Mr President, Madam Commissioner, by all accounts, the EU-US summit was successful enough. Congratulations. So let me make a larger point. Satrapies such as Russia, China, North Korea, Iran and Venezuela collaborate to harm us. Therefore, we need to stick together. There are two things that keep me awake at night. Number one, if the election in the US goes the wrong way next year, we’ll be in real
ENSpeech
Effectiveness of the EU sanctions on Russia (debate)
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for the briefing on the state and impact of sanctions. I fully support the financial measures, the measures to stymie the Russian war effort and measures to tighten up the effectiveness of sanctions. I would like to focus on just one aspect of them – the personnel sanctions. Patriarch Kirill, in my view, should also be sanctioned. Just be
PLQuestion
Ukrainian grain exports after Russia’s exit from the Black Sea Grain Initiative (debate)
Mr Kuźmiuk, I have a simple, specific question: whether you are in favour of your party colleague, Minister of Agriculture of the Republic of Poland, Minister Telus, publishing, as he promised, a list of companies that have earned on the import and sale of Ukrainian grain. Isn't that right? Yes or no?
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Humanitarian and environmental consequences of the destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam - Sustainable reconstruction and integration of Ukraine into the Euro-Atlantic community (debate)
Mr President, I would like to thank the Commissioner for the presentation. Of course, we should always be aware that we are a confederation and that the contributions of the European institutions should be counted together with the contributions of the Member States. Of course, we need to do more, more urgently, but I hope that this outrage at Nova Kakhovka joins the long list of charges against t
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Threat to democracy and the rule of law in Poland, in particular through the creation of an investigative committee (debate)
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, in objecting to this debate, the leader of the group of our ruling party, Professor Legutko, said that there is nothing to protest about, that this proposed committee is standard parliamentary practice. No, Mr Legutko, it is not a parliamentary committee! Don’t you read your own laws? It’s outside of parliament. It’s actually run from the cabinet o
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Adequacy of the protection afforded by the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework (debate)
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen. What happens to our data is important to us citizens. Let me give you a drastic example: those of us on the Polish opposition who have been targeted with the Pegasus anti-terrorist software still don’t know what happened to the data that was gathered, which is completely unacceptable. Transatlantic data flows are also essential to the EU-US economi
Madam President, I'm sorry. The High House! Mr. Commissioner, I'm sorry. No one will overtake me in supporting heroic Ukraine in its fight to defend itself against Russian aggression. But, Commissioner, I feel misled by you and the Commission. Because in response to the Russian blockade of exports through the Black Sea, transit corridors were to be created through Poland, so that what Ukraine had
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The need for a coherent strategy for EU-China Relations (debate)
Mr President, Commissioners, ladies and gentlemen, I believe that our policy on China is, in fact, quite clear. To collaborate where possible, to compete where needed and to confront where necessary. We need to make ourselves a little less dependent on China. We need to make ourselves more self-reliant on defence. Basically, the policy can continue indefinitely for mutual benefit. But we have two
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Question Time (VPC/HR) - Strengthening the Trans-Atlantic ties in an ever challenging multilateral world
We had a meeting here in the European Parliament this morning with Bill Browder, who initiated the Magnitsky legislation, and he claims that we have not used this mechanism as much as the United States. So, just take a look at it, please.
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Question Time (VPC/HR) - Strengthening the Trans-Atlantic ties in an ever challenging multilateral world
Mr President, High Representative, as chairman of the USA delegation here in the European Parliament, I’d just like to express satisfaction that President Putin’s criminal invasion of Ukraine has brought us as the West together. And I’d like to thank the Commission and you personally for your leadership on this, which gives me hope that we will prevail. I therefore have only two suggestions. Numbe
PLSpeech
The humanitarian situation in Ukraine due to Russia’s attacks against critical infrastructure and civilian areas (debate)
Mr President, thank you very much. Commissioner, I'm sorry. The High House! On social media, a video was published, a fragment of a Russian television journalistic program. It shows how Putin's propagandists imitate the sound of drones and missiles falling on Ukraine, and laugh at it, chuckle, and rejoice at the suffering of people who, according to them, are Russians, who are not Ukrainians at al
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90 years after Holodomor: Recognising the mass killing through starvation as genocide (debate)
Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, let us be clear about what happened in the 1930s. It wasn’t a natural disaster. There was first the collectivisation, and then Stalin blamed the victims. And throughout that time, the Soviet Union was exporting grain. What happened was that internal troops, NKVD, was sent to Ukraine, surrounded places district by district, activists took grain a
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Defending democracy from foreign interference (debate)
Mr President, I wish to thank the Commissioner for his introduction. Foreign interference in democracies is, of course, a very broad subject. In that sense, the scandal that were dealing with is easy because taking cash from people is illegal under any rules. But I agree with my colleague Mr Auštrevičius when he says that we should not only punish those who’ve been corrupt, but also the corruptors
Mr President, High Representative, colleagues, China accounts for a quarter of humanity. It’s an ancient culture. It’s our largest trading partner. We want to have a constructive relationship with it. I proposed the paper, which was supported by this House some time ago, whose gist was that we should, with China, collaborate where possible, compete where needed and confront when necessary. I belie
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Recognising the Russian Federation as a state sponsor of terrorism (debate)
Madam President, Madam Commissioner, colleagues, there are two definitions of terrorism. One is that it is the deliberate use of extreme violence to achieve political aims, and the other is attacking combatants during an armed conflict. Russian death squads have killed President Yandarbiyev of Chechnya in 2004 in Doha. Litvinenko, killed with polonium in London, has already been mentioned. Major S
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Russia’s escalation of its war of aggression against Ukraine (debate)
Mr President, I say to Mr Putin: all you have achieved with your bogus annexations is that Ukraine will no longer negotiate with you. Your situation is very precarious. You can no longer win, but you still have some room for manoeuvre. A previous ruler of Russia, Nicholas II, also attacked what was perceived as a weaker adversary, Japan, in 1904 and also lost both on land and at sea. He concluded
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The death of Mahsa Amini and the repression of women's rights protesters in Iran (debate)
Mr President, High Representative, colleagues, there are moments in the history of man’s struggle for liberty when only poetry will do. I recommend to you a song called Barai by Sherwin Hajipour, whose lyrics are put together from messages sent by protesters that describe what this is about. ‘For dancing in the streets. For fear when kissing. For yearning of just normal life. For this polluted air
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The relations of the Russian government and diplomatic network with parties of extremist, populist, anti-European and certain other European political parties in the context of the war (debate)
– I wasn’t referring to the honourable lady. I am prepared to accept that you regard Putin as a capitalist pig. But the real standard for me of your attitude is: do you or do you not support the right of the people of Ukraine to defend themselves and do you support giving them the means to defend themselves? That is the question.
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The relations of the Russian government and diplomatic network with parties of extremist, populist, anti-European and certain other European political parties in the context of the war (debate)
Madam President, I am shocked that after the war crimes in Bucha, after the bombing of the trading centre in Kremenchuk, after the mining of Ukrainian ports, which makes it impossible to export the grain, there are still some pro—Putin sentiments in this House. Colleagues from the left say that’s a false accusation. I hope you remember how the Russian judge justified the launch of this invasion –
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The call for a Convention for the revision of the Treaties (debate)
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the peoples of Europe demand a health union. They demand an energy union. And above all, in the face of Putin’s cruel aggression, they demand a defence union. We need standing military forces. We need a Commissioner for defence. We need joint purchases of equipment. We need a joint headquarters. And this cannot be done without Treaty change. We need to do it bec
PLSpeech
The EU’s Foreign, Security and Defence Policy after the Russian invasion of Ukraine (debate)
Mr President, thank you very much. The High House! Last year, from this place, I asked what misfortune must happen in order for us to take European defence matters seriously. Putin's unprovoked aggression against Ukraine even exceeded my expectations. The North Atlantic Alliance, the United States, has risen to the challenge. The European Union has done more than I personally expected, and I would
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The follow up of the Conference on the Future of Europe (debate)
I would like to thank the honourable Member for recalling my speech in Berlin in 2011, where I indeed said that I feared German power less than I feared Germany’s inactivity. And you know what? It seems to fit the current attitude of the German coalition to the war in Ukraine. No human institution will be perfect, but when the facts change, I change my view. What do you do? Therefore, we need inst
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The follow up of the Conference on the Future of Europe (debate)
Madam President, I would grant the nationalist side of this debate that the process of the conference has not been perfectly democratic. But I’d just like to remind you that the whole idea of the conference was to open up the process to unelected people, to the kind of people that we don’t normally talk to. So that was deliberate. And if your supporters were less active or less persuasive in that
Madam Speaker, High House. Artificial intelligence is a great invention, but like any invention, it can serve good or evil. It can be used for cancer detection or surveillance, safer driving or autonomous killing, also with the help of weapons of mass destruction. It can expand our knowledge or create deep fakes and manipulate entire societies. As a Union, we are not a leader in this technology, b
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Outcome of the EU-China Summit (1 April 2022) (debate)
Madam President, I would like to put to the leaders of the People’s Republic that President Putin has made a disastrous mistake in invading China, but so have you. Because by all accounts, he gave you a warning that he would do that and you didn’t object. You should have. Because if this horrible war has done anything, it has certainly brought the free world together. I’m not sure this is what you