Ms Lynn Boylan:

The question was around the sustainable finance and that on 17 June, the Commission adopted the fifth of its omnibus packages, which dealt with defence. One of the measures included was a notice on how the EU sustainable finance and due diligence rules will apply to the defence sector. It has confirmed to us that you cannot discriminate against the defence sector and it will be eligible for sustainable finance. For anyone who does not know, sustainable finance is supposed to be helping us to achieve the objectives of the European Green Deal and the objectives of reducing our carbon emissions and taking climate action. We now have a situation where sustainable finance will be eligible for defence companies that not only are using critical raw materials which are contributing to our carbon emissions - if you look at the carbon emissions of what is happening in Palestine right now it is enormous - but are also diverting funds away from actually addressing climate action. Climate change does lead to increase conflict.

We know that. That was accepted by the UN in 2007. The UN Secretary General at the time, Ban Ki-moon, clearly said that the war in Darfur was the first climate change conflict. Of the 25 countries most vulnerable to climate change, 14 of them are currently suffering from conflict. We do not need funding going to defence and certainly not the sustainable finance fund, which is supposed to address climate change.