Speeches

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, the European Commission has an ambition to reindustrialise Europe in order to produce what is needed and to implement the green transition. To achieve this, the institutions want to strengthen the competitiveness of European industry. But then I ask myself this simple question: How can we reindustrialise our continent without protectionism and without controlling the price of the goods most essential to industry, i.e. energy? How can we talk about competitiveness when electricity bills push our craftsmen, small businesses and SMEs to relocate every day? While the Commission only swears by the internal market, our direct competitors, led by the United States, take advantage of our inability to regulate energy prices to attract our industries hit by electricity prices to their soil. Where the EU talks about the market, our competitors plan and regulate. Where we sign free trade agreements, our competitors protect and subsidize their strategic productions. So yes, we need to put in place an industrial strategy in Europe, but for that, we need to move away from market logics to strategic production, starting with energy. This is about our sovereignty.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, the COPs follow one another, and the promises made during them are a bit like the good New Year’s resolutions, those made in the evening and betrayed the next day. Admittedly, the creation of a compensation fund for the countries of the South is good news. It must be said that this is the least, since the prosperity of the North has been based on the exploitation of the South and these countries are now suffering the dramatic consequences of climate change, which they have not caused. For its part, Europe wants to be a good student, but it does not clearly give itself the means to achieve its ambitions. It is enough to see the latest political choices that have been made in this Chamber, in particular the free trade agreements, which always favour the great move of the world. What about our management of the energy crisis? We are talking about a major issue, which affects both the climate and 44 million Europeans. While the energy market leads us directly to electricity shortages and soaring prices, the Commission systematically and blindly replies that the market needs to be trusted. We do not trust this market or its short-term vision driven by private interests and immediate profit. We need a long-term vision, where the public authorities identify the needs of the population and act to meet them. Colleagues, in order to finally succeed in the next steps, it will be necessary to say this clearly: market and ecological planning are incompatible. It is time to draw the right conclusions.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, this morning I heard on the radio that Enedis, the French electricity grid operator, is preparing for load shedding. In other words, we should be facing power cuts this winter because we do not have enough energy to meet demand. Thus, in the event of extreme cold, the heating of households and the power supply to businesses should be interrupted. It is also our public services, such as schools and health centres, that could be deprived of electricity. This is dramatic and the result of poor political choices. So yes, it is clear that a better connection between European electricity networks will make it possible to better deal with the energy crisis. This is the very principle of European solidarity that we need. However, there is still a need to have the capacity to power these networks, as the liberalisation of the energy sector has hampered the necessary investments in our power generation capacity. There is therefore an urgent need to exit the European energy market and regain control over our energy production and distribution in order to protect European households, communities and businesses from shortages and soaring prices. Madam President, only exiting this market will allow us to plan the energy sector in the long term to ensure security of supply, regulated tariffs and our full energy sovereignty.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, have you noticed the irony of our calendar? The COP, the UN conference that brings together world leaders to talk about the ecological crisis and the fight against global warming, will be held at the same time as the Qatar Football World Cup, held in the middle of the desert, in air-conditioned stadiums. Then, in the aftermath, we found nothing better than awarding the next Asian Winter Games to Saudi Arabia to organise 50-degree ice skating competitions in the shade. All this is not serious and particularly cynical, whereas in recent months we have been marked by climate disasters on an unprecedented scale, with a new record of fires in Europe and all over the world, floods that have wiped out the map of entire territories, as in Pakistan. Yes, the ecological crisis is here and it is the most vulnerable, always the same, who are the first victims. So, at the dawn of a twenty-seventh COP, one more, millions of people who are being hit hard by climate change have their eyes on us and we need to give them concrete answers, social and climate justice policy measures, not just resolutions and declarations of good intentions. Let's not miss this opportunity

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, there is chaos in Pakistan as a result of the terrible floods that have hit the country. More than 1,600 people have lost their lives, millions of homes have been destroyed, farmland has been devastated and hundreds of schools have been wiped off the map. At least 8 million people have been forced to leave everything behind to find the resources they need to survive elsewhere. In this context, the new €30 million humanitarian aid proposed by the EU to meet the vital needs of the Pakistani people is a good thing. We also welcome the fact that the European Civil Protection Mechanism has been mobilised to send teams to support relief operations. A mechanism that will also have to be strengthened in its human and financial resources in order to face the next crises and calls for help both in Europe and in the rest of the world. I will nevertheless conclude by recalling that solidarity, although irreplaceable for those who receive it, does not solve everything. It will be necessary to address the causes of these climate disasters, which are multiplying and intensifying, yesterday in Pakistan, tomorrow on our continent. They are undoubtedly the result of climate change, for which it is our collective responsibility to mitigate the effects, especially for the most vulnerable.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, let us not go around the bush. Let us admit that the energy market is a failure and that opening up this sector to competition is one of the worst decisions taken and imposed by the European Union on the Member States. This market allows, in times of crisis, for some energy companies, to produce electricity at € 40 per megawatt to quietly resell it at € 1,000 per megawatt, for maximum profits of shareholders, to the detriment of millions of people who will no longer be able to pay heating bills and who are shamefully asked to put a rolled collar if they are cold in winter. In the face of such a scandal, the measures proposed by the Commission and the Council are not up to the task. What we need is to fully recover our ability to decide for ourselves in the energy field. We must leave the European energy market in favour of a public energy cluster whose action will be dictated solely by the general interest. A public management that protects the most precarious, that plans according to needs, that uses the revenues of production to deploy renewable energy, that defends our energy sovereignty in the face of foreign powers. Energy is a common good that must no longer be taken over by the private sector and that we must manage and protect.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, it is good to start this parliamentary campaign with the European forestry strategy. As you know, the summer was marked by numerous fires that ravaged thousands of hectares, reminding us of the extreme fragility of our ecosystems. The ecological crisis is here and it is our duty to mitigate its effects on fauna, flora and the most vulnerable. For our forestry strategy, this means better coordination of national policies to adapt to climate change. This means strengthening our public services, both those involved in the day-to-day management of our forests and those fighting the growing fires in Europe. It also involves a break with a purely mercantile vision of forests. The use of forests, whether for construction or energy production needs to be better regulated. We must protect biodiversity there, as must workers in the sector, who are particularly affected by accidents at work and occupational diseases. Therefore, while there are some good elements in this report, it is essential to increase its ambition.