Speeches

Mr President, María Isabel, Erika, Mónica, Zuita, Pamela, Amal, María de los Ángeles, María Pilar, Hazna, África, Consuelo, Alicia, Rocío, Nicoleta, María Teresa, Betty, Lucía, Jordina, Mari Cruz, Mari Carmen, Conchi, Flora... some of the 37 women murdered by their partners and ex-partners, by those who claimed to love them. And while, in the European Union, despite the efforts of this Parliament, ratification of the Istanbul Convention remains stalled, the Commission raises doubts about gender-based violence as a Eurocrime and there is controversy over the scope of the legislative proposal it intends to put forward. I only hope that the Commission will not give wings to the deniers and far-right governments boycotting us in the Council. These governments and their allies are those who protect the culture of rape, those who advance on the bodies of women in their particular "maid story", convinced that we are the property of men, states or churches. Thousands of women are waiting for our answer and we cannot leave them alone.

Mr President, ensuring quality and inclusive education and training requires a fair and well-funded education system that puts an end to sexism and classism. For example, to close the gender gap and break the glass ceilings in science and academia, research led by women or peer teams must be funded, gender prejudices and stereotypes must be eradicated, positive female role models must be fostered at all levels of education, equality plans must be made easier for research centres and universities, and old university hierarchies must be radically changed: The university is a place not only aged, but also masculinized and scientifically biased, in which, until recently, gender studies not only did not count, but discounted. In addition, education cannot depend on a system of micro-credentials that makes it difficult to obtain the qualifications that guarantee social advancement. We need more public investment and more involvement of schools, and, at work, of course, more co-responsibility of the business sector.

Madam President, with their struggle, Polish women have taught us a lesson that we should remember because the far right is obsessed with birth politics across Europe. For example, a few years ago the Spanish People's Party filed an appeal of unconstitutionality against the 2010 abortion law to attack women's freedom, end sex education and expand a regime of conscientious objection that is already abused by dozens of hospitals; As it has not yet been resolved, they now dream of returning to the restrictive legislation we had in 1985. Just this week, this House debated the rule of law in Poland. Well, the prohibition of abortion by a Constitutional Court appointed by the Government is completely outside this framework: abortion is a right, not just a health service, and where it is violated, the rule of law is violated, whether in Poland today or in Spain tomorrow; Therefore, those who want us at the service of the family, the homeland, the nation and religion will face us. (Applause)

Mr President, Mr Morawiecki, you have some confusion about the system of sources of Community law. The European Union, in fact, is not a state, but neither is it a book club or an ill-agreed marriage. Do you think that without the principle of primacy, without the obligation to apply EU law in full, you would have the right to veto other governments in the European Council? Or do you think you can subdue others or receive funds without fulfilling your obligations? Yours is a government free rider that pretends to go for free, a subversive and advantageous government with authoritarian tendencies. I am not surprised that he questions the founding values of this Community when they do not interest him, because he already questions his own for the same reasons when he chooses the judges of the Constitutional Court to follow his dictates, declares zones free of LGTBI ideology or violates the rights of women. Mr Morawiecki, you are harming your people with absurd megalomaniac fantasies, typical of the nineteenth century. The time of the superstates has passed and Poland needs European funds - I insist, European ones - to get out of the crisis.

Madam President, all farmers know that they have to invest more and more to become poorer: more pesticides, pesticides and fertilisers in increasingly eroded soil, without water or nutrients. Tomorrow we can start changing that. We can change the way we produce, distribute and consume to avoid the water and food crises we already suffer today. The change we all need must also be an opportunity for our farmers to improve their position in the food chain and enable them to grow and breed in a closer, more profitable and healthier way. They cannot be the pagans, all actors in the food chain have to respond. We need to improve the lives of those who feed us every day: increasing their income, avoiding the emptying of rural areas and limiting the oligopoly of large distribution chains. Like it or not, the food transition is no longer an alternative, but a fact, and what we have now is the opportunity to make necessity a virtue. Of course, all this also requires greater coherence in public policies, including the European Union's trade policy, preventing the technological futurism of digitalisation from becoming another burden. The debate on the Farm to Fork Strategy shows that food is political and that the discussion goes far beyond reducing emissions or avoiding nutrient losses; In fact, the report we are voting on tomorrow is an essential step in defending the human right to adequate food for all.

Madam President, when abortion is banned, as we are seeing in Texas - if a judge does not prevent it - the lives and physical and psychological health of women are put at risk, who have to resort to clandestine and unsafe abortions. Inequality and discrimination are encouraged, because it is women who give up and who face the greatest difficulties when they have children. They limit their autonomy to freely decide when and how many children to have. Their right to freedom of religion and conscience is violated, because many of the laws restricting abortion – we are seeing it here – are based exclusively on the doctrines of the faith. Those who might call themselves "pro some lives" claim to defend the right to life of the unborn, but their opposition to abortion has more to do with the sacredness of the conventional family, in which the father is the owner and the mother the property. The mother is a reproductive machine with no ability to decide on her own life in the face of unwanted pregnancies. The "pro some lives" also use demographic and racist arguments to assign us the role of full-time birth attendants, since, according to them, their own children are always better than those of migrants, so that women have to give birth to avoid the degeneration of the national progeny. Women's lives must be put at the service of their children, their race and their nation. As a feminist, I claim the essential role of women in sustaining life and caring for bonds, but not the bonds that religious fundamentalists want to impose on us, but those that we choose and accept freely, outside our wombs.

Mr President, a batterer is never, I insist, never a good father. It is therefore surprising that when women report violence against themselves or their children, exclusive custody is given to abusive parents. It is surprising that children who suffer violence are not heard and are assumed to be being manipulated by their mothers, despite having medical and psychosocial reports that prove otherwise. In Spain, between 2013 and 2021, 42 children were killed by their abusive parents for the sole purpose of sinking their mothers. Parental alienation syndrome is a disgusting farce. We need to ratify the Istanbul Convention and implement it; assume that gender-based violence is a Eurocrime; articulate a framework directive on this matter; obliging States to transpose and implement the Victims’ Rights Directive; improve cooperation in cross-border cases; encourage research and obtain funding, among other things, to combat the denialism of those who claim to defend the family. This is defending the family. Enough hypocrisy and false Christian morality.

Mr President, we already know that the pandemic has had devastating consequences. The question now is whether we are going to take advantage of the recovery to fight against the inequalities that have been accentuated during this year. If the answer is yes, we need more social justice with sufficient minimum wages, European unemployment insurance, the definitive suspension of the Stability Pact and social protection measures, such as the ERTE in Spain. More tax justice, ending tax havens and dumping between and within states, and supporting the 15% minimum corporate tax - something we've been saying for years. We also need fewer gender gaps in wages, pensions and care sharing; We hope that the future European care strategy will put an end to them. And finally, an ecological transition is necessary that truly changes the way we produce and consume with more energy and food sovereignty and that is not a business for the usual ones. All this is necessary, if the answer is yes. If the answer is no, then we'd better go home.

Mr President, a food system that leaves more than 800 million people hungry and economically homeless in the world and, at the same time, causes forms of malnutrition such as overweight is a diseased system. That the Farm to Fork Strategy takes up this diagnosis and calls for a transition to sustainable food systems based on environmental, social and public health objectives is all well and good, but it addresses three issues. First, food sovereignty is not compatible with mining furor. Either we produce food or we drill the earth. The right to food requires us to rethink the energy transition model based on critical minerals. Secondly, we have a predatory trade policy that underpins agribusiness, drives out small farmers and deepens our ecological footprint. A sustainable food system cannot be reduced to the European corralito, especially if we depend, as is the case, on imported food. And finally, it is useless to have a very demanding strategy with European producers if the imported products we consume do not meet the same requirements.

Mr President, gender-based violence is insufficiently and unevenly recognised and persecuted in the European Union. Many countries have not ratified the Istanbul Convention or are threatening to leave; most do not differentiate between domestic violence and gender-based violence, or do not even consider domestic violence as a crime; and the few who contemplate gender-based violence do not define it in the same way. Currently, Spain is the most advanced country in this regard, but if we look around us, the legislative disparity is such that: we lack sufficient and comparable data; we do not have legal tools to adequately protect, support and redress victims; we do not have sufficient resources, funding or professionals; And since there is no cooperation between states, the aggressors can roam freely in one EU country, while justice persecutes them in another. It is incomprehensible that crimes against women are considered less serious than crimes such as corruption or cybercrime, which are pursued in a more homogeneous, coordinated and resourced manner. For all this, gender-based violence has to be a "Eurocrime", due to its extreme gravity, its cross-border dimension and because it can only be ended if we have common criteria. We know that the road is long and that some parties, governments and lobbies Denialists will try to avoid it at all costs, but Thursday's vote is the first step toward achieving it.

Madam President, Commissioner, we hear about flexibility and optimisation, resources, technological development and new forms of employment, but reality is pulverising the advertising engineering of the platform economy, a model built for tax dumping and social dumping, that is, from the denial of labour rights and tax avoidance. That is why, first of all, we must recognize the presumption of employment of our workers in line with European jurisprudence: That, at this stage of the struggle, our struggle is not to expand our rights, but to recognize ourselves as workers, already tells us something. The large profits of these companies come out of the precariousness and temporality of their contracts, that is, from the exploitation of their workers. Secondly, the management of algorithms has to be transparent, because those algorithms today monitor, discriminate and violate individual and collective rights, but no one is accountable for them. And thirdly, with the platform economy, our tax and contribution revenues are shrinking. Either that is corrected or there will be no financial balance or social protection for anyone.

Madam President, to tackle ageing in Europe we need a care pact and strong public investment in social services, without losing sight of the gender perspective. Think of women, but not to undermine their reproductive autonomy and turn them into childbearing machines at the service of the motherland, but to give them a better old age than they have. Because our grandmothers, the great caretakers, live worse than their male namesake. They suffer from precariousness, unemployment and the wage gap when they are young and pensions when they are older. Many live alone and have more difficulty accessing health services, long-term care or decent housing. When we analyze the aging of the population, we have to think about the unequal distribution of care tasks and the labor penalization of motherhood, rather than the prohibition of the right to abortion or those familist policies that use the body of women of reproductive age to abandon them later to their fate. The key is to take care of them, of those who take care of us, but in all the moments of their lives.