What Damian spoke about.

Mr President, dear President Costa, whenever Europe's 27 leaders meet to solve our problems, we get your document expressing deep concern, underlining the urgency and reiterating the need for something to happen. Now, President Costa, while I understand the power of words, in these chaotic times, we lack action, not words. When Trump cuts Starshield and Ukrainians die in their sleep, Europe needs

Madam President, Prime Minister, 'ficar a ver navios' is a Portuguese saying, as you know, that translates to 'stay watching ships'. It's used when someone is left behind empty-handed. It's a beautiful image – someone sitting on the hills of Lisbon, vinho verde in hand, mesmerised by the longing for something unattainable passing by, like a ship in the distance. It's a beautiful image also for the

Madam President, I couldn't have said it better. Our businesses have to do two jobs at the same time at the moment. One is their real job, what they're doing, their profession. And the second one is to report on it. Just yesterday, I spoke to a friend who runs a bakery in Berlin, and because of European rules and their German interpretation, he is now currently considered a packaging producer beca

Madam President, dear Prime Minister Carney, I'm really excited we are formalising our long-distance relationship. Of course, our history has had its ups and downs, but hey, we recently had a bad break-up with the Brits, and you seem to be going through a rough patch with the US. So, clearly, we are both open for something new. For us, choosing you – Canada and Mr Carney – is quite easy. You have

Madam President, dear colleagues challenging the digital euro. I have listened carefully, but your arguments simply don't add up. First, you call yourself patriots, and yet you oppose the one instrument that could loosen the grip that Donald Trump has on all our payments. If you are true European patriots, vote for the anti-Trump coin. Second, you tell us how much you love the privacy of cash. And

Mr President, Executive Vice-President, colleagues, Europe is becoming a colony of the US and China. That is the clear message of the Europe 2031 simulation and similar ones looking into our immediate future. They claim that all companies and governments will have to use frontier models to stay competitive and safe; that all labour is replaceable by the mix of AI and robotics, meaning that a signi

Madam President, colleagues, Commissioner, Mr Vice-President, Europe is basically the Silicon Valley's unpaid internship. We tell our founders to dream very big and then we offer them small change. Despite all our big words on Draghi, we are just not serious enough when it comes to the money, sending so many of our founders of our potential next unicorns on direct flights to the Silicon Valley. Am

Mr President, colleagues, not every explosion makes a loud boom, but last Friday, I could definitely feel the earth tremble. Because last Friday, Trump actually pressed a 'red button'. He issued his export control directive to stop Anthropic giving access to its best AI models to Europeans. Colleagues, this is a huge middle finger towards Europe, and it tells us two very important things. First, T

My main point is honesty. Honesty. We talk about the single market for years. We hear from the Council, we hear from the Commission: the single market is so important. It will help so many of us. But then, let's be honest, if we want a single market, this means that we will change the Ministry of Finance position in Germany right now. There is nothing stopping the German Chancellor and the German

Madam President, Vice‑President, colleagues, Europe is like a football team where every player plays on a different court under different rules, and then we wonder why we lose globally. And, of course, we nod our heads when our coach Draghi tells us to maybe train a bit more together. But I wonder, if everyone here agrees – the Council, the Commission, Parliament – we need a single court, we need

Mr President, dear colleagues, I'm incredibly grateful that we are having a strong debate about the institutional changes that Europe needs now. But I also have to say that I'm a bit tired of the false narratives that come up here in this House every time we discuss this topic. People on the far right and on the far left say Europe is undemocratic. Then we propose to make it democratic with instit

Dear colleague, I have to say, I do not understand a word of what you are saying because you say that we want less power for the nation states, but that is completely wrong. We have all lost power. All of us. The nation states, the European Union. We are not able to defend ourselves. We are not able to act. So, what we need to do is to make sure that everyone can take decisions on the European lev

Mrs Bischoff, first of all I wanted to thank you because you are so strongly committed to the changes in the European treaties in the last mandate and also in this mandate. But I still wonder: As the European Parliament, we have already called for Treaty changes. We triggered Article 48. It is actually no longer a choice at all whether the Council, whether the heads of government sit down and actu

Mr President, dear colleagues, I have to agree with Ms Hayer that it's quite ironic to have the far right request a debate on election meddling. That is very ironic because Alice Weidel, the boss of the AfD, got a lot of likes from Nigeria, and I'm not sure it's because she's so very friendly to foreigners in her speech. It's ironic because Viktor Orbán is really the pinnacle of a person that unde

Madam President, the war in Iran is more than thousands of kilometres away, but the impact that we feel on our economy is immediate. Around 20 % of the world's oil passes through the Straight of Hormuz, and when it stopped, the oil prices, of course, increased. We see a 10 % increase in oil prices raises the inflation of the euro area by 0.3 percentage points. So, we know that there's an immediate

Madam President, colleagues, the new world order – or the old world order – is dead. We have heard this this week from the Commission President and it is true. That means that prosperity is something completely different now. Prosperity of individuals means resilience and democracy, and prosperity of the European continent means that we can stand up to blackmailing. This is where the European Seme

Madam President, colleagues, tomorrow our European athletes will continue to rock the Winter Olympics, while Merz, Macron, Meloni and and Co will sit down to think about how we can have more world champions in our industry. But without tough choices, this is pretty much the same as putting me in very shiny tights and giving me great skates to compete in figure skating – it's not going to work. Dea

Mr Schwab, forgive me for always asking you, but you always say such clever things, so I have to ask. My question goes in the direction: They say that simplification is the only thing we need to do for the single market. What I'm wondering is: What about harmonisation? What would be a concrete proposal for harmonisation, where the European Union could now really take the next step towards simplify

Mr President, 'Holodomor': dear colleagues, have you ever heard this dark term before? Its literal translation is 'death by cold'. It's a war crime you'd expect to read about in history books, not in Europe in 2026. But this is exactly the reality that Ukrainians are suffering right now as Putin's bombs leave millions to freeze in Arctic weather conditions. Colleagues, there's not a single power p

Madam President, Commissioner, colleagues, I have to say I'm still a bit under the impression of the rambling of Donald Trump that I was just listening to from Davos, and it just reminded me once more that every initiative that we take now has to look for resilience – military resilience, democratic resilience and of course also economic resilience. And so I think the Digital Networks Act comes in

Madam President, dear Mr Costa, this is the House of European citizens, and the European citizens I talked to are pissed. They're very, very angry. They're angry at Trump for attacking Europe. They're proud of Europe. They like our culture. They like our values. But they're also very, very disappointed with the 27 national leaders. So, the one message that I have from European citizens to your clu

Madam President, colleagues, there's only one and only one priority at the moment, and that is to establish European independence. Every action we take now, every law we adopt, has to establish this independence: military independence, democratic independence and, yes, economic independence. Commissioner, it is therefore a major failure of your Commission that we do not see a fundamental harmonisa

Mr President, dear Commissioner or – as it should be – dear Minister of the United States of Europe, please thank your boss for her unwavering support for Ukraine. It's absolutely clear we need to make Russia pay for the mass murdering that they're doing in Ukraine. The fact that Trump does not support this is another sign that the transatlantic relationship is really drowning in the trans-Atlanti

Mr President, colleagues, Commissioner, all we want for Christmas is for Europe to be able to defend itself. I am happy we are making some baby steps towards a common and multiannual procurement, and I am happy that we are improving military mobility. But we are working with the assumption that the world is the world of yesterday. I think the US security strategy, as well as the negotiations for p

Madam President, colleagues, I think we all like simplification. When life is simple, it's nice. I have to say that the current proposal here – and what we voted on and what we will vote on – is not really a simplification, sadly. I think there's a lot of money coming back and we are using it, and I think that's very good because InvestEU is a great programme. But to change the definition of SMEs