17
Jun
2026
Watch
Preparation of the European Council (joint debate)
Mr President! We have responded to Russia’s war in violation of international law with sanctions that have increased our dependence on Donald Trump’s dirty fracking gas; The wars of the United States and Israel, which violated international law, were only silenced by the leaders of the EU. And now we let the US drive us into an economic war with China. When my country – Germany – had large export surpluses for many years, we always defended that by saying that this was the great German engineering art. Now we are crying out to China. And of course there is overcapacity, for example in the case of steel. But even with smart strategic industrial policies, China has gained more and more control over value chains – for critical raw materials, for semiconductors. That is why we should learn much more from China's example that a policy that announces the withdrawal of the state from the economy does not work and the failure of the Franco-German fighter jet shows that the European Union's way of investing, above all in armaments, must fail. We need to invest in strategic sectors of the future.