 Hello my name is Tarek Reinker, I'm a Green Member of the European Parliament and since the Corona crisis I have been stuck in Brussels and what I have been mostly concerned with are the attacks on rule of law and fundamental rights that we have seen in some member states where actually this crisis and measures that are being taken to fight the virus are used in a way to undermine fundamental rights of minorities for example most notably the situation in Hungary where you might have seen Viktor Orban has gotten a majority to rule by decree the parliament is basically taken out of power and in this context he has pushed for a change of the legislation on legal gender recognition so that practically trans people cannot change their gender marker in their documents anymore and it's not a surprise that this is coming the Hungarian government has always worked against the LGBTI community in Hungary still in this crisis the specific situation is being abused and I think it speaks volume about how in danger fundamental rights in Europe are. The second thing that I have worked on a lot is the situation in Poland you might have heard of a couple of years ago a proposal to introduce a complete ban on abortion in the Polish law a similar proposal has now been put forward again it wouldn't mean a total abortion but almost and because it would scrap an indication which leads to 98 percent of all legal abortions in Poland obviously feminist organizations people standing up for fundamental rights in Poland have tried to intervene and to strongly oppose but because of the situation it is not as easy protests in the streets are prohibited so the community organized online protests but also tried to have protest stage from cars while they are waiting to get into a shop or a bakery and still obviously from a democratic point of view the situation is far from ideal to have such an important debate in the European parliament we have said that we stand in full solidarity and with the activist fighting against this law in Poland and there was a second proposal introduced and that would criminalize the provision of information on sexuality and sexual and reproductive rights to minus also this is deeply worrying and problematic and part of an authoritarian backlash against fundamental rights against sexual and reproductive rights and driven by a very I must say now powerful network of extreme right Christian fundamentalist organizations that are operating not only in Poland but in many other member states in the European Union and I can only say that for the European parliament we will stay vigilant and these two laws have now been moved to the committees so they are in a situation right now where they're being prepared for a second reading in the Polish parliament they have not been rejected so we have to absolutely keep our eyes on the situation in Poland and I can only appeal to you when things like this happen when we see the abortion law but also the criminalization of sex education in Poland but also the attack on trans rights in Hungary it is important for the organizations for the civil society on the ground that they get solidarity from different parts of Europe from the whole world and that we organize solidarity actions online and also if possible offline so if you see things like this happening especially in a situation where people cannot take it to the street where people cannot protest due to the corona measures and stand in solidarity use it use your social media in order to support the efforts there very often in a very very difficult situation so I think our support is important and very much needed