Debate contributions by Séverine WERBROUCK

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the next World Summit for Social Development is an opportunity to take stock of what we have done over the past 30 years and to reaffirm the three pillars dear to Europeans: poverty eradication, support for quality employment and social integration of the disadvantaged. However, this is an opportunity that has been largely squandered by the obsessions of the left and the centre to distort the notion of inclusion by constantly combining it with their wokist obsession, at the expense of priority needs: hunger, access to housing, employment and birth support. Thus, this text, which aims to help the rest of the world beyond our European borders, comes in a context that is that of an over-indebted France without a government. A France that sees its people becoming precarious day by day, where everything falls: from purchasing power to the ability to access a main residence, through school level. We cannot, in this context, allow ourselves once again to be dragged by the European Commission or international organisations into spending more on others, to the detriment of our own. It is not our ambition to maintain development aid to China, the world’s second-largest economic power, or to train migrant workers to replace the children we no longer do in Europe. We no longer have the means to pursue the ambitions of others; We have a responsibility to preserve the dignity of our people.

Mr President, in fact, what a mess! It didn't start so bad though. To our astonishment, you were finally ready to relax the regulations for the implementation of the Just Transition and Regional Development Funds, particularly with regard to defence, energy and housing: the increase in the ceiling for co-financing by the European Union, the extension of expenditure procedures, the integration of large defence companies and, above all, more freedom for the Member States to reallocate funds. But we are now reassured, as usual, your ideology has caught up with you: no measures to ensure that the funds benefit only European companies and do not enrich the US military industry, as they do every time. In addition, you condition access to funds on the arbitrary basis of alleged respect for the rule of law, a moral argument that you actually use to restrict the policies of opposition governments. That is why we can't naively endorse either the European gabegie by disbursing and extending unused funds, paid for in large part by France, or the spirit of censorship that presides over this text by aligning the budgetary calendar with your federalist agenda.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, here is a great deal of time lost in arriving at this text, which is the image of this institution: filled with contradictory injunctions, stifled by diminishing ideology and also costly. Finally, sprinkle everything with a small pinch of arbitrary control and you will get the trash of this text that was initially interesting. Interesting, in particular because it made it possible to redirect funds in a strategic sector: defence. Moreover, it is economically virtuous, since it creates sustainable, skilled and non-relocatable jobs. This text actually makes a very simple observation: the rules of the Fund make it ineffective, bureaucratic, and the only way out is to give freedom back to the Member States. That's what we've been saying for a long time. However, reading the final version of this text, one realizes that it is filled with contradictory injunctions: supporting skills in the field of defence, while excluding mid-cap companies, or stifling diminishing ideology, because it allows funds to be reallocated to the skills of the Green Deal economy, which is precipitating us towards an economic and social disaster. This is also costly, as early disbursements will have a heavy budgetary impact in the short term, especially on net contributor countries, which are already facing critical fiscal pressure. Finally, the conditionality of these funds to the arbitrary appreciation of the sovereign policies of nations is particularly dangerous. It has already hit Hungary, but it is also setting a serious precedent. The Commission could accept programmes or not on this basis, without further argument. You will easily understand that despite the good intention of this text, it is impossible for us to support it.

Mr President, Commissioner, for a Union stifled by Chinese customs duties and now under US threats, the awakening is brutal – after 30 years of blissful naivety in trade matters, which has made states hostage to your dogma of unlimited free trade. Let me take an example: the cognac industry. It is a flagship of French excellence, with 80,000 local jobs and €3 billion in exports – almost half of which go to the United States. As you know – and Mr Trump also knows – spirits, and more generally French wine products, have been the subject of US threats of retaliation in recent years. I tell you, for the upcoming negotiations: this sector must in no way be the adjustment variable that saves the exports of German industry. What commitments, what guarantees can you give us to ensure that this exceptional sector – and, more generally, French agriculture and the French economy – is not your currency of exchange in this battle that promises to be very tough? Commissioner, are you aware that if these negotiations were undermined, French agriculture and the economy would be the first victims? With each renunciation, each time you go to bed in the negotiations, you strangle a little more the cognac sector, which is at the forefront of the trade war that has already started, and in which Europe, unfortunately, remains terribly passive.

In answer to the first part of your question on employment and the concordance of times, the fact is that we all fully agree that France and the European states must preserve their total sovereignty over their maritime domain.

Mr President, Commissioner, the protection of the oceans is all too often reduced to an opposition between the preservation of the environment and the human activities that depend on it. But beyond the agreed discourses, one fundamental truth is neglected: Our fishermen are the first defenders of the oceans. Yet it is they that Europe always chooses to punish first. We will support our fishermen in the face of any pact that seeks to criminalize them when they are the first guarantors of a rational exploitation of fisheries resources. We will protect the jobs and activities of our ports against any pact that imposes restrictions without alternatives. We will defend the sovereignty of States and their full competence over their maritime zone in the face of any pact aimed at bruxellizing their policy. France has the second largest maritime domain in the world and must retain full control of it. We will therefore be firm: No to a punitive and bureaucratic ecology, yes to a responsible and sovereign management of our resources.

Mr President, Commissioners, it is to your credit that, since your appointment, you have been working hard. Your program is out, and we can perfectly guess what your guideline is: the plundering of the competence of States. Sitting comfortably on the treaties that established you, you allow yourself to indebted the European Union. You struggle, like Don Quixote, against foreign interferences that you see everywhere, except in your own ranks. Yet you have recidivated, in terms of scandal, with the "Greengate". Will the case be stifled, as were the ‘Qatargate’ and the ‘Pfizergate’? Of course, you cannot be blamed for watching our continent sink without doing anything. It is you who plant a final dagger in the backs of our farmers, with the treaty concluded with Mercosur; you who precipitate the ruin of our businesses, with the Green Deal; You, too, are condemning our future, voluntarily leaving our borders wide open. During the five years we have to spend together, we will always remind you of your place. We are hopeful that we will soon be able to count on many governments, especially after the elections in France, so that the hundred days we have known do not turn into five years, from which it is not certain that we will be able to recover.

Mr President, at this very moment, more than 450 fishing vessels are stranded at berth because of the brutal and irrational renewal of the fishing ban in the Bay of Biscay. In addition to penalizing fishermen who have already made significant efforts, this measure has resulted in considerable losses for all shore-based trades. It is essential to remember that a job at sea generates three to four jobs on land: fishmongers, mechanics, electricians, maritime blacksmiths, fishmongers depend directly on the activity of the boats. Without compensation, these professions suffer heavy economic losses with decreases in turnover without any compensation. Fishermen are our peasants of the sea. They do not ask to live on subsidies, but to live on their craft work, to ensure their essential role for food sovereignty and to pass on their know-how to future generations. They call for sustainable solutions, reconciling the protection of biodiversity and economic survival, rather than recurrent and ineffective closures that irreversibly jeopardize a sector that is our pride.