Speeches

Mr President, we are here. The asylum and migration pact is a moment of truth for all the elected representatives of this Parliament and history is ours. Mass immigration is now everywhere in Europe a threat to our security, to our identity and, obviously, to the stability of our societies. Demographics make history and the rush to Europe is only at the beginning. Faced with this existential challenge, the European Union chooses the path of weakness and that of the air call. The reception or financial contribution of states, this is how the representatives of President Macron summarize this pact with the disconnected tone that characterizes them. It is actually submersion or punishment. Our countries will be forced to take in thousands of migrants in their towns and villages, or to pay and pay dearly to be spared. Brussels wants to distribute. We want to get out of here. We will therefore oppose this pact of submersion, with these incessant calls of air, with the brutality by which you inflict on the peoples migratory waves that they no longer wish. You're trampling on democracy. Ladies and gentlemen, the peoples of Europe do not want to be replaced or overwhelmed. They aspire to the protection and respect of their will. Hear their call.

Madam President, Prime Minister, while our continent is troubled by major geopolitical tensions and the return of war, I want to tell you about energy bills, which continue to rise month after month, penalising difficult end-of-months as much as the competitiveness of our economy. Is Europe doomed to see its factories leave and its producers die? All lucid Europeans are asking this terrible question. Energy prices remain one of the biggest handicaps for our continent, especially in the face of Asia and the United States. Since 2022, rising energy prices have hit our bakers, farmers and industries hard, paying two years of inaction to solve this absolute emergency. The relevance of a model is judged by its resilience. However, we must face the failure of this European energy pricing mechanism, which has failed to protect people and businesses from a tariff explosion. It has been the amplifier, spreading the shock wave to all the components of our economy, from industry to agriculture, from families to our bakers. In two years, the European Union has not been able to reform this European electricity market. Unlike some, I do not resolve to this big industrial move. While France has the historic advantage of nuclear power, it must regain its energy sovereignty in a Europe that is finally investing collectively in this abundant, cheap and decarbonised energy. The continent that saw the birth of Peugeot and Renault, the continent of the Dassault family, the continent of Concorde, the Airbus or the high-speed train cannot become an industrial desert. This would be a betrayal of Europe’s creative genius.

Mr President, I want to speak to you today about the plight of those who feed us. As a wind of anger rises all over Europe, we must affirm here that agriculture as we love it is not destined to disappear. While one in three French farmers lives on nearly €350 a month, and the number of farms falls year after year, our agricultural model lives on a social plan that doesn't say its name. As we speak, those who never count their hours and efforts must now count what is left at the end of the month. You cannot ignore the despair of those who have the eminent, great and beautiful mission of feeding the peoples of Europe. The European Union bears a heavy responsibility for this desperation, increasingly stunning our farmers with standards, contempt and reprimands. With the so-called "farm to fork" strategy inspired by punitive ecology, you inflict double punishment on them. You are pushing down yields and incomes for our producers and at the same time promoting the import of products from the end of the world that do not meet any of the standards you impose on our farmers. While there is no humanity without food, no sovereignty without agriculture, you hinder their work, you depreciate their merit, you impoverish their profession. In the face of the growing peasant anger, with the demonstrations in the Netherlands, Germany and France – as yesterday in Avignon and Toulouse – in the face of the danger to our food sovereignty, I say this with seriousness by making myself the voice of our countryside, we must declare a state of agricultural emergency: tax exemption on transmissions, moratorium on free trade agreements, end of punitive ecology, price guarantee, priority in public order, normative sobriety for the survival of our agriculture, its sustainability and its renewal. We have to act and do it fast. Our food security in the 21st century, but also our heritage, depends on the survival of powerful agriculture in an uncertain world. Agriculture is a strategic sector that forges our economy, our terroirs and our territories as much as it symbolizes our heritage and our identity. Act to protect our freedoms, act for them, our farmers and our countryside before it is too late.

Madam President, Commissioner, over the years, the European Union has steadily increased the regulatory burden on our businesses. All the pretexts seem good for stacking standards that have become so many obstacles to the competitiveness of our economies. In a recent interview, the new boss of Medef, French, himself denounced this European normative proliferation, as well as the administrative slowness that presides over the release of European public funds. He was alarmed at the formation of a widening structural gap between the European Union and the United States. These words, which are those of the French employers, must alert us. In the field of artificial intelligence, this profusion of standards is illustrated by a binding framework that makes us the champions to regulate businesses that others create for us. It is illustrated in agriculture by ecological standards that we are the only ones in the world to apply and from which we dispense producers outside Europe. Finally, this regulatory chatter finds one of its best examples in the Duty of Vigilance Directive that our competitors, foremost among them the United States and China, are looking at with interest, curious as to whether we are going to be crazy enough to hang a new ball on our own feet. At a time when sobriety has become a common vocabulary word, it would be a good idea for the EU to adopt normative sobriety. Stop believing that the Commission has to be involved in everything and that it knows how to do everything better than the main stakeholders. Let our companies and entrepreneurs throw themselves with their talents into the global competition. Let them work, produce, create, innovate, hire and everything will go well.

Mr President, the world is convulsing, the Middle East is flaring up and the shockwave that is spreading to Europe is adding to the daily tumults of our fellow citizens, whose anxiety about discovering their energy bill has never been more palpable. Since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, our continent has been facing an unprecedented energy crisis, plunging our states into difficulties that we could compare to those experienced during the first oil shock of October 73. Although it is no longer on the headlines, the situation persists and energy prices remain at a worrying level that penalises both the purchasing power of households and the competitiveness of our businesses. In this energy crisis, far from your satisfaction, the European Union has not been a shield. Worse, the absurd rules of the European energy market have been a crisis amplifier, and it has helped spread and intensify the seismic waves of an external shock in our societies. This European energy market is the symbol of a technocratic and centralised energy policy. Il risque de mener notre continent tout entier vers un hiver économique, avec un exode industriel qui a déjà commencé par ces règles absurdes et qui menace d’appauvrir l’Europe. Yet another policy is possible. It requires the political courage shown by countries such as Portugal and Spain, by way of derogation, in breaking the rules imposed by the Commission. Thanks to the excellence of its nuclear sector, France has all the assets to become an energy paradise capable of offering its citizens reasonable rates and able to attract to it all those who want to create, innovate and produce. C’est cet avenir que mon mouvement défendra lors de la grande confrontation démocratique le 9 juin 2024.

Mr President, his name was Dominique Bernard. He was a professor in Pas-de-Calais. It embodied words, knowledge, transmission, culture, the French Republic. It embodied everything they hate and fight. Three years ago, Professor Samuel Paty also paid the price. France has become that country where, in the 21st century, one can die of teaching. The murder of a professor is undoubtedly ‘the most terrifying defeat of reason’ and ‘the wildest triumph of brutality’, in the words of the great writer Stefan Zweig, written in a different context. This is the most barbaric expression of what Islamism is: a totalitarianism that spreads its darkness through the perversity of words and the savagery of deeds, which extinguishes all gleams of knowledge, freedom and emancipation. In Brussels, in Arras, all over Europe, Islamism has declared war on us. Europe is at war, and we have no choice but to respond, wherever necessary, with strength and determination that nothing should undermine. Peoples of Europe, hear this call! The start will not come from those who have failed. It will only come from you. People of France, in the face of barbarism, wake up! Call to account those who allowed radical Islamic soldiers to enter our lives, our soil and our homes. No longer let those who are accountable for the situation shirk their responsibilities. Demands the truth from those within the European Commission who subsidize the Muslim Brotherhood and its cultural relays with your money. Sanction these leaders, who have conducted a crazy and deregulated migration policy, and who have criminalized all those who alerted to future dangers. It is because of them that our once united societies, both so calm and so strong, are today so dislocated, consumed by tensions and conflicts that agitate the world. The homeland, European civilization, who we are and, of course, the force of laws are our best weapons in this battle. Peoples of Europe, wake up!

Madam President, Mr High Representative, ‘History is tragic’, wrote Raymond Aron. And it is indeed the return of the tragic of history that we are witnessing. Everywhere we see the convulsions of a conflict-ridden world. Everywhere, the embers of old hatred are rising and threatening to bring to the fire the precarious balances that still maintain a semblance of an international order. In this context, the attempt by the President of the European Commission, Ms von der Leyen, to seize diplomacy and speak instead of the Member States on the hot topics of international affairs is a scandal and, in this context, I would even say sabotage. The European Union is not a federal state, which would cover with its own voice the diplomacy of the Member States. Ms von der Leyen has never received a mandate from anyone to take on precisely this mission. It is the nations and their representatives, elected by a majority of citizens, who are the only ones entitled to speak on subjects of this nature. We refuse that the singular voice of France disappears, replaced by a diplomacy of technocrats without any democratic or popular legitimacy. Because the sovereignty of states is not shared, there is no valid reason why the European Commission should endlessly extend the scope of its competence and thus arrogate to itself powers that no one has conferred on it. Stay in your place and leave the states to theirs.

Madam President, Madam President of the European Commission, on 7 October, Israel was struck in the heart and suffered the deadliest attack in the history of the Jewish state. Our thoughts are with the families of the victims, the missing and the 199 hostages being held right now in the Gaza Strip. This Islamist attack, the shockwave of which has affected our societies, proves to us to be a warning and an ardent obligation. That of never lowering our guard in the face of the resurgence of the terrorist risk and the incessant conquests of Islamism. That of not giving in to this totalitarianism of the 21st century. As such, let us have the lucidity to recognise that Hamas’ ideology is already present in our societies. We are not faced with a clash of civilizations, but with a barbaric attack on civilization. Hamas is nothing but contempt for life. It is nothing but hatred of the Jewish people, which it has made one of its reasons for being. In this new test, Israel will demonstrate to the world its ability to respond to the unspeakable. Its response, if it is to be as targeted as possible, in accordance with international law, is legitimate. There can and will never be impunity for barbarism.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the tragedy of Lampedusa is our future if we do not take back control of our French, national and European borders now. This is evidenced by the words of Mrs von der Leyen, who called on the Member States to welcome migrants from Lampedusa, even though virtually none of them meet the criteria of the right to asylum. This is evidenced by the European case-law which has decided to hinder refoulement. On European soil, judges have established a genuine right of entry and a call for air for millions of candidates for the rush to Europe. Proof of this is the hijacking of Frontex, which was prevented in its role as a border guard and confined to that of a reception agency. I say here that there is no alternative to firmness. To establish firmness is to protect the peoples of Europe from a brutal and unregulated world, in which mass migration produces as much security and cultural havoc as relocations do socially. To establish firmness is to deter crossings and therefore human tragedies. There is no right to Europe that would force us to have an unlimited and unconditional welcome. And there can be no such thing because European countries will never be empty lands belonging to all, untouched by history and empty of peoples. They are the land of the peoples of Europe and it is precisely they who are the only ones entitled to decide who can enter their territory. The only ones who have the right to decide what they want, namely to be and remain themselves in the 21st century. This pact will be at the heart of the upcoming European elections on 9 June.

Madam President, where have Europe's values gone? Tearing images reach us from Nagorno-Karabakh where, day after day, the region empties of its inhabitants, thrown on the roads of exodus by military force, that of an Azeri state that has decided to make all Armenian life impossible on its soil. This tragic outcome was not inevitable. It is only the product of the renunciation to support the right of a people to live on the land of its ancestors, even if the chance of history would have entrusted the sovereignty to others. Nagorno-Karabakh, arbitrarily attributed to Azerbaijan by Stalin, is undoubtedly a home of Armenian civilization. On the highlands of Artsakh, Armenian cities were founded more than two millennia ago and Christianity quickly found a land of election. As we speak, Azerbaijan's offensive, with Turkey's blessing, threatens to erase everything. A people that goes away is an identity that goes out. Tomorrow, it may be the territorial integrity of Armenia that will be challenged, its territory having already been violated by Azeri troops in 2022. Early on, we alerted you to this peril. It is clear that the European Union prefers Azerbaijani gas to the blood of the Armenians. Armenia is alone, caught between Turkish claims and a Russian neighbor who no longer intends to ensure its protection. Europe's honour is put to the test. Would we dare to continue to be the spectators of the disappearance of a people, brother and friend? Like many here, I refuse.

Madam President, Madam President Von der Leyen, the time has come for the assessment. There has never been such a gap between the words that make up your speech and the reality experienced by millions of Europeans. You see, as president of a respected world power, you are at the head of a cold, weakened administration in which the peoples of Europe no longer believe. You swear by enlargement at all costs. We see an unprecedented shrinking of Europe’s influence in the world. By a punitive ecology borrowed from the left, you threaten our automotive industry with the announced end of thermal engines, just as you weaken our food autonomy with the so-called "farm to fork" strategy and the resulting agricultural decline. By the absurd rules of the European energy market, as by your procrastination on the issue of nuclear power, you are making my people, the French people, pay a salty bill that takes our businesses and the most modest families by the throat. By your unlimited belief in the global village, you organize the conditions of tomorrow's disorder by accepting an immigration of settlements from the South that change our culture and disrupt our way of life. By your naivety, the European institutions have been the relay of Islamist ideologies in indecent advertising campaigns. What a strange organization that funds its own enemies. Europe has entered a time of uncertainty: Covid, the return of war to our doors, artificial intelligence, the demographic and climate challenge, and I would say civilizational, impose a start on us, at the risk of disappearing. We must exist. The construction of Europe must exist, but it will find the path of power and the path of people's trust only in an alliance of free, sovereign, independent nations, capable of investing the great projects of the current century to compete with the United States or China. I call on the people to come up with a date: from 6 to 9 June, they will be able to put a definitive end to several years of renunciation in order to reconnect with the thread of hope. Long live the 9th of June.

Madam President, I would like to make a reminder of the Rules of Procedure, on the basis of Rule 133, to expressly ask you to invite the President of the European Commission to come and justify the appointment of Fiona Scott Morton to the Directorate-General for European Competition. It was recalled that Ms. Morton is an American who was, during her professional life, a consultant for the GAFAM and suspected in this context of questionable practices. This decision is worrying as the sprawling GAFAMs now seem to have one of their own at the heart of European regulation. This question at least raises the issue of conflict of interest. Is the Commission free from interference and influence by the United States of America and its companies? This is now a vital issue for our sovereignty.

Madam President, I would like to make a reminder, please, of the Rules of Procedure, on the basis of Rule 132 of the Rules of Procedure of the European Parliament. I regret the absence of President Charles Michel this morning during the debate on the conclusions of the European Council. Charles Michel, whose latest press statements on Turkey’s European future deserve clarification before Parliament. We will understand, of course, that over time, President Erdogan could afford all the offenses and blackmail against us, but it would be unacceptable if Sweden’s accession to NATO had been bargained against a reopening of accession negotiations with Turkey. Mr Michel should have come to explain it. I hope he will have the opportunity to do so. Turkey is not a European state and Europe’s borders cannot be Iraq.

Madam President of the European Parliament, Mr President of the Republic of Cyprus, thank you for your presence in Parliament’s Chamber here in Strasbourg. While the issues of national sovereignty, independence and military occupation have been legitimately at the heart of the debates since February 2022, they have been an everyday struggle for the Republic of Cyprus for more than half a century. As we speak, the north of the island is occupied by President Erdoğan’s Turkey, which has shown no willingness to engage either on the path of negotiation or on the path of pacification. His move yesterday to the occupied part of Cyprus attests to this. He made the secession and the impossible recognition of a Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus a prerequisite for the discussions. Because we hear it too little in this Chamber, I say it clearly: Turkey is part of the club of powers that shake up the international order, even challenging the territorial and maritime sovereignty of European states such as Cyprus or Greece. As such, and despite strong criticism of President Macron’s policy in France, we can only welcome France’s clear and committed diplomatic engagement with the Greek and Cypriot peoples in the face of these unacceptable intimidations. It is in the well-understood interest of our respective countries to continue and strengthen our defence cooperation. The Cyprus issue is not just a local issue, it is a European issue and, I would even say, a challenge of civilisation vis-à-vis Turkey. Those who refuse here to take Erdogan’s geopolitical ambitions seriously are seriously endangering our collective security. Thus, when your state faces the daily pressure of African migration, encouraged by Erdoğan, it is an issue common to all the nations of Europe, to which the European Union remains deaf. Mr President of the Republic, I hope that the end of European recklessness will finally materialise in stronger support for your State and your people. You will be able to count, in any case, on ours.

Madam President, Protection of citizens in the face of an uncontrolled migration policy: This is the title of the debate that we would like to put on the agenda of this parliamentary session. The tragedy of Annecy, which has moved Europe, is the direct consequence of the migratory disorder that reigns everywhere on our soil. You can no longer dodge the debate on the weakness and laxity of the European Union in protecting our fellow citizens from out-of-control immigration. European states are not NGOs, tasked with collecting all the misery of the South, nor is asylum an unconditional right to move within the Schengen area and European states. The right that you should finally care about here, ladies and gentlemen, is the right of our fellow citizens to live free and safe. Between opening our borders and protecting people, we have to choose.

Mr President, we are gathered here to talk about a chimera, a fantasy that exists only in the brains of European technocrats, an illusion of the Commission: Social Europe. For several decades now, social Europe has been the horizon that you sell to the peoples of Europe and that has been steadily drifting away from the policies that you have implemented. This social Europe, which should rather be called the ‘Europe of social ransacking’, you have in fact made it impossible, made impossible by injunctions made every year to the states where the race for the social minimum always prevails. It is on these recommendations of the Commission, using blackmail to disburse the funds of the recovery plan, that Emmanuel Macron imposed in France, brutally, a pension reform yet massively rejected by our compatriots. It is on these Commission recommendations that our states have been forced to reduce spending and the efficiency of public services, starting with hospital and health. The truth is that there is no such thing as a social Europe. It does not exist because the European Union has given up protecting people in the face of savage globalisation, the ravages of offshoring and downward pressure on wages. Worse still, it exposed them to social dumping with the Posting of Workers Directive, which creates unbearable competition between member countries. Faced with the inflation wall, the European Union has left the peoples of Europe alone in the face of predators from above by letting global speculation blow up energy prices through the absurd tariff mechanism of the European electricity market. As long as Europe refuses to be a shield that protects the peoples of Europe from the evil winds of globalisation, then social Europe will be doomed to be an untenable promise.

Mr President, Commissioner, you are driving our fishermen to ruin. In recent weeks, the French fishermen’s protest movement has resonated across Europe. As in France, German, Dutch, Belgian and Irish fishermen are issuing a distress call to EU leaders. They expressed their dismay at a veritable avalanche of standards and prohibitions that threaten the survival of an entire industry. The latest Commission project, which aims to systematically ban bottom trawling in marine protected areas, poses a direct threat to thousands of jobs and does not address the environmental problem that would have merited a case-by-case review. For fishermen, it is a final blow after years of bans of all kinds. Already heavily penalised by the explosion in fuel prices, they face arbitrary closures of fishing zones in the Atlantic, and the reduction of their areas of activity to make way for gigantic offshore wind farms. Elsewhere in the world, we are eagerly looking at the decay of European fishing. The loss of competitiveness of the sector, overwhelmed by standards, will lead to further flooding our market with non-European products. Europe's dependence is already glaring. More than half of the fishery products consumed in the EU are imported from third countries. The French fishing fleet will have been halved in 30 years, and employment has collapsed in the sector. The ambition of Brussels is the development of sustainable fisheries. And to promote this sustainable fishery is not to impose drastic standards on our fishermen while leaving the European market open to the four winds. Promoting sustainable fishing means giving our fishermen the means to remain competitive so that they can feed us without us having to import goods from the other side of the world. Globalized fishing, which leads to the standardization of tastes and consumption practices, is the worst enemy of marine biodiversity. This crucial issue will not be addressed by legislative bludgeoning, but by a return to local fishing and fishing on a human scale.

Madam President, on the occasion of the vote on Frontex’s budget discharge, let me say what I saw in Menton, on the border between France and Italy. What I saw in Menton was a double bankruptcy: first, that of the French Government, and then that of the European Union, which has emptied Frontex of its initial role in combating illegal immigration. In Menton, residents and public authorities are faced with a massive influx of migrants who enter our country without any control, and to settle there against the will of the French people. By making Frontex a travel agency for migrants, by sending the disastrous signal that you can come to Europe without being invited, you have turned our borders into sieves and our countries into hotels. European taxpayers do not want you to use their money to overwhelm them, but to protect them. In the face of the migration challenge, naivety is no longer possible. The time has come for strong action and determined action to protect the peoples of Europe. I call on you to protect its borders.

Mr President, Commissioner, our planet is facing a climate time bomb: Here are the latest findings from the IPCC scientific report. The rise in temperatures over the last 50 years is brutal and leads our societies to a clear rise in uncertainty – a banal discussion with a French farmer is enough to realise this. Today, almost half of humanity lives in areas that are extremely vulnerable to climate change. Heatwaves, droughts and heavy rains increase mortality, disease transmission and population displacement. The UN predicts that by 2050, 250 million people will emigrate from the areas most affected by global warming. If we do nothing, the migratory chaos will be one of the most dizzying consequences. But the IPCC report does not just warn about the climate emergency. It also shows us that solutions are at hand. And these solutions are very different from punitive ecology, which remains the credo chosen by the European Union. The best ally of climate is not taxes and bans, but scientific progress and technological innovation. Improving the energy performance of buildings, heavy hydrogen transport, techniques for removing CO2 from the atmosphere are all tools at our disposal to decarbonise our economies without sinking into bludgeoning or decay. The challenge of the 21st century is also the inevitable end of the era of fossil fuels. History shows us that doing without the most polluting fossil fuels, such as coal, is not a chimera. There is one country that has achieved its energy transition in just two decades. This country is France. France, led by General de Gaulle and President Pompidou, which has succeeded in replacing all of its coal use with nuclear energy. The major powers that emit the most greenhouse gases, such as the United States or China, will have to follow this French path. We must put an end to the irrational persecution of nuclear power. To want to reduce our CO2 emissions without relying on the atom is to choose the path, once again, of decay and impoverishment. Faced with the vital challenge of preserving the environment in which our civilisation must flourish, neither wait-and-see nor catastrophism can be a viable response. The coming generations do not expect millennial climate incantations, but pragmatic policies that build on the inventiveness of human genius to ensure a better world tomorrow.

Madam President, Mr President Charles Michel, for General MacArthur, the battles lost can be summed up in two words: Too late. For two decades now, our dependence on China has been growing steadily. Initially confined to the role of craftsman of a cheap economy and low-end products, the Chinese empire has now become the unavoidable global one. Since we were talking about energy, it is a must for the production of wind turbines and photovoltaic panels, of which the European Union has almost made the only pillars of its energy transition. It has become a top predator for the most strategic European companies. The spectacular takeover in 2016 of German industrial robotics leader Kuka from the port of Piraeus in Greece in the same year are only illustrious symbols and perhaps the tree that hides the forest. It is a fiercest competitor in the knowledge economy and the technologies of tomorrow, from artificial intelligence to electric cars. Carlos Tavares, the highly respected Stellantis boss, recently complained that the red carpet had been rolled out to Chinese manufacturers. Faced with this reality, time is no longer a matter of observation but of action. We need to preserve our public procurement markets today more open than those of China, prioritise European companies in public procurement, protect our strategic assets, invest in both innovation and education. Protecting our sovereignty also requires a thorough investigation into TikTok’s suspicions of espionage, its links with Chinese power and the manipulation of valuable European user data by hands other than our own. Europe is not destined to remain Beijing's prey. It is about our future, our freedom, our sovereignty, our independence and our power.

Madam President, Madam President von der Leyen, Mr President Charles Michel, while the state of energy emergency is declared throughout Europe, the first freedom of our compatriots, that of moving, is more than ever called into question. But what have motorists done to you to deserve so much hate? After the carbon taxes that triggered the anger of the yellow vests in France, after the malus of all kinds, after the privatisation of motorways that led to the massive rise in toll prices, Europe and the ayatollahs of punitive ecology invented a new persecution against them: low-emission zones that prohibit large agglomerations with a majority of vehicles. With these low-emission zones, you legitimise the assumed exclusion of ordinary people, those who have no choice but to use their diesel cars to live and work, behind the beautiful principle of ecology. But hell is paved with good intentions. These low-emission areas are areas of great exclusion that will relegate out of the most modest large urban centers, whose car is often the only means of transport. With these low-emission areas, it is better to own a state-of-the-art Porsche hybrid that lives in an upscale neighbourhood than a small Clio with 75,000 kilometres on the clock that lives in a rural municipality. Around the big cities of Europe, you build an invisible and yet impassable citadel, the citadel of money. Ultimately, these low-emission areas raise tolls against the most modest. With the demagogic ban on the sale of thermal vehicles by 2035, with the introduction of these EFAs, you confirm that for the European Union, ecology boils down to monitoring, punishing, excluding, taxing, weakening and tracking. We, the French, are among the cleanest, most virtuous in the world. Have the courage to set your punitive ecology against China, against the United States, against emerging powers that do not meet any of the standards you impose on European businesses, farmers and industrialists. The one that pollutes is not the French motorist, but the supertanker from the other side of the world. As Europe raises the question of its future this morning, our fellow citizens are wondering whether moving is becoming a luxury product that will be inaccessible to them tomorrow.

Madam President, in view of President Biden's massive support for American companies and for China, you have finally decided to react. The establishment of a support plan, the European Industrial Green Deal, is an awareness: a lip service to the protection of our economy, which we have defended so much, over time, in front of the singers of the global village. Unfortunately, three big oversights weaken your ambitions, three big oversights that could condemn you to powerlessness. The first is the absence of any massive nuclear support plan, which we know is one of the most effective ways to achieve energy autonomy and decarbonisation of our economy. The second is the reform of the European electricity market: the explosion in gas prices is having a major impact on our businesses. In the absence of any serious challenge to this price-setting mechanism, they will either close down or move to the US or China, where energy prices are cheap. Finally, you do not propose to us any measures to protect our public procurement and any advantage given to European production. You continue to want to be the best students of free trade at the expense of the peoples, our courses and our interests. Major Nuclear Plan, European Energy Market Reform, “Buy European Act”: These are the three effective pillars of an ambitious economic policy to restore power, prosperity and sovereignty. For our companies as well as for our states, the crisis of globalisation, the rise of geopolitical perils and economic rivalries make it necessary for Europe to have a strategic autonomy, which can no longer be this market open to all winds, from unfair bad international competition or foreign predation.

Madam President, the Istanbul Convention is an important text in the fight against violence against women, and we obviously support its cause. Throughout its recent history, Europe has been that civilization that has allowed women to take their full place in society, by sanctifying their rights, by sanctifying their freedoms, by tending to offer women and men the same opportunities to rise in society. We must constantly remind ourselves that our values, the values of our history, of Europe, which put men and women on an equal footing, will always be eminently superior to those of cultures that enslave women, imprison them behind a veil, subject them to genital mutilation, prohibit them from going to school, having a job, driving or going out on the street alone. This is, among other things, the position of the NGO Yavuz Sultan Selim, an Islamic-nationalist Turkish brotherhood financed to the tune of EUR 31 000 by the European Commission and, therefore, by the taxpayer’s tax. How did these obscurantists, for whom women’s freedom is synonymous with offense, customary with violently anti-Semitic and homophobic language, who yesterday justified the Bataclan attacks, receive a single penny of public money? How can you talk about protecting women’s rights, but at the same time support with taxpayers’ money the enemies of women and the enemies of Europe? How can you tolerate so much those who want our destruction today? By adjusting Europe to the Islamic hour, you are preparing our nations for an inevitable setback in women’s rights and freedoms. To defeat this project, you will always find us on your way.

Madam President, a political leader should constantly aspire to two fundamental objectives: peace inside and peace outside; peace in the nation and peace among nations. In the absence of either, freedom disappears or is only a fragile asset, which can be broken at any time. For almost a year, Russia has invaded Ukraine, violated its borders, committed acts of war against civilian populations and illegally occupied a significant part of its territory. By doing so, Moscow gave the Ukrainians a common enemy and the Ukrainian nation, which it claimed to be chimerical, a spirit of resistance and a more intense and concrete existence than ever before. We must reaffirm here that, like all the peoples of the world, Ukrainians have the right to self-determination and to refuse the shadow of empire. And, like all nations in the world, Ukraine has the legitimate right, and perhaps even the duty, to defend its territory, integrity and borders. As for us, because history teaches us and looks at us, because peace is a fragile balance that resonates more strongly on our continent than elsewhere, we have a duty to ensure that the rest of Europe does not rush into war and that it guards against an irreversible spiral. We have a duty to help and assist our attacked neighbours, starting with the reception of their war refugees or the provision of defence material. On the other hand, the mobilisation of combat aircraft or war tanks, of which I would point out that France no longer even has for itself in its own capacities, would place our States and the European Union in a new dimension and escalation, that of co-belligerence. Let's remember: yesterday it was only about individual equipment and defensive weapons. Today, we are told that it is only a handful of tanks and we are already talking about fighter jets. The day after tomorrow, why not nuclear warheads? The war is already there, it is raging between the Russians and the Ukrainians by devastating cities, families and landscapes. But tomorrow it could spread to others and embrace the whole continent if we completely erase the possibility of peace from our horizons. To say that war is now impossible is to make war more likely than ever. It is worrying that the desire to seek conditions of peace is presented by some war-goers as the wish for a Russian victory. Only a major continental peace treaty will provide Europe as a whole with the stability it needs in a world already largely marked by geopolitical insecurity. Talking about, wishing for and actively seeking peace is not about sacrificing Ukrainian freedom and independence, it is about making it possible. If we want peace, we must prepare it more than ever in our speeches and in our actions.

Madam President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, his name is Olivier, artisan baker of the Marne, and he has not been paid a salary for months. Her name is Estelle, a restaurateur in the Vaucluse, and she has taken the radical decision to close her establishment. These testimonies, these tragedies, among many others, are those of thousands of business leaders across Europe, bakers, butchers, artisans, restaurateurs, traders, overwhelmed by the explosion of energy bills: costs multiplied by two, three, four, five, sometimes ten and even shutting down. Their requirement is not to be kept under infusion of public aid, but to be able to live from their work in the dignity of those who have dared, risked, undertaken to build a sustainable activity. Their demand is to pay their energy at a fair, regulated price, guaranteed by a strategist state that protects its economic interests. For them, your last-minute subsidies will be their debt and their taxes tomorrow. For several months, your refusal to call into question the rules of the European energy market, and in particular the artificial backing of electricity prices on gas prices, has led our companies to speculate on the part of global predators. However, Spain and Portugal have proved that it is possible to get rid of them. What is at stake here is nothing more or less than the very existence of this France of initiative and effort, of these places of sociality, sharing, conviviality, production that are our bistros, our breweries, our small shops and our workshops, of our know-how and our living heritage, of this lifestyle that characterises the European soul. We can avoid this wall of bankruptcy. Have the courage to break with the Europeanist ready-to-think when it is a failure for these thousands of business leaders. Their society is the work of a lifetime, so let them live.