Nine months before the next European Parliament elections on 6 - 9 June, President Ursula von der Leyen outlines her Commission’s priorities from now until the end of its mandate. She focuses on a stronger and more resilient European Union, on the EU’s continued support for Ukraine in its war against Russia’s aggression, on energy security and EU energy independence, the EU’s twin green and digital transitions, and on protecting core EU values. Philippe LAMBERTS (Greens/EFA, BE), Co-Chair of the Greens/EFA group, gives his statement during the State of the European Union 2023 in Strasbourg. This transcription is a result of an automatic process. Please check against delivery.

statement

Strasbourg

debate

plenary session

LAMBERTS, Philippe (Greens/EFA, BE)

Greens/EFA

state of the European Union 2023 (T)

Plenary session: Statement by Philippe LAMBERTS (Greens/EFA, BE), Co-Chair of the Greens/EFA group

SOUNDBITE (English), Roberta METSOLA, President of the European Parliament, The co-president of the Green Group, Philip Lamberts, for six and a half minutes.

SOUNDBITE (English), Philippe LAMBERTS (Greens/EFA, BE), Dear President Von der Leyen, Dear colleagues, it is not without emotion having been in this Parliament for 14 years that I am taking part today in my last State of the Union debate. For ten years I witnessed a European Union blinded by economic orthodoxy, deaf to the social and climate emergencies. But 2019 marked the turning point.

SOUNDBITE (English), Philippe LAMBERTS (Greens/EFA, BE), For the first time in its history, European Union made the fight against climate change a top priority. And against all odds, the European Green Deal withstood the pandemic and the war that rocked the European Union. Each time it was put front and centre in our response. We owe very much of this to you, Madam President. To your vision, your persistence and your leadership.

SOUNDBITE (English), Philippe LAMBERTS (Greens/EFA, BE), Unsurprisingly, those who never embraced the European Green Deal in the first place are now calling for a pause, a moratorium to weaken its ambition in the name of protecting our competitiveness, if you see what I mean to them, I say this. We are not above nature. Humanity is part of nature, whether we like it or not. There are limits to what our planet can take and to what it can give.

SOUNDBITE (English), Philippe LAMBERTS (Greens/EFA, BE), Respecting those limits is not the Greens hobby horse. It is a question of survival and this struggle for survival all too many European citizens are now seeing first hand. Can you imagine a Greek firefighter walking away from the raging inferno or rescue worker when floods hit Slovenia say, let's take it easy. No, they are giving everything they have to get these climate events under control. We owe it to them and to every citizen caught up in the extremes unleashed by climate change to act with all we have. We have waited for too long.

SOUNDBITE (English), Philippe LAMBERTS (Greens/EFA, BE), So stand firm, Madam President. We cannot content ourselves with just implementing what that's already been decided, which in itself is not enough to meet the 1.5 degree warming target. So much remains to be done. Instead of carbon sinks or agriculture and forestry have become net carbon emitters on land, water and air are so polluted by forever chemicals, heavy metals, fine particles, plastics that they are causing massive death and disease. And this leads to a collapse in biodiversity, which endangers all lives and livelihoods.

SOUNDBITE (English), Philippe LAMBERTS (Greens/EFA, BE), But as you said, Madam President, the ecological transition is not just a necessity. It is the single biggest economic opportunity for Europe. Shying away from it would make us followers. Also rants condemned to import the solutions we need from the rest of the world. The key to competitiveness, dear colleagues, is for our economies to embrace the green transition, to support enterpreneurs who want to lead it and to ditch the rent seekers. This is to assure true to EU prosperity.

SOUNDBITE (English), Philippe LAMBERTS (Greens/EFA, BE), The political viability of the European Green Deal will depend on our capacity to demand more from those who have the most and less from those who have the least. There are limits to what the planet can take, but the same goes for our societies. Financial crisis, Eurozone crisis, pandemic, war in Ukraine, energy crisis. Every time it's ordinary citizens who foot the bill, whereas those who own capital continue to accumulate.

SOUNDBITE (English), Philippe LAMBERTS (Greens/EFA, BE), Even Christine Lagarde said it, most of the current inflammation is due to the massive increase in corporate profits. President, you will certainly object that social and fiscal justice are the remit of member states. And that's true. But given that in the past the European Commission was able to push governments to adopt unfair reforms, it should also be able to demand that they do what's right. It does have direct means of action as well.

SOUNDBITE (English), Philippe LAMBERTS (Greens/EFA, BE), And they're available. Look at housing. Most young people can no longer afford accommodation in the towns where they work and the cause financial speculation in the property market. The good news is that financial regulation is an EU competence. So what are you waiting for? To deal with this highly charged situation like nature, common goods or energy? Housing can't be a simple financial asset left to the vagaries of the market.

SOUNDBITE (English), Philippe LAMBERTS (Greens/EFA, BE), If we want the environmental transition to be a unifying project, we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that our union is first and foremost a community of values. However, everywhere in Europe, fundamental freedoms are in retreat, whether it's people calling the rights of women into question the underfunding and co-opting of the judiciary, hyper concentration of the media, spying on journalists, activists and political leaders or police, violence against demonstrators and people of an ethnic minority background.

SOUNDBITE (English), Philippe LAMBERTS (Greens/EFA, BE), President, In spite of the legal and financial pressures that you've put on two Member States, the backsliding continues and is increasing. As guardian of European law, the Commission will have to redouble its efforts not only vis a vis Poland and Hungary.

SOUNDBITE (English), Philippe LAMBERTS (Greens/EFA, BE), One that comes first in Article two is human dignity, and there is no greater denial of this fundamental value than the way we treat people seeking protection from us. Today, European asylum policy boils down to make Europe a fortress and to rely on autocrats, dictators and failed states to keep refugees and migrants away from our shores. This has made smugglers rich and turned the Mediterranean into a mass grave.

SOUNDBITE (English), Philippe LAMBERTS (Greens/EFA, BE), And I'm afraid, Madam President, I don't share your optimism, the EU pact on on asylum and migration does not fundamentally change the steady logic. Our union has a duty, a responsibility and I would even say a need to take its fair share in welcoming, forcibly displaced people. And it can if we only harness or collective capabilities or moral credit is at stake, not least in Africa. For decades, the fear of migration has been instrumentalized by the far right, and now it seems that the fight against climate change has become the new target.

SOUNDBITE (English), Philippe LAMBERTS (Greens/EFA, BE), But what concerns me even more, Madam President, is the fact that a growing number of your party colleagues are embracing the same strategy, the same language, in the hope probably of bringing voters back into the EPP fold. Several EPP member parties are considering or have chosen to form coalitions with far right parties, and some of their representatives were not even ashamed to admit to me that they share so much with them in terms of values and programme.

SOUNDBITE (English), Philippe LAMBERTS (Greens/EFA, BE), So in the name of the Greens European Free Alliance, I'm appealing to you. Don't let Robert Schuman's party drift away from its values, the values on which the European Union has been founded.

SOUNDBITE (English), Philippe LAMBERTS (Greens/EFA, BE), Dear colleagues, and I'm concluding the pandemic and the war on a background of climate disruption persuaded the majority of our coast citizens that it's only together that we can tackle the challenges of this century. The European Union has regained credit in their eyes to the point that those, not very many of them who are calling for the country to leave the European Union no longer dare to do it publicly.

SOUNDBITE (English), Philippe LAMBERTS (Greens/EFA, BE), We need to stick to our course and ensure that our efforts of the efforts are fairly distributed. That's how we can make our union an area of peace and freedom with shared and sustainable prosperity. Our citizens and particularly our young people who are rightly anxious about the future, expect no less from us. Let us kindle and maintain their trust. Thank you.