Plenary focus - November 2023

For more than a month, bombs have been raining down on Gaza, even targeting hospitals. More than 12,000 Palestinians have been killed, the vast majority of them civilians and at least one-third of them children. We have before us a veritable humanitarian catastrophe and yet the EU is still not calling for a ceasefire, which should be the absolute priority. There is also an urgent need to denounce war crimes committed by the IDF, as well as the violence of Israeli colonisation of the West Bank. European leaders are multiplying their inconsistencies and are not up to the task. They must shoulder their responsibilities and do everything they can to bring about peace! Our group The Left succeeded in getting the ceasefire mentioned in the title of Wednesday’s debate. But we are continuing to push for a resolution expressing a strong position from the European Parliament!

The COP28 resolution gives strong backing to the European Commission and the Council mandate in calling for a ramping up of global climate ambition. Our priorities include addressing emissions from the agriculture sector, nature restoration links and global equity and effective participation. I hope that the ambition of the resolution is preserved in the plenary.

Every year more than 350,000 tonnes of pesticides are used in the EU, polluting our environment, soil, and water sources, poisoning our food, and endangering human and animal health. This new pesticide law introduces binding reduction targets, which will ensure that fewer pesticides end up on our plate and in our environment. While further action is still needed, this new law is a crucial step towards more sustainable agriculture and a toxin-free environment.

The right to repair text will allow considerable expansion of the repair economy through setting a European framework encouraging repair instead of renewal. This is why we have tried to further widen the scope of these new rights, especially when it comes to batteries. All in all, it’s one step closer to the reparability of goods, which is good for both consumers and the environment. The Left group will support this report in plenary, as we did in committee.

This text undercuts environmental safeguards and offers unconditional public money to corporations. It even proposes to let corporations set the rules. We need a major public investment plan to guarantee quality jobs in industry, and make the green transition a reality. Here, Conservatives and Social Democrats abandon workers and the planet by handing industrial policy over to the market.

Our proposal implements the European Parliament’s commitment to follow up on the Conference on the Future of Europe. It will foster a democratic transformation towards a sustainable economy and make the EU institutions more capable to act in view of potential enlargement. A reform of the EU’s external policies should redefine security and include non-military aspects, such as environmental and social risks. Therefore, an EU Defence Union must be built on the principle of structural non-aggression capabilities.