Debate contributions by João OLIVEIRA

Mr President, Commissioner Šefčovič, the next meeting of the European Council is announced with great criticism of Trump, but with the same position of submission and subordination of the European Union to the United States, the same contempt for the needs of the peoples within the EU, the same complicity with the genocide and the occupation of Palestine. If the European Commission and the European Council want to make a difference and distance themselves from Trump, they have a good remedy: Change the policies. Make a difference by looking at the economy from the point of view of the needs of peoples and not the profits of multinationals, giving priority to increasing wages, access to housing, health, solving the social problems that afflict peoples' lives, rather than turning people's needs into business and a source of profit; building solutions for peace and collective security, rather than spending people’s resources on militarisation and war; Acting to put an end to the genocide, Israel's colonial policy and giving concrete form to the State of Palestine. The right way is to respond to the needs of workers and peoples, not to submit to the United States.

Mr Di Rupo, you spoke about the solution of mobilising Russian assets to prolong the war in Ukraine. What the European Union is proposing is to insist on prolonging the war in Ukraine by spending more than has been spent so far on prolonging the war in Ukraine. And the questions I ask you are two: firstly, whether it believes that the priority should be to prolong the war – not to end it – with a political solution that guarantees the collective security of the whole of Europe; and, secondly, whether these resources are no longer needed to meet the housing and social needs of peoples.

Mr Berendsen, you are astonished at the arrogance of the Trump administration in its national security strategy towards the European Union. I think I should not be surprised, because that is the consequence of the subaltern and submissive way in which the European Union has confronted American interests. That is the consequence of who accepts Trump’s imposition of increased military spending for NATO or who – as Mrs von der Leyen did – accepts Trump’s imposition of tariffs and trade policy. And the question I ask you is: If we continue in this position of submission, does this attitude of Donald Trump end?

Mr President, Commissioner, valuing work and workers must be a criterion and a benchmark for development. There is no country that can be considered developed with its workers devalued, despised, without meeting their needs. However, the policies of national governments and the coverage that the European Union gives to these policies go exactly the opposite way. In a number of countries, including my own country, Portugal, processes are underway to amend labour laws that attack workers' rights, facilitate dismissals, make employment precarious, attack maternity and paternity rights, and jeopardise the reconciliation of family and personal life of workers and their working hours. These are options that run absolutely counter to the sense of development and social justice, which we must challenge. The general strike that took place in Portugal last week provides a strong response from Portuguese workers in rejecting these policies and confronts the Portuguese government – but also the European Union – with the need for another path that is by valuing work and workers as a criterion for development.

Madam President, EUR 800 billion in rearmament spending gives the magnitude of the drift of this warmongering madness and militarisation of the European Union to which we are being directed. The effort with the agitation of ghosts and boogeymen regarding external security risks is the example of the investment being made in propaganda to sustain the diversion to war, to the arms race, of resources that are still needed to build houses and to respond to unemployment, the need for wage increases, economic and social problems that affect the peoples in all the countries that make up the European Union. A legislative package to create more privileges and benefits for large arms multinationals is truly the goal behind the use of this figure in the package. omnibus. More privileges and more benefits for the big multinationals who make war the engine of their profits, war the engine of the concentration of their wealth. The path of militarisation of the European Union is a path that does not serve the peoples and jeopardizes their future.

Mr Germain, you have come to announce to us the idea that peace within the European Union is achieved by investing resources from the European Union budget to arm ourselves for a confrontation with Russia. And the questions I ask you are these: How do you think peace is achieved with the threat of a military confrontation, especially with the threat of a military confrontation with a nuclear power? How far can a nuclear confrontation guarantee peace? What role do you think there should be for dialogue, for diplomacy, for the political solution to conflicts? And do you really think that the European Union budget should prioritise spending on armaments, with so many social problems to be solved across Europe?

Madam President, Commissioner, the nature of the InvestEU programme is clear, and its conditions have never left any doubt as to who is benefiting and who is paying the benefit. Instead of supporting and financing public investment with direct public grants, the European Union has opted with InvestEU to provide public guarantees for private investments. The conditions of this program are those that are usually prepared in these schemes: risks are transferred to taxpayers so that profits are private, but losses are socialised. The consequences of these options are well known. In Portugal, moreover, we have several examples of this in the scandals of BPN, BES/Novo Banco, Banif or the privatisation of TAP, in which the current PSD-CDS government once again insists. This so-called simplification package omnibus shows what these simplifications of the European Union are for and to whom they are for. This proposal reduces transparency by exempting transactions below EUR 300 000 from reporting, compared to EUR 100 000 before, and simplifies it by weakening democratic control. The level of financial risks that are assumed is increased by reducing the level of confidence in the loss provision from 95 % to 90 %, and the transfer of risks to taxpayers is maintained, with the risks of assuming the losses of private businesses financed with public money. These are not options that serve economic development and justice.