Speeches

Madam President of the European Parliament, Madam President of the European Commission, ladies and gentlemen of the Council, ladies and gentlemen, it is not good at this time to be a European company. Not only are our companies suffering from the hellish rise in energy prices, to which you offer no lasting solution, but they are now facing US protectionism that is taking on itself without any false modesty. In the run-up to the European Council, this is indeed a new concern for our businesses: the Inflation Reduction Act, decided by US President Joe Biden. Under the guise of combating climate change, this law favours American companies with large subsidies and tax credits, whether in the fields of photovoltaic panels, electric cars or batteries. Stupid among the Europeanist elites, who still believed in the verses of liberal religion and the Breviary of the World Trade Organisation! With fluttering arms and wide-eyed eyes, you finally seem to discover that all the great powers of the world are promoting their companies, protecting their workers and defending their interests. All but one, the European Union, which consistently wants to be the best pupil of free trade, and systematically at its expense. We are the only continent that so opens its public markets without reciprocity, where Americans buy American and where Chinese buy Chinese. We are the only ones to open up our borders to products that do not meet any of our standards, whether social or environmental. Rather than being the eternal naïve of global trade, what are we Europeans waiting for to buy Europe? What are we waiting for to protect the social norms of our democracies, avoiding competition with countries that ignore workers’ rights? What are we waiting for to define and defend our strategic interests, to build an ambitious growth policy and to protect our producers, consumers and employees? Europeans have not done Europe to suffer, but to act. Let's wake up! Thank you and I wish you all, ladies and gentlemen, a very Merry Christmas.

Mr President, Commissioner, the religion of human rights therefore stops where the suitcases of tickets begin. While the European Union has established itself as a model of virtue, a lecturer and a moralising judge of all the regimes in the world, here it is presumed to be corrupted at its highest level by the money of an Islamist state. Today's democratic scandal in the European Parliament, one of whose Vice-Presidents has just been jailed, has the merit of putting an end to a charade: the masquerade of those who wear the values of Europe, the masquerade of those who scream loudest in the defence of democracy, the masquerade of socialists suspected here in the European Parliament of having received money from Qatar. Qatar is, let us remember, an Islamist dictatorship. Freedom of expression does not apply, gender equality and workers’ rights do not exist, homosexuality is punishable by death. Qatar is the state where 6,500 slave workers died on World Cup construction sites, for whom our modern democracies look away. Qatar is the state that withdraws its women's teams from international sporting events, on the grounds that its players cannot play matches wearing the Islamic veil. Qatar is the state that finances Islamism in France and sponsors al-Nusra jihadists in Syria. According to French journalists Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot, Qatar’s proselytism and, with it, the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in France have poured over €25 million in ten years into the construction of schools, radical mosques and separatist associations. How many other members of this Parliament are willing to sell their public positions to the highest bidder? How many others show the same ethical flexibility, if not the same moral debasement? We refuse to allow our nations to be sold by cutting. It is time to trace the thread of corruption and shed light on the connections of some elected officials here with Qatar. I am convinced that more corpses are in the closet, and that we are not at the end of our sentences. On Qatar, as on many others, we will have alerted before all others. Make sure that Europe, the real one, is respected in the face of those who trade in it and who trade in our interests.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to warn you that this will be a bit different from the speeches made by previous speakers. Europe cannot allow its immigration policy from the sea to be dictated by human traffickers, whether they are called NGOs or smugglers’ mafias. Nor can Europe rely on solidarity to distribute the world’s people on our soil, in violation of the will expressed by our fellow citizens. We must consider that our migration policy begins on the sea, that our borders are also maritime, that no one can claim to dock on our soil without being allowed to do so. Your project is to welcome and distribute. Ours is to rescue and drive. To deter temptations to leave, asylum applications must be made in the embassies and consulates of the countries of departure. To protect refugees from real wars, if any, safe humanitarian camps must be set up in the regions of departure under the aegis of the Office of the High Commissioner and under the aegis of the United Nations. Because it deters a fantasized Eldorado from risking his life, this firmness is probably the most humane policy there is. The policy that saves lives is the one that deters people from coming. These are the keys to protecting our borders. This is not the intention of the European Commission. Neither is President Emmanuel Macron. Ideologies prevent them from doing so, but so does the naivety of believing that migration flows will dry up on their own and that this is only a temporary crisis. Yet the laws of demography are relentless. Without taking control of our destiny, without general awareness, the rush to Europe awaits us. Lampedusa, Ceuta or the Chapel Gate could be our future.

Madam President, open civil war, migratory surge, human trafficking, modern slavery. Since its destruction in 2011, following a disastrous Franco-Otanian military campaign, Libya has been struggling to recover and causing tremors throughout the region and to our continent. With geopolitics abhorring the vacuum, it is Turkey in the lead that, in Libya for several years, has been shooting down its cards one after the other. In 2019, taking advantage of a political and military partition of the country, it ripped off an agreement offering it maritime areas belonging to two EU countries, Greece and Cyprus. On October 3, Ankara recidivated by signing a memorandum with Tripoli assigning it illegal drilling zones in the eastern Mediterranean. Clearly, Erdoğan and his strategists are instrumentalising Libyan chaos to build up an area of influence and power in the Eastern Mediterranean, in defiance of the law of the sea and respect for international treaties. It is essential for our Greek and Cypriot friends and allies and for regional stability that such agreements are never endorsed and that their denunciation is part of the conditions for recognising a future legitimate, independent and sustainable regime. Libya has not been an Ottoman province for more than a century. It is a question of the security of Europe and the entire Mediterranean that it does not become so again.

Mr President, President Charles Michel, as the anguish of the end of the month and the worry of winter take root all over Europe, the latest European summit seems to ignore the urgency of it. Indeed, no action could be taken to support both our businesses and families facing an unprecedented energy crisis. In France, so far, and despite promises of unfulfilled reforms, President Macron has been subject to the absurd rules of the European electricity market – these European rules, which lead to electricity prices being indexed to gas prices, have left us at the mercy of the speculative price explosion following the war in Ukraine. France, which derives no benefit from the operation of this straitjacket, is doing well, albeit weakened, thanks to its nuclear production. We can easily say that, without this European market, we would have been partly protected from the great geopolitical movements of the world. It is therefore urgent to get out of it, or, failing that, to introduce derogations on the model of those obtained by Portugal and Spain, which thus have electricity prices on average three times lower than ours. Over time, tax leverage must be used by reducing VAT on energy, as Germany or Poland have done. Unfortunately, President Macron stubbornly refuses to do so. The risk of leading Europe towards industrial desertification, with a loss of jobs and know-how, is real in the coming months. Act now, for when the factories have closed, it will be too late.

Mr President, Mr High Representative, my question will be simple and very direct: So what do you think matters most, Azerbaijani gas or Armenian blood? I think I already know the answer because the President of the European Commission, Mrs von der Leyen, signed an agreement to double the quantities of gas imported from Azerbaijan without ever officially defending the Armenians attacked on their land. In recent days, authenticated videos show the summary and savage execution of Armenian soldiers by Azerbaijani troops. What are you waiting for? What are you waiting for to point the finger at this dirty war waged by Baku? Without American guidance, has Europe become incapable of taking a stand in world affairs? Or is it because of the fear of denouncing Turkey, a NATO member that directly supports Azerbaijan’s ambitions? I am not blaming you for trying to reduce Europe’s energy dependence on a particular power. We reproach you, for lack of anticipation and ideological blindness, for doing so in a rush that sacrifices European fraternity with the people of Armenia. Our civilisation is burning, but Europe is looking elsewhere.

Mr President, we owe moral and unanimous support to the revolt of the women of Iran whose courage has moved the world. By burning their Islamic veil, these women directed their anger towards the symbol of the oppression practised by the mullahs' regime. What is rejected by these demonstrators is a society that makes women by nature, from birth to death, a being inferior to men. But it is actually the duplicity of the European Commission that I wish to point out today. You condemn obscurantism in Iran, but you make it shorthand in Europe. I would like to take as an example this official communication from the European Commission presenting a veiled girl whom you made disappear in disaster when whistleblowers rightly denounced her. In Iran, women burn their veil, in Europe, you wear it as a banner. This anecdote is not isolated. It is part of a context of assumed entrism of Islamist pharmacies to whom you dare to offer the money drawn from the wallet of European taxpayers. I am thinking of the Femyso association, an emanation of the Muslim Brotherhood, to which you are rolling out the red carpet within the European institutions. Your relativism, your refusal to assume the identity of our nations, your dogmatic support for a massive immigration policy, your disguised financing of enemy associations put our continent in the waiting room of Islamism. Our continent, that of Greek philosophy, Roman law, reason, our continent shaped by centuries of intense Christian faith must remain that of free men and women. It will never be that of the Islamic veil, submission and obscurantism.

Madam President of Parliament, Madam President of the European Commission, we are here. These are the peoples of Europe at the foot of the wall. While the state of energy emergency must now be declared, war is no stranger to it. But it is first and foremost your successive mistakes that we are paying for today. You perfectly illustrate the French proverb ‘hell is paved with good intentions’. You wanted to get out of our dependence on fossil fuels, you put us in the hands of Russia, the United States, China and the Gulf petromonarchies. You claimed to decarbonise our economy, we are reopening coal-fired power plants because of an absurd and irrational war against nuclear power, under pressure from the Greens. You wanted to collapse the Russian economy, you gave it an unexpected financial windfall by multiplying its hydrocarbon revenues. You pretended to defend ecology, you import American shale gas with a lot of LLNGCs. You stood up for the values of Europe, you are now kneeling in front of Azerbaijan, which is bombing the brave people of Armenia because you were begging for their hydrocarbons. You praised the merits of social Europe, you are now preparing the rationing of millions of French and European families who have never feared the coming winter so much. By your inconsistencies, by your senseless reversals, by your renunciations of sovereignty, you plunge our peoples and their businesses into distress by confronting them with emergencies that were once believed to exist. The reduction of VAT on energy, the return to sound price control by leaving the European electricity market, the taxation of super-profits and the unwavering support for the nuclear industry are all essential measures to prevent us from returning to the economic stone age. Mrs von der Leyen, the people of Europe are angry everywhere. It is not far away when they will ask you with the severity of a judge before the culprit: What did you do with the European dream?

Mr President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, the last European Council ended a French presidency of the European Union which, beyond the all too often narcissistic exercise of a president fleeing electoral campaigns and French debates, has in no way remedied the inherent weaknesses and excesses of Brussels. "We must move to a Europe that is powerful in the world, fully sovereign, free of its choices and master of its destiny," Emmanuel Macron announced modestly six months ago. Never, perhaps, have we been further away. We will certainly have a universal charger, which is far from useless in everyday life. But what does this mean in light of the increased reliance on Americans and NATO for defence and foreign policy? Without the ability to keep up with the challenges and dangers of the world, Europe is forced to put its destiny in the hands of others. This is the very negation of sovereignty and freedom. Instead of working to consolidate and repair what should be, the European Union is continuing its flight forward by making enlargement a dogma, even if it means destabilising our economic and social models. The ecological and environmental hypocrisy continues unabated, and the EUFP took advantage of its last days to make a nice gift to trade disruption by signing a new free trade agreement with New Zealand. Finally, despite recurring chin shots, Emmanuel Macron will not have resolved any significant progress in protecting our borders against migratory intrusions from the South and the East. With 3,000 years of history, European states and peoples deserve better than the incantations ever followed by the effects of heads of state seeking to flee the popular will.

Mr President, Minister, the ecological challenge is one of the major challenges of our century. Here we all share the same observation: Our planet's natural resources will not be enough for an ever-increasing world population. This issue does not involve a political camp, but rather all of humanity, and in particular the younger generations, who will be the first to suffer the full consequences of global warming and who will have to meet the great challenge of the energy transition. The latest IPCC report enlightens and alerts us. This immense challenge should lead us to rethink in depth our production method. But rather than calling into question the great global shift brought about by the proliferation of free trade agreements, the European Union is seeking to make ordinary citizens pay for the disastrous environmental consequences of its economic choices. In your view, they are subject to ever-increasing regulatory and fiscal bludgeoning because they are guilty of not living in sufficiently well-insulated homes or because they are forced to use their cars to get to work. The constant tightening of European standards for motor vehicles and, tomorrow, the complete ban on combustion-engined cars will complete the transformation of the car into a luxury good for many of our compatriots, even though a single supertanker that crisscrosses the world’s oceans releases as many fine particles as a million cars in France. It is not up to the taxpayer to pay to compensate in any way for the harmful effects of your economic policy. It is this policy itself that needs to be changed through the reappropriation of the local, short circuits and economic patriotism. The European Union is not taking this path. While you deploy treasures of inventiveness to pocket the working and middle classes, you continue to negotiate free trade agreements with Mexico, Chile, Brazil, Australia and New Zealand. While you are blaming European citizens, you continue to allow our plants to be relocated to the other side of the world, depriving us of any means of monitoring environmental production standards. As you roll out grandiloquent climate roadmaps, you always forbid, in the name of free and undistorted competition, to favour local economic actors in the award of public contracts. Thus, we still live in a world where our children can be given apples from Chile in the school canteens of Normandy. European countries are among the most virtuous in the fight against global warming. In 30 years, the EU has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by one third. Together, our 27 countries emit three times less CO2 into the atmosphere than China alone. Thanks to nuclear power, France is by far one of the most virtuous countries in the world. The ecological transition must not be punitive or sacrificial. On the contrary, it must be a means of providing new opportunities for our industry, rehabilitating the local economy and thus bequeathing a sustainable France and continent to future generations.

Madam President, I would like to make a point of order, please, on the basis of Rule 123, which governs access to the European Parliament. A few hours ago, a conference was held in Parliament on Islamophobia, at the initiative of the COJEP association, in the presence of Mr Elias d’Imzalène, who would be listed and followed in France for Islamist radicalisation. I would like to know how this association was able to bring this individual within walking distance of the Chamber and with the likely approval of Parliament’s Bureau.

Madam President, Madam President of the European Commission, for the past two months the horror of war has been hitting our continent. This conflict, so close to our doors, touches our consciences and reminds us of our duty of solidarity in the face of the atrocities and war crimes suffered by the Ukrainian people. But it also affects every one of us, every people of Europe, through the violence of its collateral economic consequences. Inflation is back everywhere in Europe, and it first overwhelms the most modest, who see the prices of basic necessities rise. Feed, heat or move becomes, alas for many, an ever more severe anguish. This war is first and foremost a questioning of our dependence: imported fossil fuels as well as food and agricultural products grown ever further from home. This war reminds us of the oldest lesson in history: Sovereignty is the price of freedom. Therefore, it is crucial to strengthen our energy autonomy by continuing to strengthen our nuclear sector, the cleanest and most decarbonized energy available to our societies today, by refusing to give in to the pressures of the Greens who want to send our societies back to the economic stone age by reopening coal-fired power plants. Our duty is also to regain our food sovereignty through the end of absolute free trade and the development of fair trade, the use of short circuits and localism, proximity. This protection of our agricultural sectors passes through the end of the crazy farm-to-fork strategy promoted by the Commission, which leaves our farmers to compulsion and ruin. The exceptional situation we are experiencing calls in the shorter term for emergency measures for the purchasing power of our fellow citizens. Fuel taxes must be lowered, as Poland did in February. We want to do this in France, where taxes represent almost 60% of the price at the pump. We must also resolve to note that at this moment, the energy sanctions taken by Europe have weakened our purchasing power while enriching Russia. The ruble has been at a historically high level for two years and war profiteers are getting richer and richer in the export of raw materials. The car manufacturer Renault was forced to sell its shares in the Russian brand Lada for a symbolic ruble. It was therefore a Putin-dependent institute that acquired it. This is a strange sanction that leads to the sacking of a French company and finally allows the Russian government to nationalise it for free. In conclusion, we do not have the power to decide the location of oil and gas deposits. On the other hand, we can decide to protect our own while sanctioning war profiteers and aspiring tomorrow to return to the path of independence. A simple principle must be followed: Sanctions must continue to target Putin, the Russian regime and its decision-makers, not the portfolio of Europeans or the activities of our companies. I beg you to think of them.

Mr President, at a time when negotiations were more open than ever, Vladimir Putin took an unacceptable step by throwing Europe before the scourge of war. We cannot accept that the sovereignty of a state and a people is violated, let alone by weapons. Like all of you, I support this outpouring of solidarity for the Ukrainian people, who have entered into resistance in defence of their homeland. However, the return of the tragic history must not prevent us from thinking rightly, from looking at this conflict in its complexity and from carrying the voice of peace and above all of de-escalation. By supporting the otanisation of Europe for almost 20 years, effectively putting us under the US flag, our leaders have missed opportunities to open a balanced relationship with Russia. We traded our independence and freedom of action for an illusion of protection and thus maintained an archaic conflictual climate. Now is the time for firmness and we must show unambiguous unity in supporting the Ukrainian people and condemning this invasion. However, I would like to say that it is dishonest for the European institutions to use this war to advance a federalist agenda that the people refuse. This is the case with the deepening of NATO or the enlargement of the European Union, which would not help, at a time when our priority is to silence the weapons. I also want to say that sanctioning Russia must not mean, in any case, heavily sanctioning ourselves. Beware that sanctions taken under the influence of unanimity do not turn out to be balls for the purchasing power of the peoples and that they do not harm our companies while allowing Russia to strengthen its strategic autonomy. This is precisely the case with the sanctions in force since 2014. Nor do we use the methods we condemn elsewhere in Europe. It is not in the practices or values of mature democracies like ours to shut down media outlets, even if they are relays of foreign influence. Falling into unnecessary overbidding would worsen the war rather than find peace. Our imperative is peace, de-escalation, but also, for my country, the return of a free, independent, respected and balanced France in a multipolar world.

Madam President, Mr President of the Republic, your Europe is 60 years old, ours is 3,000 years old. Your political project aims to erase the nations of Europe, ours to save them. We must deconstruct the history of France, you said. We therefore understand your enthusiasm to find yourself today at the head of an institution that has set itself the goal of dissolving millennial Europe. You and your allies have made Europe Washington's backyard, Beijing's prey, Erdogan's doormat and Africa's Hotel. Producing batteries and semiconductors on European soil is commendable, but the 21st century demands of us a more distant vision. In a recent interview in which you are delighted to annoy some of the French people, you advocate the establishment of a Europe of migration. Earlier, in a press conference, you announced that you wanted to take forward the European Pact for Migration. This pact organizes a real legal coup d'état since, under the guise of harmonizing the rules, the European Union will dispossess nations of the right to define their own migration policy. You will blur the notion of refugees and migrants, establish family reunification extended to brothers and sisters, force countries to forced relocations, restrict the possibilities of deportation, encourage NGOs in their role as accomplices of smugglers. Clearly, you want to dispossess the states and peoples of the last of the rights they have left, that of deciding who enters their homes and who must leave them, when your priority should be to re-establish borders in France and to lay borders on Europe. You want to dispossess the peoples, our people, of the legitimate right to be and to remain themselves. Tomorrow, will Europe still be Europe if, as in Cologne, the days are punctuated by the call of the muezzin? Will it still be Europe if, as in Belgian or Dutch cities, a majority of inhabitants give allegiance to the King of Morocco or Sultan Erdogan? Finally, if, like so many neighborhoods of France, another civilization imposes itself and with it a relationship with women that is foreign to us? Europe can survive deficits above 3% of GDP, but it would not recover from a protracted birth deficit offset by external migration. The nations of Europe do not want to be dissolved, replaced or submerged. The presidential election on 10 and 24 April will decide not only the fate of France, but of Europe as a whole. Mr. President of the Republic, how can you claim today as a unifying force in Europe, when you have been to the end the divider of France, preferring to the unity of the country generalized competition and therefore the war of all against all? You behaved like a liquidator at the head of the French state. You will have meticulously played at the casino with French industry, sold to foreign powers and of which Alstom will forever remain a symbol of betrayal of national interests. You will have allowed the state to be challenged in its authority, the nation weakened in its sovereignty, the people attacked in its identity and in its freedoms. Of your promises of a new world, there will remain only your bullying, your humiliations, your cynicism and your contempt, which have helped to make the people sad, to weaken their vital force, to make them doubt the future, to make them doubt themselves. While France needs to radiate again to express its power, you have extinguished its light. For France but also for Europe, it is vital that your mandate remains unique.

Madam President, banning the expressions ‘generated’ such as ‘Mr’, ‘Madame’ or ‘Mademoiselle’, and now banning the mere reference to Christmas, is what the European Commission requires of its employees in an internal note addressed to them. This masterpiece of bureaucratic stupidity is not a mere anecdote, but a new step towards the gradual and meticulous installation of a new totalitarianism. Your plan for this millennial civilisation, which you so hate, is not only to replace it with migration routes, but to cancel it. To cancel it outright by methodically deconstructing its soul and foundations. This militant project is that of the Woke ideology, imported from the other side of the Atlantic. A cancel culture who would like to cleanse the past, erase our myths and heroes, debunk our statues, rewrite history, blame majorities to better impose communities. The erasure of our cultural and civilizational references is just one step. While you consider yourself legitimate to revise our millennial traditions or vocabulary, the European Commissioner for Equality, Helena Dalli, is at the same time actively promoting the Femyso association, an Islamist outlet close to the Muslim Brotherhood, known for its proselytising in favour of the veil and its attacks on the French conception of secularism. Not to mention the Council of Europe campaign, financed by our money, promoting the Islamic veil, which is so alien to the idea that European civilisation is made of women. Faced with your desire to eject Europe outright from the European Union, we will continue to defend a French France in a European Europe. Allow me, ladies and gentlemen, at the risk of attracting the wrath of the hateful deconstructors you are, to wish you all a very Merry Christmas.

Madam President, in France the trial of the Paris attacks of 13 November 2015, which claimed the lives of 130 of our compatriots, injured 400 other French people and plunged hundreds of families into impossible mourning, began. We now know that several of the terrorists have been able to spread terror by hiding in the wave of migration that has overwhelmed Europe and that our leaders have encouraged. This unconscious and murderous policy must be buried forever. The first Afghans evacuated from Kabul had barely arrived on French soil, with five of them under surveillance for terrorist risk by the French intelligence services. Kabul is also the scene of a reactivation of Islamic State jihadists. We don't know anything about all the people we've evacuated and are setting up in our homes by the hundreds or even thousands. After everything we have experienced in our country, no risk should be taken. The entire refugee reception effort must focus on neighbouring states through the establishment of safe humanitarian camps in neighbouring countries, with which the cultural shock is also much less. The laws of hospitality have been flouted, saturated and used by our enemies. It is time to say that we display complete to prefer the safety of our own.

Madam President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, after Mrs von der Leyen last April, it is now the European Council that continues to pursue the Arlésienne in a mutually beneficial cooperation with Turkey. What the EU sees as a form of good neighbourliness, Erdoğan sees as a line of strength to get much more than he has already managed to gain by exploiting our weaknesses and cowardice. Why, then, is the Council seeking to relaunch the EU-Turkey Free Trade Agreement? Strengthening the customs union means giving Erdoğan new means of pressure, this time economic, which he will certainly exploit in the future, since we have already made our weaknesses clear to him time and time again. Why demand continued EU funding for refugees in Turkey? We know that these are only the instruments of Erdoğan’s migration blackmail. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has mastered the art of adapting his Islamist ideology to his current interests. We must not be fooled. Any concession to this regime runs counter to the interests and security of Europeans.

Madam President, Commissioner, who are knitting while we talk about the future and the identity of our peoples... Seven people stabbed in Sweden: the author is an Afghan who arrived in 2016, already known to the police. Knife-threatened schoolchildren in Ermont, France: the author is a Haitian multi-recidivist. In Germany, Christiane, 49, Johanna, retired, Steffi, 24, who had come to buy a dress for her friend's wedding: all were specifically targeted as women and stabbed to death by a Somali who arrived in 2015 as an asylum seeker. No more than a month goes by in Europe without an attack involving a freshly landed migrant – who will put a knee to the ground for his victims? The text you propose to us is a pump aspiring to more violence in our societies, even though your primary responsibility is to protect them. Whether it is the treatment of asylum in the countries of departure or the tightening of sanctions against smugglers, the example of Denmark and the United Kingdom should inspire you, as they correspond to what a majority of European peoples now expect.