Plenary focus - June 2021

Covid recovery is a unique time to take radical decisions for tax justice. We must establish a global minimum corporate tax rate and put an end to tax dodging. The poorest can’t pay the price of this crisis anymore.

Over 80 million people live in, or are at risk of poverty. This is an intolerable situation in an EU where so much wealth has been amassed. During the Porto Social Summit governments pushed for many policies but when it came to taking decisive action to fight poverty and generate employment they remained toothless. The digital and ecological transitions are major challenges that require the EU to have social policy at the heart of its daily action. This is one of the reasons The Left has insisted on having this debate in the upcoming Strasbourg plenary.

Along with hundreds of organisations, world leaders, and the vast majority of WTO countries, we believe that a TRIPS waiver is crucial to increase vaccine production capacity, particularly in the Global South. We must use all the tools we have to defeat the pandemic. Blocking the waiver in the WTO was the wrong decision by the Commission. Moderna, AstraZeneca, Pfizer and BioNTech have made billions in profits from the pandemic after getting billions in public subsidies. Their future R&D is not at risk. What’s at risk are the lives of millions of people. No one is safe until everyone is safe.

Without the strength and commitment of The Left, nothing good would have come out of the Commission’s proposal. We were able to do damage control, significantly strengthening data protection, making sure that the regulation ends after 12 months and that people who cross borders daily are specifically considered. We fought until the end for free and universal Covid-19 testing but the Council refused to budge. Therefore the current fragmentation throughout the EU will not be fully solved and uncertainties will remain.

Hundreds of millions of animals are locked up in cages for farming purposes in Europe every year. They live under horrible conditions, without any chance to exercise their natural behaviour. After the successful European Citizens’ initiative, signed by 1.4 million citizens, the European Parliament has now joined the widely supported call to free animals from cages. The Left emphasises that a legislative proposal must now be put forward without delay. The practice of caging animals in Europe must end by 2027 at the very latest. The ban should cover cages used for breeding ducks and geese, alongside the practice of force-feeding to produce foie gras, one of the cruellest things animals are subjected to in European farms today.

While European development cooperation and policy have been historically guided by economic and geopolitical interests, the merger of the various EU financial instruments dedicated to the Global South into the Neighbourhood, Development and International Cooperation Instrument (NDICI) ends the pretence of universal and neutral development aid. Putting budgets for security and financing into the NDICI means redirecting and subordinating development policy to foreign and security policy. NDICI funds will also be used to fight migration and refugees and, through Article 9, finance the military in third countries

The NDICI seals the complete subordination of European development policy to the geopolitical, commercial and military interests of the EU, which have nothing to do with the Sustainable Development Goals or the reduction of poverty and inequalities in the Global South.

In this biodiversity crisis the European Parliament needs to stand firmly on the side of nature. We need a Biodiversity Law that puts protection of nature above the push from industry and agriculture to destroy it. We also need an independent Panel on Biodiversity calling out the EU on its harmful legislation. We must protect biodiversity – from the smallest microorganisms to the biggest mammals.