Speeches

Mr President, Ursula von der Leyen wants to be remembered for her Green Deal, the migration pact and the ReArm Europe project. And yes, we will remember them, but not as a success. Her Green Deal has made European energy more expensive, especially after her own government shut down functioning nuclear power plants. The results: Europe is less competitive and Europeans can't pay their electricity bills. Her migration pact was sold as a solution. Yet just weeks after its adoption, even her own colleagues in the EPP turned against it. It was weak, inefficient and without real impact – just as expected. Her ReArm Europe plan is nothing more than a power grab – another attempt to centralise power here in Brussels. But let's not forget that Ms von der Leyen was the defence minister who ran the German military into the ground, and now she wants to rearm Europe. It's a joke! One hundred days were all we needed to confirm that her leadership truly means expensive failures, power abuse and a Europe that pays the price.

Madam President, in September, a 19-year-old girl was found raped and murdered in Paris. In January, a two-year-old boy was stabbed to death in a city park near Frankfurt. In February in Munich, a two-year-old girl and her mom were killed by a car terrorist. What do these events have in common? Every one of them and a 100 more were committed by illegal migrants who have arrived illegally to this continent, been denied asylum and not been deported. Time and time again, we have warned about the dangers of illegal migration, and time and time again we have been dismissed, ignored and vilified. How many more Europeans must die, be raped, robbed, attacked before you wake up? How many more grieving families must be left behind in sorrow and despair before we take this serious? For every victim, every shattered family, we must say: naïve policies cost lives.

Madam President, EUR 35 trillion in loans for the Ukraine Recovery Mechanism. EUR 100 trillion in Corona loans, EUR 750 trillion for the recovery funds. And now the Commission is considering EUR 150 trillion for rearmament. But none of this would have been necessary if we had a Commission that was more preoccupied with creating growth instead of bureaucracy. If you had a Commission that was willing to prioritise within the EUR 1.2 trillion budget. Ursula von der Leyen, you are making the Europeans into welfare junkies and you're doing it from borrowed money. So let me put this very simple. We want our money back! When we look at it from a Danish perspective, one has to say that the EU has done very little. Time and again, Denmark has supported Ukraine militarily and economically, and again and again we have seen how the largest EU Member States; Germany, France, Italy and Spain have not followed suit. So it's easy to blame Trump for the situation Ukraine is in. But if you really want to understand why, three years into the war, we have an EU that is incapable of defending itself, an EU that is incapable of defending Ukraine, then we need to look inward. There has been far too little action and too much talk, and unfortunately it continues.

Mr President! 13,000 new laws, regulations and executive orders, this is what we have managed to spray on the European business community since 2019. If you look at just three harmful directives, the Working Time Registration Directive has cost Danish companies two and a half billion kroner a year in administration. The ESG Directive seven and a half billion and the infamous GDPR Directive 8 billion. Then it is not a great surprise that European industry suffers. And what is the solution? It's putting the fox to guard geese. That the same European Commission that made this myriad of rules now says they want to simplify the rules. The truth is, there's one molbo story after another. The Packaging Directive has led a small Danish company to ask for data from 150 different suppliers in order to continue its operations. Now let's be honest; The problem in Europe is too much regulation, too much bureaucracy, and we only get rid of that when the European Commission takes a fundamentally different direction.

Mr President, well, isn't it marvellous? Marvellous to see the same politicians who have built Europe's economic future on politics from communist parties, from extreme green parties, now blaming the right for the lack of competitiveness in the European Union. But please, look within. You have explicitly, in election after election, day after day, in this House, removed us from influence, removed our input from being taken into account. And that is the reason Europe is at a standstill. The German economy is in ruins, the French economy is in ruins, and we are seeing the lack of prosperity everywhere in Europe and higher energy prices than in the US. You, my dear colleagues, have adopted and implemented 1 300 new laws since 2009. Four times more than the US has. Maybe that is the reason you are not able to compete. Maybe your ideological blindness, your stupidity in economy is the reason that you are not allowed to compete with the US, not the right that you never let in. But when we come into power, we will fix it. So take it easy.

Mr President! The situation in the Baltic Sea is quite serious. We have seen everything from the demolition of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline to the damage that has now been done to critical infrastructure and submarine cables, that we as European NATO allies have been completely unable to monitor and defend our interests in the Baltic Sea. Unfortunately, it is a whole series of disastrous military decisions that make us so helpless in the situation that is currently taking place. In particular, we can point out from the Danish side that it was a monumental mistake to cut down boats on patrol vessels, but especially on the submarine weapon under the Danish Navy. This has meant that we don't have the eyes and ears we used to have to control what foreign powers did in our neighbourhood. Therefore, we can only hope that the NATO-aligned European countries around the Baltic Sea, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, the Baltic States, Poland and Germany come together in a much stronger naval defence. But at the same time something is nagging, and that is that we in the EU, on the Danish side, have not been able to impose sanctions on the Russian shadow fleet. It has emerged that Danish shipyards have an obligation to repair precisely ships from the Russian shadow fleet, despite the fact that they both help facilitate Russia's war effort in Ukraine with their exports of Russian gas and oil and are suspected in parts of these attacks. Let us now join forces and get the sanctions in place so that European and Danish shipping companies are not obliged to support this activity by repairing the ships.

Mr. President, I have a few words for dear President Trump. The list is very detailed: Greenland has been part of the Danish Kingdom for 800 years. It is an integrated part of our country. It's not for sale. Let me put it in words you might understand: Mr Trump, fuck off. Mr President! That said, we must say that both Danish and Greenlandic politicians have been flirting for far too long with an independence idea that turns out to be very dangerous. Dangerous because it is completely unrealistic. No one believes that such a large territory can be maintained by 55 000 Greenlanders, but also because Greenlandic politicians have kept talking irresponsibly about independence without doing their homework. You have a self-government law, where you have the right to take area by area home to yourself, but have opted out of doing so. You do not maintain your own sovereignty, not your own judiciary, not your own police, not your own health care, yet you keep talking about independence. It is not serious, and it causes a great deal of unrest around your country and around the Reich community. At the same time, you have had a rhetoric against Denmark and the Danes, where everything from colonial rule to genocide has been used. That is not acceptable and it is not in line with reality. Now clean up your own house. Look at the third of your children who have been abused before they leave your home. Look at the big problems with alcoholism that prevail in Greenland and clean it up. And let us together strengthen the Kingdom of Denmark and remain a Danish kingdom.

Mr President, the antisemitic attacks in Amsterdam were horrifying, but not really surprising. They come after a long period of time where we have seen terrorist attacks targeted against Jews in Europe, we have seen demonstrations and riots in the streets calling for the eradication of the State of Israel, and antisemitic shouts going out to the streets in all major capitals of western Europe. And let's be honest, today, nobody wants to address the real core issue. The core issue is that after Europe's experience with antisemitic behaviour in the past and the awful crimes of the Holocaust, today, the threat comes from newcomers. The threat is based in the vast number of Islamic migrants coming into Europe. We have seen it in the people perpetrating the terrorist attacks in Copenhagen, terrorist attacks in France, and now also the riots in Amsterdam. And when we refuse to talk about that, we really refuse to talk about the issue of modern‑day antisemitic behaviour in Europe. Unless we can talk about the alliance between fanatical Islamists and the friends to the left in this House, we cannot really combat antisemitism here in Europe. So please wake up and please take action instead of continuing to ignore the core root of antisemitic behaviour today in Europe.

Madam President! One thing is strikingly clear when you have heard the debate here today, and that is that Trump's biggest fans do not exist in the United States. They can be found here in the Hemicycle. Not on the right, where we would really like to pay tribute to the fact that the Americans want a new direction with less wakeism, with less illegal immigration, with more room for private initiative. But among all of you who conjure up scares because you've missed Trump, you've missed Trump's ability to scare Europeans into handing over even more power to the EU. And that is why you are standing here today crying out for the last remnants of foreign policy to be left to the EU. The last remnants of defence policy must be left to the EU. The last vestiges of national self-determination must be left to the EU. Trump is your favorite hat object. Because without Trump, you know very well, and the intimidation campaign that you and the mainstream media are waging against him, you know very well that there will never be a popular demand, support, desire to leave that kind of competence to Brussels. But I am afraid we must disappoint you because the electorate is tired of the bureaucracy of the European Union, of the patronage, of federalism. So, just like in the United States, they will continue to vote for parties that put Europeans first, not you to decide everything.

Madam President! One in three Muslims in Denmark responds that they believe that Hamas' terror attack on October 7 was either fully or partially justified. This is the biggest attack on Jews in the world since the Holocaust. An event in which whole families, women and children were slaughtered. Where innocent festivalgoers were raped, tortured before being mown down by military weapons. It goes even further. Almost every second Muslim in Denmark replies that the state of Israel has no right to exist. These polls are not unique to my country. They are also seen in the UK. See you in France. I would venture the claim that in any Muslim population in Europe we will see similar support for the kind of Islamism that movements like Hamas, like Hezbollah, like Iran, stand for. And so we just have to say it crystal clear, where Islam is gaining ground, religious tolerance recedes. We see it in the Middle East, where in 100 years we have gone from large Christian and Jewish minorities in a number of countries, to today it is almost impossible to find a Christian or a Jew in the Middle Eastern countries outside Israel. That's why we have to say it crystal clear. We will not have better religious tolerance if we do not stop the import of Muslim immigration into Europe. You can say it in Mads Skjern's words. No one shall come to my house with their religion and cause strife. No one should be allowed to come to Europe and destroy the tolerance that exists here towards different believers, different-thinking sexual minorities. And that is what we must stand by at this time, otherwise the whole foundation of the Christian cultural Europe we know will erode.

Mr. President! Unfortunately, the memory of this House and of the institutions of the European Union is extremely brief. I remember when I first came here in 2014 how, even after the invasion of Crimea, policies were implemented that clearly benefited Russia economically. Policies that were supported by the vast majority of the House because they said: Let's deal with Putin, then there will be no war. Right up until the invasion of Ukraine, decisions were made in this house, which were remote from the world. It was about how the United States was the main opponent in the geopolitical controversy. There was – not Russia, not China – the United States. It was about how this House voted through resolutions that France and Britain should dismantle their nuclear arsenal because we wanted Europe to abolish nuclear weapons while we still had a threat from Russia. That was the reality. And that, after all, remains the reality when you look at the action and the debate that we have today, namely the support of the Member States for Ukraine. Because it is almost non-existent. A small country like Denmark contributes more to Ukraine's defence struggle than major European economies like Spain, like France, like Italy. It is absolutely insane, when you look at the toasts given from the very same countries, that you can't even, in whole kroner and cents, or euros and cents for that matter, contribute what 6 million Danes do. And now we even see Germany, as the only major country that has contributed significantly to Ukraine's defence, saying that next year it will cut aid by half. Not only that, but the German Chancellor is talking about starting peace talks. Not as has been said in the past on Ukrainian terms, but peace talks because he is weak in German domestic policy. So drop the toast and get into the game. If you really want to help Ukraine, then come up with action instead of big dreams of European military, which contribute nothing in reality.

Mr President! The EU’s green transition has been a disaster. A human catastrophe for the many Europeans whose jobs are being sent to Asia and to the United States. A human and personal disaster for the many Europeans who struggle with high inflation every day, find it difficult to pay the bills on their energy prices and can barely afford food. And a personal disaster for the youth you have made so frightened that they are now talking about that they do not even dare to have children. The truth is, your transformation has been headless. It has sent jobs, growth and jobs to Asia and the United States, while here in Europe we have just paid the bill for your bureaucracy, your taxation and your bans. But the truth is that the EU is now emitting less than 7% of global emissions, while China is approaching 30. So the only thing you've won from your green transition is that you've made us all poorer. It's stupid, it's bad. And those who sit in this Chamber and bow and applaud the most, it is after all you who have dismantled European nuclear power and are fighting to have it eradicated in the last countries. So your concern for the green transition goes no further than your own nose tip. It's disgraceful, and it's wrong!

Mr President! For decades, the EU has acted as Iran's useful idiots. For decades, we have watched as Iran has come closer to developing nuclear weapons day by day. For decades, Iran has been allowed to dictate an Islamist movement without putting its foot down. In this house, it took years before one would even recognize that Hamas is a terrorist organization. Even today, it can be debated in the European Union whether the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, with all its weaponry from Syria to Yemen, to Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine, is a terrorist movement. Imagine that here in the European Union there is a so-called High Representative for Foreign Affairs. A man who believes himself to be the EU's foreign minister, who cares more about criticizing the only democratic country in the region, Israel, than he cares about limiting the influence of Islamic Iran. Iran is not just in the Middle East. We have examples in France, in Denmark, in lots of European countries that Iran has tried to hit us with terror. Sometimes it has even succeeded. We know that Iran works here on the continent through movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood and Hizb ut-Tahrir by spreading the disease of Islamism in Europe. And yet we do nothing. We are useful idiots of Islamism.

Madam President! The idiocy of the EU strikes again. Once again, here in Europe, we manage to make legislation that is so bureaucratic, so cumbersome, so impossible that we scare European growth, European jobs out of the continent. There's a reason Tesla isn't in Europe. There's a reason Facebook isn't in Europe. There is a reason why there are no major IA or chip manufacturers located in Europe, and the reason is you. The reason is too much bureaucracy and too much bad regulation. Especially when we look at the pharmaceutical sector, at the pharmaceutical sector, there is reason to defend what we have in Europe. But one of Europe's largest companies, Danish Novo Nordisk, has now announced that it will move a large part of its future development from Denmark to the US precisely because of poor European legislation, poor European patent protection and too much difficulty in getting its investments back after a long development period. Can we be familiar with that? No, no, no. Will it cost prosperity? Yes, yes. Unfortunately, however, this is the consequence of leaving the responsibility to the Commission and to the European Parliament.

Madam President! Now we are seeing the consequences of the hopeless migration policy to Europe. Because no one has wanted to take responsibility, and that is why the answer here from the House, from the Commission and from the Council has been: Let's try to outsource it. Let us make agreements with Islamic despots in North Africa, in Turkey, and let us let them hold back migration flows. It may sound enthralling. It may sound tempting that you do not have to deal with your problems yourself, but the truth is that you have made yourself completely vulnerable to blackmail, that more wants more, and that these are often regimes such as Tunisia, where you cannot talk about stable cooperative relations. We in Europe have to take responsibility for our own fate, and it is not that you can just negotiate with a dictator in the Middle East or in North Africa and believe they will solve our migration challenge for us if they get a bag of money in their back pocket.

Madam President! The money keeps pouring out of the EU's coffers. Every time you fail to make progress in southern Europe, in eastern Europe, the answer is the same: Send more money! This time it is the EU's so-called cohesion funds that are at stake. But the prospect is that it will get much, much worse. 8-10 new countries are being invited into the EU, and when you look at the Council's calculations, this will lead to an extra bill in the form of money for agricultural subsidies, cohesion funds of DKK 35 billion in Denmark alone. It is insane that this House should continue to demand and demand and demand money without taking responsibility for creating the growth needed to underpin Europe's future. Therefore, one must say that the cash box must be closed in! No more money should be spent on cohesion policy, on agricultural subsidies. We need to put an end to these crazy programmes, which only mean that the Member States do not take responsibility for economic development.

Madam President! The EU's money is not in control. For the 29th year in a row, the European Court of Auditors, our own auditors, have chosen to tell us that the EU budget could not be approved. The latest report shows that 4.2% of the funds simply cannot be accounted for. It is therefore a problem, indeed scandalous, that, year after year in this House, budgetary procedures are adopted without taking into account the fact that the budget has never been approved in the first place. It is time for us to take the spoon in the other hand, to take it seriously that these are taxpayer-funded funds, and to make sure that we have the commitment that we have first and foremost, namely that our accounts can be approved. It should be a simple logic that this is the first task that a Parliament has to carry out. Unfortunately, we have once again adopted a report which does not ensure that we have the budget approved by the Court of Auditors for the 30th or 31st year.

Mr President! Every day, hour, minute, millions of animals in the EU suffer and they suffer because the EU allows it. We have just heard from the Commission that it is defending its inactivity by the fact that there are different rules in the Member States. Perhaps the Commission should concentrate a little more on raising the disastrously low level of animal welfare protection, rather than shooting at those Member States that are actually trying to address the problem and taking the lead. However, it seems that the Commission is more concerned with achieving total harmonisation in this area than with defending the conditions and rights of animals. And there's plenty to do. We have production animals suffering from totally unacceptable forms of production, which should not be applicable at all in Europe in 2024. We have culturally religious cruelty to animals, such as bullfighting or halal slaughter, against which the Commission has never taken any action whatsoever. And we have a pet industry that seems to be getting further and further out of control of puppy and kitten factories with miserable conditions for these animals that are supposed to be man's best friend, but with that kind of friends, I think they'd rather ask themselves exempt. Then get started. Get out of the chair. We should not wait another five years to see action from the Commission while the animals suffer.

The Danish People's Party's proposal is the one that the Danish Social Democrats have copied. This is the Australian model, and I am glad that we have inspired the social democrats in Denmark. Now, unfortunately, the Social Democrats here in the S&D Group belong to a very, very small minority who want to do something about illegal immigration. But I think there is good reason to praise the Danish Social Democrats, and that is also why my colleagues in the AFD, in the Rassemblement National and elsewhere point to Denmark, where the Danish People's Party has had influence on immigration policy, as a model example of how good it could be in the EU if you gave the right wing influence. So thank you to Niels Fuglsang for demonstrating the importance of this point. I am happy with the cooperation with the Danish Social Democrats, even though you are sometimes a little too soft for my taste.

Madam President! Prime Minister! Illegal immigration is used as a weapon against European borders. We have seen it in Finland, where Russia, with their aggression, has pushed illegal migrants against your country. We've seen it in the Mediterranean. We have seen it in Turkey against Greece and Bulgaria, and this is something we need to take seriously from Europe. Because, of course, we cannot rely on our neighbours always having the best intentions in mind when they use such instruments against us. It is therefore necessary for the European Union to take matters into its own hands and address the challenge of illegal migration once and for all here on our continent, and not to assume that we always have friendly neighbours. Because history shows – like the situation in Russia, in Turkey and elsewhere – that we cannot rely on it. Let us therefore take it seriously now, and let us do something about it, both in Finland and in the rest of the European Union. (The speaker agreed to answer a blue card entry)

Mr President! There is simply too much climate nonsense in the EU, and it must be stopped now. The EU's so-called green transition is characterised by massive bureaucracy, huge taxation and ill-considered bans. Typically, it comes from the best of intentions. You want all the good. Indeed, green has almost been abolished as a pseudo-religion here in the Union. No one is against better consumer rights. But we just have experience that when such things are implemented and dictated from Brussels, it often ends up with no clearer rules for the individual consumer. At least not something we have a greater understanding of, but we end up with a bureaucracy that will only harm the European consumer through expensive products and harm European industry through unbearable bureaucracy. Let's face the truth: The truth is that the EU is lagging behind the global growth train. Germany is in recession. The truth is that we are losing hundreds of thousands of so-called green jobs to Asia, to the United States, where a fundamentally different strategy has been pursued in relation to the green transition. Let us now wake up and acknowledge that we are not helping Europe or Europeans by taxing ourselves to death while jobs disappear. We only help ourselves by being innovative, by creating development here on the continent and not just dismantling and bureaucracy.

Mr. President. This is EU enlargement at speed. It is to allow Turkey, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia and a number of other countries into the Union without them being ready for it in any way. We know the consequences. This is going to be a huge financial burden for taxpayers. For Denmark alone, DKK 36 billion in each EU budget period. This will lead to social dumping. It will lead to welfare tourism, and it will lead to greater crime. But it will also mean something in the matter we are dealing with at the moment. For you are using enlargement to create the United States of Europe. You want to abolish the veto. You want to have control over the tax policies of the Member States. You want to complete the dream of a United States of Europe under cover of wanting to help countries like Ukraine against the Russian aggressor. It is unacceptable, it is disingenuous, and it will be above my body to allow Turkey into the European Union just to satisfy your federal ambitions.

Mr. President! Ukraine is disappointed, Ukrainians are disappointed and they are disappointed in you. I was there a few days ago, and all the promises that have been made about military aid, about a million grenades, they are like evaporated into the sun. We see that little Denmark has given twice as much in military aid as France as Spain as Italy put together. If we really want the Ukrainians to have the chance of victory over Russia, then we have to be serious about letting the fine toasts here in Brussels be followed by actual action, by grenades, by military equipment, by the things you need if you are to win a war and not just empty words and promises from Brussels.

Mr President! I think today, most people can see what a tyrannical regime Vladimir Putin's Russia is. Unfortunately, it is a realization that has come too late for many in this house. I still remember debates in the European Parliament defending Macron's right to sell aircraft carriers to Putin. Debates defending Germany's economic interests in Russian gas and pressured Denmark, among other things, to accept the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which has made us even more dependent on the despotic regime in Russia. So all we have to say is that when we talk about the political prisoners in the Russian system today, we in Europe have a shared responsibility! Co-responsibility for our naivety, for our inactivity and for our excessive belief that as long as we deal with despots like Putin or China, everything will be fine. The truth is that resistance must be given from day one.