Ska Keller (Verts/ALE). – Mr President, first of all let me also say that I very much welcome that the Commission has come up with such a reflection paper. This is because I think it is the first time that the Commission is actually also acknowledging there are problems around globalisation. I think that is a very good thing. It is a very good start.

Unfortunately, we see little action, let us say, in the paper. There are a lot of very important words, like realising concerns and pointing out the right problems. That is all very nice and very fair, but I think – as colleagues have also said – that we should move forward to action. We need concrete things. In other reflection papers there was more concrete action – we would say not enough, but there was some – but I think here, on globalisation, concrete action is missing.

Let me mention some areas where I think we can move to direct action. Firstly, to end the race to the bottom between Member States when it comes to workers’ rights. Let us think about posted workers. I think it is very important that we safeguard the rights of all workers inside the European Union. Let us also review trade agreements. It is possible to do them in such a way that benefits European Union citizens as well as the citizens in our partner countries, but for that we really need to change the way in which we do trade agreements at the moment.

We also need to lead the fight against climate change. We should not wait for others to follow the path or maybe also do something, but we need to be more ambitious in targeting the reduction of CO2 emissions, because we have no time to waste. If we lose our planet, there is not a second one we can go to.

We also need to get serious about fighting tax avoidance and tax evasion – because I think those are key issues when it comes to social justice – by making sure that big companies which greatly profit from globalisation pay their due share and making sure that we can also afford investment, for example in education, good social services and sustainable jobs.

I think here the European Union can really do something, because no nation state can deal with those issues alone. We need the European Union, but we also need to make sure that we do concrete things.