For some years now, we have led the push for a more meaningful EU partnership with Africa. To this end, we have organised Africa Week every year where partners sharing the same progressive values come together to build a new partnership between Africa and Europe.

We put human rights and democracy over multinationals’ interests. After a long and hard campaign, the S&D Group convinced the rest of Parliament to secure a legally binding scheme to ensure the traceability of minerals such as gold, tin tungsten and tantalum, to make sure that products sold in the EU do not fuel armed militias or foster human rights violations in conflict areas.

With a view to promoting stability, security and non-proliferation in the Middle East, we have spearheaded many initiatives with Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. The Iran Deal, which saw economic sanctions come to an end in exchange for safeguards on nuclear activity, was our success in multilateral diplomacy.

We believe in international trade only when it serves the interest of our citizens and workers. We have fought to protect European workers and small and medium companies from unfair competition. Thanks to our group, China was not granted by the European Union the status of market economy which would have left Europe without strong protections against dumping from Chinese companies. On the contrary, we have been able to strengthen the trade defense instruments that protect Europe from unfair competition.

We have also imposed stricter and more ambitious rules on environmental and social standards in trade agreements such as that between the EU and Canada (CETA). We also ensured stronger EU trade defence instruments to tackle unfair competition from imports.