Speeches

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner, at this historic moment, the pro-European forces of the European Parliament are pursuing a vision of what the social dimension of this new Europe, destined for renewal and rebirth, should be. We are facing major challenges related to the evolution of work, new professions, support for employment and social policies, even the European minimum wage. And so I believe that we must also respond to these 13 million frontier workers, mobile workers, seasonal workers, posted workers, who struggle every day to be granted their rights. There are rules, but there are no tools to implement them. The European social security number is therefore essential to link national systems and allow the authorities to carry out checks, prevent abuses and punish exploiters, but at the same time I believe that it is an extraordinary tool to promote the geographical mobility of workers and make the European labour market more dynamic. As 5 Star Movement we strongly support this resolution and call on the Commission to present a legislative proposal by 2022, so we can restore dignity to these workers and abolish unfair competition, so that there is no more room for those who take advantage of the weakest.

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, two years ago, the 5 Star Movement's vote in favour of the von der Leyen Presidency, which, among other things, saved the Union from a possible institutional vacuum, was based on two political commitments: a new strategy towards 2050, based on the green transition and social justice, and a review of governance to put an end to the blind austerity that had frustrated every attempt at the development and well-being of citizens. No ambitious objective can be achieved without an amendment to the Stability and Growth Pact, which puts social and environmental indicators on an equal footing with economic indicators. I am particularly interested in two of our proposals that have been accepted: the participation of labour ministers in the European Semester, as well as economic ministers, and the impact assessment on our European policies, on workers, on fragile actors, on small and medium-sized enterprises and also on very small ones, which are the backbone of our economy. But this is not enough: The paradigm shift will have to take place before the deactivation of the safeguard clause in order to avoid new economic and social imbalances.

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, with this report, which contains dozens of amendments tabled by the Five Star Movement, Parliament is in fact calling for a change to the Farm to Fork. We need cumulative impact assessments if we are to set binding targets for farmers and safeguard that continuity of food supply, corporate sustainability and employment levels. The ambitious targets on pesticides, fertilisers, biodiversity and organic farming can only be achieved if the baseline It is the same for everyone, considering also what farmers have already done in the most virtuous countries, as in Italy. Nutritional information must be based on independent scientific data, on the quantity of product consumed and on the real ability of consumers to understand, through labelling that must indicate the country of origin of each individual ingredient, including the synthetic one. The biggest challenge we have is precisely our ability to export our sustainability model, through a review of the import regimes of products from third countries, ensuring reciprocity of environmental, social and health standards to protect the identity and excellence of our European agricultural model.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, the resolution we are about to vote on has a historic significance, because Parliament takes a clear stand in defence of platform workers, victims of exploitation and precariousness based on legal indeterminacy, indecent wages, opaque and pervasive algorithms. For this reason, a European directive is essential that unequivocally states that platform workers are employees, reversing the burden of proof on companies, demanding transparency and accessibility on algorithms and eliminating any reference to a "third status" that could open the way to new forms of tax and wage dumping. As the Five Star Movement, we are pleased to have made a decisive contribution to the final version of this resolution, thanks to our amendments which have all been included in the compromises. The new directive will be the architrave, together with those on the right to disconnect and minimum wage, on which to build a socially fair recovery, ensuring protections in step with the transformations of the labour market to achieve the new European social model.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Vice-President Šefčovič, the historic moment we are living through gives us unemployment and inequalities, to the point that one in four European citizens today is poor or at risk of social exclusion. The time has come to rewrite together a new social model, a society based on equity, opportunity and well-being. As a 5 Star Movement, we believe that the Commission's programme for next year must have the courage to redesign a new political governance, which revises the constraints of the Stability and Growth Pact by introducing the decoupling of green and social investments. The European Semester will also need to be reformed by setting environmental and social objectives on a par with macroeconomic ones. This path will have to be completed urgently before the deactivation of the safeguard clause, to avoid an institutional and financial short circuit that would jeopardise the resilience of our own democracies. Mr Vice-President, Next Generation EU is a great hope for citizens for the future and for a new Europe based on unity and solidarity. We cannot disappoint them right now, let us turn this wish into reality.