7
Oct
2025
Watch
This is Europe - Debate with the Prime Minister of Luxembourg, Luc Frieden (debate)
Madam President, Prime Minister, you referred to a Europe of concentric circles to meet the challenge of agility and speed that European decision-making today requires in the international context. Indeed, we must stop wanting to do everything at 27. Effectiveness is also about respecting nations and their democratic choices, and freeing oneself from a kind of Brussels Jacobinism that characterizes the functioning of the European institutions. Some want to go even further with the end of unanimity, the end of the veto, that is to say, to again thwart nations and their democratic choices. You also mentioned debureaucratization. This is the top priority. We must continue and amplify the unravelling of the Green Deal, which is a real disaster for our industrialists, for our agriculture, and in general, for all our economic players. Just a few moments ago, and on a recurring basis, we often hear the reproach made to Luxembourg, your country, of being a tax haven. But the real problem today is that a number of European countries, starting with France, are a fiscal hell and that Europe has become a regulatory and normative hell. That is what must be ended. Finally, you mentioned border controls, but today it is a necessity. Why? Because Europe's external borders are sieves. They are sieves when it comes to immigration and goods, which creates unfair competition.