Bas Eickhout, author. – Mr President, thank you. And also, thank you for the applause before I even spoke. Last Monday, this Monday, it was Earth Day 2024, and also, again, the European State of the Climate Report has been published and it is full of very clear messages: 2023 was the warmest year on record; again, the average sea surface temperature across Europe was the highest on record; the Alps, which have seen glaciers lose around 10% of their remaining volume; and in the past 20 years, heat-related deaths are estimated to have increased by 94%.

Weather- and climate-related economic losses in 2023 are estimated at more than EUR 13.4 billion. That’s the state of the climate, and we’re only at the beginning because every emission that we are still doing is piling up in this atmosphere and is building up impacts that we are still going to see.

Remember 2015, when we signed up to the Paris Agreement, where we promised the world, ‘We want to stay below a warming of 1.5 degrees’? Remember 2019, when this whole House said, ‘We support the Green Deal. We work for climate neutrality’? Remember 2020, when this House in a full majority said, ‘There is a state of climate emergency’? Those were the days.

Those were the days where also the conservatives were very clear, making the point, ‘We need urgent action on climate’, and what have we seen? We’ve seen stalling. We’ve seen pressuring. We’ve been watering down: on nature restoration, on deforestation, on pesticides, on packaging, on electric vehicles. On all these files, we have seen conservatives and the right weakening, pressuring down and watering down legislation. And they are giving false promises.

This afternoon we will vote on agriculture again, and here the right will say, ‘We are going to weaken your environmental provisions because then everything will be fine for you’. But is that what is the problem of our farmers? The problem of our farmers is not environmental legislation. It is that they’re not getting a fair price for their production.

So I will challenge you. We have amendments this afternoon where we are going to ask for transparency in the food chain so that we know what farmers can get. We have amendments that are capping the subsidies so that our subsidy system will not go to the big farms, but to the small farmers. We are challenging you. Are you willing to really pick up a fight for our farmers, or are you just making sound and not helping any farmer at all?

And we will see the same on industrial policy. In industrial policy, the right is talking about the problems of competitiveness. What are the real problems? The real problem is a lack of a European strategy, a lack of European investments, and a lack of clarity that the Green Deal is our future industrial deal. That clarity, that is lacking.

So therefore, dear colleagues, these elections will be about the Green Deal, the future of the Green Deal, the future of European competitiveness, the future of a real fair income for our farmers. And therefore we are calling, ‘Let’s make these elections the Green Deal elections’, and let’s make sure that we are continuing our fight because we need to pick it up. And it is time that the right is getting his head out of the sand again and start working. We will do so.