Debate contributions by Anthony SMITH

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner, 39: this is the percentage of French people indicating that they had experienced shortages of medicines in 2024. France is obviously no exception; 21 Member States report experiencing the same phenomenon. The fault of the capitalist laissez-faire that reigns supreme here, in Parliament and in the EU. How would it be otherwise, moreover, in a Europe that abandons the major pharmaceutical groups? all powers, leaving them to relocate to the other side of the world and knowingly organising shortages of medicines to make more and more profits, leaving workers behind and increasing our dependence on third countries? But how would we treat ourselves tomorrow, Commissioner, if there were tensions with India or China, when these two countries together make 80% of the world’s generics? The European Union, on this subject as on the others, must change its matrix. The future of medicine, whatever the geopolitical context, requires industrial planning, with a public cluster of medicines, the relocation of essential medicines, or the control and strict social and environmental conditionality of business aid. This is what is at stake in the popular struggles we are waging with La France Insoumise.

Mr McNamara, I hear that you are calling on your government in Ireland. So I have a question for you, because in fact you are in the same group, Renew, as the French macronists, who are not here tonight in this Chamber. They who, in France, conduct a criminal policy, they who conduct a policy that puts down livestock. Just one question, Mr. McNamara: Do you know where the French macronists went?

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, it is criminal not to act when every day in Europe twelve workers, three of them in France, die at work. Together with my colleague Marina Measurement, we have built since the beginning of this mandate – together with trade unionists, labour inspectors and associations of victims’ families – a zero-death-to-work roadmap. Everywhere we present it, the testimonies are the same: work uses, fatigues, injures bodies and minds and, sometimes, too often, kills. Accidents at work or occupational diseases are never ‘bad luck’. They are the systemic result of a lack of political action and will that allows capital to continue accumulating more and more. Because, today as yesterday, health and safety at work is still considered a cost by the vast majority of employers. The proof is here, with the failure of the European Commission’s ‘vision zero’, which followed a 2020 resolution and was to eliminate deaths and reduce occupational diseases by 2030. So yes, inaction is criminal.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner, as we say in this Chamber, enlargement will be a success only if it is at the service of the peoples and the improvement of living conditions, and not only seen as a geopolitical tool at the service of war logics that are light years away from the aspirations of the peoples of Europe. But your European Union boils down, in fact, to a set of means allowing free and undistorted competition, at the service of the predation of the big capitalist groups and an imperialist political vision. A model in which the social question is still and always absent. However, the reception of new states should be conceived and realized around an ambitious common pillar of social rights and collective guarantees for workers: collective bargaining, massive increases in wages and paid leave, strengthening of social legislation, in particular with regard to respect for health and safety at work, increased means for labour inspectorates, real equality between women and men at work. Suffice it to say that we are constantly moving away from this objective, as evidenced by the reactionary course of the European Commission and its relays in Parliament, which are preparing to bury the duty of vigilance of multinationals. Welcoming new states should also make it possible to protect workers' mobility by ending the status of posted work, so that workers benefit from the full social rights of the country where they are employed. This is a way to end the practices of social and fiscal dumping that are destroying the lives of millions of workers and their families. Enlargement should be a lever for building a fairer continent, where social rights and democratic checks and balances are the rule, and which rejects widespread competition, dumping and corruption. That is not the purpose of the report that is being proposed to us today.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Latin America and the Caribbean are once again victims of the hypocrisy of the European Parliament. Under the guise of a supposedly fair desire for partnership, the European Union is setting itself up as the spearhead of neo-colonialism. For your will is, as yesterday, to facilitate access to the strategic natural resources of this region for the big companies of our continent, at the expense of the peoples and the protection of the environment. We will not be silent to denounce your predatory and extractivist logics, your destructive and Atlanticist vision of geopolitical power relations. You are instrumentalizing the issue of human rights by omitting all the abuses emanating from governments on the right of the political spectrum. What about Peru, Ecuador, Argentina, where the separation of powers and the action of civil society, NGOs and trade unions are under attack by the State? The people of South America and the Caribbean deserve better than this low-level bargain. Other partnerships are possible, based on respect for the sovereignty of peoples, solidarity and the protection of human rights and the environment.

Madam President, it is a festival of punctures that you are aligning, Mr Valet. It's fortunately a one-man show which lasts barely a minute, because it is disastrous. You do not have a word, Mr Valet - or worse, you offer full bail - for the Bukele regime in El Salvador that you idealise; A regime condemned by Amnesty International and other organisations as an authoritarian and reactionary regime, where fundamental freedoms are not guaranteed. This is certainly the model that you, M.me Le Pen and Mr. Bardella, want to go to France. We are human rights and freedoms, and you are against that model, Mr Valet.

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, Colombia has been subjected for several months to a wave of terrorist attacks in connection with drug trafficking targeting civilians and the military. We condemn these attacks. We stand with and support the families of the victims, as we support President Petro and his government in their fight against drug trafficking. We welcome the implementation of a policy of total peace based on respect for human rights and the need to address the root causes of crime, including poverty and social exclusion. The indecent political instrumentalisation of terrorism for electoral purposes by the right and the far right must stop. Rather than tossing the opprobrium in the hope that the historic pact will fall in 2026, the opposition should put its energy into implementing the UN Secretary-General's recommendations related to the peace agreement. We call for action by the European Union to ensure that this agreement is fully implemented. The Colombian people must be protected from mafia and predatory logics, the only way they can enjoy their tranquility.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, in the face of austerity, liberal policies and the authoritarian course that is taking place among the citizens of Europe, the time is ripe for the emergence of a new spring of peoples. Everywhere, popular mobilizations call into question the hegemony of the powerful and the regressions they seek to make us suffer to the tie. In France, the Bayrou government has just fallen. This is just the beginning! From Wednesday, around the slogan "Block everything", it is in the street that workers, youth of the country, social and trade union movements will meet. The French people will get the fall of the Republican monarch Emmanuel Macron. Then comes the time of the censorship of Ursula von der Leyen and her Commission of lobbyists in the service of the grabbers. For it is in the practical experience of struggle that the spark of the revolutionary consciousness of the exploited is ignited. Because, yesterday as today, "he who does not move does not feel his chains".

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner, enlargement will be a success only if it is at the service of the peoples and the improvement of living conditions, and not only seen as a geopolitical tool at the service of your bloc-versus-bloc logic, a warlike logic that is light years away from the aspirations of the peoples of Europe. The key to the success of enlargement will be first and foremost a more democratic Europe, with institutions at the service of citizens and not a market at the service of industrialists. But, let us say it from the outset, your European Union today can be summed up as a set of means allowing free and undistorted competition in the service of an imperialist vision. Our Europe, the one we defend, carries a project of peace, wealth sharing, democracy, welcome and humanity. At a time when the extreme right are arbitrating the decisions of our institution, we can only see the regressions on all sides, acclaimed by the Conservatives and the Liberals. This is the Europe you are proposing to the peoples of our continent, that of climate catastrophe and widespread poverty, that of corruption and discrimination, in short, a union like Orbán and Nawrocki. The reception of new states must be based on an ambitious common pillar of social rights in which social democracy, and in particular collective bargaining, must play their full role. Otherwise, it is the exploitation of workers, the at least so-called social and environmental race that will prevail. This requires that pre-accession aid also be used to build this common Europe, with strong, transparent, honest institutions, effective inspections and independent judicial systems. Enlargement must be a lever for building a fairer continent, where social rights and democratic checks and balances are the rule, which rejects widespread competition, social dumping and corruption. In a word, no enlargement without an ambitious social project.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Colombia is preparing to enter a sequence of high importance for the future of the country, particularly with regard to peacekeeping and the continuation of the citizens' revolution implemented since 2022. The assassination attempt on Miguel Uribe, a potential presidential candidate, is a heinous act that must be denounced. In a democracy, only the sovereign people must be able to choose their representatives. The use of hired killers is an unnamed cowardice. Colombian political life has been marked for decades by these political assassinations, which also affect human rights and environmental defenders. But this assassination attempt must not be exploited by some to curb the ambition of social reforms, including that of labour law desired by the historic pact. I would like to welcome the action of President Petro, who strongly condemned the attack, strengthened the security of presidential candidates and encouraged the investigation conducted by the Attorney General to ensure the security and proper conduct of the electoral process.

Madam President, Commissioner, this is terrific, terribly hypocritical! Mme von der Leyen and Macron are standing up for academic and political freedoms by welcoming American scientists, for example, who have been persecuted for their commitment to Palestine. They are the same ones who, here, are bogged down in convolutions so as not to denounce the ongoing genocide in Gaza. The same people here who anathematize activists and students denouncing the IDF massacres; The same people who here accuse anyone criticizing Netanyahu's far-right government of anti-Semitism. Since Macron took office, France's higher education budget per student has fallen by 15%. A methodical destruction of the public university is taking place before our eyes. Universities are no longer able to complete their budgets and the precariousness of staff and students is reaching record levels. Enough of this hypocrisy and these obscene communication plans! We will always defend political and academic freedoms and the means necessary for their expression, just as we will always defend the reception of refugees, regardless of their origin.

Mr. Leggeri, you didn't hear anything here, you didn't listen. You have not heard the President of Slovenia say it here in this Chamber. In everything you have said, not a word for the people of Gaza, not a word for the massacres that are taking place there and for the genocide that is taking place there. This is what the National Gathering is all about. Selective humanity is your daily lot: It's a disgrace. History will judge you and your friends, Mr. Leggeri.

Mr Guetta, your macroist friends in France have, for more than a year and a half, given their unconditional support to the massacres taking place in Palestine and Gaza. Today, as the winds turn – because, tomorrow, perhaps, history will judge those who were complicit in this genocide – I see that opinions are changing and so are yours. In this case, will you really turn in the direction of history that catches up with you, ask here for the immediate suspension of the association agreement and no longer let Mr Netanyahu cross French airspace, for example? Go to the end. Be consistent. Turn, but turn really.

Thank you, Mr Blaha, for your intervention. When I hear our other colleague react, I say to myself that the right wing in the European Parliament really has two double standards: a policy of migration within its borders that it wants to ban and a policy of migration for Cubans that it wants to allow. Really, you're ridiculous!

Mrs Junco García, what Cuba is suffering from is not, as you denounce it, communism. What Cuba suffers from is not being a prison. The prison, Madam, is the one that, for more than 60 years, the United States of America has been building in Cuba by maintaining an embargo, a blockade, by considering Cuba a terrorist state. It is a policy that you support, it is the one that starves the Cuban people, it is the one that sets them against you. That is why our solidarity with Cuba is total. Shame on you!

Madam President, colleagues, Commissioner, the debate around the energy-intensive industries we have today is crucial, as the future of these sectors darkens. Faced with global competition from China and the United States and skyrocketing energy prices, millions of jobs are at risk, particularly in the steel industry, a sector that is strategic for European industrial autonomy. In France, for example, Arcelor Mittal is threatening to relocate 15,000 jobs, while its managers and shareholders continue to fill their pockets. The stakes are known to everyone. However, the responses provided by this resolution are not commensurate with the scale of the crisis. Nothing that really gets us out of the electricity market, which deregulates and blows up the price of energy. Nothing on the addition of new market protection measures, which are necessary at a time when the trade war is accelerating. Nothing on the social side, necessary to preserve working conditions and quality jobs and to allow the participation of workers and their trade unions in industrial planning. Finally, there is nothing about imposing strict conditionality on the public aid paid, with an obligation to repay in the event of non-compliance with environmental and social standards. Result: you give a blank cheque to companies that continue to binge on public money while firing at the same time. We're walking on our heads! Colleagues, when are you finally going to admit that these are your policies and your Liberal ideology that has thrown our industries and their workers into the wall? This is no longer the time for procrastination. Let's take back control!

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner, let us be serious: with the Clean Industry Pact, the Commission has still not understood anything. It continues with its neoliberal strategy, which merely recycles measures from the past that have pushed European industry into the wall. No lessons have been learned on the electricity market, as has been said, based on gas price coupling – which is blowing up bills; none on the public financing of the industrial transition, which is still framed in this area by the austere and absurd rules of the Stability Pact; none on the lack of protection of the European market against foreign competition; none on the involvement of workers and their trade union organisations in the development of the industrial strategy. However, solutions to the crisis, Mr. Séjourné, exist; but this implies a change of ideology – yes, it will be difficult. There is an urgent need, for example, to plan democratically for the modernisation of the industrial tool and to take over strategic sectors from the public authorities. The challenge is simple: rebuild a European industry at the service of workers and citizens, not profits. We're a long way from that.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, I have one minute to tell you about a man, Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, whose name I am proud to pronounce in this Chamber. Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, a Lebanese communist activist and long-time defender of the Palestinian cause, has been imprisoned since 1984: Forty-one years in the jails of the French State. Yet here there is no expression, no resolution to demand his immediate release, that of the oldest political prisoner in Europe. Not a word for George Ibrahim Abdallah, yet liberated for twenty-five years. Here, it is always the same hypocrisy of the well-thinking bourgeois and their ‘double standards’. The Paris Court of Appeal, which was due to rule on his release on 20 February, postponed its decision until 19 June. The continued detention of George Ibrahim Abdallah is a state scandal and a disgrace to the French state. Enough hard work! Release George Ibrahim Abdallah! Release George Ibrahim Abdallah!

Yes, I cannot fail to react when I hear you, Mrs Rechagneux, as I have heard your colleagues from the European extreme right: You dare here in this Chamber to talk about sovereignty. You are the first, with your organization, to sell French and European sovereignty to Trump, Musk and GAFAM. You speak, you defend Mr Séjourné's simplification, but this simplification is the one that concretely attacks the labour code, the collective agreements, the workers' rights that you claim to defend. When will you and your colleagues, Mrs Rechagneux, get out of the duplicity of the speech?

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, let us say it straight away, the compass for the competitiveness of the European Commission is a scam. What is coming, the shock of simplification, as you call it, is massive deregulation that will tackle environmental and social standards to the detriment of workers and to the benefit of lobbies and bosses. Nothing on the reform of the European electricity market to lower household and business bills. Nothing about the necessary measures to protect European industry. Nothing, or so little, on increasing public investment to boost innovation and the decarbonisation of European industry. Nothing about collective bargaining with unions to raise wages and improve working conditions. Proof that your compass is ineffective: ArcelorMittal, the world's second largest steel group, is threatening to relocate certain activities from Europe to India a few days after the announcement of your compass. Your policy, Mr. Séjourné, is irresponsible, it will amplify the social and economic crisis. It is urgent to get out of it.