What Gerolf spoke about.

Mr President, since the withdrawal of the United Kingdom, the cooperation of the European Member States within the European Union has paradoxically turned into a speed race: an insane acceleration of centralisation and the creation, instead of the Member States, of a unitary state or even, in the words of Guy Verhofstadt, a world empire. He forgot that the United States is a gas exporter and, when sanctions were imposed, immediately announced that exports of gas to Europe would increase tenfold this year. The European Union is seizing every crisis, including the COVID-19 crisis and the war in Ukraine, to insidiously reinforce and accelerate this evolution. The Conference on the Future of Europe was a glorified theatre performance and, in fact, a major failure. Few hundred citizens showed up for the conference and were then manipulated and directed by professionals during the meetings towards a list of proposals that are almost a copy of the most far-reaching unifying projects of the united state. The conference then gave the left-liberal and green majority of the European Parliament the opportunity to promote these proposals as the only and irreversible path for cooperation on the European continent. This majority has called itself the ‘pro-European majority’ since yesterday’s failed vote. Those who disagree belong to the ‘anti-European minority’ or, to a lesser extent, to the ‘far right’. The ID Group rejects these so-called results of the conference and remains committed only to a free and negotiated European cooperation in which the Member States and peoples are not deprived of their rights. European standards cannot be imposed on citizens whose Member State has not agreed to them. The emphasis should be on the return of power to the Member States. An amendment of the Treaties is therefore only useful to us if this possibility is provided for. We want to contribute to Europe, but Europe must change and not get worse than it already is.

Mr President, the ID Group can well understand that the knights and maidens of the European empire, the rulers in the European Parliament and the Commission, the proponents of a European Union moving further towards a centralised state have become very frustrated over the years. The realisation that more and more European citizens are rejecting their vision of cooperation between European peoples must be frustrating. The fact that a large Member State like the United Kingdom simply took it for granted hit like a bomb and left a deep trauma. The frustration of this elite club about the threat that arises in one election after another, namely the slowly emerging and growing awakening of a public opinion that is critical of the state of affairs, is understandable. Everyone knows and feels that the legitimacy of the empire's strategy is dwindling. When the rulers were obliged in 2019 to allocate the key posts to unelected EU fanatics von der Leyen for the sake of their delicate balance of power and their imperative retention of power, and Michel, Macron felt that this large democratic deficit should be compensated for. According to Macronian tradition, this could not, of course, be done by means of a referendum, but had to be done, following the example of Grand Débat, a well-directed and tightly directed piece of theatre, which could then be labelled as a decision of the citizens. Of the four hundred million people on this continent, eight hundred were carefully selected, brought to Parliament and imprisoned with Guy Verhofstadt until they had approved the continuation of the empire strategy as their own proposal. According to the ID Group, the confusion of this conference with that of the citizens is therefore a sign of great cynicism. Stop this commedia dell’arte. She was a beautiful piece of macronian and verhofstadtian theatre, but is nothing more than that.

Mr President, I will not disappoint Guy Verhofstadt. This report fits in with what I call the Brexit paradox. It seemed logical to me that, after the departure of a large and important Member State such as the United Kingdom, the proponents of a further expansion of the power of the centralised unitary state called the European Union should reflect on whether they have gone too far, whether the people of the European Union support the concept and whether a more balanced relationship with the desire of most European citizens for national identity should not be sought. The elite in the European Parliament, headed by Guy Verhofstadt, and in the European Commission, on the other hand, did the opposite in a kind of panic reaction. The knights of the European state and the European empire have fallen into a cramp and in a few years have expanded power and powers to such an extent that we can now almost speak of an irreversible situation: European debts, European taxes, the replacement of the Member States by a majority principle, public health, the development of a military complex, the organisation of unlimited immigration and the prosecution of Member States that do not comply. These issues have been introduced at an accelerated pace in recent years, for fear of the awakening of public opinion. As the icing on the cake, the European Union also wants to introduce its own electoral system. It thus places under its control the way in which Member States have so far, according to their own political and cultural views, been able and allowed to elect their delegates to the European Parliament. In addition, a principle is created of representatives of the people who no longer sit on behalf of their own people, but only on behalf of the European Union. For people like me, who would have preferred some reflection on the direction in which European cooperation should evolve – a matter of historical importance – this report is not good news.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, you will remember how Hillary Clinton got into serious trouble with her email mismanagement at the time. What emerged as a conclusion was the following: Anyone with high responsibilities – especially political responsibilities with taxpayers’ money – is obliged to act carefully and without secrecy. The European Commission is not sufficiently aware of the profound impact that the coronavirus crisis has had on citizens. One of the many scandalous effects is – in addition to the late and then useless restrictions on freedom – that once the vaccine contracts became public, they turned out to be illegible because of a so-called confidentiality obligation. Fortunately, due to a mistake by a Belgian secretary of state who posted the prices of the vaccines in a Twitter message, we know the price ratios between the vaccines. Pfizer, with which the Commission President, according to a statement by Pfizer boss Bourla herself, had ‘created a deep relationship of trust’, appears to have the second highest price. It is of course unconvincing that the personal messages between the two, as the Commission now puts forward in its defence, are merely ‘efemeer’ in nature. In your high-ranking bubble and in your electric limousines, you do not realize the anger of the people who would prefer the European Commission itself to be ephemeral, of a transient nature.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the citizenship of the national states is closer to my heart than the largely artificially constructed citizenship of the European Union. The European Union should remain a voluntary platform of cooperation and should cease to seek to assume the form of a centralised state. The mention in the left-liberal German coalition agreement that the European Union should become a so-called federal state of Europe is a serious warning. With your EU citizenship, you may think that you are granting freedoms, but there is also the mistake of thinking. Freedom is not granted. After all, EU citizenship can just as well lead to an excessive, centralised grip on citizens. For this reason, I would like to protest strongly against the European Commission's plans to create a digital identity, a so-called 'digital identity'. digital walletby pressing. During the coronavirus crisis, we saw what an unacceptable control company we had become in such a short period of time: a card society that made citizens dependent on a centralised digital green light in order to be and be a free citizen. This so-called ‘Covid Safe Ticket’ thus became the prefigure of the Chinese-style control society, where freedom is a reward awarded to citizens with the right behaviour centrally determined by Big Brother. In this context, freedom is no longer inviolable above all else. Freedom becomes in that federal state through a digital wallet generously granted. In this way, the European Union facilitates the organisation of freedom. Corona was only a foretaste, a test phase for the further slippage. The European digital identity is the confirmation and anchoring of that control society. The ID Group in general and my national party Vlaams Belang in particular will oppose this. I appeal and call on the Commission to stop this project immediately and definitively, and otherwise on the Member States to remove it from the table in the Council.

Mr President, I am a Fleming and I therefore have Belgian nationality. Belgium already has the fourth highest inflation rate in Europe, with public spending expected to reach 55% in 2026, the highest in Europe and soon to reach all industrialised countries. The negative budget balance projected in 2023 is 4.9%, the highest in Europe this year. Belgium should also only give priority to Greece, Italy and Portugal as regards the level of public debt. Why is Belgium doing so badly for a Western European country? Well, I'm telling you: For the same reason that the Eurozone is doing badly. Belgium was founded for political reasons, ignoring the economic reality and the underlying differences. In the euro area, too, the wealth of divergences in convergence policy has been crammed, with all its consequences. Performing countries are independent and culturally homogeneous countries where the same people are responsible for expenditure and income. In the meantime, in order to hide the failures, the euro area has become deleveraged. But citizens and especially young people are confronted with the consequences of your debt-driven planned economy: horrific energy prices and the quasion possibility to buy normal houses. And for us, your inflationary pandemic is looming, which will soon lead to chaos that will be as great as your megalomania. We will of course not approve your insignificant ECB report.

Mr President, Mr President, I can of course imagine that the coincidence of the European Presidency and the French presidential elections was an enormous opportunity for you, but I hope that you can also imagine that not everyone is equally happy with it. That coincidence weighs on the debate and – I fear – it also weighs on the European Union. Because no matter how you turn it around, you create the appearance that you are going to instrumentalise that European Presidency for your own re-election, or vice versa, that the European Presidency will suffer from those French elections, from your radical vision, which is, of course, one of an integrated legal system that advocates a single governance model for this continent: a jakobinism of European federalism – or, as it stands today in the German left-wing coalition agreement, a European federation, a ‘European federal state’, as it is called in Germany. If that is your vision, then unfortunately I can only call on the French, together with Marine Le Pen, to ... (The President interrupted the speaker)

Mr President, the more the progress of the Recovery and Resilience Facility can be seen here, the more it becomes clear with what questionable cynicism this European Union has exploited the rather dramatic circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic to push through its own political agenda. Most governments have eagerly used the coronavirus to expand their power, including the European Union. Suddenly, the European Union is now active in areas that were previously exclusive Member State competences. Suddenly, the European Union can now issue its own debt on the financial markets and levy its own taxes on its own resources. Time-honoured debates on this subject were closed in a flurry of confusion in favour of the centralised unitary state which the European Union is becoming to the detriment of the Member States. The fictitious money that the ECB picks out of nowhere – out of nowhere, more than thin air – in an infinite spiral of debt creation is shamelessly used by the European Union as a political weapon by which it denies money to Member States that are not sufficiently subservient to that centralised state. On the contrary, Member States that are in line – such as the Member State of Belgium, where I come from – and that blindly approve all the manoeuvres of the European Commission are rewarded with this corona money and receive the corona money for anything. For example, we recently discovered to our surprise that Belgium is receiving corona money for new eavesdropping equipment for its state security and intelligence services. As I said, the European Union and corona, it is a story of brutal cynicism.

Mr President, today I am addressing mainly the colleagues of this European majority, for whom European cooperation must become a unitary state centralised in Brussels. In your concept, it is best possible that those excesses of competence of the European Union should be assessed solely and exclusively by the Court of Justice. It is quite possible that you think that, that you think in a closed legal system. It is also quite possible that your ever-expanding powers of recent years must be financially sanctioned and brought before courts, as Napoleon forced his concept of unity with the French army. It is quite possible that you think that in Lisbon it has been agreed once and for all and forever how the European Union should work and that the problem that arises today is only a problem of the appointment of Polish judges and of a regime change that you want deeply in your heart. But let me tell you: The world is changing, political views are changing. It is clear to everyone that you are mistaken, and to more and more European citizens that you are mistaken. The idea that 450 million European citizens have decided to voluntarily and consciously transfer their sovereignty to your legal system once and for all is an illusion. Let me tell you that: It's a delusion. It's an idea you have to let go of. Calm down, ladies and gentlemen, and I am going to call you to do so with the words of Angela Merkel. She visited Brussels last week and she got questions about Poland. She visited Brussels as a farewell visit to our Belgian government. And I'll take her, Madam President, citing in ... Madam President, I will switch to German for a quote, so you can really hear Ms Merkel speaking. Aber zu glauben, dass man politische Differenzen und valleicht auch Differenzen in der Wahrnehmung der Europäischen Union – who sollte sie arbeiten, who swayed that Schwerpunkte signal? – nur durch Gerichtsverfahren klären kann, finde ich niecht Richtig. Wir haben also große Probleme, aber ich rate dazu, sie im Gespräch zu lösen und Kompromisse zu finden. Das war immer das Wesen der Europäischen Union, und das muss es auch bleiben.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, it is gratifying that this Parliament has not learned the lessons it should have learned. For the banks, before the 2008 crisis, it always had to be more, always bigger and always further. To stop that, I thought, was the lesson we learned from the financial crisis. And the question was, of course, whether citizens and businesses should be protected against the mismanagement and possible bankruptcy of banks. Yes, of course. Our people simply do not have the time and the means to arm themselves against it individually. However, is the pan-European banking union a good solution for this? Absolutely not, because, first of all, the Banking Union still ignores the fundamental problems of the banking sector. Thirteen years after the financial crisis, there are still no partitions or firewalls between savings banks and investment banks. We still risk financial crises because banks are too big, take too many risks and invest more in each other's products than investing in the real economy. This resolution even advocates scaling up with even larger and cross-border banks, with all possible disastrous domino effects. Have we learned nothing from this crisis? It was small and medium-sized banks that kept Europe afloat. Of course, people's money must be protected in bank accounts, especially in a gigantic debt economy like that of the current ECB. But one single deposit guarantee for the whole euro area simply does not take into account the different risks in countries, so that in some countries more protection is needed and in others less. It also strips sinners of an essential part of a stable financial environment, namely their own responsibility. Supervision of banks and guarantees should therefore remain national competences. And finally, no half-sentence can be said or written in this House, or it must be green and climate neutral. The Banking Union must therefore also support the climate religion in this report. Since the adoption of the Taxonomy Regulation, this means that European bureaucrats will be at the helm of our banks, and they will decide which investments are still allowed or not. Such a state-run economy is perhaps the dream of the many open or hidden communists in this hemisphere, but certainly not the ideal of the founders of European cooperation. Certainly not from us, from the patriotic forces in Europe.

Mr President, Madam President-in-Office of the Commission, this morning there was a broad message that the European Union is continuing to seize the powers of the Member States, to further expand its powers and to further reduce the size of the Member States. This is no longer European cooperation. This is a unitary state in the making. Let me give you the vision of parties that find each other, 16 national parties and 114 Members of this Parliament, representing citizens who are attached to the freedom of nations and traditions of European peoples. We think European cooperation is positive, but European cooperation is faltering, especially because countries feel that they are slowly being deprived of the right to exercise their legitimate sovereign powers. The EU is increasingly becoming an instrument of radical forces seeking to bring about a Europe without nations through their ‘social engineering’ of the past. We are convinced that the cooperation of European nations must be based on tradition, respect for the culture and history of European Member States, respect also for the common values that unite our nations, and not on their destruction.

Mr President, after this astonishing debate, I would like to talk briefly about attraction. Summer has begun and the Mediterranean will soon return to the scene of this Parliament's deadly migration policy. The majority of Parliament, which repeatedly votes in favour of European open borders policy, is responsible for this. It is also responsible for the dual attractiveness of asylum policy and open borders. Social protection and health care in Europe, on the one hand, and the perverse asylum system with open borders, on the other, together, are the reason why the situation has gotten out of control and led to an open invitation to the whole world to come to Europe. The majority of Parliament is responsible for the far too large number of deaths that will again fall in the Mediterranean this summer. We must put an end to the automatism of the open borders in order to remove the attraction.