Debate contributions by Marie TOUSSAINT

Madam President, Commissioner, Executive Vice-President, you are talking about a package to support chemical companies. But I will tell you, in reality, what you are presenting to us today is a poisoning permit issued to the worst of the chemical industry, to the detriment, of course, of consumers, workers, and our children. You call it an ‘industry plan’. Well, I call it a plan to multiply cancers. Are you bragging about simplifying the rules? In fact, you are opening the door to carcinogens in our toothpastes, removing vital labelling requirements and weakening the traceability of fertilisers that are already polluting our soils and waters. I'll go further. Because, you see, there are many ways to make war on women. There is an obvious way, by attacking our rights, for example on abortion. Then there is a more vicious way of releasing into everyday products substances so toxic that they cause death by causing breast cancer or fibroids. This applies, for example, to formaldehyde in shampoos, benzophenone in varnishes – with an additional racial burden, since these substances, the use of which you facilitate, are found in straightening products or in those used to whiten the skin. All this to please fifteen CEOs, met in small committee, while NGOs, scientists, trade unions and consumer representatives were asked to stay out. This package is nothing less than a set of texts dictated by chemical lobbies and ignoring civil society and science. So let us not simplify at the cost of more cancers, more pollution and more distrust of citizens. Save the Green Deal, save the Zero Pollution Action Plan and, above all, put in place the European Cancer Plan.

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, finally, the European Union is determined to permanently and permanently separate itself from Russian gas. It was time! Together with environmentalists, we have been constantly alerting, alerting and alerting to the danger that this toxic dependence poses to peace and to citizens. But it took the outbreak of war for the majority of this European Parliament to finally open its eyes. To succeed in getting out of Russian gas, the extension of gas storage obligations was essential, both for our security of supply and to protect Europeans from the explosive prices manipulated both by dictators like Vladimir Putin and by the markets. The facts are as follows: A 90% fill, combined with a 25% drop in consumption, allowed us to spend two winters without giving in to Moscow's blackmail. But let us not be mistaken, Commissioner: Taking us out of Vladimir Putin's hands must not lead us to bind ourselves to Donald Trump's natural gas. The only real energy, geopolitical, climate and social security is the exit from fossil fuels that we continue to import from dubious regimes. What Europe needs is a real gas exit plan, based on lower demand, energy efficiency, sobriety and renewable energy.

Madam President, there is no sub-citizenship. That is why, in the outermost regions, in particular in the French overseas regions, every inhabitant should be able to enjoy the rights enjoyed by the rest of the citizens of the Union. That's not the case. There is a break in equality because the cost of living overseas is prohibitive. Europe must face this truth. In Martinique, prices for basic necessities are up to 40% higher than in France. This is the consequence of an economy of rent and monopolies, characterized by economic concentration in the hands of a few - often descendants of bekés - especially in distribution, in the automobile industry and in agriculture. How can we turn a blind eye to the responsibility of the Bernard Hayot Group, which owns more than 300 subsidiaries and represents 50% of the average shopping cart of a Martinican? That is why it is essential - and I thank my colleagues in this regard - that this report from the European Parliament calls on the European Commission to act by opening an investigation into abuses of a dominant position overseas. This is a first step towards respect and justice for those who, for years, have been fighting against dear life and profit.

Mr President, in April 1915, the Ottoman State arrested, deported and murdered. More than 1 million Armenians are exterminated. This genocide remains an unsuturable wound in the memory of the Armenian people and in European memory. What has been destroyed is not just scattered lives: an entire people wanted to be wiped out. We must keep the memory alive against the gravediggers of memory who still deny, a hundred and ten years after the crime, thus pursuing the genocidal low work. However, one cannot defend the memory of the dead and betray the living. Even today, Armenia is bleeding. Despite the peace agreement, Azerbaijan continues to blockade and bomb, as well as to take political prisoners. For example, 100 000 people have been taken from their land, Nagorno-Karabakh, and are still awaiting their right of return. Meanwhile, the European Union signed a gas agreement with Azerbaijan. She talks about peace while betraying herself for gas. She forgets that human rights are not negotiable. The Armenian people suffer from the repetition of history in other ways, in other words, but with the same impunity. So we have a responsibility: Not just remembering, but refusing compromises and acting.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, social plans are multiplying on our continent, putting millions of workers out of work. Bills are exploding. Millions of people fail to live with dignity from their work, to house themselves, to feed their children properly. Millions of citizens are now thrown into a poverty trap, from which they are less able to escape as public policies stigmatise and harass them. The hunt for the poor is actually being declared at a time when wealth has never been so shamefully concentrated. In this context, there is a well-established attack on an already fragile social Europe. Calls for simplification are turning into vast operations of deregulation and destruction of all European social and environmental protections for the sole benefit of multinationals, their shareholders and their dividends. The right and the far right oppose the ecological imperative and the social issue. More precisely, they remember the working classes only when it comes to using them to revoke, on their behalf, the fight for the climate. But what hypocrisy! It is not the poor, the forgotten, or the people you defend, but the profits of the shareholders. You do not defend those who have an empty stomach, but those who have their hands already full. So stop attacking ecology and recognise the need for new rights and protections for the world of work! We are now calling for justice for workers contaminated with asbestos, such as those at the port of Dunkirk, for farm workers exposed to chlordecone or other toxic pesticides, or for workers made sick by chemicals and other eternal pollutants – PFAS –, particularly those at the Solvay plant in Salindres. We cannot continue to blind ourselves to our economic model. So I want to say it here, today, forcefully: We must not stop, but continue to improve the social and environmental standards that govern us. The ecological transition is essential. We must therefore invest heavily to save our jobs, take care of our public services and infrastructure in the face of climate change and desertification in rural areas, and ensure the necessary transition. Moreover, only by ensuring that all our policies and budgets work to eradicate poverty and exclusion will we be able to ensure our social cohesion. We should therefore put in place a social veto right, which prohibits the adoption of a measure if it is detrimental to the 10% of us who are the poorest. Europe must guarantee workers European social protection, transition to employment insurance, including a genuine Just Transition Directive, so that no worker is without income, training or the ability to be the author of his or her own career path and reskilling. New European legislation is needed to put an end to precarious work – a scourge which, moreover, primarily affects women – and to prevent abuse by employers and part-time work – it is they who will benefit first and foremost from temporary agency work. So we must never go back to the Pay Transparency Directive, nor to the Minimum Wage Directive, which has already been transposed by many Member States, and which is an example of what Europe can do – well! – for social Europe. Moreover, it is imperative to save European due diligence and create a framework for the negotiation of collective agreements in all companies, starting with multinationals. Social Europe also means being vigilant about the situation of the most vulnerable. So I hope to see the issues of dignified housing, the unbearable treatment of Roma and travellers on our continent, the Child Guarantee and children in care, including for means, and people with disabilities, addressed in this debate that is just beginning. We want a Europe that defends the rights of everyone, starting with the most humble, and for this we will have to adopt an ambitious strategy to eradicate extreme poverty. So, ladies and gentlemen, good debate!

Thank you, Mr Oliveira, for this question. What has been observed in the years, perhaps even decades, that have passed is that this fiscal straitjacket that has been imposed on Member States has sometimes led to cuts in social policies, social justice and public services – this is the case with schools and hospitals, for example, which we absolutely need for our populations – in favour of liberalism that ended up destroying jobs as a result of relocations. The European peoples suffered from this inability of the States and the European Union to invest in their protection and security. Today, we are told that the Fiscal Stability Pact must be lifted in order to be able to produce weapons, but without recognising the massive needs for the green transition, which will be beneficial for all, nor for precariousness. This is a "double standard" that must absolutely be denounced. I therefore share your remark.

Mr President, what we are discussing today, the European Semester, is a crucial tool for coordinating the fiscal – and therefore economic and social – policies of the Member States. I regret the dogma of growth and austerity in which Europe remains locked, despite the capacity for dialogue in the examination of this report. Believing that we can keep the climate issue on the periphery is madness. Only within planetary boundaries can states deploy healthy and sustainable budgets. The laws of economics are not above the laws of nature. I would add that without social justice, European cohesion will not last long. Separating the budgetary issue from social rights makes no sense either. We must ensure that no more EU Member States’ budgets will worsen the living conditions of the most vulnerable. We face an immense contradiction: on the one hand, fiscal rules that impose a straitjacket on states, leading them to pursue austere policies with catastrophic consequences; on the other, a Commission that recognises the massive investment needs. By proposing to circumvent fiscal rules in favour of defence, the Commission is only demonstrating the ineffectiveness of the Fiscal Stability Pact. Let's be consistent and change the rules of the game.

Mr Liese, thank you for your intervention. We have been listening for a while to the EPP speakers, who explain that they are ready to work with all democratic groups in the European Parliament. Yet the EPP did not respond to the call when it came to sitting together to look at what could be done to simplify business life while maintaining a high level of social and environmental ambition. Together with my colleagues from the left and, for that matter, from the centre, we have repeatedly asked the representatives of the European People’s Party what you intend to do with this text. So I ask you again: Do you intend to discuss with us, the democratic groups, or do you intend to support the amendments to remove the extreme right, or even to table them yourself?

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I too will address the European right, as I cannot address the Commission. Under the guise of simplification, what you are proposing is an unprecedented collapse in the protections of the European economy. At a time when Europe is under threat, you are choosing deregulation over sovereignty. Indeed, you propose that we abandon the few tools that allow us, for example, to refuse the entry of products from Uyghur forced labour on the European market and unfair competition from American shale gas or rogue firms like Rana Plaza. And you dare to call it the defence of employment? Get back together! Yes, we need to simplify and we will all say so here today. However, you do not simplify; you have decided to use the motorway of deregulation as an open grave. By doing so, you are undermining our sovereignty, our values, and the transition to a responsible economy, because by undoing what we began to build, you are discouraging and sanctioning responsible companies and investors who have already engaged in change. In short, you sanction virtue and encourage vice. You dare to write that companies that fail to meet their climate obligations, Commissioner, will be able to continue their activities with complete peace of mind. Should climate-related activities really be encouraged? You also aim to reduce by 90% the number of companies affected by transparency obligations, including high-risk sectors, such as the mining industry. Is that really reasonable? No, no. We are not fooled. If you do indeed choose the alliance with the far right, you will choose not to reduce bureaucracy, but to expand the area of impunity without limit. We will fight this policy.

Mr President, this is Reunion once again hit by a cyclone of unprecedented intensity. Last year, Belal had already caused serious damage, but Garance is even worse. After Chido in Mayotte, this is a new climatic episode that defies customs in the Indian Ocean. When will we understand that we need to accelerate, rather than pause, the fight against climate change? The people of Reunion lost five of their own. Thousands of households have lost access to electricity and water. Farmers are losing their crops again, from darlings to cane, and in Saint-Benoît, one of the poorest cities on the island, hundreds of families still live in shelters. France declared a state of natural disaster. It must also declare price suppression, and Europe must lend a hand. It is also imperative that we develop a culture of risk. First, in spatial planning: there is a need to stop building in flood zones and gullies, to take into account the findings of scientists and to invest public money in the protection of people and nature, rather than in new, unnecessary road projects. Secondly, in solidarity, because the most vulnerable are always on the front line; So let us put them at the heart of the future European strategy for adapting to climate change. Ladies and gentlemen, let us not make Reunion Island a new symbol of our inaction, but on the contrary let us place it at the heart of all our actions.

Mrs. Karlsbro, thank you. You say that you do not understand why some are opposed to the agreement with Mercosur, which you very obviously support. However, to sign this agreement with Mercosur, to implement it, is to tell farmers, who are already suffering, who are already dying, from the low remuneration linked to the sale of their products, that we will subject them to even tougher competition on the most remunerative products. Signing and ratifying this agreement with Mercosur means telling parents who already see their children suffering, or even dying, from cancers linked to exposure to toxic products that we will continue, or even worsen, this exposure. Signing and ratifying the Mercosur agreement means telling European citizens that Javier Milei, the chainsaw in hand, who leaves the World Health Organisation and terrorises its citizens, is a reliable partner for the European Union. That is why we oppose this Mercosur agreement. And please...

Mr. Speaker, our goal is to reconcile the economy with the planet: These words, which speak among other things of competitiveness, are not about me or ecologists, but about Ursula von der Leyen. Today, Mr Vice-President, I have to say that I am a little upset. Why? Because the unspoken often have a meaning that we must absolutely reveal. Total absence – total absence! – the climate and ecological issues in your speech are extremely telling. Mr. Vice-President, your speech reveals one thing: the European Commission is about to turn its back on the Green Deal and actually seems to have reversed course. Your first concrete proposal, which you told us about today, will therefore be an omnibus aimed at undoing a valuable tool, one that imposes transparency on how companies treat nature and human beings around the world. According to you, if we listen to you, European competitiveness requires ever more free trade, subjecting Europeans to all competition, wherever they come from, requiring Europe to destroy its social and environmental protections, so that it can attract ever more capital. With a price, that of our sovereignty. However, we must not bow to the American oligarchs or China who wish to come and do their business with us, with the rules they themselves have set and leave with our money. We must resist Donald Trump, not give in to him. Mr. Séjourné, you defended yesterday the start up nationToday you boast of having a business plan for Europe; I'm not sure that's the model we need. On the contrary, we need courage, lucidity and will to protect Europe, preserve our jobs and save the climate.

Mr President, desertification is the other name for climate injustice and vulnerability. It is perhaps because it first affected the poorest countries that the richest countries paid so little attention to it for so long. Desertification is now upon us. Corsica and the poorest parts of the Mediterranean, Perpignan and its most precarious neighborhoods in France, or the devastated Mayotte, no longer have water. In Guadeloupe, coastal erosion hits, drawing on the drying up of land. When in the Massif Central, it is obviously the small farmers who suffer the most and who do not have the means to buy hay for their farms when it comes to lack. Basically, desertification continues in indifference, because it hits the most vulnerable first and foremost. But let's not be naive: We will soon realize that desertification is everyone's business. Hopefully then it won't be too late. In Africa, 16% of GDP has already evaporated as a result of desertification. Commissioner, we are not powerless here on European soil for an issue that is indeed a global issue. Desertification is linked to climate change and fossil fuels. So let's get out of here, and faster than today. It is also linked to intensive agriculture and deforestation that we can and must combat. Then let's act! There's no more time to waste.

You ask me if anyone here has asked to cut funding for NGOs. Yes, we have a debate that aims to remove funds from these NGOs. We are talking about EUR 15 million in the LIFE programme allocated to 35 organisations, and at the same time you are fighting – Mrs Hohlmeier for example – a battle in the context of the reports on the future budgets of the European Union to abolish these funds. When you carry out an attack, conduct it transparently, conduct it honestly! Say what you have in mind rather than hiding behind smoky ambitions!

Madam President, a truce of hypocrisy: we are not here because the right and the far right want to make sure that European funds are used properly. No, we are here because the right and the far right have decided to wage war against these non-profit organisations – non-profit! – who work, with financial and human resources, to defend the general interest, that of the planet, that of ecology and that of health. Make no mistake, we know: This is not an isolated act, but the first act of a deep war waged by reactionaries against those who defend our lives rather than profits. Today's NGOs, who's next? Whistleblowers? Journalists? And yes, scientists and all those who will dare to stand up for what we have most precious: nature, solidarity, democracy. But what are we really talking about? We are talking about 15 small million euros from the LIFE programme used for associations that defend whales, rivers and rivers? Let us instead talk about the billions, the billions distributed in state aid, sometimes without conditionality, for private interests, for interests that organise themselves in lobbying to influence European decisions for their own benefit rather than that of the general interest. These lobbies are doing everything possible to evade taxes with impunity, trample on labour law and are now asking to be able to pollute without limit. Do you want to silence those who defend the general interest? We'll hold on.

Sir, you are talking about independent studies. Yet your political family, at EU level as well as in the Member States, keeps firing red bullets at all the agencies that are able to provide these independent scientific studies. To give you an example: In France, we have an institution that deals with pesticides and provides studies, which, however, are hidden. They are buried by governments, which do not do so. At EU level, we have institutions, EU agencies that are supposed to deal independently with the health effects of certain products, and yet rely on data produced by whom? Not by independent institutions, but by pesticide companies themselves! So, sir, be consistent: If you want to end grants for NGOs, defend creation and investment in public research and in EU agencies!

Mr President, over the past 50 years, Europe has lost millions of industrial jobs – 2 million in France since 1970, particularly in the textile sector. The 2008 financial crisis was accompanied by massive social plans. Even today, the employees of Michelin, Vencorex, ArcelorMittal, Grandpuits and Chapelle-Darblay must be supported at all costs. Let's be serious: the Green Deal is not responsible for this job destruction. As early as 2015, Renault and PSA produced fewer cars in France than in the 1960s. No, what is at stake is the insatiable appetite of shareholders and managers, who always use the same tireless arguments to destroy jobs, social rights and environmental legislation with a simple flip-flop. The truth is that it is the destruction of the environment that is now destroying the European economy. By defending the status quo, you, on the right and on the far right, are sowing unemployment, misery, health and environmental disasters. The Green Deal is not a brake but an opportunity for our industry, sovereignty, businesses and jobs. So I say it here forcefully: Don't touch the Green Deal. It is our future.

Madam President, Cyclone Chido, which hit Mayotte, is not just a natural disaster. I say this because I refuse to see here the sign of inevitable inevitability. The disaster is social, health, political, because it is the result of a long history of domination, humiliation and abandonment. Nowhere are we prepared for climate disasters, which are always social disasters. But in Mayotte, extreme poverty has been the vector of much greater vulnerability. Already before the cyclone, a significant proportion of the population had difficult access to housing, food and water. Already she was struck by cholera. Abandoned by the French State and the European Union, crowded into slums, with failing public services, the people of Morocco were unable to cope with Cyclone Chido. Look Mayotte in the eye, and you will see the real face of climate injustice. Because, in the face of climate change, which is changing the trajectory of cyclones – which have multiplied in recent years in the region, as evidenced by the passage in Mozambique of Belna, Idai and Kenneth, all three in 2019 – it would have been necessary to take the measure of the risk and protect populations upstream. But Mayotte counts too little in the eyes of many, and France and Europe are not yet familiar with the culture of climate risk. So we are condemned to count the dead, victims of inconsistency and unpreparedness. As a matter of urgency, Europe must, yes, provide massive aid and push France to declare a state of health and social emergency in Mayotte. We have no right to forget the people of Mahoria. But it will also be necessary to learn the lessons of Chido. We need to anticipate extreme weather events, build decent infrastructure, strengthen civil security, deploy mobile hospitals and, of course, eradicate misery, to reduce high vulnerability.

Mr President, it is with great indignation that I rise today, on behalf of environmentalists, to denounce the arrest of Boualem Sansal, a man of letters detained for having dared to think freely, for having chosen speech rather than the silence of lead demanded by a beleaguered regime. We demand his immediate release. To demand the release of Boualem Sansal is to defend an essential freedom: that of writers, that of thinkers, that of creators. This freedom is not conditional. It does not depend on whether we share their ideas or not. A writer's freedom is never just an individual matter; It is the barometer of the freedom of a people. When you imprison a writer, you imprison an entire nation, because you deprive it of its thought, its ability to dream, to question, to evolve. Beyond, therefore, the person of Boualem Sansal, this cry that we are launching today is a call for freedom for an entire people, the Algerian people, who for decades have been suffocating. It suffocates under the weight of a gerontocracy that clings to power, under a locked system that refuses to hear legitimate aspirations for democracy, transparency and a better life. So, with one and the same impulse, we demand freedom for Boualem Sansal and freedom for the whole of Algeria.

Madam President, Mrs von der Leyen, by choosing to appoint Raffaele Fitto to the post of Vice-President, you are beginning your second term at the head of the European Commission in the saddest of ways. Your choice, Madam, is not one of compromise, but of compromise with the extreme right. And this is a mistake, because the political situation requires neither complacency nor confusion, but on the contrary vigilance and clarity. My Italian friends, who are there and who face the modernised far right of Giorgia Meloni on a daily basis, see the appointment of Mr Fitto as an insult. Read again Recognising Fascism of the great Umberto Eco and you will understand that, even covered with a mask of respectability, fascism remains fascism. I want to relay here the voice of the millions of Europeans who refuse the path of dishonour. No political calculation can exonerate us from our duty of vigilance. Europe must remain a space of struggle against the nationalist retreat, which carries the idea of the permanent confrontation of the peoples. Faced with the extreme right, this xenophobic, conspiracy-minded and climate-sceptic extreme right, we must resist, resist and resist again. That's what environmentalists will do. But you, Mrs von der Leyen, after having installed the far right at the head of the European Commission, what will you do?

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, poverty is a political choice, and so is eradicating it. So let us make sure that at the time of choice the European Union prefers humanity to greed. Half of the world's population today suffers from hunger, lack of care, an uncertain future. So, of course, it is not the same, but Europe is not spared, with nearly 23% of the population at risk of poverty and social exclusion, that is 118 million citizens. And I want to recall here that the poorest are systematically victims of multiple institutional violence, a state pauvrophobia on a global scale. Despite the suffering of the people, Commissioner, we have not made the fight against poverty a political priority. That's not the case yet, that's not true! The fortunes of the world's five largest billionaires have more than doubled since the beginning of this decade, while 60% of humanity has become even poorer. That's what Lula reminded us of. And in fact, these richest are also the most polluting. Then we can act, it's time! For the first time, the G20 has committed to a global tax on the ultra-rich. But we cannot stop at the big speeches, it would be unbearable. So Europe, Commissioner, must encourage this choice and work towards its implementation. Taxing large fortunes is a necessity to meet colossal needs, but it is also a human, economic, climate and democratic imperative.

Madam President, today we should all be Valencians. Because this terrible tragedy has taken away brothers and sisters, our brothers, our sisters, our children, our parents, our neighbours, our colleagues and our friends. The terrible images of Valencia bring us together in the same humanity struck by the catastrophe, which is why I am ashamed, I am ashamed of the lack of respect and the instrumentalization, on the part of the extreme right and the right, of all these human lives that have been wasted. Because, on the contrary, these thousands of lives destroyed must remind us of a raw reality, a raw and brutal reality. We are facing disaster because our climate policies are still not adapted to the reality of disruption. And now is not the time to falter. This is not the time to give up under the pressure of those who, even today, deny human responsibility for climate change and ask us to turn our backs on the climate battle. Especially since you, on this side of the hemicycle, on the ground, are carrying out policies of concreteization, of artificialization, which prevent nature from protecting us from the climate disruption that has been created by humanity. So, I want to say to the far right: Your lies don't protect us, they expose us. Your denial does not relieve us, it drowns us. Know that we will always be there, in front of you, to defend human lives and climate action.

Mr President, my colleagues on the right and on the far right have asked for this debate on bureaucracy and competitiveness to once again sound the burden on social and environmental rights. Because, let us say it frankly, it is not the administrative complexity that matters to you, but the preservation of an economic model that is out of breath. When you say: ‘competitiveness’ means: ‘relocations’ and ‘job destruction’. You say: “administrative burdens”? I hear: "destruction of nature in the name of profit". You claim to have a monopoly on economic wisdom, but the laws of economics are not above the laws of nature. You actually have a real obsession with an economic model that rhymes with the destruction of nature, social and cultural rights, traditional solidarities and sometimes even human lives. Basically, you do not care about this essential simplification, which would improve the lives of Europeans. You are the very architects of this millefeuille, of this administrative bureaucracy set up to monitor the poorest, foreigners, associations or integration companies. To sum up my point: we will not allow social rights to be undone or nature to be destroyed with so-called simplification, which is nothing more than the mask of economic violence.