What Rob spoke about.

The European Commission looks at the world with pink glasses. Timmermans’ green landslide is leading to unaffordable energy prices, the ECB’s ultra-low interest rate policy is creating unaffordable housing and the excessive COVID-19 measures are further polarising society. My biggest concern, however, is the arrival of migrants from Afghanistan. We must prevent this from being a repeat of 2015. In

Mr President, if you call the electronic patient file in the Netherlands, a lot of people know that. Many people were concerned that their most intimate medical records would end up on the streets. And the Senate – the ‘First Chamber’ in the Netherlands – agreed with these people. In 2010, thirteen years ago, our Senate voted to stop its introduction. Instead, the National Switch Point has now bee

Mr President, I have heard it a few times today, the illusion of the left-wing populists here to take away the business model of the smugglers by persecuting them. From low risk, high return we are going to make high risk, low return. Look at the fight against drugs and how successful it has become. There is no market in the world where as much money is made as in the cocaine trade. The higher the

Mr President, there is a tidal wave coming at Europe. Artificial intelligence can and probably will also be the biggest revolution of this century. Our way of life will change completely. For me, the first priority – and we all agree on this here – is to remain a free society in which people’s fundamental rights are also safe. I always look very critically at legislation from the European Union. I

Mr President, Commissioner, colleagues, the ‘Head of Directorate for the Protection of State Secrets in the Press’, as it was called in the Soviet Union. ‘The Central Propaganda Department’ is what it is called in China. And with the so-called EU DisinfoLab, we also have our Ministry of Truth, which determines what people are allowed to say. How far does the EU go in its crusade against dissent? A

Mr President, it is spring again and mass immigration is reaching record after record again. We all agree on that, from left to right. The asylum system is broken. It is time for a fundamentally different policy. And the goal is clear: There should be much less migration to Europe. We only allow immigrants who are of added value to our society. We provide emergency assistance in third countries. A

Mr President, this debate has a very nice title: “The need for European solidarity in saving lives in the Mediterranean, in particular in Italy”. There, as already mentioned, the government has declared a state of emergency a few times. The influx of illegal immigrants has been unsustainable for a long time. It will be an annual ritual. As soon as spring comes, the southern European coast begins t

Mr President, we are talking here tonight about the fundamental lies that underlie this debate. The title of the debate is: ‘on the criminalisation of humanitarian aid, including search and rescue’. The suggestion made here is that migrants from Africa are shipwrecked and should not be helped. But that is of course not the case. Many migrants deliberately enter rickety boats, often even without a

Mr President, Commissioner, Council, ‘If you have no borders, you have no country.’ This was said by former US President Trump, and he was right. Schengen – as has just been said – can only survive if the EU’s external borders are strictly guarded, if the walls of Fort Europe are not cracked. But right now, illegal immigration is reaching record after record. The smuggling NGOs are bringing tens o

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, today we are talking about the report on fundamental rights in the European Union. The years 2020-2021. And I am sure that for everyone who lived in Europe in those two years, it should be very clear which topics should definitely be in it. And I'll name four here. First of all, dot on one, the introduction of a QR code. In doing so, the European g

... from Europol. To date, Member States have entered the data on the suspects in the Schengen Information System. If you all agree with this proposal, you give Europol the right to enter data itself, even for people who have never been convicted. That is another step closer to a federal EU police force. I have exactly the same objections to this as to many other federal agencies: far from the cit

Mr President, the European energy tax ETS was introduced in 2015 to make fossil-generated energy artificially more expensive than green energy. This was done at a time when a cubic meter of gas cost about a fifth of the current rate. In 2018, this ETS tax was increased. And today we are debating the extension of the increase in this ETS tax. We do this at a time when the term ‘energy poverty’ is f

Mr President, thank you to the rapporteur for this report. When talking about the circular economy, the Farm to Fork Strategy or the Green Deal in this Parliament, the targets often cannot be high enough. I think it is important to have a realistic policy. Policies that promote rather than undermine food security. Policies that allow my constituents to pay their energy bills and also have money le

Mr President, this report condemns the reintroduction of internal border controls in the Schengen area. Member States have temporarily closed their borders more than 260 times since 2015: 12 times as many as in the previous eight years. Of course, COVID-19 has been the main reason for this, but terrorism and acute illegal immigration flows have also played a role. A country without borders is not