Speeches

Mr President, thank you to Commissioner Sinkevičius for building the trust of European citizens in the institutions of the Commission and the European Union. For 20 years, we have been debating the need to stop removing fins from sharks. This is fully in line with the practice of using rhino horns or ivory separately for the market. Smuggling, contraband and, in this case, verbal greenwashing or cleansing with products that have been smuggled into the legal mass cannot be controlled by anything other than a ban on the trade in shark fins. It is not a necessary commodity for anyone. The question is whether we are doing what is right, or whether we are listening to momentary financial interests and lobbyists.

Mr President, firstly, international agreements are binding, no matter what you think of them personally, and women are human beings. They include human rights, as well as sexual and reproductive health rights. The Beijing Convention and the Istanbul Convention are binding international law. Nor can you, because you disagree with driving on the right or left, break traffic rules yourself and say that it is a matter of opinion and subsidiarity, and then decide to drive at any speed anywhere. Finally, after almost twenty years of waiting, we shall have this ratification of the Istanbul Convention here in Parliament and the subsequent directive. Yes, violence against men is also prohibited. Yes, it is in international criminal law, but this notion of violence does not sufficiently recognise the form of specific violence against women, sexual, physical, above all hate speech, mental and psychological and, to a very large extent, structural violence. That is why we need specific legislation that addresses all these forms of violence, including psychological, structural and also hate speech that has taken place here, which, Mr President, I am formally announcing and asking you to address, for your part, with regard to the language used here, which, in my opinion, meets the criteria for inappropriate behaviour.

Mr President, first of all I would like to thank the Commission for a reasonably good and balanced proposal for the revision of the Stability and Growth Pact. It responds to key challenges such as increasing country-specificity. It is reasonably realistic in time. There is room for hope that, in return for these two, we could actually look at the debt and deficit ceilings more bindingly than the current proposal. Where I hope the Commission moves forward is also the reform of the metrics: How do we measure debt and GDP? We all know that the GDP metric as it stands is quite inadequate, and so too, with regard to the debt and growth pact, we need to look at social and environmental capital and also analyse what is bad debt, such as fossil subsidies, and what is good debt that supports the green transition.

Mr President, pay discrimination is not allowed in our Treaties. It is denied by the Equal Pay Directive. Somehow, after tens of years of existence in the EU, we still lack both in the equal pay for equal work, not to mention equal value. The 30 % on salaries on women – this is not acceptable. What you do not know, you cannot act upon. This is the reason why this pay transparency directive is so important. It gives the possibilities for employers and employees to have the full picture: what is the legal forms and basis for their salary, based on the competence, on the demands of the work and other special qualifications – not the gender. This gives the first possibility to really see where we stand and to take the positive actions. It’s important that it is criminal to discriminate in concrete by gender. I find it extremely important that by this directive we are going to have the harmonised criteria, indicators and application systems developed by EIGE together with the Commission. This ensures the comparability between different industries, Member States, public and private sectors, so we actually know where we stand. It is important that the Commission, as Parliament asks, reviews the directive within due time so to how to see to expand its coverage because now it is covering less than 1 % of the enterprises and 50 % of the workers, so that it covers all the workers and all the employers. And maybe active equality programming and eradication of these problems could be included in this review.

Mr President, of course we all want peace for the Middle East, and we want to have a two—state solution – or even one—state solution, as was discussed at some point. But then again, what is the real situation and what do we do as a Union? While Israel does not respect the UN resolution and internationally—committed borders, while Israel is expanding illegal settlements and barely having any room left for the Palestinians, it looks like we would almost be waiting for the Palestinian area to diminish and disappear. What do we do when Israelis are preventing Gaza people to travel, to work and even from getting medical help? Well, we intensify our economic and scientific relations with the Israelis and, the latest, we engage ourselves to deepen police cooperation. How do we deal with Russia when it has one partial attack in Europe? Where do we see the economic sanctions against Israel? Where do we see the strong stopping of any bilateral cooperation with Israel? Being non—partial and balanced does not mean closing up the eyes and being blind.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, people with disabilities are people. That is why they also have human rights. Human rights are part of the rule of law, which the Commission is responsible for defending. I therefore hope that, in this respect, the Commission will also step up and test its limits of action vis-à-vis the Council, which has, among other things, lagged behind the ambitious level of the anti-discrimination directive and of accessibility required to move forward. Thank you to the Commission for its commitment to introduce the EU Disability Card. This is also a first step towards realising the mobility of persons with disabilities and access to services. Similarly, we also need obligations regarding the interoperability of mobility. Get out of the plantation. The same rights and opportunities for working life. Therefore, it is important to oblige companies to diversity in pay. What is more, of course, we also need the same linguistic rights, for example, with regard to this Parliament and the possibilities of interpretation.

Madam President, the European Investment Bank has a pretty good track record for the last years and commitment, willingness and capability, including in environmental matters and considerations on its worth. For that, I would like you to continue, to raise the bar, with the ambition – you have Parliament’s support on that – to stay tight that none of the Bank’s funds should go to ‘significant harm’ nor fossil fuel investments. Avoid incineration and start taking into account circular economy principles, low toxicity as well as the huge demands that we have on the biodiversity side. Because you have the capabilities, you have the money, you have Parliament’s support, and you have the duty to do it.

Mr President, I’m very saddened to see the Commission take the role of being just a stepping stone for Council and Member States in this case. And this is not promising for the taxonomy and its future. What was negotiated in the first round and first level of regulation was that this was supposed to be the gold standard of what is green and to create a reliable, verifiable framework. That’s why it is clearly written in the first level of regulation that it needs to be science—based. And what the platform proposed was not this what the Commission is proposing. It says it needs to have ‘clear indicators’. Well, that can be doubted in this case. It says clearly it needs to be substantially better than the industry average, and that is the industry that we are talking about, substantially better than the nuclear in general. Substantially better than the gas in general. And it means that now when we look at the delegated acts, how can anyone say that if you have old—fashioned Russian nuclear reactors – where you have a plan for the waste treatment by 2040 – that is the best gold standard of the nuclear energy in the European global market. And the Parliament and the negotiating team was open to discuss this point, for example. We might disagree or agree about what is the role of nuclear in the future, but if you include nuclear, it should have been that kind of a technology that has the plans already for the waste treatment. The new model of small nuclear; maybe in future fusion, if we are talking about as long as a 2040 timeline, and those ones in technology that are recycling and reusing the fuel. So there are plenty of options that from the bottom of my heart I really would have hoped the Commission would have used. And with gas, in some cases it goes close to ‘do no significant harm’ limits when we are talking about a temporary use of gas. So disappointed. Not in the line of the first level of the regulation. There’s a severe brake on this and this has been the reaction by the financial market investors already. None of them are labelling gas or nuclear as green investment. So the EU, according to this proposal, would do that. And there is a strong signal that this might discredit the whole process.

I have a very brief question. If we look at the EPAs and the scientific community, they are very clear that 40% of the land and water area should be in a favourable state to support our ecosystems. If we look at that, what are your plans to proceed with this rewilding target in biodiversity of about 20%? Because there seems to be one half missing. This leads to a second question. How are you going to push the higher ambition level internationally? I am not going to take the second question because I can very briefly add then, when we have the targets, what about using Copernicus and artificial intelligence better on supervision and make it more binding?

Mr President, thank you for the debate and thank you to the Commissioner for the preparation about an EU care strategy. We just would like to encourage you to raise the ambition level, with this Parliament’s support – which you can hear very strongly – and as I said, to take the informal carers’ situation into account. Commissioner Šuica, you quite rightly said that at the Conference on the Future of Europe, citizens’ first priority was the care and social sector and the EU’s improvements there. And it is true that access to care is a human right. It is a constitutional right and it is the EU’s duty to take care of that. And so, no, it does not touch with the subsidiarity. We demand and we ensure that there is universal access to care when it is needed. Then it is up to the Member States how they organise it – public or private, informal/formal, community-based, personal budgeting – there are millions of ways and this is clearly said in the report. We do not touch with the subsidiarity. It is in no way threatened and there is no pressure on it. But if the quality and human rights is a pressure to the subsidiarity of Member States, then I really do wonder. Then, yes, I agree that it would be wonderful to also encourage the better use of digitalisation, research and innovation and the benefit of this knowledge at European level. This is the right place for the EU to support the Member States and to create programmes and platforms, as it is called in this report, to support Member States’ development. Last but not least, if Member States, by themselves, could solve the care issues, they would have done so already. And if they could take care of the cross-border needs of 8 million new people to be demanded in the sector, it would have happened already.

Mr President, this is the first comprehensive care report from the European Parliament, and so it is quite groundbreaking. After COVID-19, it became quite clear, in the same way as in the health sector, that the individual resources of the Member States are too weak to care for our citizens. The level of care was very low in many Member States, especially for the elderly and institutional care. There was a lack of equipment, staff and staff support. The death rates, which have been specific to elderly people with memory disorders in care institutions, are so dramatic that this requires further examination. Parliament is therefore sending a strong message that every European has a fundamental right to good, accessible care for all who need it, whether it be short-term, long-term, surprising or predictable. This right-based approach is, of course, already enshrined in the social pillar, but we do not yet have very effective means of achieving it. To the effect that someone's right must also be someone's duty, in this case the duty of the Member States to ensure the accessibility of this good care. The second message is that there must also be a change in care and in the perception of care. We need to focus on people-centred, tailor-made care based on people's life situations, needs and aspirations, away from institutions, more communal. The third message is that this all needs more investment in the care sector as a whole and especially in the care of people with long-term illnesses. This, in turn, needs, as far as I can see, legislation. It needs indicators of quality of care, continuous monitoring of the situation in the Member States, basic pay for best practices and also addressing existing problematic situations and backlogs. Parliament calls on the Commission to adopt a care strategy and to keep it under constant review, so that it is not just a good goal and a piece of paper on the table. I am also particularly pleased with the requirement in this report for a care programme for informal carers, which I hope the Commission will bring either as part of the care strategy or afterwards. We need to recognise and recognise informal caregiving, which accounts for around 70% of care needs in our Member States. Care must be taken to ensure that it is not only financially supported, but also supported by its services, and that caregivers' well-being, leisure time and health are taken care of. Care is also, to a large extent, a women's issue, where often underpaid women take care of other women. It is therefore self-evident that better care needs to be taken about the position of workers. Without good employees, there is no good care. With these accompanying words, I would like to thank all the parties, the shadow rapporteurs and the co-rapporteur, Milan Brglez, for the very good and constructive cooperation with which we can send forward this strong common message.

Mr President, I’m very happy that we are having this very frank and good exchange of opinions here in Parliament on kidney disease, like we have had on other diseases, where you have taken very prompt action. We know that chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a significant burden for our healthcare system. One hundred million Europeans suffer from it, and predictions are that it is in sharp extension and increase. Of course, this is easy to understand. We live longer. We eat more medicine. There are the other big non-communicable diseases (NCDs) – we heard about diabetes and blood pressure. Then there’s our livelihoods and what we eat and what chemicals we put in ourselves – and that all gets into our kidneys. But the difference with some other diseases, like the big ones like diabetes where we have the European programme, like heart and cardiovascular diseases, is that kidney disease is a silent killer. We do not raise it as a big issue at Member State level. More often than not, patients are not aware of the situation until it is already a severe condition. Even though, in some cases, it would be preventable with different choices of medication, for example, if there’s a lack of understanding, prevention is undone. And then, if doctors often do not take it as a priority, the patients do not know, and the healthcare system doesn’t prioritise and understand it, and there you have it. It keeps on growing and spreading silently in our societies. That’s why I think, and we co-signatories of this initiative think, that this would be a very good and proper time for the Commission to start thinking about having a separate kidney disease (CKD) programme that has the normal elements we always see in health programmes: how to prevent, how to diagnose early, how to screen, how to start the best treatments, how to develop better and more cost-effective treatments, as we know that this is one of the most expensive therapies we have in our healthcare system. And with this, we can tackle this challenge. But I’m only afraid that if this is only one part of the NCD programme, and not even listed as one of the highest, we might not be able to tackle the challenge. So this is the plea from us to the Commission: please consider having a separate programme about it and action in the future.

Madam President, textiles are growing environmental harm, as we have heard many times already today here in the plenary, and it is up to buildings and food on the scale of circular economy and resource efficiency of the material consumption what we have globally. It is championing to be the first or the second in chemicalisation, in water consumption, in waste problems and in CO2 emissions. Should I continue? And what is the problem with the textiles is that basically everything goes wrong with the textiles. It is from sourcing to the whole processing of the materials, and we know all the social and chemical and other problems there. And it is up to very short use of the textiles itself and then the very unproper discarding of that material. And when you add up that with the extremely increased use of the model fashion and textiles, we can see a blowing catastrophe just in front of our eyes. So because of that, I would like to thank and congratulate the Commission and Commissioner to coming up with this textile strategy that the Parliament has been calling for several times. And I hope that with this strategy, the Commission would set vital requirements and then the voluntary action. We need them both. And let me describe very briefly a couple of those. We need to act on the sourcing and to put the regulatory framework what is sustainable sourcing on the quality, durability, and longevity of the materials. We need to set up a proper life-cycle analysis to support it. We need to prolong the use, and there the target should be that the hub of the textiles by 2030 should be served as services. We need to reuse, recycle and then refibre back to the use, so with the target with the tenfold resource efficiency. And to conclude, there needs to be minimum regulation on social and environmental standards and the neglect should be criminalised. But we need the voluntary actions, that is the Disclosure Regulation, due diligence, taxonomy and CSRD that the textiles should be included in.

Mr President, this is the third action plan in a row that started 10 years ago to put gender in the limelight in our development and foreign policy. And I need to admit that I need to congratulate the Commission and the Commissioner for the extremely ambitious and fast implementation of these targets. This is so far the best programme, and the idea is that – as we heard – that over 80% of the activities should be in line with the gender action plan and integrating gender in foreign policies and in development. And we heard already that – was it 78%? – that this is already achieved. So congratulations, this is the direction to go in. But not to be complacent about what is done, I would like to look further at the upcoming challenges, and there I just would like to raise some of the points which the Parliament finds extremely important. One of them is that we would have a special unit in the European External Action Service for gender activities and gender knowledge, and I think that that really would help us in our service units across the world – the limelight and to find the gender analysis in country politics. Last but not least, one small but important point I would like to raise is that I hope that you could do all in your powers to find a way to help the female human rights defenders in our services.

Mr President, it is good to hear that the Commission has a good will to stop golden passports and visas and the unjustified sale of EU citizenship, but now we also need deeds and effective deeds. Firstly, I would like to ask the Commission: Will you take all necessary measures to freeze during the current sanctions regime all dual citizenship assets held by Russians with golden passports or visas in European territory? Secondly, where there is will in politics, there is also a way. I therefore call on the Commission to bring forward a legislative proposal to prevent the sale of citizenship. Invoking the rule of law, including the fact that, as a rule, it is about avoiding EU legislation and money laundering, and this can also be done on the basis of the fight against terrorism. I also believe that this must be regressively targeted at those who have so far acquired dual citizenship without justification. Finally, I would like to thank the rapporteur, Mrs Sophia in 't Veld, for her excellent report and for her initiative in this matter.

Madam President, Member States and the extreme right do not own their citzens, not even women. Women’s rights are human rights, because women are human beings. That’s why sexual and reproductive rights and the right to an abortion are human rights, and human rights are part of the rule of law. This gross and aggravated offence to women’s rights that is happening in Poland, caused by this arbitrary and extrajudicial government, is exactly the reason why we need stronger tools in the rule of law and in non—discrimination in the EU. We also need to keep a very close eye on what is happening in other Member States, for example in Slovakia. Indeed, I hope that, if my rights were threatened in Finland by this kind of arbitrary extreme-rightist government, someone in the EU would step up and fight for my rights. So it is my duty to fight for the rights of Polish citizens and Polish women.

Mr President, the EU stands for constitutional rights, human rights, the rule of law and democracy, which it is built on. This is the basis for peace and prosperity. It is the task of the Commission and Parliament to safeguard this. Prime Minister, your actions are strengthening the rule of law in the EU and our understanding of why it is so important to safeguard these tasks at the EU level. You are making us all understand why we need a stronger procedure in the EU. We are going to stand with the Polish people and rely on the Commission to act on its duty, and nothing will change this. We are not blaming Poland nor its citizens. We are defending them against the bullying violence that you, Prime Minister, are leading.

Mr President, art is at the heart of European values, our civilisation, our ability to understand the world, to create well-being and to innovate and create prosperous economies. That’s why I think that this is the right time to discuss what should be the EU’s role in culture and cultural policies. And yes, I am supportive of the proposals that we should indeed have a stronger role. I would like to thank the Commission for putting effort into finding the funds for culture and art in one place in the future. That and the two per cent of the RRF is a good start, but I wish that we could go further in the amount. I would double it in the longer term. Secondly, I would just like to propose to all of us, and to the Commission, why wouldn’t we make an experiment of basic income and start with the artists in trouble in troubling times? I think that a couple of million would go very far in this kind of an endeavour.

Mr President, I support a strong social responsibility for every single European citizen and our duty to increase well-being for everyone. A good economic policy is a prerequisite for this, and I dare to say that responsible and good economic policy is in fact the best social policy. We know that debt levels have risen beyond the necessary COVID-19 recovery in all Member States, especially in those where economic problems were already evident in the past. However, this is not a reason to lose the foundations of the Stability and Growth Pact, nor is it a reason not to deal with indebtedness. We need to achieve sustainable debt levels so that we can afford to continue to recover in a countercyclical manner, and so that we can afford climate and other investments for which Europe has a huge investment gap. Good public finance management can be modelled on the RRF process, and just as important as looking at debt levels is how in different sectors we direct our spending so that it produces better and more efficiently, and every sector in this regard can be an investment target but also a waste.