Plenary focus - October II

European single market for electronic communications The agreement that we will be voting threw out two of the main issues: roaming and the most important of all – net neutrality. Internet is definitely a common good, a fundamental right. All citizens must have access to it without discrimination, the same way they can travel on roads that were built centuries ago to connect people. We need to save net neutrality. Information exchange in the field of taxation I welcome that the report is more ambitious than the Commission and especially the Council. The Parliament sends a clear signal to the member states that people will no longer accept secret tax deals to the benefit of multinationals. In this regard I call on my MEP colleagues from other groups to support our amendments to make all tax rulings fully transparent and not to hide behind so-called tax secrecy. European Semester Marisa Matias - Portugal Despite all the compromises to incorporate the different visons and proposals, there is still a really thick line dividing us: austerity as a rule. We need solidarity not austerity. We need to stop treating deficits as sinners and surpluses as righteous. Surplus is not a naturally positive dimension. We cannot accept that workers, once again, have to pay the costs.

With this Report the EP intends to use its right of initiative to reform European electoral law aiming for a better democratic legitimation. “It should be fair within Europe” declares one of the rapporteurs who is not willing to accept that the German Federal Constitutional Court simply prohibits an electoral threshold for the European elections. This should be now corrected for Germany by changing the European Elections Act and similarly also for Spain. The obvious calculation is that many will not be affected and agree; Federal Constitutional Courts can hardly oppose “European” law and Germany will not block the innovations in the Council. The EP should not be instrumentalised by the German grand coalition. If it works once, it will always work: not for our group.

The Parliament will vote on the revision of the National Emission Ceilings Directive this plenary. In the light of VW emission scandal, this legislation is more important than ever. This directive is crucial for air quality in our cities because it will oblige national policies to reduce air pollution. Quality of air and air pollution is the most important health problem in the EU. The revised directive puts controls on different types of air pollution in each member state. Its goal is to cut the number of premature deaths caused by air pollution by half by 2030. National ceilings for six pollutants (sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, ammonia, methane, particulate matter and non-methane volatile organic compounds) were set for countries to reach by 2030. The ENVI committee added mercury to the list of pollutants and introduced fully binding targets for the reduction of pollutants to 2025, with the exception of methane. The proposed EP report is stronger and more ambitious than the Commission’s proposal and GUE/NGL will support it.