Speeches

Mr President! In Italy, hundreds of fascists show the Hitler salute. What about Prime Minister Meloni? She's silent! In Germany, the AfD meets with the identitarian movement and with financially strong entrepreneurs to organize the deportation of millions of people, including Germans, from Germany. And I say here clearly: We stand behind all European citizens, regardless of their skin colour and the birthplace of their parents! We know how many millions of people have died, how much unbelievable suffering and how much destruction this ethnic extremism has brought to Europe. That is why now is the time to do everything possible to counter this inhumane movement as a defensive democracy! Minorities who attack our democracy in order to enforce their racist ideology have always existed. But they can only win if the majority allows it, and the majority clearly says: We stand behind democracy! And that is why it is time for her to stand up now, including on the streets – for democracy, for fundamental rights and for the freedom of all citizens. And rely on it – we will!

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen. The 2024 European elections are coming – a celebration of democracy. Citizens look at the situation on the basis of well-researched reports from the free press and then choose the party that best represents their opinion and interests – so far as the ideal picture is concerned. But the reality today is very different. On the internet, disinformation – i.e. deliberate misinformation – is spreading much faster than information. No serious journalism can keep up with the speed at which a false message reaches millions of people. This mechanism is used by political extremists as well as by Russian actors, and they all have one thing in common: They want to destroy our democracy. The platforms that make a lot of money from it. They earn their money through advertising. And the more they give visibility to extremists, the more money they make. The more outrage a content triggers, the more time people spend on YouTube, Facebook, or TikTok. Democrat destroyers rely precisely on fear and anger in order to incite and incite people. For social networks this is a lot of profit, but for democracy it means pure poison. Because in a democracy, we need facts, optimism and a willingness to compromise. But this is exactly what is punished on the net with low visibility. We have to change this absurd mechanism if we want to give facts a chance again. This is exactly the chance we have now. Das Gesetz über digitale Dienste gibt nämlich der Kommission die Möglichkeit, einzuschreiten, wenn Plattformen Menschen systematisch viel mehr Desinformation in die Timeline spülen als Fakten. This is exactly what the Commission needs to do now to protect the 2024 elections. I very much welcome the fact that Commissioner Breton X, TikTok, Meta and Google have already vigorously called for compliance with the Digital Services Act following the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel. But the Digital Services Act is so revolutionary because it is not just about deleting illegal content, but finally about opportunities for equal visibility for legal content as well. Only if the European Union now pushes through a change in the algorithms of social networks so that facts have the same opportunity again, will European citizens be able to celebrate a great celebration of democracy in 2024.

Madam President, colleagues, this week the Council will vote on the highly controversial child sexual abuse regulation proposal. According to press reports and the X advertising repository, the Commission has attempted at the same time to directly influence public opinion in key Member States through micro-targeted messages on X, explicitly asking Twitter to hide these messages from certain groups of people, for example Christians – so according to their religious beliefs, or also according to their political orientation. This is illegal under the DSA. From a European rule of law point of view, it is highly problematic that the European Commission attempts to directly influence public opinion ahead of a crucial Council vote, going behind the back of the respective governments, violating the principle of sincere cooperation with the co-legislators. It is also undermining Commissioner Breton’s very commendable efforts in the last weeks to combat the spread of disinformation and illegal content about the terrorist attacks of Hamas on Israel on digital platforms using exactly that DSA – the Digital Services Act. Therefore we request your support for a plenary debate with the title ‘Council and Commission statements: the European Commission’s attempt to influence the voters of Member States reluctant to support the CSAM proposal through micro-targeting, without resolution’ to be added on Wednesday night. As a consequence, we request for the session to be extended to 23.00.

Mr President! The Transman Malte was beaten to death in Germany on the open road because he was a Transman. In more and more European countries, queer people are in danger because they are so openly harassed against them on the Internet. This hatred kills. It is deliberately fueled by major disinformation campaigns, orchestrated by Russian actors, by far-right groups from the USA, who want to divide our society and weaken our democracy. When right-wing populists enter governments, they continue to foment hatred - with laws that impute pedophilia to queer people, as in Hungary, with laws that destroy entire families, as in Italy. The EU needs to make one thing clear: We are fighting online disinformation, which is the breeding ground for these discriminatory laws, and we will defend the fundamental rights of queer people in every country in Europe. Because the attack on their rights is an attack on our democracy.

Madam President, Did you know that our colleague Hannah Neumann is being slandered? On an Italian media page, an article appeared that portrayed Hannah Neumann as corrupt and involved in Qatari money - a brazen lie intended to damage the integrity of this house. And that can happen to any of us. In painstaking detail, this colleague has succeeded in defending herself and having this article deleted. But until then, it was so widespread that it temporarily came first in search results. We must finally understand: Disinformation is spreading faster than information on the Internet. No well-researched journalistic content can keep up with the lies pushed by algorithms. And if, by the way, we include the European Media Freedom Act in its current form with Article 17, which is a licence for disinformation, also for the content of Hungarian state television - but, because you now need the consent of the national supervisory authority to moderate it - I would like to see where they get it in Hungary or in Italy. That's why I ask you: Vote in favour of amendments which delete or defuse Article 17! Media freedom is a great asset, but it also means that citizens have a right not to be swamped by lies.

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, Half of all AI researchers said in a 2022 survey that there is a 10% chance that AI could lead to the extinction of humanity. Which of you would still get on a plane in such a probability of a crash? Few probably. This is precisely why there are rules on aviation safety so that we can use this technology safely. This is exactly what we do for artificial intelligence. Not only individual high-risk applications are important, but also the procedures that ensure that we can safely use large generative models such as ChatGPT – and certainly also for our democracy. Because what threatens, for example, are disinformation generated on a large scale, which, together with deepfakes, could flood our information landscape. In a short time you can create large amounts of misleading content, which in turn is spread faster on social networks through the algorithms than journalistic quality information. We must also be able to tackle this risk, because without facts there is no democracy. We want to protect this democracy, and for this we are taking an important first step with the new European AI legislation.

Mr President, Commissioner, Madam Fox, ladies and gentlemen! One in ten young people between the ages of 10 and 19 has been the victim of cyberbullying, and one in three knows a victim. This is a mass epidemic that has the most serious consequences for the mental health of children and adolescents, including suicide. Many are responsible for the fight, first and foremost the large digital platforms. They need to change their algorithms, set up easy reporting channels and immediately delete reported cyberbullying content. This is what we are working on here in Europe. On the ground, we need digital education, we need school social work. But above all, hatred and hate speech on the Internet must now finally be outlawed socially, and for this it needs the example of adults and especially of us here, in politics. And it can't be that these days in Germany, the former chairman of the Young Union, i.e. a youth organization, is inciting against the educator of a Catholic day care center on Twitter and releasing her for the right-wing inciters with the contact details to shoot down. This is cyberbullying at the highest level, and this is exactly the example we don't need.

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, The right-wing extremist government in Italy is once again attacking its favorite enemy with sharp rhetoric: Rainbow families and their children. These children are no longer allowed to be registered in Italian cities. And supposedly, it's about enforcing the ban on surrogacy. But the colleagues here on the right side of the house and in Italy ignore that for the vast majority of children born from surrogacy, the new parents are heterosexual couples. Why is the LGBTQ+ community being overwhelmed with hatred? And that shows again: The far-right government in Italy is dismantling the rights of its citizens and discriminating against all groups that do not fit into its authoritarian worldview. But this is not Italy. Many mayors and mayors of Italy – most notably ‘Beppe’ Sala in Milan – are taking a stand against this exclusionary policy. They defend the rights of children, and we in Europe stand by their side!

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, Fortunately, data is not the new oil. Data is the new ground from which innovation can grow, and this innovation needs to be fostered. By now presenting with clear rules who may use which non-personal data and how this data can also interact. But one principle must be clear: Whoever generates the data decides on its use. It cannot be that the data from the use of a smart refrigerator automatically belongs only to the manufacturer. Because for innovative applications and business models, we also need access for start-ups and for research. In the cloud sector, I very much regret that the Committee on the Internal Market has thwarted the Commission's ambitious push to break up the market dominated today by two dominant digital companies in order to give European providers a real chance and to offer our small and medium-sized enterprises more choice. Here we are cementing a dependency from which we in Europe actually want to free ourselves. The proposal is weak – unfortunately – as is the case with all digital policy in terms of climate protection. The increasing volume of data will require large amounts of electricity and resources. That's why it's so important that we think the Green Deal and digital legislation go hand in hand. Because we need smart digitalization to save the planet. I hope that we can still take advantage of the opportunities that now arise in the field of ecodesign and artificial intelligence.

. – Madam President, Madam Minister! The term Cambridge Analytica has already fallen several times and is also known to many. But what did this company actually do? It has created psychological profiles – very accurate data profiles – of people, in order to then influence their voting behaviour, through content tailored to them personally. This can mean, in the most innocuous case, that a political candidate gets photographed with a cat to send an ad to cat lovers, and with a dog to send ads and advertisements to dog lovers. But in the more serious case – and this is what is happening today – it is said that, for example, black voters in the Swing districtsIn 2016, the election-deciding constituencies in the USA were prevented from going to the polls by suggesting to them with Facebook ads that this is not worth it. Today, this is the normal case of political advertising rather than the exception. With the help of such data profiles, a party can also send out very different messages to different groups of voters, for example: ‘Free travel for all – no new laws!” to the elderly and ”Climate protection first!” to younger people. This does not fit with our public democracy, that as a party you no longer have to stand up for what you say. It is our responsibility to communicate clearly and take responsibility for it. Democracy needs a common public, and that is what we are bringing forward with this law. The targeting of political advertising based on very personal characteristics will be restricted and completely banned 60 days before the election. This is an important step towards strong democracy and fair elections.

Madam President, on behalf of my group, I would propose a debate with a different title that actually focuses on the facts that we want to debate here. So, the title would be ‘Commission statement on recent violent attacks against diplomatic personnel in the European Union and counter—measures, including improving detention conditions’. I think this is a lot more accurate description of the facts we want to debate.

Madam President, In Germany, right-wing extremists planned a coup d'état. They wanted to eliminate freedom and democracy by force of arms. These were not madmen and this was not a rag troop, as the colleagues on the right and right-wing extremist side of the house represent here. This was a judge, these were former soldiers, former policemen, educated, influential people who were also trained on the weapon. Yet they have become radicalized, just like many other people who are inundated with lies, disinformation and hatred on social networks every day. Thanks to gigantic data profiles, platforms can also address each and every one of us personally and bombard vulnerable people with far-right messages of doom every second. Internet companies know this very well. In an internal Facebook memo in 2019, it was already said that exactly our own recommendations and the optimization of the algorithms for interaction, i.e. on what we share and comment on, lead to hatred and disinformation on social media being so dominant. But they don't change it because they make a lot of money selling out our democracy. If we want to protect our democracy, we must finally make social networks transparent and democratic.

Madam President, Commissioner, colleagues, every study shows that women work more than men, but they have a lower income – and that’s called the gender pay gap. In the same way, we have a public budget gender pay gap, and in order to measure that gap and to find out what causes this, we agreed in the MFF on finding a methodology to measure the impact of the MFF expenditure on gender equality. But the method the Commission is coming up with now does not draw an accurate picture because it doesn’t take into account any negative impact that major programmes might have. We should be learning the lesson from NextGenerationEU where we have some nice wording on gender equality in the regulation, but we are finding out now that from 70% to 80% of that expenditure goes to one gender and that’s not the gender that has been hardest hit by the COVID crisis – women. The result is that NextGenerationEU might even increase the gender pay gap. So we expect strong action on gender equality in the MFF review, and we expect that from a Commission President who represents European women more than any of her predecessors.

Mr President, Commissioner, colleagues, foreign influence has many faces, and one of the most shameful ones we experienced in this week in this House by people who haven’t understood what it means to be Members of this House. But the most powerful one is still social media, where Russian and Chinese actors deliberately target democracies with misleading content to influence the public opinion. And the Digital Services Act, which we approved in this House, will give us some instruments to tackle this. And social media networks should be preparing but, unfortunately, they are not. Elon Musk just readmitted some super-spreaders of disinformation on Twitter, abolished the disinformation policy of the company on COVID and slashed the workforce by half, in particular focusing on content moderation and integrity experts. Facebook cut its workforce by 13%, and that means an increase in disinformation and a decrease in trustworthy information. And that means that almost half of Ukrainian independent local news publishers are restricted on Facebook. So it’s the brave people of Ukraine, to whom we awarded the Sakharov Prize, that is paying the price for disinformation for foreign influence two times with a hybrid war being waged against them, and with not even being able to access information on digital platforms. This is a scandal and we have to address this.

Madam President, we stand with Ukraine, with our hearts, our minds, and EUR 18 billion. We stand with Ukrainian people, who will never give up fighting because they have seen how Putin’s troops have raped, tortured and murdered innocent civilians. We stand with the Ukrainian teachers, the nurses, the mayors, the technicians and the construction workers who are rebuilding their country every day after every attack. And we stand with the Ukrainian soldiers who save human lives by stopping bombs and retaking occupied territories. We stand with the families, with the children who are in the cold, without heating, without electricity, without water, because Russian bombs target civilian energy infrastructure. And this is happening right now, while we are speaking, in Kyiv. We stand with the Ukrainian people who are fighting every day to protect not only their own country, but our democracy and freedom. And I can tell you, EUR 18 billion is not a high price because the really high price is paid by the Ukrainian people. We stand with Ukraine.

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, The 2023 EU budget has been negotiated under extreme conditions: a brutal Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, which defended not only its own country but also our values – democracy and freedom – and more than deserved our solidarity. At the same time, we are facing an energy price crisis and inflation that is causing Europeans to fear for their existence. And we are facing the accelerating climate catastrophe that will pose even more serious challenges to the global community. We are responding to this with concrete measures, with increased investments in the Eastern and Southern Partnerships, which we support, for example, in the reception of refugees. We are responding with increases for the LIFE programme, which preserves our nature, and with funds for the Facility. Connecting Europe in the field of transport and energy. Europe sets the right priorities, especially during the crisis. But does this mean that we are capable of acting? No. Our room for manoeuvre is too small for that. And that is why we expect the Commission to carry out an ambitious review of the multiannual financial framework.

Madam President, Worldwide and in Europe, one in three women experiences physical or sexual violence, mostly from their own partner. Today, there is digital violence. Women are targeted, attacked, insulted, exposed, isolated, insulted, blackmailed and threatened with digital media in order to silence them. And we have a powerful tool around the world to end violence against women: The Istanbul Convention. And we are working here in the EU on a directive to combat gender-based violence. But unfortunately, the Istanbul Convention today is the target of a global campaign by far-right and right-wing organizations, parties and governments that incite people against the ratification of this convention. And I fear that this is exactly what will happen in this House against the directive on combating gender-based violence. And that is why I would like to ask all the democratic colleagues here and also all the democratic governments, especially in the Council, to make a particularly strong commitment to the protection of women against violence and to a strong directive. Women's rights are human rights. And we won't let them take us.

Mr President! In Italy, a collector of fascism devotionals was elected president of the Senate last week. And this meeting had to be chaired by the 92-year-old Auschwitz survivor Liliana Segre. What a humiliation for this extraordinary woman! How could that have happened? This was made possible by Berlusconis Forza Italia, with the great support of the European Christian Democrats, also from this House. Is that what you want: Right-wing extremist governments that do not miss an opportunity to constantly undermine democracy? Isn't it enough for you what Orbán did in Hungary? In Sweden, an alliance of Christian Democrats, moderates and liberals now rules, which has become dependent on the far-right Sweden Democrats. That is why I also ask the liberals the question: Is that what you want? There is a clear line between parties that profess liberal democracy and those that do not and who, as a Trojan horse, want to abolish this very democracy. Democracy does not die because it is attacked. Democracy dies when the people who call themselves democrats do not defend it.

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I would also like to tell the colleague from the AfD, who did not have enough time to listen here for a few more minutes, that it is not the EU that is funding the war here. Nor is it the EU that is driving up energy prices, which are costing our citizens their sleep. It is Vladimir Putin who triggered this whole crisis with his criminal war of aggression against Ukraine. And I would like to say this to the colleague who belongs to a party whose youth organization joined the youth organization of Putin's party in 2016. And to come here and make such speeches, that's just outrageous! Putin's brutal attack is not just an attack on Ukraine's territorial integrity, but an attack on our democratic and liberal way of life and on a rules-based global order. It shows: Democracies are peaceful and autocracies start wars. And that is why it is so important that we express here our maximum solidarity with Ukraine, including with this budget, and, of course, support the countries inside and outside Europe that suffer particularly from the consequences. And that is why with this budget we are also financing the AMIF programme for countries hosting refugees, and we have also increased it, but of course we have also increased funding for humanitarian aid. But the crimes in Ukraine must not let us forget that the biggest crisis on our planet is progressing unstoppably, and that is the climate and biodiversity crisis. The floods in Pakistan, as well as the drought in Europe, have shown the serious impact this crisis is already having on us humans today, how quickly entire systems are collapsing. Just think of the nuclear power plants in France, some of which can no longer be cooled due to a lack of water. And that is why it is good that we are increasing funding here for the transition to clean energy, for the circular economy, for climate change mitigation, and also for the LIFE programme and biodiversity. Preserving biodiversity is not about the survival of a single beautiful butterfly. It is about safeguarding the economic foundations for future generations. We need to set the course for this here in Europe. We'd have to do more, but that's going in the right direction.

Mr President, Commissioner, colleagues, the Dutch childcare benefit scandal epitomises what the former UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, calls a digital welfare dystopia. It specifically targets poorer citizens rather than rich people evading taxes, where in case of fraud, the sums to recover would be much higher. The system is racist. There is no simple redress and the system targets people who can’t afford to – or are unlikely to – go to court. The principle of innocent until proven guilty is overturned. Innocent people are treated like criminals. Fundamental principles of the rule of law are overturned. Artificial intelligence systems targeting people need very, very strong safeguards and these safeguards are currently not provided by the AI Act. And here we need to change, we need to improve the AI Act. And furthermore, public administrations should support low-income citizens rather than harassing them and giving millions to big-tech companies to build what Virginia Eubanks calls The Digital Poorhouse.

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen! Putin is waging his war against democracy on several fronts: in Ukraine with crimes against people in flesh and blood, in the rest of the world with propaganda and lies. And while Putin has to face defeat after defeat on the Ukrainian front, his propaganda war on the Internet is very successful, because he has two great allies. The first are right-wing extremist politicians and networks in Europe, in the USA, who systematically take up the propaganda lies from Russian troll factories and spread them among us. And the second ally is the social networks themselves, a breeding ground for lies and propaganda. Their greed for our attention, where they make a lot of money from advertising – because that is behind it – comes at the expense of the truth. Their algorithms disseminate racy content faster than any fact and with surgical precision thanks to comprehensive data profiles. We must uncover and abolish these hidden enemies of democracy. To this end, the Digital Services Act is a very sharp sword that the European Commission and the Member States must now use.

Mr President, the digital services act (DSA) is a landmark legislation with the potential to become a global standard. While it is not perfect, it is still revolutionary. Why is that so? First of all, it breaks with the paradigm of inevitability, and it puts democracy over private, monopolistic interests, because until now there was a feeling that big tech was too powerful to regulate, and now we make it clear that democracies set the rules. Secondly, it makes the Internet a better place without interfering with freedom of expression. The DSA holds platforms accountable for what they do and not for what their users think or write in their posts. And finally, it tackles the information asymmetry. Today, platforms know everything about us because they collect our data. But the little we know, we learned from whistle-blowers, like Frances Haugen. And this is why the risk assessment and the access to the data of the platforms for independent researchers, also from civil society organisations, is so important because they will provide us with the evidence we need to regulate well. And they will be able to tell the stories about how social networks influence our public opinion, our politics, or the health of our children. Europe and the world deserve a free Internet where democracy counts more than private profits. The DSA is a first, but giant, step in that direction.

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen! Artificial intelligence is seen by many, including myself, in many areas as a promise for a better future. But without clear rules, we risk a "back-in-the-future" effect, like Marty, the film hero who starts ambitiously into the future with his future machine in 1985 and then ends up in 1955. And this is what we are experiencing today: For example, if Apple Pay the credit line of the man with the same creditworthiness and income is 20 times larger than that of his wife. This has nothing to do with intelligence, innovation or progress, because this is artificial intelligence without smart rules, a technology that is based on data from the past and therefore does not carry us into the future by itself. And in order for it to really develop its potential, we need clear rules, clear ex-ante rules against discrimination. This means high-quality data sets, mixed teams and, above all, verifiability. And that's why he has to AI-ActThe current regulation on the table is making a quantum leap for artificial intelligence. It is not enough to have a product certification or product safety regulation. What we need is a true law to implement fundamental rights in the age of artificial intelligence. And this can also be a competitive advantage for European companies, because the companies, the tech giants that currently dominate the market, cannot. And what is also remarkable about this report is the recognition that the business of online advertising based on data profiles is the basis for the market dominance of the big big tech companies – the same companies we are currently working with in the market. DSA and DMA regulation – also in the field of artificial intelligence. And I hope that the European Union will not sell out the soil – because the data is also the soil on which the digital economy thrives and grows – but will finally order it itself.

Madam President, fortunately data is not the new oil, because the planet really couldn’t support that. The IPPC has just reminded us that we only have three years to drastically reduce our CO2 emissions. Data is a lot better. It is the new soil from which wonderful trees can grow. And that means data is the source for climate-friendly urban transport planning or breakthroughs in medical research, but also for very profitable business models. And this is why it is so important that we now establish rules to ensure that our non-personal data can be used for the common good and does not fall prey to a handful of dominant players, as is the case for personal data today. With the Data Governance Act, we prevent data monopolies, making sure that service providers shall remain neutral and may not use the data for any other purpose, that intermediation services cannot be tied to other services, such as cloud storage or business analytics, and that public data can only be used exclusively for one year. Let’s make sure that many beautiful trees can grow from this wonderful soil.

Honourable Member! It is not a question of individual examples that I have to list here. The point is that if there is no system of separation of powers in a state, if the government itself controls who the judges are who watch over corruption, who watch over wrong spending of funds, then there is no independent scrutiny. Then it is also very difficult to teach these examples at all, because it is no longer possible to identify them at all without independent prosecutors and without an independent judiciary. This is the foundation of democracy that we stand for here. I think that will also benefit the Polish people.