Mr. Seán Kelly:

My colleagues have given very good answers to the question and I concur with them. It is a very difficult situation because it goes against the grain of the European Union which was founded on the principles of peace, prosperity, fairness and human rights to have any place having an advantage in exporting goods to the EU or getting benefits that they should not have. It is something that we often discuss in Parliament. Mr. Kelleher is right. We can vote for something in Parliament but it must be implemented by the Council too and it includes those who will be opposed for different reasons. There is no question around the Parliament standing up for human rights. Every single month, when we go to Strasbourg we have Urgency Resolution debates where we discuss the abuse of human rights around the world. For instance, a week ago we had an Urgency Resolution debate about the Philippines where we asked that the generalised scheme of preferences plus, GSP+, on being able to export goods to the EU without tariffs would be withdrawn. That was passed unanimously, almost, by the Parliament. It is not often you get unanimity in Parliament because there are so many diverse groups. However, when it comes to human rights we are broad-minded and strong on it, I think. The same applies to China and the Uyghurs. People do not want to see places that are exploiting people or engaging in forced labour and so on having an advantage. There is an increased focus on it now particularly since the pandemic. Hopefully it can be done collectively and incorporating the Palestinian situation, as Billy Kelleher and Grace O'Sullivan said.