Ahead of the plenary session in Strasbourg from 14th of February to 17th of February, Ska KELLER (Greens/EFA,DE) and Philippe LAMBERTS (Greens/EFA/BE), Co-Presidents hold a press conference to present the priorities of their group for the session.

LAMBERTS, Philippe (Greens/EFA, BE)

press conference

KELLER, Ska (Greens/EFA, DE)

Greens/EFA

Briefing Greens/EFA - Press conference by Ska KELLER (Greens/EFA,DE) and Philippe LAMBERTS (Greens/EFA/BE), Co-Presidents

SOUNDBITE (English), Philippe LAMBERTS (Greens/EFA, BE), Co-President, Thank you, Pierre. Welcome everyone. Good morning. So I will focus what I will have to say on cyber surveillance. So, indeed, it's already been quite a while since the consortium of investigative journalism as announced the the widespread surveillance of all sorts of individuals with these Israeli software. So it would seem that every day that passes the list of customers of that company and the list of targets is getting longer. We are speaking about tens of thousands of people at the moment, and this is only the probably the tip of the iceberg.

SOUNDBITE (English), Philippe LAMBERTS (Greens/EFA, BE), Co-President, So this is just another instance in a fairly, I would say, elaborate one of you know. This counterpart to the surveillance capitalism that we have, which is the surveillance state, and Europe does not escape, at least in two ways because there are foreign powers spying on EU citizens. But likewise we discover that there are European EU member states who are customers of that company. So there's many reasons to be worried. I mean, when politicians, when civil society activists, when lawyers, when judges are put under surveillance, these are really foundations of democracy that are at stake. I think you cannot overemphasise that.

SOUNDBITE (English), Philippe LAMBERTS (Greens/EFA, BE), Co-President, And in that sense, I think that the European Parliament has a key role to play here. We have indeed this instrument called an Enquiry Committee. And if ever there was a topic on which a real enquiry is needed, it is the case of Pegasus and assorted software. So that is going to be a key debate in the plenary now just after this, but also in the Conference of Presidents tomorrow. We have had a first exchange of views last week.

SOUNDBITE (English), Philippe LAMBERTS (Greens/EFA, BE), Co-President, One thing is for sure is that there are at least two groups, Renew and us, we are staunchly behind the idea of having an enquiry committee. We now hope that our colleagues from EPP and from Social Democrats will do the right thing. And frankly speaking, I cannot think of any reason why we should not have that enquiry committee and the sooner the better. Now we want this to become central. We have suspicious, of course, that some governments in Europe have used Pegasus in a not totally legitimate ways. We have at least suspicions there, so I could imagine that this could be an embarrassment to some of the political groups here.

SOUNDBITE (English), Philippe LAMBERTS (Greens/EFA, BE), Co-President, But I also do think that they will see the bigger picture and the need to rein in that kind of abuses. So to be continued at a conference of president tomorrow, I again hope that there will be a consensual decision of going for an enquiry committee. But believe me, if this is not consensual, we will push it. With all the means that we have at our disposal.

Q&A, focusing on the ongoing demonstrations in Canada and Europe called "Freedom Convoy 2022", and on the instances they presented on the use of vaccines/QR codes as means of surveillance capitalism.

SOUNDBITE (English), Ska KELLER (Greens/EFA, DE), Co-President, The ECJ ruling tomorrow on Hungary and Poland rule of law, and the rule of law mechanism on Wednesday morning. So we're all eagerly waiting for that. And we will have a debate on that matter in the afternoon of Wednesday. As you know, we are very much of the opinion that the Commission should start and should have started the rule of law mechanism a long time ago. It's very urgent because rule of law is one of the fundamental principles of the European Union, something that we all have to stand up for stand together with.

SOUNDBITE (English), Ska KELLER (Greens/EFA, DE), Co-President, And it's very important that the Commission also takes its job seriously as being the guardian of the treaty. So we will remind the Commission of that, as we have done before, and we will keep pushing for that. Then of course, we will have a debate on the situation at the Ukraine-Russian border, and we are working also towards a statement of the group leaders to be adopted at the Conference of Presidents tomorrow.

SOUNDBITE (English), Ska KELLER (Greens/EFA, DE), Co-President, And there is huge support amongst the groups, of course, for a line that we all support of saying, we want Russia to stop this escalation, this has to end. The Ukraine is a sovereign country that needs to be able to decide itself. About its future as any other country as well, and we are calling for Russia to stop this escalation, and we are going to express our support to the people in Ukraine, to Ukraine as a sovereign country that decides on its own future.

SOUNDBITE (English), Ska KELLER (Greens/EFA, DE), Co-President, So, this is something that we will certainly all stress in the debate on Ukraine, where all the groups are standing, most groups are standing, united and that will also be expressed in the declaration that is currently still being worked on.

Q&A, focusing on the upcoming debate on the Rule of Law and on the announced absence Urusla von der Leyen, President of the European Commission. .

Q&A, follow up question on the "Freedom Convoy 2022" protests in Canada.