What Daniel spoke about.

Madam President, yesterday a number of offices of the European Parliament were searched by the European Public Prosecutor's Office. These were offices of the Patriots for Europe Group, including their secretary general. It's not without irony that those colleagues here in the Chamber that always scream the loudest about the corrupt bureaucrats keep employing a secretary general that is under inves

Mr President, dear colleagues, Erasmus is the best thing that the European Union is doing. There is no other programme that changes the lives of millions of Europeans so directly and so profoundly. I myself, 20 years ago, was an Erasmus student. And during this year that I was able to spend in Paris, I not only fell in love with the French language, but also with an Italian woman who, today, is my

Mr President, colleagues, it's been nine years since the brutal assassination of Daphne. And for these nine years, we've been waiting for justice, for closure on this case. The hitmen have been sentenced; they are in jail. But the person that ordered the brutal assassination by car bomb is still walking free today. And that shows us that something is not quite right in the justice system in Malta.

You complained about all this corruption that only interests your party or your group. In fact, your secretary-general's offices have just been raided by the police because your political group continues to hijack hundreds of thousands of euros. Unfortunately, you did not talk about it, but perhaps you can answer this question: why is there so much corruption among the Patriots, and especially in

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen! Thank you to the Court of Auditors, and you too, Commissioner. If you read through the report of the Court of Auditors, you have to say that you have a little hair on your feet. Especially with the examples that can be found there, where agricultural money is distributed to shepherds in Crete, who allegedly grazed their animals 226 kilometers away, which are pro

Mr President, Minister, Commissioner, dear colleagues, as budget controllers, we want to see a more ambitious fight against fraud and corruption. We need to fund those institutions that are meant to go after the corrupt people like Viktor Orbán, or the embezzlement of agricultural funds in Slovakia – or even, in our own House, the corrupt band of Le Pen that are stealing from taxpayers' money. We

Mr President, dear colleagues, dear Commissioner, the biggest success in the fight against corruption in the European Union that we have seen in recent years was that Hungarian voters threw out the most corrupt government that we have seen in the history of the Union. After 16 years of Orbán and his family and friends stealing billions of taxpayer money, this is now over – the king of corruption i

Mr President, dear colleagues, when we as Europeans last discussed how the European Union should function was 25 years ago. It was a very different world. It was a world where we could still entrust our lives to the Americans, where democracy, social market economy, freedoms were still spreading in this world. Well, we live in a different world now. We have seen since, for example, a head of state

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, We parents have to make important decisions about our children every day. But there is one decision that we, as parents, should not make here in Parliament. And that is the choice between the birth of our children and voting – between the delivery room and the hemicycle. So far it is like this: Mothers lose their voice when they have a child, they cannot be r

Madam President, I want to react to a couple of things that were said during this debate. Let me start, Commissioner, with Slovakia. Of course you have other tools than the conditionality, but I think we really ought to make sure that Fico does not become another Orbán, as he himself says he wants to be. We have tools: let's not wait until it's too late, as we have seen in other cases before. And

Mr President, colleagues, Commissioner, the discharge is one of the most important scrutiny tools at the disposal of this Parliament, and obviously, the discharge is the biggest scrutiny that we do. It's the first time that this is in the hands of a Green rapporteur, so I want to thank my colleagues and the shadows for the trustful collaboration that we have had in this process. The Budgetary Cont

Mr President, dear colleagues, this is now the seventh report on the protection of the financial interests of the Union and combating fraud that I'm working on in this Parliament, and I have to say, it's the worst that I've seen so far. The rapporteur, Mr Sanchez, despite his numerous meetings that he supposedly had with EPPO, with OLAF, with the Commission, has missed all the major things that th

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, Do you know what really makes me angry? I am infuriated by those who are always loudest about the EU, who think that Brussels is full of corrupt bureaucrats, the people of Le Pen, Orbán, and the AfD. Now we are talking here today about the first European anti-corruption law – common standards for bribery, embezzlement and abuse of office in

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen. In the Committee on Budgetary Control, it is of course particularly important to us that the money of European taxpayers is particularly protected. Unfortunately, when I watch – especially here in our own house – there is always abuse with funds. Marine Le Pen has been convicted and investigations into the former AfD ‑ faction – the ID – are ongoing. We have suc

Mr Buchheit, all sorts of stories go beyond how the AfD handles taxpayers' money in this way, but today we are talking about Slovakia. Do you want us to use taxpayers' money to finance luxury villas for any Slovaks, to build pools for them at their villas? Do you think that this is also a sensible use of EU taxpayers' money by German taxpayers? Then why don't you address corruption and say it's al

Madam President, dear colleagues, just a couple of weeks ago, I was sitting in the living room of Zuzana Šubová, and she told me how she had worked in the paying agency for agricultural funds in Slovakia. And then she had been pushed out when she started pointing out the rampant corruption problems that she was seeing with agricultural funds in Slovakia. And just shortly after my visit in the earl

Colleague, your candidate for Prime Minister is currently touring the country and is accusing Brussels of warmongering. He is saying that he's the only one keeping Hungary safe, and then he is the first one in line when it comes to applying for EU funds for defence. How does that make any sense? I mean, the only explanations I can find is that he basically, as always when it comes to EU funds, he

Madam President, madam Commissioner, dear colleagues, Hungary is the most corrupt country in the European Union. EUR 18 billion are frozen because of this corruption and the attacks on the rule of law. And at the same time, Hungary is the country where Orbán constantly travels to meet Putin. He blocks everything that has to do with European defence and security. And in this situation, the Commissi

So the proceedings are ongoing, and until a case is closed, I continue to assume that there is substantiated evidence. If house searches take place, then this is not just the case, but you have to present a judge with proper evidence. Particularly with MEPs, the hurdle is particularly high. Evidence must also be provided in the case of the waiver of immunity. In this respect, there is already a ve

Madam President, Dear colleagues! It seems to me that we need James Bond in the European Parliament to do something about the espionage, the propagandists of Russia who are here. It seems to be particularly members of the far-right who shine here today with absence. Until 2020, Nathan Gill was a Member of Parliament for Nigel Farage's anti-European UKIP party. They have always said they would defe

You just talked about double standards and a lot of corruption. You did not mention the biggest corruption scandal we have had here in Parliament in recent years – that your ID group embezzled and stole at least 4.3 million in the last legislature, including individual members of the AfD. When do German and European taxpayers actually get their money back from the AfD, which was misused and stolen

Madam President, Commissioner, 15 years of Viktor Orbán have turned Hungary into a mafia state: all checks and balances basically dismantled and Orbán has made his friends and family the richest people in the country, meanwhile their desolate hospitals, schools, roads, infrastructure, all of this is going down the drain. So then, three years ago – finally – the Commission said, 'We're going to fre

Mr President, dear colleagues, since Viktor Orban came to power in 2010, the European Union has given EUR 80 billion to Hungary – eighty billion euros! This was money meant to modernise schools, to update hospitals, to bring fast internet to every corner of Hungary – to do all those things that we do with EU money. But if you travel through Hungary and if you visit the neighbouring countries, you

Madam President, dear colleagues, this is an historic moment. It is a step forward towards the modernisation of this European Parliament. Members of this Parliament should be able to transfer their vote during and around pregnancy and after giving birth. That we do this for mothers now is a good step, but I think it should have been done for all parents. I myself had to make the choice twice for t