs. An error that was suffered in Spain with the labor reform of the Popular Party, encouraged by the previous Commission. Luckily, today we know that things can be different thanks to the numerous social agreements that have been implemented in the framework of the ERTE, platform work or the increase in the minimum wage. And this is the lesson we cannot forget. The role of social dialogue and collective bargaining is constitutionalised in the Treaties. But, without political will and ambition in the Council Recommendation, everything will be paperless. We have already seen this in the Laval judgment or in the recent interpretation of Article 155 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. So, we are alerted.