Debate contributions by Nikolas FARANTOURIS

Madam President, colleagues and friends, a proxy vote for mothers is a critical step forward. We strongly and firmly support this, and we will vote enthusiastically for this. However, we believe that fathers on parental leave also deserve the attention of our House, and this is exactly what has been echoed in our amendments. We all invite you to vote for this and support this.

Mr President, the vast majority of the governments of our Member States are proving to be inferior to the circumstances. It has decided in the Council on a budget that is slashed, underweight and not commensurate with the real needs of our European family. We are trying here to find funds and increase spending on agricultural policy, on our young people, on demographics, on regional cohesion, on social cohesion, on housing. I tabled an amendment to support the housing of young people and I urge you all to vote in favour of it. This budget does not satisfy us and we are asking for more.

Madam President, a year ago we received two reports: the Letta report and the Draghi report. And, regardless of political positions and party origins, we have all agreed that the European Union faces social, economic and geopolitical existential challenges. A year later, the European Commission, which supposedly adopted around 300 recommendations from these reports, has advanced about 10 percent, and Draghi himself considers that the European Union is preparing to collapse from wasteful, untargeted arms spending. Attention, be careful! In our effort to shield the outside, do not let the inside of the European Union, which we have been trying to build for 70 years, collapse like a paper tower!

Mr President, security is not just about guns. Security is also the resilience of networks and infrastructure, prevention, the possibility of rapid compensation and restoration. In the next Multiannual Financial Framework tabled by the European Commission, resources for these things are scarce, poor. That is why I am asking today, here in plenary, for an escape clause from the strict fiscal rules, so that our countries, the countries of the South, Greece, Cyprus, Portugal and the other countries affected by natural disasters and fires this summer, can invest in human resources, firefighters, means, invest in resilience, innovation, invest in prevention and rehabilitation. Escape clause now for internal security.

Mr President, I warned about what happened, about the extremism that is sweeping Syria. With my question from January. In a letter to the High Representative in February. My personal visit to Damascus and Syria in the days of the great massacres in March, 7-9 March. With a new question to the Commission in April. And in the end, we have victims. Orthodox Christians who went to church on Sunday. How can sanctions be lifted without a basic timetable for democratic elections? How can Syria's ethnic and religious communities with over a thousand years of presence there not be represented? I call on you to vote in favour of the resolution and I also call on you finally to act.

Madam President, colleagues and friends, I wish to thank you all and, in particular, my fellow co-rapporteur Robert from S&D and shadow rapporteurs from different groups for your constructive cooperation throughout this process. We ended up to a balanced but also ambitious report, and I think this is a unique opportunity for our House and for our Union to show people out there that we can lead negotiations and global efforts towards a more sustainable society, a more sustainable economy. And at the end of the day, a more sustainable planet for next generations. Let's all vote for it!

Madam President, dear Prime Minister of Denmark. We welcome you to the European Parliament and, together with you, welcome the Danish Presidency. You govern a country, which in recent decades has made significant efforts for social cohesion, inclusion, reducing inequalities and, ultimately, prosperity. I urge you not to let these gains go to waste and with your presidency to emphasise not only competitiveness, but also the climate crisis, but also social cohesion. I want you to focus on housing and health. I want European citizens to know that Europe, our common family, is taking care of the important problems that concern all of us, and I urge you to lead this effort and not to lag behind.

Madam President, the Recovery and Resilience Facility is the first major serious attempt at joint lending in the European Union. It is the first major serious joint effort to tackle our common problems, and must be a safe guide for our next steps on this continent – in this family. It's got to work. And it must succeed by making the most of the last euro of European citizens. Our committee – the Committee on Budgets – passed by a very large majority our proposal for an 18-month extension of Recovery and Resilience Facility disbursements. It is fair, it is appropriate and it must be done in order to carry out those projects that have an elementary degree of maturity and to achieve this tool that represents us all. That is why I also call on the plenary to vote for the extension of this mechanism by a very large majority in favour of all groups. And I ask the Commission to take seriously the will of the 500 million European citizens who are asking for this money to go ahead and be disbursed on time – possibly with an extension.

Madam President, I come from a Mediterranean country and a nation where the sea is the reason for its existence. But isn't that the case for the whole of Europe, ladies and gentlemen? The high seas spawned our democracy, spawned prosperity, spawned clemency, spawned solidarity, understanding, spawned global culture – and we must protect them. That is why I call – in this marine pact – for mandatory requirements, Commissioner. Mandatory nature of environmental and biodiversity protection. Accelerate processes, including before 2027, and involve local communities with support tools, because there is a big problem – especially in the South – from overheating and pollution. I'm calling you into action now.

Madam President, the health of 500 million European citizens and the safety of their food is a very important thing to decide against the decisions and will of the representatives of these 500 million citizens of the European Union. This has been done systematically in recent years. The European Parliament condemns the expansion of genetically modified products and the latest fashion of producing proteins from larvae and insects in our diet, and the European Commission is deaf. I call for vigilance. The only democratic legitimacy that exists for such decisions concerning the food chain is within this house, in the European Parliament, and I would ask you to honour it.

Mr President, I call for the release of the Swedish journalist Joakim Medin, who is currently on trial in Turkey for allegedly insulting President Erdoğan, and I call for the condemnation of President Erdoğan's provocative visit to the occupied part of Cyprus, which has been under illegal Turkish occupation for 50 years. Turkey is a revisionist force, which has invaded Cyprus, has invaded Syria, is burdened with genocides of Armenians and Pontians, and is currently discussing becoming a cornerstone of our European security and defence architecture. Is it ever possible, ladies and gentlemen? I therefore call for condemnation and I also call for vigilance on the part of the European institutions and for there to be no negligence.

Mr President, Commissioner, we welcome you to our Parliament. We also welcome a pact for our seas and oceans, which will be legally binding, which will be ambitious, which will be mandatory and which will take into account ecosystems, but also the need to cooperate in a crucial area for the European Union and for the whole world. An important part of our seas is the Mediterranean. I call on you, Commissioner, to start building on the map of Seville, to start better shielding our marine parks and to start planning our mandatory and common future from here, from the Mediterranean. Because there are threats to ecosystems as well as issues related to maritime safety, biodiversity issues, issues related to third country relations. I invite you to work with me on this as well.

Madam President, I was in Syria and Damascus this weekend, and I saw closely the atrocities and atrocities committed by the new regime, either under its tolerance or under its coordination. I therefore call for an immediate deployment of a team from the European Union, either from the European Parliament or from the European Commission. We need immediate elections, respect for human rights, respect for the principle of representativeness of all religious and ethnic communities, and I find unacceptable the statement by the External Action Service, which equates the victims with the perpetrator. I think Syria is on the brink right now. I believe that the European Union must show reflexes and above all not leave hundreds of civilians to brutal treatment by the regime.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, we are discussing a common defence and a common security and defence policy. The European Commission is making proposals and we are here today discussing our common stance on defence policy issues. It seems to me that we are missing something crucial: whereas defence can only be an adjunct to a common foreign policy; that you decide to defend something and spend money, when you have decided what is at stake, to shield national sovereignty, national independence and every inch of territorial integrity of the 27 Member States. We cannot, therefore, without weighing up the next steps in a common foreign policy, for which I am in favour and believe in our common attitude and our common future on this continent, rush to spend money without having reached the objective. Thank you very much.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am following the debate. I regret that to a large extent we are coming to review things that we had agreed on both in the European Parliament and in the European Commission. I am glad, however, that voices are heard from various wings of the European Parliament and I will join my own voice so that a deregulation which, at least in my own eyes, seems a little pretentious, does not proceed. We say "yes" to simplifying procedures for entrepreneurship. We want entrepreneurship and competitiveness. We say "no" to pretentiousness. How else can one explain the fact that this famous simplification starts from sustainability? There are so many dozens, hundreds of procedures that could be simplified. Why start with sustainability, ladies and gentlemen? I think we should reject it and stay where we agreed.

Mr President, in the previous plenary we decided here on an upgraded Security and Infrastructure Committee of the European Parliament, Security and Defence. And today's debate from this morning shows that security issues in the European Union are not just about a frantic and obsessive arms and weapons race. They concern broader issues and possibly more important ones. Network and infrastructure security issues, digital security issues, resilience issues, issues related to basic infrastructure. A prerequisite for all this, then, is that we do not give the greatest weight of the debate to this obsessive arms debate, which even comes from abroad. But to focus on our networks and infrastructures and our innovation.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, for two months now we have been overly concerned with what the United States is doing or will do and, I think, less concerned with what the European Union should do. The European Union must remain the guardian of international legality. The European Union must remain the guardian of global health, environmental protection and biodiversity. The European Union must remain the guardian of prosperity and the reduction of social inequalities. And this can be done by revising the treaties, by a common foreign policy, by a common industrial policy, by increasing spending on social benefits and reducing inequalities. Yes to common security, no to the obsessive increase in armaments at the expense of social spending and environmental protection. So we will be re-leasing the global community for these important global goods.

Mr President, let the European Union and its Member States not follow the hypocrisy of other countries on this planet. The dry regions of the Earth today cover about half of the Earth’s land area – 41% – affecting 2 billion people on this planet, and we do not understand. Let us remove the partisan blinkers and stop, ladies and gentlemen, denying the climate crisis. The measures we need to take are not only economic. They are also measures of political will for the restoration of the dried and deserted areas of this planet. I call on the European Union to act, and not to move a centimeter from its position of international leadership in the fight against climate change.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner Šefčovič, I shall refer to the economic dimension of the new relationship with the United States, which I consider to be the most important. The architecture of world trade, as we know it after the Second World War, is changing. But it doesn't change now. It's been going on for years. Already under the Obama administration, I believe that the United States has begun to withdraw its interest from the World Trade Organization and to discuss at the regional level. Europe's response can only be more regional cooperation and, above all, linking the European Union's industrial policy to the common commercial policy. Now and without further obstruction.

Mr President, Commissioner, in my recent question on the protection of Natura sites in the Mediterranean, you answered me, sincerely and thank you very much, that the figures are disappointing, for countries in the Mediterranean where biodiversity is at risk. So, ladies and gentlemen, now is the time for action. I cannot understand what delaying the implementation of the deforestation law is all about. And I also want measures from the European Commission in order to strictly enforce the European Union regulations on the protection of Natura sites. And finally, I would like to see in the medium-term budget measures and funds for biodiversity. Actions now. No more wishes.

Madam President, there are European countries par excellence that have been asking for decades to join our European family. And yet, the European Union has turned its attention to other corners of Europe and not to the Western Balkans. We need a strong message of support to countries that are trying to honour the Copenhagen criteria and to converge towards our European family. Και τα Δυτικά Βαλκάνια, στην καρδιά της Ευρώπης, χρειάζονται ένα ισχυρό μήνυμα. I am calling here and now for the accession of Montenegro and Serbia to the European Union. If not these countries, which ones? If not in the heart of Europe, if not in the arms of Europe, then in whose arms and in whose influence, ladies and gentlemen of the European Commission? Serbia and Montenegro now join our European family.

Mr President, what distinguishes the European Union from other countries of the world, from other federal states, from other international organisations? What is perhaps its most emblematic intervention on the issues of humanity and the planet today? Protecting the environment, the future generations, the planet. The protection of what is a self-evident prerequisite for our existence. As a member of the Environment Committee, I also had the opportunity to follow closely the work on the climate crisis in Baku, COP29. The results are unsatisfactory because there is no commitment to either funding or to developed countries' next steps towards a cleaner planet. Here, then, as we speak, negotiations are ongoing in Busan, Korea, for an international agreement on plastics under the auspices of the United Nations, and the European Union must take the lead. I call on the European Commission to remain firm and committed to the goal of reducing plastics – not just increasing recycling, but reducing plastic production, which is disappointing. It's growing at a geometric speed. First of all. Secondly, recycling. Only 9% of plastics are recycled every year. This number should be doubled and tripled immediately. Thirdly, we must not allow all those lobbying companies that have currently flooded the work of the global conference in South Korea, in Busan, 220 - the largest number of mineral and plastic companies ever to appear at such an international conference - to establish their agenda. Here and now we need global rules, legally binding for all, especially for developed but also developing countries. First, to reduce plastics. And secondly, to increase recycling.