Press conference by Manon AUBRY (The Left, FR) and Martin SCHIRDEWAN (The Left, DE), Co-Presidents, hold a press conference in the European Parliament in Strasbourg, to present the priorities of the group for the plenary session. This transcription is a result of an automatic process. Please check against delivery.

Strasbourg

plenary session

press conference

SCHIRDEWAN, Martin (The Left, DE)

AUBRY, Manon (The Left, FR)

The Left

Press conference by Manon AUBRY (The Left, FR), Group Leader - Briefing The Left

https://api.multimedia.europarl.europa.eu/documents/20125/69638122/1681461756370_I240005Chapters%5BSD-EN%5D.srt

SOUNDBITE (French), Manon AUBRY (The Left, FR), Co-President of The Left Group, Hello everyone, happy to meet you here for this new briefing. I think that today's votes speak for themselves and this is the subject on which I suggest that we focus, namely a majority of the texts in the climate package that will therefore be voted on today.

SOUNDBITE (French), Manon AUBRY (The Left, FR), Co-President of The Left Group, And I want to say four years after the start of the European Commission's mandate, this is an opportunity to take stock of the European Commission's action on climate issues, since four years ago we were announced with great fanfare a Green Deal. Well, one year before the end of the mandate, we can very clearly and here take stock of it.

SOUNDBITE (French), Manon AUBRY (The Left, FR), Co-President of The Left Group, Because this mandate is primarily that of climate chaos. It is the story of repeated floods throughout the European Union and of the disasters that have multiplied. And if we go back to the history of this climate package, where does the original sin come from? It comes from the fact that we have a target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, which has been set at 55%, ten points below the target we would need to reach the Paris agreements and therefore the COP21 climate agreements.

SOUNDBITE (French), Manon AUBRY (The Left, FR), Co-President of The Left Group, To this, you add that all the texts in the climate package today, we are not sure that they would allow us to achieve a 55% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. And for our group, the original sin of this climate package is that it is based on major hypotheses and problems in this area that are structural.

SOUNDBITE (French), Manon AUBRY (The Left, FR), Co-President of The Left Group, The first is that all climate texts use the same logic as that of the market each time. Everything is commodified, including the right to pollute and the right to wreck the planet. It's the carbon market, the energy market, and so on. The second challenge is that we are going to talk about the climate without necessarily bringing together all the policies that have an impact on the climate.

SOUNDBITE (French), Manon AUBRY (The Left, FR), Co-President of The Left Group, Obviously, I am thinking of the common agricultural policy. Obviously, I am thinking of the free trade agreements that are going to be signed in spades in the coming months, without ever telling ourselves we are setting ourselves a climate objective, and behind ambitions and coherence does not come in terms of trade policy.

SOUNDBITE (French), Manon AUBRY (The Left, FR), Co-President of The Left Group, And then, even if we should note some cultural victories on our part, the European Commission, which is now talking about relocation, planning or or regulation. In reality, the European Commission often rejects a balance of power against companies, especially the most polluting actors. And what is interesting, four years after the start of this mandate, is to watch the political balance change.

SOUNDBITE (French), Manon AUBRY (The Left, FR), Co-President of The Left Group, Proof of this is one of the latest texts on thermal cars, where in reality, we can see very well that it is thanks to the majorities that are forming on the left with our left group, the socialist group and the Green group that we can have progressive majorities forcing the Renew camp to find majorities and to build majorities.

SOUNDBITE (French), Manon AUBRY (The Left, FR), Co-President of The Left Group, When the right-wing group asserts itself to be more and more climatosceptive, obviously in connection with the extreme right, which it seems to be increasingly close to. But I imagine that you will have the opportunity to ask the question to my colleague Manfred Weber.

SOUNDBITE (French), Manon AUBRY (The Left, FR), Co-President of The Left Group, In particular with regard to climate, and I would like to draw your attention to a specific text within the framework of the climate package that is being voted on today. Allow me to raise the alert on an essential subject and to wear my hat as group president as well as my French deputy. And to ask the question to all my colleagues who are about to vote to extend the carbon market to transport and housing.

SOUNDBITE (French), Manon AUBRY (The Left, FR), Co-President of The Left Group, Do you want Yellow Vests at all roundabouts in the European Union? Because that is what we are talking about today. What we are going to vote on is the extension of the carbon market, a mechanism that has not proved its worth. Extending to transport and housing, in concrete terms, means increasing the bill for heating and for transport for people's gasoline. It seems that a certain number of political leaders, here in the European Parliament, have learned absolutely nothing from the crisis that shook France and the Yellow Vests movement in 2009 and 2020.

SOUNDBITE (French), Manon AUBRY (The Left, FR), Co-President of The Left Group, So our group says it here with great clarity, but also with firmness. It is not the working classes to pay the cost of the ecological transition, it is not the working classes who should be asked to make efforts when the first polluters are on the side of large multinational companies. I am not even talking about the fact that we want to charge, to make households pay.

SOUNDBITE (French), Manon AUBRY (The Left, FR), Co-President of The Left Group, On the other hand, when it comes to making contributions, I don't know, or at random, yachts or private jets, in this case, no specific mechanisms are put in place and I sound the alarm quite solemnly. This is all the more so as this is in addition to a market mechanism that is completely dysfunctional.

SOUNDBITE (French), Manon AUBRY (The Left, FR), Co-President of The Left Group, If we have to take stock of the carbon market in recent years, what is it? First of all, it is a mechanism that means that, according to the European Environment Agency, a large part of the most polluting companies, according to the European Environment Agency, have 95% of their quotas free of charge, which ultimately represents a public donation. Because when you give free allowances to large companies for the right to pollute, you are giving public money that they are not paying out and which has been estimated at more than 98 billion euros, according to WWF.

SOUNDBITE (French), Manon AUBRY (The Left, FR), Co-President of The Left Group, I would add that to this, some companies will push malice to the point of doing business because having free quotas allows them to be resold. So much so that, according to Carbon Market Watch, it has been measured that 1.6 billion euros have been earned by companies just by arrogating to themselves the rights to pollute that were given free of charge by the European Union.

SOUNDBITE (French), Manon AUBRY (The Left, FR), Co-President of The Left Group, Lafarge is one of the good examples in this area. Nearly 500 million in profits, a fair gift from the European Union because these companies benefited from free quotas. So yes, the revision of the carbon market text partly focuses on the allocation of free allowances.

SOUNDBITE (French), Manon AUBRY (The Left, FR), Co-President of The Left Group, But we are so far from the initial position of the European Parliament. How is it that the European Parliament, which is an actor in the negotiations in the same way as the Council, in the same way as the Commission, how is it that our Parliament agrees to both set the dates and to postpone free quotas even further until at least 2036 and agrees to extend the carbon market to individuals, and in particular to housing and transport.

SOUNDBITE (French), Manon AUBRY (The Left, FR), Co-President of The Left Group, And I would add that the pseudo-safeguards that were mentioned by some of my colleagues in the Renaissance group, I was there just after Stéphane Sejourne. Well, I remember an interview with a colleague from the Renaissance group, Marie-Pierre Védrine, not to mention who is a deputy and Renaissance, who is in charge of negotiations for its group on the Social Climate Fund, saying in an interview “it is out of the question that households should pay the cost of the ecological transition.

SOUNDBITE (French), Manon AUBRY (The Left, FR), Co-President of The Left Group, And what do they do three months later? They vote like nothing, a device that extends the carbon tax to households. And so they agree to charge individuals and in particular the most precarious households. To definitively believe that they have learned nothing from the Yellow Vests crisis.

SOUNDBITE (French), Manon AUBRY (The Left, FR), Co-President of The Left Group, I am ending because I know that I have little time to say a word about the debate that occupied us this morning on relations between the European Union and China. I think that, from the memory of the European Parliament, I have rarely heard so many people mention Emmanuel Macron's name, and not just me, I assure you. Don't think that I have a personal obsession. Each and every one of my colleagues has cited it numerous times.

SOUNDBITE (French), Manon AUBRY (The Left, FR), Co-President of The Left Group, I think that Emmanuel Macron's visit raises a certain number of debates. First, Emmanuel Macron made two mistakes. The first is to seem to be sending the United States and China back to back at a time when only China has stoked tensions through military intimidation on Taiwan soil.

SOUNDBITE (French), Manon AUBRY (The Left, FR), Co-President of The Left Group, And then, the second mistake of not raising the issue of human rights, and in particular of the Uighurs, when our European Parliament had already warned on the subject. But their displacement raises a real question: the independence of the European Union and how can we establish independence when our European Union is constantly signing free trade agreements, constantly opening trade borders to finally organize our dependence on the whole world?

SOUNDBITE (French), Manon AUBRY (The Left, FR), Co-President of The Left Group, I can give a lot of examples, but let's just say that I don't know paracetamol, which has recently been in short supply. So we, in geopolitical matters, as you know, our group has always claimed the concept of non-alignment, which is not neutrality. To be non-aligned means to align neither with the interests of China nor with the interests of the United States.

SOUNDBITE (French), Manon AUBRY (The Left, FR), Co-President of The Left Group, But that absolutely does not mean that we are going to support a political power and it absolutely does not mean that, of course, we do not condemn the war in Ukraine. And when Russia attacks Ukraine, we give unwavering support to the Ukrainian people. Being non-aligned means organizing the conditions for our geopolitical and strategic independence and organizing our autonomy and independence.

SOUNDBITE (French), Manon AUBRY (The Left, FR), Co-President of The Left Group, It means ensuring that we empower ourselves from the major political powers in military matters at the same time. NATO to take just this example when it comes to trade, whether we are getting rid of free trade agreements or in terms of the economy, and especially when we talk about human rights. Make sure that we punish our multinationals who blithely violate them in their supply chain. This allows me to whet your curiosity.

SOUNDBITE (French), Manon AUBRY (The Left, FR), Co-President of The Left Group, I was also the rapporteur for my group on a text on the duty of vigilance whose negotiations ended very late at night, which marks, I think, a small step in giving victims access to justice against multinational companies, violates human rights and damages the environment.

SOUNDBITE (French), Manon AUBRY (The Left, FR), Co-President of The Left Group, But a big step in the great fight that is ours to ensure that companies no longer enjoy their impunity and no longer organize their impunity by creating their business model based on human rights violations. This text will be voted on in committee next week and probably at the next plenary session in May. And I can tell you that he targeted a lot of debates and a lot of the activities of lobbies who, even at 1 am late at night obviously, still had a lot of arguments. I am at your disposal for more specific questions on the subject.

Q&amp;A Question regarding Europe trying to save the planet, but China still continuing masspolluting.

Q&A regarding the results of this ETS across Europe. Question