Satuday, 2 December, 10:00 - 12:00
Room: Plenary
Organised by the Greens/EFA Group in the European Parliament.
We are currently living an unprecedented crisis in the European Union with energy prices going through the roof. Energy prices were already increasing during the second half of 2021, prior to the war in Ukraine. This is due to several factors including the increase of gas prices on global markets, extreme climate conditions (e.g. heatwaves this Summer) which increase energy demand, greater energy demand in general in a context of post-COVID-19 economic recovery and recent scarcity of nuclear and hydropower electricity generation, partly linked to climate conditions. Russia’s decision to stop gas supply to several Member States in the past few months has accelerated the trend of higher gas prices. Rising energy prices are accelerating the cost-of-living crisis and sustaining a vicious cycle of constrained household budgets, increasing food and energy poverty and fuelling social unrest.
More than 96.5 million Europeans are already at risk of poverty and social exclusion, which represents around 22% of the EU population and this number will unfortunately only increase as a consequence of spiralling energy prices and because of the impact of climate change. This also affects society at large as public, social and cultural services like hospitals, universities or schools are also deeply affected by the rise in energy prices. Many companies, especially SMEs, are heavily impacted and are not able to pass on their rising energy costs to their customers, being at risk of bankruptcy.
In the past months, the European Commission has tried to preserve Europe’s unity and solidarity with a series of measures to diversify the EU energy mix away from Russian coal, oil and gas and to lower the impact of higher energy prices, especially for the most vulnerable. Member States have adopted European proposals in record time but have also sometimes played their national card, especially to ensure security of supply and the refilling of their gas storage ahead of this winter. In addition, Member States have adopted social measures to shield EU citizens from the impact of high energy prices.
This plenary session will aim at discussing the following questions:
- What immediate measures can Member States and the European Union adopt to protect the European population and avoid dramatic social consequences of increased cost of living?
- How to ensure that today’s actions also help accelerate the energy transition and boost energy efficiency and renewables? What concrete solutions exist that should be replicate all over Europe to promote energy savings, energy efficiency and renewable energy?
- How to ensure adequate and long-term financing for green and social measures related to the energy transition? How to ensure that adequate financing is accessible at the local level as well to implement bottom-up projects and put citizens at the heart of the energy transition?
- How to ensure that Greens in different Member States are perceived as the main political actor to promote a fair energy transition and the promoter of a right to energy for everyone that does not harm people’s health nor ecosystems?
| Speakers: | ||
|---|---|---|
 | Moderator: Marie Toussaint, Vice President of the Greens/EFA Group in the European Parliament | |
 | Terry Reintke, Co-President of the Greens/EFA Group in the European Parliament Terry Reintke is Co-President of the Greens/EFA Group, the fourth largest group in the European Parliament. For her, answers to the energy crisis and the ambitious implementation of the Green Deal are the big challenges of the coming years. The fight for social justice in the European Union is one of the priorities for the 35-year-old. Terry Reintke stands for a feminist foreign policy guided by values. Her parliamentary work focuses on the preservation of the rule of law and the EU-wide protection of fundamental rights. As a member of the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE), she is committed to promoting democracy; resolute opposition to authoritarian tendencies is one of her core concerns. In the Committee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality, the politician, born in 1987, fights inter alia for safe access to abortion of unwanted pregnancies to be enshrined as a fundamental right in the EU Charter. As Co-Chair of the European Parliament's LGBTI Intergroup, Terry Reintke had been instrumental in driving the cross-party process towards the LGBTI Freedom Zone, an initiative dedicated to fighting queer hostility in the EU. In 2017, the US Time Magazine awarded her and other women behind the #MeToo movement who stand up against sexual harassment and abuse of power as Person of the Year. Terry Reintke first entered the European Parliament for Alliance 90/The Greens in 2014, as the youngest woman at the time. She grew up in the Ruhr area and studied political science in Berlin and Edinburgh. At that time, she was already politically active as a member of the national board of the GREEN YOUTH and spokesperson for the Federation of Young European Greens (FYEG) | |
 | Ricarda Lang, Party Leader, BÜNDNIS 90/DIE GRÜNEN Ricarda Lang became party leader of the German Green Party (BÜNDNIS 90/DIE GRÜNEN) in February 2022. In September 2021, she was elected as a Member of the German Bundestag, where she sits on the Committee for Family Policy and is Vice-Chair of the Committee for Labor and Social Policy. | |
 | Sara Matthieu, Member of the European Parliament Sara Matthieu is a Belgian Member of the European Parliament since 2020. She is coordinator of the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs, and an active member in the Committees of International Trade and Environmental Affairs. In the parliament, she works mainly on circular economy including eco-design and social themes such as protection against asbestos, protection of workers, minimum income and due diligence. She has been active in politics for the past 22 years, holding positions at Natuurpunt and the cabinet of Brussels Mobility Minister Bruno De Lille. In addition, she is an active member of the Belgian women's movement. As of 2013, she has been a city councillor in Ghent, where the Greens are in the majority. Sara has been active in European politics since 2002, within FYEG, and as a delegate and later board member within EGP and the global greens. | |
 | Bas Eickhout, Vice-President of the Greens/EFA Group in the European Parliament Bas Eickhout (1976, Groesbeek, NL) studied Chemistry and Environmental Science at the Radboud University in Nijmegen and lives in Utrecht. Since 2000, he worked as a researcher at the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (Planbureau voor de Leefomgeving). He worked on several projects related to international environmental problems, such as climate change, agriculture, land-use and biofuels. He co-authored the IPCC report on climate change, which received the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. Bas Eickhout has been a member of the European Parliament and delegation leader of the Dutch Greens since 2009. He is a member and coordinator of the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety and a substitute member of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs and the Committee on Budgetary Control. Eickhout is also a member of the Delegation for relations with the People's Republic of China and a substitute member of the Delegation for relations with the United States. | |
 | Benedek Jávor, Head of the Budapest Representation to the EU, biologist, and Former Member of the European Parliament Benedek Jávor is a biologist, environmentalist, and politician. After a decade in academia and in the Green NGO movement he was one of the founders of the Green party LMP in 2009 and the Green-Left party Párbeszéd in 2013. Member of the Parliament of Hungary and chair of its Sustainable Development Committee in 2010-2014. From 2014 to 2019 he was a Member of the European Parliament in the Greens/EFA group, first vice-chair of the Committee for Environment. Since 2020 he is the Head of the Representation of the City of Budapest to the EU in Brussels. Special focus on energy, climate and environmental policy, as well as the rule of law and anti-corruption discourse on the European level. | |
 | Esther Lynch, Acting Secretary General, European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) Esther Lynch is the acting General Secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation. Before that, she was ETUC Deputy General Secretary from 2019 to 2022, after four years as Confederal Secretary. Esther’s responsibilities included social dialogue, collective bargaining and wage policy, trade union rights, gender equality and Brexit. She has extensive trade union experience at Irish, European and international levels, starting with her election as a shop steward in the 1980s. Before coming to the ETUC, she was the Legislation and Social Affairs Officer with the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU), where she took part in negotiations on Ireland’s National Social Partner Agreements. As Deputy General Secretary and as Confederal Secretary she led ETUC advocacy actions aimed at improving workers and trade union rights in legislative initiatives such as the Directive on Adequate Minimum Wages, the Transparent and Predicable Working Conditions Directive and the Whistleblowing Directive, ran a successful campaign that mobilised support for the European Pillar of Social Rights and the ETUC’s ‘Europe Needs a Pay Rise’ campaign and helped secure the EU’s adoption of legally binding occupational exposure limits to protect workers from exposure to carcinogens, as well as a social partners’ agreements on digitalisation and on reprotoxins. A lifelong feminist, Esther is pushing for the adoption of the Gender Pay Transparency Directive to end the undervaluing of work predominantly done by women. | |
