What Matthias spoke about.

Madam President, Commissioner, Minister! Let us be honest: This budget is not just about next year. It is about the course for the future and the MFF 2028-2034. Let me give you three examples. First, support for Ukraine. We stand with Ukraine, and that remains the case. However, our support will only be permanently reflected in the population if people do not have the impression that it is at the

This is also the simpler part of the story. It is clear that we are dependent. The question is, where exactly? Where are the bottlenecks? What can we do about it? Is it more about recycling? Are we talking about better partnerships? Is it about us extracting more from the earth ourselves? This is not trivial. We have to think pan-European because we are within the Union. Do we stick together and c

I read with interest that the European Court of Auditors says: We have a raw materials strategy in the EU, but it is not consistent enough. There is a lack of data, there is a lack of empiricism on which this is based. We have relatively far-reaching proposals in there. And yet the database is too thin. And that's why, I think, we need to expand the database. We need to look more systematically at

Mr President, Imagine if someone had control over your smarthome, could just remotely turn off the lights, turn off the heater or lock the doors - you probably wouldn't let that happen, would you? But why should we let China do this to our industry? The past few months have shown us how dependent we are on critical raw materials. Export restrictions on rare earths make us blackmailable. And the Co

Mr President, Commissioner, Minister! At every gas station in Europe you can see who is paying for this crisis and who deserves it. Families have to turn around every euro. Craft businesses can no longer pay their bills. And, dear colleagues from the left, if you then say: ‘Yes, the tank discount in Germany does not bring anything’, I think you really do not have an eye on how tight it is for some

Thank you very much, Mr. Colleague. You have just described very impressively the dangers that such a failure of a negotiation would entail. And you are honestly committed to ensuring that we achieve a compromise here. But what do you say about the really provocative statements of Chancellor Merz, who thinks that such a failure of the EU budget negotiations would be the cheapest option for Germany

Madam President, 10% chance of killing everyone. This is the prediction of a leading employee of the AI company Anthropic. I'm saying this when you develop a technology that has a 10% chance of killing a human being: Stop it! Stop it! What's behind it? We see that there are more and more stories about cyberattacks, about autonomous agents evading their developers, about self-improving models in th

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, A local start-up pays its taxes where it operates economically, but a global corporation can often shift its profits to where it is most tax-efficient. This is an imbalance that we have, of course, with the 28th. They do not want to strengthen the regime. That is why our attitude is clear: Yes, on the 28th. Competitiveness regimes to deepen the single market

Madam President, colleagues, we cannot carry on like this. This is not sustainable. Our financial sector taxation system needs reform. Europe needs more investment for our digital and green transitions to strengthen our security and to foster investment. We need a deeper integrated financial market, but our taxation system has not kept up with that challenge. The VAT exemption on financial service

Mr President! Yes, propaganda and authoritarianism, that's a diabolical team; We know this enough in Germany, and that is why tens of thousands of people took to the streets in Thuringia on the weekend, because they did not want to tolerate the AfD holding a party congress in Thuringia and attacking our democracy 100 years after the re-establishment of the NSDAP. But propaganda, we also know, is s

Mr President! Europe is not investing enough in its future – everyone can see that. We are falling back in competition with other major powers in the world. And that is why it is important that this budget also focuses on future technologies, on good work, on innovation. But the member states of the EU have given the EU more and more tasks, and the financial resources have simply not kept up. And

Madam President, Political change in Hungary raises hope, but it will be measured by concrete actions. Because the rule of law must not only be a campaign slogan, it must also apply in practice. The case of Maja T. is a very concrete test for this. Extradition to Hungary was unlawful – as the Federal Constitutional Court has also stated – and this extradition needs to be corrected. A fair trial wa

Madam President, Executive Vice-President Virkkunen, ladies and gentlemen! Yes, we actually get up every morning and first look at our phones, what Trump has done again. And we can actually be happy if we see anything at all, because if our critical infrastructure, the digital infrastructure, fails, then we don't even have this access anymore. It is therefore important that this draft, and also th

Mr President! Görlitz controls half of the world. This sounds a bit weird, similar to Cremona or Porvoo or Cheb or Ávila, small and medium-sized towns. But that's exactly the size if it were a city, the group that controls half the world. A small group of super-rich people hold half of the world's wealth. This is the youngest World Inequality Report shown again. And it's not just that this is a pr

Madam President, Madam Minister, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen! In Freiberg in Saxony, the company Freiberger Compound Materials Wafer here, and for this it needs gallium. But at Gallium, we are almost entirely dependent on imports from China. If China restricts exports – and this has happened – then scarcity and rising prices follow. And this is just one example from the heart of Europe. Chi

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen! I know of no better technology than the electric car. Regardless of climate protection, the electric car is simply the better technology. Instead of emphasizing the advantages of the electric car, there is always the discussion about the preservation of the combustion engine. This is counterproductive and unsettles customers. This is not a quote fr

Madam President, Vice-President Séjourné! Why wander into the distance? Look, the good is so close. We are breaking our heads – and rightly so – about Europe’s external trade relations, but we have still not developed our own internal market properly. Let's just try to order a parcel in another Member State, then there are higher shipping costs, longer delivery times, and often there is not even a

Mr President! Our tax system is no longer working. Previously: The more successful a company is, the more taxes it pays. But today, the most successful of them are evading their responsibilities. 2021 was the low point: Amazon, then the second largest company in the world, got back in the EU money instead of paying taxes. Nobody understands that anymore. The effective taxation of digital platforms

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen! Tomorrow we will adopt three own-initiative reports on the future of cohesion policy, and I must say honestly: Maybe we could have saved ourselves all the work, maybe it was in vain. What is the use of a proposal for simplified funding if the Commission plans to virtually abolish regional policy as we know it by 2028? What good is a just transit