Speeches

Madam President, the left will, of course, support every sense of urgency that exists, and that exists among the citizens, to put an end to the obscene reality that we have some of the largest and most profitable companies in the world paying low taxes or not paying taxes at all. But what we are promised is a tax on multinational companies that will be fair, fairly distributed and effective. And the proposal we have on the table is none of these things. It will not be a tax on multinationals, but a tax on a small part of multinational companies. It will not be effective, because it is full of exclusions, deductions and exceptions. It will not be fair, because it is a much lower rate than that practiced in most countries and for most companies. And it will not be justly distributed, because the developed world has tried to keep to itself the lion's share of the revenue from this new tax. We therefore have a great deal of urgency, but also a great deal to improve on this proposal.

Madam President, Russia's military aggression against Ukraine has shown how important it is to overcome Europe's dependence on Russia. An economic dependence that has also become a political dependence in the response to this military aggression. It is important that this energy sovereignty of Europe is achieved with an agenda for the energy transition, without hesitation and zigzags, and not through a return to the Coal Age. And it is also important that the truly solidarity-based and responsible response being given to the refugee crisis of this war in Ukraine be extended to all refugees of all backgrounds, colours and religions. Europe cannot have two asylum policies, it cannot discriminate between human lives. But it is also important that the victims of this war are not used to remilitarise Europe, fattening the same European military industry that sold a part of the weapons with which Russia today attacks the Ukrainian people. Ten European countries continued to sell arms to Russia, even after the embargo imposed by the European institutions. Remilitarization is the promotion of this industry, which will then spread weapons around the world. And it is also, and neither can it be, the laundering and strengthening of NATO, an international organization that is responsible for so many criminal wars, for so many millions of dead and refugees across this planet. The path of peace is the path of an autonomous diplomacy of the European Union, a diplomacy for peace.

Madam President, the European Union's economic rules are obsolete and are and have always been counterproductive. They were suspended during the pandemic because everyone knew that they would not be able to respond to this economic crisis anymore. And we already know today that they will not be able to respond to the economic crisis that is coming and that is going to be caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, either from the point of view of the response to the economic and social crisis, or from the point of view of the investment required in the energy transition so that Europe can reduce its dependence on Russia in this area. That is why the suspension of economic rules is a window of opportunity to change them, a window of opportunity that this report contributes to wasting. The report calls for a clear path for the revision of the rules, but it does not have a single clear, substantial commitment on how such a revision should be made. It has vague ideas and paragraphs that say one thing and the opposite, as we also heard in Commissioner Dombrovskis' speech. It even has the famous references to the so-called prudent fiscal policies that have destroyed so many economies within the European Union. We have shared with the Socialists and the Greens common views on the need to revise the economic rules of the European Union. The strategy of the right is clear, is to postpone and delay this debate to leave it all the same when this window of opportunity closes. This report plays that game and contributes to missing that opportunity.

Mr President, golden visas operate on the basis of an indecent principle: the principle that the rights that come with nationality can be bought, the principle that people who choose our countries to work, so often in low-paid jobs, can wait years to have nationality and the associated rights, but people who want nationality to launder money from corruption or financial crime can have it on time. This principle is not only allowed but has been promoted in Portugal. In 2013 and 2014, the right-wing government in Portugal carried out an authentic tour Russia to sell visas gold Portuguese. In the same months as the Euromaidan and with particular intensity after the invasion of Crimea, the Portuguese government attracted Russian millionaires to this unfortunate scheme. And even today, even with a criminal war and invasion in Ukraine, the Portuguese government, now socialist, continues to refuse to revoke these visas. gold and penalizing the elite who are supporting and financing this invasion.

Madam President, it seems to me to be very important that, in the implementation of the Recovery and Resilience Facility, the Commission and the Council learn from the mistakes of the past, in particular the mistakes that led to the Troika programmes, and that the Member States are allowed to develop their own development strategies and accompany them with the structural reforms that the Member States and their democratic life determine. I believe that this mechanism will have the greatest chance of success if we allow the democratic institutions of each country to decide on its course and not the technocracy of Brussels. If mistakes are made, as they already seem to be in my country, particularly in terms of concentrating this support on the usual large companies and not on small and medium-sized enterprises, as promised, it will be up to the democratic systems to correct these mistakes and direct economic policy towards more productive priorities. At the very least, it is up to the European Commission not to go back to the mistakes and interferences of the past that have produced such disastrous results.

Madam President, this Parliament has debated digital platforms a lot from the point of view of labour rights and has come up with joint positions that are important, but there has been much less debate about what digital platforms mean from the point of view of competition, an issue that usually concerns both the European Commission and so little when digital platforms are involved. With digital platforms we have different conditions in terms of taxation, in terms of regulation, in terms of labour rights. Digital platforms do dumping like perhaps no other private company in the European Economic Area. How long will it take for the European Commission to start - which sees competition problems everywhere within the European Economic Area - to see competition problems in the way digital platforms operate in sectors that already exist.

Madam President, for my country, the European Union has already been a reference from the point of view of environmental laws and has already been a factor in modernising some of the actions of the authorities in Portugal at this level. However, this line of action of the European Union has been increasingly degraded. Throughout this mandate, we have brought to the Commission numerous complaints about various watercourses in Portugal, the Rio Ave, Ribeira de Travassos and others, which the Commission knows are violations of the Water Framework Directive, and we have not received any satisfactory response from the Commission. The same thing when we reported attacks in the Ria Formosa Natural Park or in the Guadiana river basin, protected areas of community interest. The European Union continues to speak, but has less and less concrete action in the protection of these environmental rights and in the application of this Community law. It was as committed as it is in other areas, such as labour law, where it has no competence, but it puts pressure on Member States far beyond what the law allows.

Mr President, the OECD agreement on the taxation of multinationals is a fraud based on two lies. The first is that multinational companies will be taxed at 15%. That's not gonna happen. The first pillar provides for the first 10 % profit margin to be exempted, which means that some of the most profitable multinational companies on the planet will pay not 15, not 10, not 5, but 0 %, and the second pillar was thrown into ten years from now, i.e. into the Calendas, politically speaking. The second lie is that the revenue will be paid in the countries where the economic activity takes place, one of the fundamental principles of the OECD and which is also not respected in this proposal. The share that will be distributed to the countries that are entitled to it corresponds to a small part of the taxed income, which will deepen the inequalities between the developed and the underdeveloped world and between countries that promote tax evasion and those that want to combat it.

Mr President, the European Commission has always been very quick to persecute all Member States that implement fiscal policies, public policies, social policies that violate economic governance rules. But it is curious to note that when it comes to regulating the criminality of the financial system, tax evasion, the hare turns into the turtle. And that is why we have so many Member States, like my own, that have not yet transposed the legislation on money laundering; That's why we keep seeing gold, that instrument at the service of financial crime, in several Member States, again including my own; and that, despite all the European Commission's declarations of intent, we still have a list of offshore which is absolutely ridiculous and which shows that we are not just talking about slowness. In the case of the protection of offshore They hide the path through which money is laundered, the European Commission is not only slow, it is actively complicit.

Mr President, thank you to the rapporteur of this report for presenting us with a very clear position from Parliament on a decades-long public health problem that has killed tens of thousands of people in Europe alone and continues in all sorts of buildings in our cities, in offices, in apartments, in schools, in theatres, even in hospitals. The removal of asbestos from all these buildings has been very slow, very inefficient and dangerous for people who continue to use it during removal operations. For example, in my country, in many schools, asbestos removal was done on weekends, exposing children who attended it, and workers working on asbestos removal are often also very poorly protected. I therefore believe that this report is very important because it ensures a systematic policy of rapid asbestos removal that also protects those who will work on this priority.

Mr President, the main difference between cross-border regions and other regions is that the region next door is also not just another region, but another country. But this cannot be a reason why infrastructure, services, investments, which other regions in the same countries take for granted, or at least have no obstacles to implement, should be added to the already common discrimination of these regions within these countries. In many countries of the European Union, as in my own, cross-border regions are also regions away from large urban centres and therefore regions where there is already a lower density of public services, infrastructure, problems of desertification and abandonment. If we add to these chronic problems, at least chronic ones in some countries of the European Union, the legal obstacles that this mechanism was intended to overcome, we are aggravating the situation of these regions and going against the whole spirit of European cohesion policy. That is why the European Parliament has sought to discuss this matter and overcome some of the concerns that were initially expressed from the point of view of the voluntary nature of this mechanism which, if not confirmed, could undermine the principle of subsidiarity. Parliament's contribution has dispelled these doubts from the point of view of the implementation of this mechanism. That is why it is so difficult to understand the Council's blockade, if only because it contradicts the past positions of several governments, some of them still in office, regarding the continuation of this mechanism and its compatibility with the principle of subsidiarity. It is sad that the European Union, which has proved so effective in overcoming all legal barriers, in some cases and from my point of view too far, to achieve harmonisation of the internal market, is not able to overcome such simple obstacles to promoting public investment, to promoting public services and basic infrastructure. And the truth is that the Council has not brought here an explanation for this blockage, let alone a proposal for an alternative instrument to solve these problems, and so there remains the question, and I renew the question, which is, incidentally, the subject of this oral question, whether there is an alternative, whether the Council is going to propose any alternative, whether the Commission is going to propose any alternative, or whether the idea is to stay the same?

Mr President, Commissioner Gentiloni, the size of the Recovery and Resilience Fund, spread over the various years in which it can be used, is below half a percentage point, less than 0.5% of European GDP. This has not prevented a barrage of propaganda around this instrument, which will be distributed in droppers, with corresponding pressures for Member States to implement the famous specific recommendations that most European governments have wisely ignored. However, there are also responsibilities for which the Commission has to answer. It has already been pre-announced by the European Commission that from 2023 the economic governance rules will resume and it does not appear that the European Commission is preparing to transform them before that moment, as would be necessary. And so the question is: the Commission considers that this very meagre macroeconomic stimulus that constitutes the Recovery and Resilience Fund will be sufficient to offset the effects of the return of economic insanity with which we have been governed.

Mr President, the Dutch Minister of Finance not so long ago called for an investigation of the countries of southern Europe because of their limited budgetary space. This Minister of Finance governs a Member State of the European Union that steals tax revenue that legitimately belongs to other Member States, including these southern countries, and thereby shifts the tax burden from multinational companies to those who live off their work. This Minister of Finance now appears in the Pandora Papers It proves that everything makes sense. But crocodile tears don't boil down to the people who now appear in our lives. Pandora Papers. The groups that were still a little while ago outraged, the right-wing groups in the European Parliament, who were outraged by the revelations of the Pandora Papers, they are the same people who have blocked a resolution of this Parliament on the same subject and are preparing, in relation to this report, to block all the concrete amendments to the Code of Conduct that it contains. All the outrage, all the concern, all the declarations of intent, as long as nothing concrete is done – that is the philosophy of the European right. If this report, if this excellent report, is amputated in its most consequential part, we will know who is responsible.

Madam President, the exchange of information and administrative cooperation between tax authorities is fundamental to combating fraud and tax evasion and money laundering. These objectives are apparently consensual, but every time we discuss one of these reports we find that there are political forces, countries and even European institutions, which are not only not available to do what is necessary, but do everything they can to prevent these objectives from being achieved with minimum effectiveness. The fact that we have sought to collect information on the exchange of information and that the same States that have undertaken to continue and comply with these information exchange requirements refuse to exchange information on the subject is very worrying, as is the European Commission's highly restrictive interpretation of its own constraints, which has allowed this information not to reach Parliament. If that is the case, and if that is the interpretation of the European Commission, I hope that, in a future revision of the DAC, the European Commission will give itself these powers and give Parliament access to the information that will make it possible to monitor the implementation of the DAC. In fact, an area in which, as has already been said, the European Commission has been very attentive. I also hope that the European Commission will accept the requests that are made in this report to extend the information that is exchanged between tax authorities, namely at the level of real estate and dividends, at the level of the degree of discrimination of information and at the level of information of financial institutions on ultimate beneficiaries.

Madam President, platforms are sold as a magical world of innovation and entrepreneurship. But beyond marketing and dazzling, mobile apps, the services that are provided, even algorithms, are far from innovations today. The only magic that platforms offer is the trick of making the boss disappear and the corresponding working relationship. The only innovation they have made available is the ability to travel back in time, to the 19th century, and to the framework of social and labour rights that existed there. The only entrepreneurship that really exists is the transfer of economic risk from the company that hires to the worker that works and starts to risk everything. What we need is to treat platform workers as workers, collective bargaining, labour contracts, social protection. By the way, for these and for all workers.