Speeches

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, Joseph Figueira Martin is a Portuguese and Belgian citizen, a European citizen and a worker in a non-governmental humanitarian aid organisation in the Central African Republic. It was in that country that he was captured, kidnapped, abducted by the Wagner Group mercenaries, the same ones who collaborate with Vladimir Putin, and who handed Joseph over to the local authorities. And, as if arbitrary detention outside the law and three-day torture were not enough, false and fabricated accusations followed. The result is a compatriot of ours, far from his family, sentenced to ten years of hard labor. His physical condition deteriorates every day, and he is even unable to speak, to communicate with his son, who is less than two years old. Ladies and gentlemen, what is required is action and dignity. What is required is that we make our values not only our word, but also our action. The recognition of human rights cannot happen here on paper alone - and that is why I call on the countries of origin, the governments of Portugal and Belgium, the European institutions, to strengthen their diplomatic work in defending this citizen. I also call on all of us, all Members of the European Parliament, to be agile and determined, both to organise a diplomatic mission and to consider sanctions if the Central African Republic does not contribute to the freedom of this citizen. Ladies and gentlemen, freedom has no price, but it is in a hurry.

Madam President, High Representative, Speaker, while Donald Trump squanders the political capital of the United States of America with blackmail and threats, the affirmation of our strategic autonomy gains urgency. In a few days, a decisive summit will take place in India. It's not just a bilateral meeting, it's an opportunity to bring two of the world's largest economies and two of the world's largest democracies closer together. An agreement between Europe and India has the capacity to boost growth, diversify value chains and create new opportunities for our companies, including in the technology sector. But this agreement is only sustainable if it is symbolic, fair and also consistent with European labour, climate and investment protection standards and values. It is not about promoting free trade by default, but about building strategic partnerships that promote economic resilience and shared interests and are beneficial to both sides. In a context marked by geopolitical tension, this is the kind of relationship that Europe must cultivate, building bridges, multilateralism and peace. What we cannot do is remain hostage to the old international order, which no longer exists, nor to an old club which is now called 'peace', but which remains an old club of friends. Ladies and gentlemen, we have not turned our backs on our allies, but we should never expect them to come to us either.

The honourable Member had two minutes to reply, and I will ask him again: Can you condemn Vladimir Putin's illegal invasion of Ukraine? Can you condemn, or not, Donald Trump's statements about Greenland?

The honourable Member speaks here about everything he wants to talk about and about everything that Europeans do not want to hear. My question could be extensive, but I think it can be succinct and very clear. The leader of his parliamentary bench did not say anything about condemnation, he does not have a word of condemnation for the words of the American president. You are making an intervention in which you attack Europeans and Europe and you are not talking about external threats. My question is simple: Can you condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine? Can you condemn Vladimir Putin? Can you condemn the statements of the American president and the possible alienation - occupation - of Greenland? Yes or no?

Mr President, colleagues, the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy is the end of the transatlantic preferential relationship – which is why the report we are voting on today is even more important. The American focus on containment of China and the struggle for global supremacy dictated that the great friendship forged after the Great Wars was today replaced by new partnerships. It is not by chance (and I quote) that this American president calls for "a stable relationship with the Europeans", but "a strategically stable relationship with Vladimir Putin". If, in the face of this, the European Union is weak or naive, we will all be at the mercy of powers eager to overthrow the European project. That is why the report we are adopting today, and want to vote on, on investment in European defence is of the utmost importance. But it is not enough to say; We have to do it and we have to invest. And this can only be done with all Europeans and with the openness that we now allow Ukrainians to access European funds to fight for our freedom. The security of our continent is our responsibility and our right. This can't be anyone's colony as many would like. This is the European Union.

I hope I found the correct translation for your speech, because you think it's at least a coincidence that the airspace of Europe has been systematically violated since the invasion of Ukraine. And you also think it is a coincidence that Poland has had acts of sabotage while Ukraine is being invaded. So my question to you is very simple: do you also think it is a coincidence that Russia is the neighbour of Ukraine? You think it is a coincidence that we find the Russian army, Russian troops in Ukraine? And do you think it is a coincidence that we need to protect Ukraine while Russians are laughing at interventions like yours?

The Honourable Member does not seem to understand either parents or children, because if he understood them, he would understand that it is a concern of parents to access social networks that deteriorate their children's intellectual capacity and cognitive development. The Honourable Member lives from this artificial division between left and right, because, in fact, he does not want the protection of minors or the protection of his political agenda, because otherwise I would tell him the opposite — it is that protection of minors, whether through age limitation or through digital education, that will emancipate young people from being better educated. Otherwise, as in the past, we would not have banned the consumption of alcohol, nor the consumption of drugs, nor the consumption of tobacco, because yes, Mr President-in-Office, like parents, we all have a collective duty to educate our children better.

I am not surprised that the Honourable Member will once again mention the transatlantic partnership and completely omit the responsibility of the Chinese state. If you listened well to my speech, you realized that the independence we need is independence and autonomy. It is not only in relation to China, it is in relation to all the powers that want to instrumentalize the Europeans and the European Union for any kind of trade war. But what is at stake today, and it bothers me very much that the Honourable Member is not bothered by this, is the European workers who lose jobs, the European workers who are threatened by layoff, This is because the People's Republic of China, through the action of several companies, wants to instrumentalise the rare materials and raw materials of international legal trade to threaten our rights as consumers.

Madam President, Commissioner, for too long we have thought that cheap imports would come with only benefits and no costs. We continue to sigh for a world that does not exist, because it is not only tariffs that threaten us, it is also the deficit of rules that distorts global competition. Our markets are daily flooded with cheap products that hide a working reality with which we cannot – and do not want – to compete. How can European companies compete against unfair subsidies from other states to their industries? How can we entrust China with the supply of materials without which our factories stop? How can workers have stability when they live under the threat of relocation of factories where labour rights are a mirage? We need action and we need courage. Europe can only move forward in a global market with rules, and that means protecting its industry and moving forward with new partnerships. Everything else is fables, fables of a market that was born to be liberating and ended up being oppressive.

The honourable Member rightly mentioned that one of the main priorities of this work programme of the European Commission is housing. I well remember your party and your former head of delegation here and today Minister of Foreign Affairs of Portugal, as well as the current Prime Minister saying that former Prime Minister António Costa was very wrong when he said that housing should be a European problem treated in a European way. So my question is very simple. Is the PSD now joining the solution, is the now Prime Minister Luis Montenegro joining the European solution, alongside António Costa? And by the way, do you recognise that what the Commission says about inflation above 35% of homes in Portugal is a problem for young Portuguese people, but it is also a problem that you are aggravating?

Mr President, Madam Executive Vice-President, ladies and gentlemen, today I want to talk about the history of a continent. A continent that, after centuries of conflict, has decided to put an end to war and to establish, through shared sovereignty and cooperation, a future of peace. That continent is Europe and that project is the European Union. It is for him, for his past and for his peoples that we cannot accept any setback in our sovereignty, whatever the cost. The European Union is a free and democratic space, one of the few in the world. And in democracy we respond to the will of the people and the people, not some elites. When Donald Trump blocks a global agreement between more than 130 countries to tax digital giants, he puts the interest of the most privileged ahead of the interest of peoples and nations. And when we choose to give in and give up multilateralism, we give up Europeans and give up all these young people who are watching this debate today. This is a new system of a new world, where geopolitical competition overlaps with international cooperation, and so we must learn from the mistakes of the past and reduce external dependencies, from technology to defence. Yes, we need to uphold our rules, but we need to think much further. We need more European industry, innovative factories, advanced and ethical data centres. Clean and affordable energy. If Europeans want to have a voice and weight in the future, the solution is not to retreat cowardly to nationalism, but to bet on cooperation and autonomy as the basis of the strength of the whole continent.

Colleague, thank you very much for accepting – my two questions are very simple, because you brought here the question of hate speech. So I just want to ask you very clearly: if a minor is attacked on social media and the rest because of how he or she looks, isn't that hate speech? If, for example, a person from a minority is attacked because of her or his ethnicity, isn't that hate speech? Because remember one thing, free speech is not the same thing as having no rule of law in Europe.

Mr President, Commissioner, dear colleagues, big tech companies are not paying their fair share of taxes today. And we know that this is no longer a controversial stance, only a fact. All evidence points to workers and small businesses paying higher rates than Meta, Amazon and other digital giants. Unfortunately, when we were close to an international deal with more than 130 countries, President Trump stepped in to protect the interests of his corporate friends. With the threat of tariffs and other retaliation, this US administration is now trying to prevent us from reaching a European solution, and it is very curious that the far right that claims to be sovereigntist didn't even show up to the debate today. But colleagues, this is not the time to backtrack. The debate today is not only about tax justice, but also about our sovereignty. We must remain and stand united and remind everyone that the EU remains a democracy. The question is therefore simple. Are you siding with the President Trump and forfeiting the mandate given by your citizens, by our citizens, to legislate on their behalf, or are you ready to stand for our values and to ensure that big tech cannot avoid their fair share of taxes and their fair share of responsibilities? We chose the second option. The S&D Group chose tax justice and, more importantly, we choose democracy.

(start of intervention with microphone off) ... accompany you in your requests, in your demands, for the benefit of national destinations. But this year, about 2.35% of our national territory burned in Portugal. It is more than 200 000 hectares, well above twice the average of the last ten years. Let me ask you a question that worries the Portuguese and that certainly worries me: why has the Government of Portugal decided successively to postpone the request for support from the European Civil Protection Mechanism? Because the image that passes is of a government that was more concerned with television coverage of a party event than with saving the country on time.

Mr Cotrim de Figueiredo, I believe that we agree on the essential points: that the European Union must negotiate with the United States, that our relationship must be positive, but that this relationship cannot be achieved at any cost. And that is why, allow me, I would like to ask you about your position on the taxation of the big tech companies currently operating in the European Union. We know that these corporations pay far lower fees and taxes than our small and medium-sized enterprises, taxes that are essential to finance more spending, as we advocate, safely and avoiding taxes on citizens. Are liberals on the side of Trump's budget bomb or on the side of European consumers?

If I could respond with a sale, I would say that this intervention comes from a deeply Europeanist party, concerned about Europe and the way European funds are allocated to our country. That's not the case. And so I will respond by being a deeply Europeanist party, a party that created, in Portugal, the Foundation for Science and Technology, a party that deepened European integration also in knowledge, and that already in the last legislature – not in the last legislature of the AD government, but of the Socialist Party government – created clusters in Portugal that not only allowed access to more funds, but allowed access to more funds between Portuguese companies and universities. And so that skeptical view of Europe is something that characterizes the bench from which the honourable Member comes, but it is not something that is reflected in the public data, which shows us that today we have more qualified people, more innovation – and much more than we had before European integration.

Dear President, Dear President, Dear President, Dear President, Dear President, Dear President, Dear President,, the future of European industry and competitiveness is not built on low wages or unrestricted deregulation; It is built with a strategy for innovation, a strategy that we lacked. The initiative Chose Europe, now presented, adds €500 million, making it possible to value our qualified young people and new research centres. But the increase in funding also opens the door to recruiting the best scientists who are no longer in Europe. I am talking about those who, in the United States and other countries, have suffered cuts in support of their work and who feel the science threatened by those who in Gaza threaten children, but who in the world threaten the truth. This is a unique opportunity to reinvent Europe as the leader of a new era of knowledge in decarbonisation, artificial intelligence or health biotechnologies. But let's be clear, the future won't wait for us. And that is why, more than it is important to present, it is urgent to do. This must be sufficient reason for the Old Continent to be once again the most enlightened.

Don't miss it so much, honourable Member. It's like that again and it's like that for you. His party says it wants a reflection on a two-state solution. You say you want to negotiate, but you refuse to recognize one of them, Palestine. But what's more, he says he doesn't recognize Palestine because he understands that there, in Palestine, are no free citizens. And therefore, if I acknowledge that the honourable Member is so outraged by the deaths in Palestine, by the damage to Israel and the Palestinians, what I ask him is whether he is able to recognise that the lack of freedom of these Palestinian citizens is precisely because of Israeli invasions such as are still happening today.

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, 28 April is remembered as the day when the Iberian Peninsula went dark and our fragility was exposed. In Civil Protection, the Portuguese government spoke late and did not provide security. He left the Portuguese to their fate and resigned from the required leadership. Louis Montenegro failed. And if Louis Montenegro was unable to lead a 12-hour blackout, hiding from the problems, imagine what it would be like in a scenario of a new war or a pandemic. Further to the right, while populists rushed to attack the right bet on renewables, central to our sovereignty and, by the way, to our independence from the homeland, information began to enter our homes and deny their theses. The truth, colleagues, is that in energy resilience we have had the bill for the little investment in the modernisation of networks and the lack of interconnections with the rest of the continent that makes us an energy island. It is when extremists take advantage of the blackout and those who fail to protect the people hide in the darkness that we most need light in Europe.

The honourable Member said that this blackout was planned. I think that the honourable Member, if he is not Messiah, is at least the only enlightened Portuguese. But let's go a little further. Clarified as you are, there was a Member of Parliament who, in the dark in the Assembly of the Republic, being from his party, said that the big problem was that we had shut down coal-fired power stations. Now, we came to realize that this was not only a lack of truth, it was to take advantage of the blackout to, while the prime minister was hiding, try to deceive the Portuguese. It would be much clearer if you came here to say that we need more interconnections, because if you do not, you only show that you understand very little about electricity, as you do very little about energy policies.

Dear Member, as you will understand and as you can read, not only in this Commission's programme, but from what our Group has brought here, you can see that employment contracts are always guaranteed when there is wealth creation. What we cannot tolerate, what we cannot accept, is that the relocation of jobs, which – yes – affects a large part of the workers of the European Union, millions of workers, is embodied and from investment that is made outside the Union. That's why we're talking about innovation, that's why we're talking about interconnections, cheaper energy, but that's why we're also talking about investment in sustainable energy. Contrary to what the blocs on our right say, relying on other nations hostile to the Union is not good either for workers or for our countries.

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the loss of European competitiveness is unfortunately nothing new. After decades of underinvestment in innovation and a bet on cheap imports, the results are in sight and 850 000 jobs in industry have disappeared in the last four years alone. These are not numbers, they are lives. Many people for whom work has ceased to be a source of stability and has become a battle and an uncertainty. So when we talk about recovering industrial strength, as it is well presented, we talk about restoring hope and freedom through decent employment and fair wages to those left behind. And this must start with a strong bet on safe, cheap and sustainable energy. Reducing exposure to blocks hostile to the Union, increasing our renewable production and ensuring interdependence between our Member States are the first steps towards the industrial success of the world’s largest single market. Our well-being and our freedom depend on our courage and our responsibility.