Plenary focus - April 2022

Sanctions should target oligarchs first, and the role of the EU is to make sure that they are actually implemented. Tax havens, including European ones, must be forced to cooperate to freeze all Russian billionaires’ assets immediately. European people must also be protected against rising prices for all essential goods. We need compensation measures to mitigate the impact of the war in Ukraine on low-income households in Europe.

The EU has given Putin leverage on energy. Private households must not suffer from impending energy shortages and must be able to keep their heating on when they are cold. We need an EU-wide moratorium ruling out any heating shutdowns. Instead, the additional investments intended for weapons and the military must flow towards a massive expansion in renewable energy infrastructure to produce energy in an environmentally friendly and self-sufficient manner so that the EU ends its dependence on autocrats.

The IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report is alarming. Yet many are trying to take advantage of the current situation in Europe by saying that climate action must be slowed down. We can’t afford this kind of short-sightedness. Every European leader should understand that the climate emergency is also an issue of security and that, for instance, there is a vital synergy between climate goals and energy policy.

Violent and often deadly pushbacks happen every day at all of the EU’s external borders. The EU’s support for these practices through Frontex operations in Greece or financial support for border surveillance in Croatia is shameful. Pushbacks are not isolated incidents. They have become an integral part of EU migration policy. Instead of acting on the overwhelming evidence of human rights violations in many member states, the European Commission stands by and accepts the continued impunity of those responsible.

A crime against humanity is underway in Afghanistan, where a country of 40 million people is being starved with devastating sanctions to excuse the West’s responsibility for a criminal 20-year invasion and occupation. Afghans need immediate sanction relief, the repatriation of their stolen Central Bank assets, and the same welcome in Europe now rightly being given to Ukrainians fleeing war and devastation.

The Rule of Law cannot take a back seat. Despite years of citizens’ outcry, the Council has stayed out of the Article 7 procedures. We insist that all Council Presidencies organise regular hearings and that the French Presidency issue recommendations on Hungary and Poland. The Commission must trigger the Rule of Law Conditionality Regulation.

Europe should be ashamed and haunted by the suffering of marginalised Roma communities. Year after year, we read reports about Roma people facing abuse and discrimination, and year after year, very little - if any - action is taken. It says a lot about the EU today that this problem persists. It is discrimination, plain and simple.

In a time of growing rivalry between the great powers, the EU has been keen to proclaim: ‘We are in! We are armed to the teeth and prepared!’ The speedy way in which the military budgets have been mobilised and activated did not happen by accident. These militarisation programmes have been ready to go. The EU is using the war and the suffering of the Ukrainian people as their ‘window of opportunity’. This is cynical and does not serve at all the people’s interests.