Debate contributions by Juan Fernando LÓPEZ AGUILAR

Madam President, Vice-President Fitto, cohesive solidarity is Europe's raison d'être: It began as inter-territorial and regional solidarity and then achieved social and intergenerational solidarity. If I have defended this with passion for the outermost regions that border other continents, with the same conviction I defend it for the regions that have a border no less than with Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, under a cruel war of aggression that has not only resulted in thousands of deaths, but also with eleven million displaced people who have entered the territory of the European Union, four million of whom remain in the neighboring countries: not only Finland, with its 1,300 kilometers of border, not only the three Baltic republics, but also Poland with Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave in the middle of the European Union. Therefore, the solution to all those people who need assistance is European funds, in no case talk of instrumentalization (or weaponisation, in English) of immigrants as weapons, because they are people, but those countries need assistance to be able to care for them and provide services that comply with their fundamental rights. A strong and robust European cohesion policy is needed...

Madam President, Commissioner Šefčovič, before the Commission's work programme, the pro-European response is clear: We need to be more united without making any concessions to reactionary nationalism, which is the opposite of what we need to make an opportunity for the enormous challenges posed to us by disruptive global actors, such as the Trump Administration, or hostile ones, such as Putin's Russia. But it is ironic that, in the face of the most decisive fact in the European Union and in the context of the elections in its Member States – the migratory event – what the work programme proposes in its deregulatory mantra is a new law, a law of returns, as if ignoring that increasing returns does not depend on new legislation, but on an architecture, currently non-existent, of mutually beneficial and interesting agreements both for the transit and origin states and for the European Union. What is imperative is to implement the Pact on Migration and Asylum together with all the legislation that is mandatory for Member States. And that is what we miss in the Commission's work programme.

Madam President, Commissioner, it has cost humanity and its history many wars, much blood and much accumulated pain to put in place an architecture of international justice of which not only the International Court of Justice of the United Nations system is a part, but also the International Criminal Court, which draws lessons from the courts of Nuremberg, Tokyo, Rwanda and Yugoslavia and prevents impunity for war crimes and crimes against humanity. And therefore, the European Union, which makes international law a source of its own law and whose Member States are signatories to the International Criminal Court treaty, has an obligation to defend it against the threats and sanctions of Trump, who seeks to cover up the war crimes perpetrated in Gaza against the civilian population by the Netanyahu government, as well as to ensure that the war crimes perpetrated in Ukraine go unpunished. Therefore, it is not enough just to say that we are part of the International Criminal Court, it is necessary for the Council to send a clear message in defence of the fight against impunity and of the International Criminal Court.

Mr President, Commissioner Šuica, you have received the message very clearly: The problem is not new, nor is violence, but its chronification and escalation to morally unbearable extremes demands a forceful response. That intervention by M23, the covert force behind Rwanda's intervention in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is leaving thousands dead and hundreds of thousands displaced, with all kinds of violence, including sexual violence. It is therefore urgent to suspend the cooperation programme with Rwanda and the 20 million euros of investment planned to send the clear message that in no case can raw materials, no matter how strategic they may be, such as coltan, justify the continuation of the bloodshed. Members of the European Parliament were able to hear the absolutely horrifying testimony of the witnesses to that violence the other day. They were calling on the European Union to mobilise all its energies: No country that has had a colonial presence in Africa can do this on its own. In order to compensate for the influence of Russia and China, it must be the European Union that uses all its weight. The message is therefore very clear, Commissioner Šuica: act, and act now.

Mr President, after three years of Putin's cruel war of aggression against Ukraine, there are three very clear lessons. We activated the Temporary Protection Directive for the first time with a huge financial effort to help countries that have received 11 million people displaced by war, four million of whom stay indefinitely in Europe. But that cannot under any circumstances be a pretext for not complying with the obligations of the Pact on Migration and Asylum, not even for Poland, which has been so supportive of those displaced from the war in Ukraine. But in order to sustain that effort, it is imperative that we make permanent the mechanism that makes it possible to convert the confiscation of property into permanent sanctions against Russia. This mechanism requires reform of the current European Union sanctions legislation. And, thirdly, it is essential to give solid body to the cooperation with the International Criminal Court, so questioned at the moment by the Trump Administration. In the European Union we have signed the international criminal treaty, with joint investigation teams with...

Mr President, every week that passes, these fragile boats continue to arrive in the Canary Islands, full of desperate people who come from the African continent. The Canary Islands are the European Union, but boats full of the corpses of those unfortunate people who did not get it continue to arrive in the Caribbean as well. And the lesson of so much tragedy is imperative: urges the Commission to accelerate the full implementation of all mandatory laws for the Member States making up the Pact on Migration and Asylum and, in particular, to accelerate the launch of the EU Solidarity Coordinator, allowing for an orderly, fair, equitable and solidarity-based redistribution of those in a very vulnerable situation: women with minors, women victims of trafficking and exploitation of persons, and unaccompanied minors, who also require solidarity in Spain, prevented to date by the opposition of the right. There is an urgent need for legal reform to make this possible, but above all there is an urgent need for the Commission to demand that all Member States comply with their obligations under the Pact and to make it clear that it is not acceptable for a head of government, as we heard this week from Donald Tusk in Poland, to say that he will not implement the Pact on Migration and Asylum, as if he were unaware that European law is binding in its primacy and in its direct effectiveness for all Member States.

Mr President, the role of the European Union in resolving humanitarian crises by identifying people missing in wars and conflicts and the dictatorships that have ravaged the Member States of the European Union is not only fundamental, but also fully consistent with our values, as well as imperative. And it is clear that memory, reparation and truth are the way, as demonstrated in Cyprus - for which I have had the honour of being this Parliament's rapporteur on missing persons - and it is the right way pointed out by the Spanish Law on Democratic Memory. The opposite path is indicated by the autonomous communities governed in Spain by the right and the extreme right, which have canceled the census of victims, which have eliminated the programs of exhumation of mass graves and elimination of the symbols of the dictatorship. To do justice to the victims it is essential that we combine these three virtues: memory, repair and truth.

Madam President, we are debating in this plenary session the increase in organised crime in Sweden, but, in reality, we are talking about a syndrome that runs throughout Europe: First of all, organized crime is the crime of our time. Secondly, there is an increase in the number of adolescents – minors – involved in the commission of these crimes, recruited by mafias. And thirdly, the recruitment technique consists of Instagram and social media. This is not happening in all the Member States of the European Union, there is no room for any demagogy - such as the one used, incidentally, by the right against the Swedish Social Democratic Government - when the truth is that, under the Swedish right-wing government supported by the extreme right, this criminality has only increased. Therefore, the recipe is in sight: increasing specialised police and judicial cooperation. Secondly, to use all the experience of Eurojust and Europol to confiscate not only firearms, but also illegally obtained profits and their laundering. And, thirdly, digital specialization in the fight against this crime: digital evidence and thus increased technology in crime effectiveness. And - I cannot help mentioning this - we must also combat segregation, the exclusion from which inequality comes, from which the increase in crime comes.

Madam President, Commissioner Brunner, why are transnational criminal organisations that traffic in people a lucrative business? For two premises that need to be expressed. The first is despair. Last week, fifty Pakistanis lost their lives trying to reach the European Union through the Canary Islands from the coast of Mauritania. It takes a lot of desperation to explain that sequence. But the second, undoubtedly, is the complicity of the negative view with which the European Union punishes the act of migration for the absence of alternatives. People fleeing despair are forced into the hands of illicit trafficking and the exploitation of people – particularly cruel to women and unaccompanied minors – by agents complicit in these criminal networks in the European Union itself. Therefore, we must change our eyes and it is essential - I am talking about this morning in which we heard such a pro-European speech by Prime Minister Tusk - that it be said that any look at security that is not compensated by an effort of cooperation and development aid that makes the best sense of the European Union's investments to offer opportunities and recruitments at source, as well as the inclusion and integration of migrants in the European Union, will be a profoundly wrong look. Therefore, it is essential to change it.

Mr President, Commissioner, it is impossible to tackle the European demographic winter without changing our eyes to migration and, by extension, to asylum claims, because there is no issue in which the contradiction between the real interest of the European Union and the perceived interests is so striking. The real interest is that there is regular migration, with respect for their fundamental rights, that contributes with their taxes and contributions to the demographic greening, in addition to the support of our social model. And the perceived interest is fueled by lies, hoaxes, prejudices and demagogy, with a refractory and negative look at the contribution of migrants. And therefore, if we do not tackle all the keys to the equation, including this one, it will be impossible for the European Union not to continue declining in gross domestic product, in participation in world trade and, consequently, to ensure its future and the support of its social model. Changing our eyes to the migratory event is, therefore, absolutely imperative to tackle the demographic winter.

Wow, what a situation. Now what? N have to wait for the go. That's it. Okay. Okay. Juan Fernando Lopez Aguilar. We did. translation. Madam President. It's possible. Could I start again? Thank you. President Antonio Costa. Blanca. ESTA masada. Ninguna concession. transition. autonomy. State innovation. Madam President, President Antonio Costa, the best response to Trump's return to the White House is to establish a relationship based on mutual respect, which requires the European Union to respect itself and its legislation: no concessions; no backsliding on the commitment against global warming and the just green transition; no backsliding on strategic autonomy, which requires innovation, but also investments – including the defence strand; and, above all, no imitation of Trump in his cruel agenda against migrants. This requires that the Council and the Commission have absolute competitiveness and that Member States effectively comply with their legal obligations with respect to each of the regulations of the Pact on Migration and Asylum. And, since the Council is so obsessed with returns, we can only remind them that making them operational requires negotiating mutually beneficial agreements with countries of origin and transit, and that can only be done with the incentive of hiring at source and legal and safe ways that give workers a chance, who will otherwise risk their lives in the hands of criminal organizations to reach the European Union, where they have guarantees, security and a perfect respect for their dignity and their fundamental rights.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen of the Council and the Commission, we are debating Hungary again. We may be talking about breaches of the judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union; we may speak of systematic, persevering and persistent disregard for European law; we may talk about non-compliance with the obligations of all Member States in the Pact on Migration and Asylum; We may be talking about Pegasus, or we may be talking about spying on OLAF officials, an EU office whose investigations deserve respect. Whatever it is shows that Hungary is in breach of its obligations with regard to European law, transparency and, therefore, sincere cooperation – which is a mandate of Article 4 of the Treaty on European Union for the European institutions – as well as, of course, the rule of law, that is, the subjection to legality that binds all Member States as a rule of membership of this club, which is not only of rights, but also of obligations relating to European law.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, representatives of the Council and the Commission, slandering, defaming, spreading those lies that you call disinformation, hatred and confrontation is not freedom of expression and is not protected by the Charter or by the constitutions of the Member States. And yet that is exactly the design of addictive algorithms, in the hands of an oligarchy of far-right tycoons, erected as warlords against values and against European law. The European Union cannot kneel, surrender or abdicate its legislation and therefore the first obligation of the Commission is to enforce the Artificial Intelligence Act, the Digital Services Act, the Digital Markets Act and the General Data Protection Regulation, which offer the highest standard of protection in the world. And, as long as those fines that have to be imposed on anyone who violates European law and those demands that judges impose restrictions on the designs of those tycoons behind social networks arrive, there is something else the European Union can do: put in place European social networks with transparent algorithms, which guarantee a public debate worthy of the name of democratic and participatory citizenship.

Madam President, at the December plenary session I spoke about the disaster in Mayotte with fatalities and, the next day, many colleagues asked me whether that island in the Indian Ocean is a European Union. Of course it is, along with five other French regions, two Portuguese and the Canary Islands in Spain; the only regions qualified by European law to obtain solidarity – where, when it is most needed, interregional solidarity is the raison d’être of the European Union. Now also here in Strasbourg, the annual Conference of Presidents of the Outermost and Canary Regions is entitled to a unique response - as the European Union's external border - to the migration spike on the deadliest route to the European Union, which claimed no less than 50 lives last week. Once again, it is essential that the European Union responds in the outermost regions not only to climate emergencies, to natural disasters, but also to this vulnerable condition of the European Union's external border region.

Mr President, Commissioner, all Member States' constitutions prohibit discrimination on grounds of sex, as Article 21 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union categorically does. However, with just five years left until the expiration of the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations 2030 Agenda, which enshrine access to equality, the United Nations itself declares that we are three centuries away from eliminating all barriers to discrimination, including the gender gap, which is the pay gap that shakes the European Union the most. I am sure that the European Union will be worthily represented at the next UN Commission on the Status of Women in 2025. But that's not the challenge: the challenge is a commitment by the European Union to monitor any backsliding, any backsliding, particularly on women's sexual and reproductive rights in the European Union. Women's rights are an enshrinement of equality, which is a founding value of the European Union alongside democracy. It is a question of democracy and therefore a defining issue for the European Union under Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union.

Madam President, Commissioner, the rights of people with disabilities – more than 10 million across the European Union – are fundamental rights. This is clearly stated in Article 26 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, which is binding on all Member States. In addition, it says the obligation of the European Union to comply with the EU Strategy on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities for 2021-2030, in which there is a whole set of mandates to move in the direction of ensuring inclusion and personal autonomy. The card of people with disabilities that we approved last legislature addresses the care dimension, guaranteeing public employment places, guaranteeing quotas in the public service, guaranteeing parking spaces and guaranteeing special prices in public transport. But it is not enough, because we are not only talking about its care dimension: We are talking about that dimension of fundamental rights that has been reflected in the reform of the Spanish Constitution, which has been carried out this year, not only to update the lexicon, but to reinforce precisely that dimension of fundamental rights, without any form of discrimination, particularly sensitive to the disability of women and minors.

Mr President, Commissioner McGrath, it does not fail: in every Strasbourg plenary session, whatever the pretext, there is no agenda that is free from the cacophony of criticism poured into Spanish from all right-wingers against Spain and its government. And it's not only sad, it's outrageous. First, because they are worth every falsehood, every lie, every defamation and every slander in what has been described in Spain as the cycle of the hoax. Second, because it takes cynicism to charge honorable people without evidence by covering up confessed criminals and far-right organizations. Thirdly, because it is difficult not to recall here that the last People's Party Government had three ministers who have served long prison sentences, that there are two others who are designated for criminal prosecution and that the national treasurer of the People's Party has just been released from prison. The latter, a senator with a sentence of twenty years for illegal financing of the Popular Party, was convicted on a lucrative basis for having financed his own national headquarters with black money. And fourth, because we did not come to talk about this, but everything they have told proves precisely that in Spain there are independent judges and prosecutors who do not obey orders, even when they are subject to the principle of unity of action and hierarchical dependence, in accordance with the Spanish Constitution. The Spanish Parliament is the seat where you can evacuate the rosary of nonsense that you leave here. A little respect for the European Parliament would free us from the suspicion and ridicule to which you plunge in every plenary session without fail, without fail, without respite, without pause and driven by your obsession to attack your own country and the reputation of Spain, to the European image of Spain that we struggled so hard to raise. Ladies and gentlemen, Spain is an open and inclusive society, a country of full freedoms, which advances the recommendations of each rule of law report by protecting and reinforcing the veracity of information and the defence of innocent people against online slander. It is a country that grows, that generates jobs like no other European economy, that increases the minimum wage and pensions, benefits and social protection, and that reduces debt and deficits, and aspires to a coexistence based on respect and values of pluralism and diversity with which you are taught every time you go up to this rostrum.

Madam President, immediately after the overthrow of the Assad tyranny in Syria, several governments in the European Union have rushed to urge the four million Syrian refugees in the European Union – more than three million of them in Germany – that it is time for them to return. Fortunately, we have heard sensible words from President von der Leyen: such returns must be dignified and voluntary. But for this to be possible, it is essential that the European Union develop a diplomatic architecture of return agreements, encouraging countries of origin and transit with legal and safe routes, humanitarian corridors and humanitarian visas. In short, it requires the implementation of the Pact on Migration and Asylum, on which we have worked so hard in this European Parliament for two consecutive legislatures, with an acceptable balance between shared responsibility and mandatory solidarity between Member States. There is no more urgent task for this legislature than to ensure that all Member States faithfully and rigorously comply with their legal obligations towards the legislation we have put into force.

Mr President, Commissioner, this debate shows the good reasons for pursuing a European tourism policy, because it imports more than 22 million jobs throughout the European Union, more than 12% of employment and more than 10% of gross domestic product and, in some specialised regions, such as the Canary Islands, more than 30% of GDP and more than 35% of employment. Therefore, when it collapses to zero, despite all the problems that deserve discussion, it is missed. In the pandemic we had a strategic resolution on the importance of tourism exactly to recover it, and we proposed a European refund guarantee fund, a European mechanism for financing tourism policies and a travel guarantee fund, as well as a European framework for the rights of workers in the tourism sector, who matter a lot, but, above all, a European Tourism Agency to guarantee planning and social and environmental sustainability - a European agency to which, by the way, the Canarian community submitted its candidacy, as it happens. We therefore have very good reasons to move forward, into the future, and to give tourism as a strategic sector of the European Union the European responses it deserves.

Mr. President, Commissioner, cyberviolence and cyberbullying against women and the dissemination of discriminatory, defamatory and sexist content against women, particularly when they participate in electoral processes for representative positions or political responsibility, are not exclusive to neighbouring countries or candidates for European integration. It also happens in the European Union itself. That is why the report of Irene Khan, Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, is particularly relevant when she points out that there is a systemic problem that is part of a strategy of intimidation and threat to women participating in politics and, in general, against equality. And equality between men and women, although never stressed enough, is also a founding value of the European Union enshrined in Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union. It must therefore be made quite clear that the European Union must take initiatives because discrimination against women, discrimination in all its forms, is a problem of democracy and is contrary to European law.

Mr President, in this very plenary session we have discussed and welcomed the reform of the Emergency Regional Support Regulation (RESTORE) and situations such as the La Palma volcano, the fires in Madeira and now this cyclone in Mayotte, with a hundred fatalities, were mentioned in that debate. What are they telling us? That if with someone the European Union has to have a regional policy with sufficient funds, agile and repairing the devastation, it is with the outermost regions because, when a catastrophe occurs in an outermost region, as is the case of the Canary Islands, as is the case of Madeira, as is the case of Mayotte, in France, which also happens to be the poorest region in France, there is no escape. And this is the moment when the European Union can prove its best raison d'être, which is interregional solidarity. I therefore urge a substantial increase in the amounts earmarked for reparation after natural disasters, because the best European Union is the Union that lives up to its solidarity with those who need it most where they need it most.

Madam President, Commissioner, we were talking a while ago in this very Strasbourg plenary session about the power of disinformation and the threat it poses to the founding values of the European Union. But when we talk about Russian-made disinformation, this issue reaches its peak, its paroxysm, because Russia has a long history of falsification of narratives, from the concealment of the Holodomor – the great famine in Ukraine – to Storm‐1516: a massive spread of ultra-counterfeiting and cyber-operations that multiply the toxic power of disinformation in the service of the most shocking concentration of power on Earth, which Vladimir Putin currently holds over all powers in Russia. Therefore, the European Union must arm itself not only with its Cybersecurity Strategy, the banning of Russia Today and Sputnik as propaganda platforms of Putin's Russia in Europe, but with the arrest, deactivation, dismantling and sanctioning with accountability demands of platforms that disseminate toxic content and disinformation.

Mr President, Commissioner McGrath, disinformation on major technology platforms poses a dark side and a threat to European values and rights, not only to the integrity of electoral processes – as evidenced by the presidential elections in Romania – but to the entire European framework of the rule of law, fundamental rights and democracy: against the rule of law because technology platforms resist obedience and subjection to the law regulated by the European Union, even when it does so with ambition on a global scale, and particularly in those cases; against fundamental rights because they devastate the dignity of individuals, the confidentiality of personal data and the right to one’s own image, maximised by artificial intelligence; and against democracy, because they prevent rational deliberation, the exchange of ideas and, consequently, political pluralism through the invasive vertigo of addictive algorithms that trivialize increasingly intransigent and incompatible segments of society. Therefore, we are facing a threat before which the European Union has to act and before which only the European Union can act, with digital education and with a strong antitrust right that fights the oligopolistic side of the great social platforms, but also by thoroughly using the sanctioning and even criminal law against the flagrant breaches of European regulation in which the tycoons who are behind the digital platforms, usually ultra-right, incur.