What Christophe spoke about.

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, a pact presupposes that everyone knows what they are giving and what they are receiving. However, on immigration, energy and trade, our relations with the southern shore of the Mediterranean are too often based on opaque agreements and financing, the use and results of which are unknown. Yet our economies are closely intertwined and the trade balan

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the security of Bulgaria and Romania is, of course, the security of Europe. Last Tuesday, I was in Sofia, in a seminar on the security situation in the Black Sea, in the presence of the President of the Bulgarian Republic. The emotion and the astonishment were at their height, because, for the second time in a week, ships had just been hit in th

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the single market in defence is a false promise that opposes the European project. Because let's get back to the goal. Our work has identified six priorities for our defence industry: industrial concentration, interstate cooperation, innovation, competitiveness, less dependence and easier transfers within Europe. However, a single defence market

Mr President, Madam High Representative, ladies and gentlemen, we all share the same view that Europe must have a credible defence policy, but not at any cost. I will vote against updating the report on the common security and defence policy. Why? Because this report called CSDP repeatedly introduces a dangerous concept: the single market for defence and calling into question unanimity in votes. T

Thank you, dear colleague, for your question. It seems to me that before recognising the State of Palestine – and I am in favour of recognising two states – the Palestinians would have to recognise the State of Israel. Hamas, in fact, continues to kill its opponents. We've seen pictures. Intelligence services have proven it. So yes, Hamas is a terrorist movement that continues to kill its opponent

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner, the European Union has never had the real means to influence the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. His voluntarist rhetoric maintains an illusion of power quickly dissipated by reality and American action. Almost half of the Member States of the European Union have recognised the Palestinian State. It is symbolism without effect, a magical thought t

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, on several occasions in plenary I have warned. A new massacre targeting a minority took place in Syria, under the chairmanship of Ahmed al-Charaa, a former Islamist terrorist leader from Al-Qaida. Counter-terrorism experts are formal: Islamist terrorists do not confess or repent. I am probably one of the few here to have fought them directly. After the Kurds and

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, on 16 November 2024, Boualem Sansal, an 80-year-old French writer, was arrested in Algiers. His wrong? To have exercised his freedom of thought and speech. He was sentenced to five years in prison for undermining national unity, following a political trial held behind closed doors. As Boualem Sansal is seriously ill, his life is in danger. On 1

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, in Mali, Europe has paid the price of blood. Our continent has paid a heavy price: 67 European soldiers – 58 French, one Spanish, two Germans, five Dutch, one Portuguese – fell in the fight against Islamist terrorism. Let's not forget their sacrifice. We intervened in 2013, at the request of the Malian government at the time, to prevent the arrival of Islamists

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I am a French general who knows the world of defence and the defence industry well. Europe’s founding treaties, those that protect our unity, remind us that defence is not a competence of the European Union. We do not need a European army; We need weapons designed, produced and sold by Europeans and to Europeans. This will bring coherence to our

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, in the regions of the Union bordering Russia, let us not forget Georgia, where I have come from. It is not the European Union, but a country whose population claims to belong to the European family, which has written in its Constitution its firm desire to join the European Union, and which the European Union has supported for 16 years with nearly 100 million

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, on 16 November 2024, Boualem Sansal, a 75-year-old Franco-Algerian writer, multi-award-winning novelist and winner of the Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française in 2015, was arrested in Algiers. Extremely ill, he was hospitalized several times. His life is in danger. His crime? Try to understand what is happening in your country and say it. This imprison

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, our world order is being shaken up by Donald Trump. 350 million Americans are no longer willing to pay for 450 million Europeans. Where is Europe? Some are unsubscribing from X, others are already playing American rather than European solidarity. Trump is moving forward without a mask: He wants to divide us and turn us into a market place for Americans. I the

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, disinformation has always been a weapon. It is part of what is now called cyber warfare. The Internet is now a natural place of conflict for modern armies. Some EU countries have cyber military units. France itself has a cyber command. As a soldier, I can tell you that this weapon is a strategic weapon, because it has the means today to tip a conflict and inf

Mr President, Madam High Representative, ladies and gentlemen, the consequences of the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime are geopolitical, but they are also human, with a real risk of this country continuing to fragment: the Alawites in the west with the Russians, the Free Syrian Army in the north, the Kurds in the north-east, the Druze in the south, the HTC in the centre, the Christians in the big