Debate contributions by Jorge MARTÍN FRÍAS

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, today the world is a little freer. Today Venezuela is better off. Today we can see a path of freedom and democracy in Venezuela, but also in Cuba and other liberticidal regimes, whose time is running out thanks to the dismantling of the criminal and criminal Nicolás Maduro. All this would not have been possible without the previous weakening of the regime thanks to the heroic and courageous María Corina Machado and, of course, the decisive role of the Trump Administration. We are facing a historical moment that will undoubtedly take time, because a criminal state is not put to an end from one day to the next. Much remains to be done, many political prisoners to be released and many rights and freedoms to be regained, but the European Union cannot be a mere bystander. It is time for the Commission of Popular and Socialists, Mrs Dolors, to rectify its erratic policy towards Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua, and to put an end once and for all to the shameful funding that under the pretext of humanitarian aid has contributed to their experience.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, the digital world has transformed our lives in all areas, from the fields of economy, communication and work to social relations. But, like all progress, it has also brought risks and threats, and those who are most exposed to them are our children: Addictions, isolation, harassment, emotional manipulation and even suicides. Protecting our children is therefore a moral obligation. To comply with it we must provide parents, the first responsible for the care and education of their children, each and every one of the necessary tools to ensure their well-being and safety. However, we cannot accept proposals that, under the worthy pretext of protecting minors, open the door to invasion of privacy, violation of privacy or mechanisms of mass and disproportionate surveillance without a court order. In addition, and finally, it should be recalled that these matters do not fall within the competence of the European Commission. To pretend otherwise would be another attempt to stretch competences and colonize areas that correspond to States and, ultimately, to families.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Europe needs more freedom, more competitiveness and more prosperity. But that is not the path to which the report we are debating today leads us. First, because the implementation of Pillar 2 of the OECD is a nonsense that ties the hands and feet of Member States when designing their fiscal policy. Even more so if we take into account that it is not applied by countries such as China or the United States that represent almost half of the world's GDP. In other words, Europe decides to tie its hands while its competitors retain full freedom to attract investment, jobs and talent. Secondly, taxation is an exclusive competence of the Member States. It is an essential pillar of their economic and political sovereignty. Moreover, when it comes to tackling fiscal fragmentation, it opens the door to so-called fiscal harmonisation, which rewards – as is well known – those who have managed worse and imposes a fiscal hell on all Member States of the European Union alike.

Madam President, on 7 October 2023, 1,200 innocents were killed by Hamas, there were people who were mutilated, children who saw their parents executed before facing the same fate, women raped and displayed as trophies, 250 innocent abductees... The whole world witnessed one of the largest terrorist attacks. The whole world witnessed this death celebrated in some of our public squares. And the whole world has also witnessed the extent to which the truth has been twisted and manipulated, presenting the victims as executioners and the executioners as victims. The Commission, Parliament and some Member States have not been oblivious to this great masquerade. Proof of this is the last resolution that we voted on here and that ignored, among so many words, the only truth: Hamas started the war. Hamas is responsible for the deaths in Gaza, which we all regret. And Hamas can end the war if it frees the hostages. If we are close to peace today, it is thanks to the Trump administration and the generosity – I repeat, generosity – of Israel, which is willing, once again, to seek a peace that has been continuously denied it.

Mr President, the Commission has wasted precious time in reaching a beneficial agreement for Europe, but not only that: has actively hampered the negotiations. First, months were wasted on unnecessary dramatisation promoted by the Commission itself, driven more by ideological prejudices and anti-Trump hysteria than by the general interest. Time was devoted to alarming Europeans about negative tariffs for all, while keeping intact the genuine tariffs that impoverish European taxpayers, such as the Green Deal, the 2030 Agenda and many other bureaucratic impositions. Secondly, it is not smart to insult someone with whom you want to reach an agreement. In this regard, it is appropriate to recall the words of a Vice-President of this Parliament, of the Spanish People’s Party, who referred to President Trump as the ‘ogre orange’ and the ‘alpha male of a pack’, or the recent statements by the Chair of the IMCO Committee, who has referred as a ‘thug’ to the President of a democratic nation. Do you really believe that this builds a strong relationship with our main strategic partner? Nor does it help that Parliament, the result of the coalition of popular and socialists, refused to condemn the assassination attempt against a presidential candidate who is there today democratically elected with a majority that many European leaders would wish for themselves. What is there to do then? Negotiate, negotiate and negotiate, and leave behind once and for all the visceral anti-trumpism that has polluted foreign policy. Because nobody wants these tariffs, but if they finally arrive, it will be you who have to answer to the Europeans.

Mr President, Mrs Kallas, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to express our solidarity with Senator Miguel Uribe and also convey our condolences to the relatives of the seven Colombians killed by the FARC. The attack on Miguel Uribe is not an isolated event, nor are the sixty-four FARC attacks committed in the last two months. Petro is the maximum responsible. Partner of the worst liberticides and protagonist of the country's bloodiest past as a militant of the terrorist group M-19, Petro has returned Colombia to its darkest years. Murder has once again become an instrument of power for the left, as we have seen in Ecuador, Brazil and the United States. Therefore, the European Commission must immediately break any link with the schemes that protect, promote or justify these practices: Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. And, therefore, you must also firmly and unambiguously condemn, Madam High Representative, the political assassinations of the left and the bully practices of Gustavo Petro, the same one that was applauded in the Congress of Deputies of Spain by popular and socialists to the shame of all Spaniards.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the Commission assumes more and more powers that do not correspond to it while not fulfilling its most basic functions: those that protect the consumer and guarantee market freedom. To date, the Commission has done nothing to prevent China from misleading consumers by copying the European conformity marking. We've been twenty years, twenty years! Of course, while the Commission is dedicated to regulating and stifling our industry and our companies, China floods the single market with products that do not meet European standards and that, in many cases, pose a danger to the consumer without the consumer knowing it; almost 40%, according to the Commission's own data. While that promise of simplification of bureaucracy remains unanswered - because they do not know how big the monster they have created is - our competitors scoff at us in the face of the clear abandonment of functions. The Commission should register the European conformity logo without further delay and once and for all exercise leadership to end unfair competition and risks to consumers.

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the plan proposed by the Commission perseveres in error and should lead us to wonder how it is possible that positions contrary to Israel and its society always prevail in everything that the Commission brings to plenary. How is it possible that the plan, far from being inspired by the principles of freedom and democracy and protecting and helping those who have been attacked, is inspired by helping those who want to liquidate them? How is it possible for the Commission to continue funding organisations such as UNRWA, which has terrorists among its employees, which is dedicated to educating about hatred against Israel and its society and which should be placed on the list of terrorist organisations? The European Commission has a very easy way to amend all its brutal mistakes in the Middle East: Stop protecting Iran and stop funding terrorists of different stripes, and defend the only democracy in its right and duty to defend itself and create a new reality of peace and cooperation in the region.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Mrs von der Leyen has promised to reduce bureaucracy by 25% for businesses and 35% for SMEs, but what bureaucracy will Mrs von der Leyen reduce with the Digital Services Regulation, which drowns SMEs and companies in paperwork?, what bureaucracy will Mrs von der Leyen reduce with the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, which forces more than 50 000 companies to comply with crazy reports such as environmental, social and governance reports?, what bureaucracy will Mrs Von der Leyen reduce with the new European Industrial Strategy, which adds more and more regulations preventing companies from competing? Let us not deceive ourselves, Your Honours. The Commission will not reduce ideological bureaucracy: It will multiply it in its efforts to make companies and SMEs one more piece of the agendas that lead and condemn Europeans to poverty. What businesses and SMEs need, ladies and gentlemen, is less interference and Soviet planning and more freedom.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, the first thing the Commission must do is apologise to Israel and to the victims of the terrible massacre perpetrated by Hamas, for having allocated more than EUR 80 million to UNRWA this year alone: an organization with employees who have participated in the massacre and murder of innocents, including women and children. The second thing that the Commission must do is to include this organization, UNRWA, without further delay on the list of terrorist organizations of the European Union. And the third, and last, is to make known to the Europeans how much money they have given to UNRWA in recent years, how much and to what these amounts responded, and to demonstrate (I insist, demonstrate) what each penny has been dedicated to.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, the fatal arrogance of bureaucrats and socialists of all parties is ruining Europeans by imposing ideological agendas that have not been voted for by citizens in their respective nations and that are not even included or have been included in the political programs with which the different political formations are presented to electoral appointments. These are agendas that have contributed neither to prosperity, nor to equality, nor to the freedom of Europeans. Today Spaniards may wonder if they are richer or poorer than decades ago. Ask young people if they expect to live better than their parents. The impoverishment of the middle classes is a constant and housing a luxury item. But it must seem little to the engineers of organized happiness. We can ask ourselves whether the education of our children and young people, and therefore equal opportunities, is better or worse than decades ago. Clearly, it's worse. Public education and universities are colonized by anti-science and anti-truth slogans that have broken the social elevator and made the hope of thriving through effort an aspiration of the past. Today, are we more or less free than we were decades ago? Can women walk the streets with more or less freedom than decades ago? Are there more or less prohibitions than decades ago? We all know the answers: We are less free, there is less security and there are many more prohibitions. This is the consequence of decades of the implementation of agendas that have not been voted for by anyone and that have been promoted, as is the case of the Pact for the Future, by an organization such as the United Nations, which has among its members declared enemies of the principles of its own founding Charter and whose social engineering has only brought poverty to date in all areas.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, it is disgusting that after 65 years we still have to talk about the Castro-Communist regime, its political prisoners, its multiple violations of human rights, its murders, its kidnappings and its corruption. And it is repugnant because the regime, one of the longest and bloodiest dictatorships on the planet, endures because of the complicity of the international community, democratic nations and the European Union. If today we have to talk about José Daniel Ferrer, it is because of the timorous positions, of balance and economic interests that give oxygen to oligarchs of crime and corruption like Díaz-Canel. It is unusual that the European Commission – and even this Parliament – approved in 2017 a Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement between the European Union and the socialist plague of Castro's Cuba, a regime that has more than a thousand political prisoners, with a clear expansionist and oppressive vocation, as we see in Venezuela, where the Castro-communist forces give support, support and intelligence to the tyrant Maduro, together with Russia and other organizations of the international socialist crime, such as the São Paulo Forum and the Puebla Group. Therefore, the only way to truly support the cause of José Daniel Ferrer – the cause of freedom and dignity – is to be firm, forceful and suffocate those who support them, without contemplation. It is necessary to block their accounts abroad, those of their relatives, prevent them from stepping on any democratic nation and sanction the companies that collaborate with them. To that end, the first step is to fulfil the mandate that this Parliament gave in 2021, the result of a resolution led by the party I represent – VOX – and my colleague Hermann Tertsch. Ladies and gentlemen, it is time to move from words to deeds.