What Thomas spoke about.

14

Dec

2022

DE Speech

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Tackle the cost of living crisis: increase pay, tax profits, stop speculation (topical debate)

Madam President, esteemed Commission! iPES Food estimates that 20-40% of the increase in food prices is due to speculation. Yesterday we had here the Slovenian Prime Minister, formerly a very successful energy trader, who clearly told us here: A good part of energy prices is due to speculation. He knows what he's talking about. We currently have the opportunity to bring about improvements in the r…

13

Dec

2022

EN Speech

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This is Europe - Debate with the Prime Minister of Slovenia, Robert Golob (debate)

Mr President, dear Commissioner, dear Prime Minister Robert Golob. First, a short comment to our Conservative colleagues. Geographically, Slovenia is an Alpine republic, and the former speaker from your party, it was your government leaving a devastated health care system to your successor. So don’t blame the new government for your failures. But now, coming to my actual speech, thank you so much …

12

Dec

2022

EN Speech

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A long-term vision for the EU's rural areas (debate)

Madam President, Commissioner, indeed, we have to face reality. We have rural areas where families leave the rural areas because there’s a lack of public transport, there’s a lack of internet connectivity to work from home, there’s a lack of kindergartens, there’s a lack of schools, there’s a lack of retailers. And we see less and less public officers or police stations. There are more and more fa…

23

Nov

2022

DE Speech

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Protection of livestock farming and large carnivores in Europe (debate)

Mr President, Commissioner! First of all: Wolves don't eat your grandmother, and wolves don't eat your children on the way to the school bus. This is scaremongering, which comes from parts of the ÖVP, which comes from parts of the Bauernbund. And what does the Austrian Farmers' Federation mean by wolf-free zones? Do we want to exterminate the wolf again in Austria? I think these contributions are …

9

Nov

2022

EN Speech

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Communication on ensuring availability and affordability of fertilisers (debate)

Madam President, I wish to welcome the Commissioner here to the plenary. My colleague Dorfmann has already said it: we’re having fertilizer companies across the European Union that are having windfall profits, enormous profits, as we have not seen before. So why should we now use taxpayers’ money to support these companies? Luckily, our farmers had production prices for their goods which were subs…

19

Oct

2022

DE Speech

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Global food security as follow-up to the G20 Agriculture Ministers meeting (debate)

Mr President, dear Commission, dear Council! If a single producer fails in the world food system, as Ukraine has at least partially failed, then the entire global food system will be in distress. You can see what kind of feet this is on. The majority of global outages are due to climate change, even this year in Europe. We have a decline in grain production due to drought, which is climate change-…

19

Oct

2022

EN Speech

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EU-Western Balkans relations in light of the new enlargement package (debate)

Madam President, Commissioner, Western Balkans is geographically clearly Europe. It is also culturally clearly Europe. Some of us have been working a lot in the past years to get this region closer to the European Union but, meanwhile, through the geostrategic events that we see, I think a majority of the House has understood the urgency of bringing this region into the European Union. But what we…

6

Oct

2022

DE Speech

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The urgent need for an EU strategy on fertilisers to ensure food security in Europe (debate)

Mr President, Commissioner! What kind of scaremongering is this? We have a problem with food supply in the EU? Not at all! 60% of the grain we produce goes to livestock feed, another 20% goes to the production of fuels. We have no problem with food safety in the European Union. By the way, with agroecological and biological methods, we produce wonderful foods without being dependent on artificial …

5

Oct

2022

EN Speech

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Countering the anti-European and anti-Ukrainian propaganda of Putin’s European cronies (topical debate)

Mr President, Commissioner, let me start with a call. We all know what happens if Conservatives help fascists into power. I urge you, Conservatives, to learn from history, do not enable a post—fascist and Putin—friendly government in Italy. Yes, it’s the extreme right party, several extreme right parties, where we know that they have ties to Russia, where we know there were financial implications,…

4

Oct

2022

EN Speech

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Radio Equipment Directive: common charger for electronic devices (debate)

Madam President, Commissioner, we all know the cable spaghetti creeping through our bags. While they are very often consisting of a lot of different chargers, this is not just a waste of money, it’s also a waste of raw materials and it’s creating piles of electronic waste. We tried to actually regulate that much earlier already in 2009. But whenever we try to regulate something, we see industry co…

12

Sep

2022

DE Speech

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New EU Forest Strategy for 2030 – Sustainable Forest Management in Europe (debate)

Mr President, Commissioner! First of all, I would like to thank Mrs Müller and the other colleagues for their constructive cooperation. Indeed, the report recognises the problems we have. He acknowledges that we continue to have a problem with clear-cutting, that forests become CO2 emission sources instead of —lowering, that we have a problem with water storage capacity, that we add to the soil wi…

5

Jul

2022

DE Speech

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Objection pursuant to Rule 111(3): Amending the Taxonomy Climate Delegated Act and the Taxonomy Disclosures Delegated Act (debate)

Mr President, Commissioner! I appeal to all the unconvinced Liberal and Conservative Members here in the House: Tomorrow we have a unique opportunity to prevent gas and nuclear in the taxonomy here. Every child today knows that gas is a fossil fuel and thus causes the climate crisis and is certainly not a solution. The criteria for gas are essentially Russian gas. And the blackmailability and ener…

22

Jun

2022

EN Speech

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2021 Report on Montenegro (debate)

Madam President, Commissioner, with Montenegro we have a country that is a real jewel, that has a fantastic natural and cultural heritage, and we have a country that has a minority government, and this in Balkan regions. I think this is very exceptional. But having a minority government that is counting on such a broad support in the Skupština, the local parliament, is really exceptional. And what…

9

Jun

2022

EN Speech

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Illegal logging in the EU (debate)

Mr President, Commissioner, in many EU countries we are having a problem with illegal logging. I’ve witnessed it in Estonia, in Slovakia, in Poland, in Spain, in Romania and other countries. But let me focus on Romania. While the Environmental Commission is compiling an enormous amount of evidence towards an infringement procedure, there is ongoing illegal logging in Romania happening, concretely …

7

Jun

2022

DE Speech

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Binding annual greenhouse gas emission reductions by Member States (Effort Sharing Regulation) - Land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF) - CO2 emission standards for cars and vans (joint debate – Fit for 55 (part 2))

Mr President, Commissioner, Minister! We remember: Global warming threatens our environment, it threatens our economic performance, it threatens our health, and it threatens the living conditions of our future generations. And at the same time, we see massive lobbying here in the house, on the part of industry, on the part of the agricultural, forestry and chemical industries, which is trying by a…

6

Jun

2022

EN Speech

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The EEAS’s Climate Change and Defence Roadmap (debate)

Mr President, Commissioner, indeed our colleagues from the far right did not do their homework, because Mr so-called like Mr Zimniok obviously didn’t read the report, because what are we talking about there? It’s a compromised report with EPP, with social democrats, with liberals. The capabilities of actual military activity, where needed, are not impacted by that report. We’re basically talking a…

6

Jun

2022

EN Speech

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The EEAS’s Climate Change and Defence Roadmap (debate)

Mr President, Commissioner, dear colleagues. First of all, I want to thank all the shadow rapporteurs for the very constructive and compromising way that we were building this file. We were building it before the happenings in Ukraine. And even if the focus has shifted at the moment on security issues that result from the illegal and criminal and inhumane invasion of Putin’s troops into Ukraine, t…

18

May

2022

EN Speech

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2021 Report on Albania (debate)

Mr President, colleagues, first of all, I want to thank our rapporteur, Isabel Santos, and our shadow rapporteurs for holding a very inclusive process when it came to the compromise sessions that we had so that actually we compromised on all points. There is just one minor point on the Vlora airport construction and the reduction of an environmentally protected area, but these concerns we can rais…

3

May

2022

EN Speech

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Question Time (Commission) Europe’s Energy Autonomy: The strategic importance of renewables and energy interconnections and efficiency

Thank you, Commissioner, for sharing these plans with us. I would just urge you to be louder in communicating those. I think it is a very crucial moment, and we can count on the solidarity and the cooperation of our citizens. So please speak out loud on energy savings.…

3

May

2022

EN Speech

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Question Time (Commission) Europe’s Energy Autonomy: The strategic importance of renewables and energy interconnections and efficiency

Thank you, Commissioner, for coming here to debate with us. It is more than clear that we have to substitute fossil fuels as much as we can through renewables. But my very concrete question is: are you intending to launch a call to European citizens and companies that can afford it to spare energy, to spare the use of gas, to reduce the consumption of oil for the sake of reducing energy prices for…

6

Apr

2022

EN Speech

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Cooperation and similarities between the Putin regime and extreme right and separatist movements in Europe (topical debate)

Madam President, the furious and brutal war that we see that Putin’s Russia holds against Ukraine shows what Putin considers his biggest enemy: it’s democracy, it’s media freedom, it’s civil liberties, it’s our European values. And that’s the reason why he’s running that kind of brutal war crimes against his own brother and sister peoples in Ukraine. But not just that. He’s fuelling fake news. He’…

8

Mar

2022

EN Speech

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The situation in Bosnia Herzegovina (continuation of debate)

Mr President, Commissioner Várhelyi, first of all, I want to thank you for taking this step on putting a conditionality on further funding within Republika Srpska. Many of us have asked for that for quite a while, but as it is better late than never, it’s important to take that step now that it has become clear that we cannot expect any constructive moves at the moment and where there is clear evi…

8

Mar

2022

DE Speech

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Foreign interference in all democratic processes in the EU (debate)

Madam President, We are talking about Russia's electoral influence here within the European Union. And then we should talk about the fact that we don't have to look so far into the distance. We have our colleagues sitting here in the house. What about Salvini's Lega and Mr Gianluca Savoini's Lombardy-Russia Association, which was founded in 2014, and the sound recordings suggesting that they have …

16

Feb

2022

DE Speech

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EU-Russia relations, European security and Russia’s military threat against Ukraine (debate)

Madam President, Commissioner! Are we aware that every year we finance Putin's regime with tens of billions of euros through our gas purchases, indirectly co-financing the military build-up on the Ukrainian border? Anyone who does not understand today that gas is not only a climate policy problem, but also a security policy problem, has – I think – not done his homework. The Commission has recogni…

15

Feb

2022

EN Speech

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Implementation of the common foreign and security policy – annual report 2021 - Implementation of the common security and defence policy – annual report 2021 (debate)

Madam President, I’m reflecting on the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) report by Madame Loiseau, and it states – rightly so – that Europe is spending nearly EUR 400 billion on defence and military equipment. We’re the second-biggest global spender, and this spending is not reflected in our position on the negotiating table at all! The report even calls for extended expenditure of 2% of G…