This week, the European Parliament met in Strasbourg from Monday to Thursday. Bills, discussions, debates, amendments, and votes followed one after another.
1
On Monday, the Special Committee on the Housing Crisis (HOUS), of which I am a coordinator, adopted a report proposing solutions to the problem of housing affordability. I will talk about this in detail when (hopefully) the report is adopted by the European Parliament, which should happen in March. For now, I will just say that we understand, of course, that the causes of the crisis vary from country to country, and that it is the task and responsibility of each government to find a solution. However, Brussels can and must put pressure on governments, and we can and must put pressure on Brussels.
2
On Tuesday, I met with the Greek Ambassador to the EU, Efthymios Kostopoulos, to discuss the report on the coordination of social security systems. I have already mentioned that this important report has stalled in the EU Council: when Poland was the head of the Council, it was not in its interest to promote this report for domestic political reasons. Greece, on the other hand, is interested in it and has promised to help while Cyprus remains the head of the Council for the rest of this six-month period. The report needs to be approved by the EU Council as soon as possible, because Ursula von der Leyen has promised us a “spring cleaning”, i.e. all initiatives on which the Council has not reached agreement will be removed from the agenda. In my opinion, this is completely wrong, but the European ĵCommission is currently obsessed with the idea of “simplification”.
3
On Wednesday, I spoke on the plenary twice: about the strategy for combating poverty and about the report that would have eliminated abuses in the subcontracting system by limiting vertical subcontracting chains to two levels.
The European Parliament approved the strategy for combating poverty, which specifically requires the European Commission to allocate €200 million to the Children's Guarantee. This is essentially a European fund that provides children from poor families with access to healthcare, pre-school and school-age education, decent living conditions, and quality nutrition.
The report on subcontracting (I was the shadow rapporteur for the Renew Europe faction) met with a more unfortunate fate. The Parliament adopted it, but not in its original form: all demands on the Commission to change anything at the legislative level were removed from the report. This was done by the conservative EPP faction in alliance with the far right. Only the recommendations remained, which the Commission may or may not heed.
On the same day, I participated as a member of the Tallinn City Council in a meeting of the Tallinn City Property Commission, where we discussed the fate of Tallinn City Hall (or Linnahall).
4
From the votes in the plenary session, I would highlight the new rules on the expulsion of illegal migrants. The majority supported the bill. The main point is that the EU has defined a list of safe countries to which refugees can be sent. These are candidates for EU membership: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, Turkey, Ukraine, as well as Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt, Kosovo, India, Morocco, and Tunisia.
Here's the problem I see: on Thursday, the same European Parliament passed a resolution on human rights violations in Turkey by the same majority. In other words, we're being hypocritical. On the one hand, we say that Turkey is a “safe country” to send people to, and on the other, we're upset that human rights are being violated there. There is no logic in this, and human rights are priority to me. That is why I voted nay.
On Thursday, the European Parliament voted for the positions with which I will go to NYC to represent the Parliament at the 70th session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women. Here, too, the conservatives and the right wing showed what they are up to, rejecting among other things an amendment calling on the EU to include a woman's right to abortion in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights.
6
Wednesday was European 112 Day – in honor of the single number that can be used to call an ambulance, rescue services, and the police in the EU. Meanwhile, I sent a request to the European Commission on an issue I wrote about earlier: how to ensure that a person from one EU country can contact rescuers in another country if they see online that a resident of that country needs urgent help. A specific person approached my office with this problem, and in such cases we always send requests and publish the responses.