What Christine spoke about.

I condemn Putin's invasion of Ukraine, but I have great doubts that the instruments chosen in this resolution are the right way forward. If Article 42 of the resolution welcomes measures concerning Russian athletes and cultural workers, then I am sure that the wrong people are being addressed here. Rather, it promotes a division of society once again and does nothing with regard to the military si

Mr President, Ursula von der Leyen wants to lure Canada into an associate membership of the EU. What does that even mean? Since CETA is already in place, it couldn't be about trade relations. What, then? Apparently, Ursula von der Leyen is no longer content with merely terrorising the peoples in the EU with her insane regulations, bureaucracy and cronyism. No, she is looking for yet another people

Madam President, first off, parents raise their children and Brussels needs to stay the heck out of it. But it isn't about children's safety at all now, is it? If that were truly the case, you would protect children from sexualised content of gender education, and you would protect them from the disgusting public display of sexual fetishes of the transgender activist community. No, what you are tr

Madam President, what a dangerous report. You call it a Democracy Shield. A shield? It is a declaration of war on two fronts. First, abroad. You demand offensive abilities. Against whom? And on whose authority? This Parliament recklessly picks fights. And when – not if – this escalation backfires, the citizens will have to pay the price. Second, at home. You invoke freedom of expression, but you a

Madam President, it is a tragedy what happened on the MV Hondius. People died, others became seriously ill. Of course, we must act when a health emergency happens, but proportionately with restraint and respect for subsidiarity. But, yet again, you use a rare and highly specific outbreak aboard a confined expedition vessel to implement more permanent crisis structures, more monitoring, more coordi

Mr President, history teaches us something important: political systems tend to become more bureaucratic when confidence in their political leadership dwindles. Once democratic trust declines, institutions attempt to compensate through procedures, frameworks and mechanisms. Bureaucracy, however, must not ever replace legitimacy. As Hannah Arendt warned, bureaucracy easily becomes the rule of nobod

Mr President, for months we have warned about the Commission interfering in elections in Member States. We raised concerns about Romania, about pressure on platforms, about expanding reach of the Digital Services Act. And then the American Congress did what this. Parliament refused to do: they investigated and found the Commission did interfere in free speech and in elections. You chose to ignore

Madam President, all of us respect and want to protect motherhood, we share the objective of supporting mothers in this House. However, allowing proxy voting for Members who are pregnant or have recently given birth raises a question of democratic principle. The mandate belongs to the elected Member. It is, in our constitutional understanding, strictly personal, non-transferable and non-delegable.

Madam President, On behalf of the ESN Group, I would like to request that the agenda be expanded to include the item ‘Declarations by the Council and the Commission on the limitation of EU legislation’ – Ursula von der Leyen is being asked to do just that today in Berlin by Chancellor Merz and the CDU parliamentary group – and to be able to focus instead on competitiveness. The Commission is led b

Madam President, this agreement is supposed to give Parliament better tools to scrutinise the Commission, and this is exactly what should happen in a democracy. But apparently the Commission does not want to be scrutinised. How else would you explain that answers to written questions are regularly given well beyond the deadline, and are always vague while carefully avoiding the actual point? The s

Madam President, what happened in Minneapolis is first and foremost a legal dispute, a tragic incident, an incident during a law-enforcement operation. Investigations will follow. Evidence will be gathered. In the end, a judge will decide. And this will all happen in an American court, under American law, by American judges, not in this Chamber. And it will certainly not be decided by the hyperven

Mr President, governments pretend to care about children to propose the most intrusive measures. An example is chat control – it is a ruse. The EU wants to scan private messages sent from your phone; they say it is about illegal material online, but in practice it means scanning everything that people say. Once again: it is a ruse. We are talking about a social media ban for those under 16. A tric

Madam President, I am taking the floor because I was mentioned by name in a Rules of Procedure request. But I will have to say: Mr Sieper, I really do not know what you are actually doing in this House. As you said, you had 250 speeches. All you do is really use this as a platform to promote yourself. And in other news, you can call me whatever name you want. It doesn't faze me in the least. You d

Madam President, AI-generated sexual deepfakes are vile. For the women and children targeted the harm is permanent and real. They violate dignity, privacy and basic decency. And, yes, they must be stopped. Period. But let's be honest about the ritual we are performing here today. A new technology appears. It is abuse. Platforms have a problem. Parliament hyperventilates, especially when it comes w

Madam President, against Covid, Ursula von der Leyen had a master plan. Stay at home, wash your hands and take an experimental mRNA shot. These shots we were supposed to take were ordered centrally, via her now infamous text messages. In ridiculously vast quantities, so vast, in fact, that the Commission built up a massive stockpile, much of which later was discarded. Millions of doses, billions o

Mr President, some colleagues here suffer from a new condition, 'botophobia': the irrational fear of bots. But bots are simply the digital equivalent of a leaflet. During the Cold War, Europe was flooded with political pamphlets from every direction, yet no democratic government claimed that it must regulate these leaflets. This is actually what free speech means. Bots, however, are just a conveni

Madam President, Yesterday, at least 15 people were brutally murdered in an anti-Semitic attack on a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney. An Islamist terrorist attack – we mourn with our relatives. On Friday, the German authorities prevented an Islamist attack on a Christmas market in Bavaria. All this does not come unexpectedly at this time of the year. We're used to it now. Today marks the anniversar

Mr President, the Commission wants to build a Democracy Shield. You say it will protect us from foreign interference, but all of your tools end up pointing inward. EU‑funded trusted media, EU‑sponsored fact checkers and now an EU‑run network of influencers selected, trained and coordinated by Brussels. This is not a shield, this is a 'Ministry of Truth'. Influencers are meant to be authentic voice

Thank you for the question. I totally agree with you. The left side has taken such a shot at the hatred against white men, and consequently only white men can be the offenders according to their views. The reality, however, is quite different. As I said, the ‘cityscape’ has already been tried. We see it in our cities. Women just aren't safe anymore. And it is not the white men who commit these ass

Madam President, Violence against women and girls is unfortunately a daily occurrence, and it is a disgrace. That is consensus here. But you look away when the cause of violence doesn't fit into your narrative. The ‘cityscape’ has already been addressed. We have assaults on women – always the same types of perpetrators, always the same culture. But you are blind to this violence. We can also look

Madam President, Ms von der Leyen, it's me again. I'm sorry. But looking at your work programme, I have to say I haven't seen a document this full of ridiculous promises since you, Ms von der Leyen, swore to save all of your emails. But you have the audacity to call it 'Europe's independence moment'. Independence from what? Common sense? Well, congrats, you nailed that one. Common sense would mean