Speeches

Madam President, dear Commissioner, colleagues, let me first establish some basic truths. The State of Israel has a right to exist, it has the right to defend itself, but Netanyahu does not equal the entire Israel. Palestinian children, men and women have the right to survive, to live, to thrive in peace and in dignity. Hamas does not equal the entire Palestine. Human rights is not a cake. One people’s human rights does not mean that other peoples have to die. The ICJ, the world’s highest judicial authority, has imposed provisional measures on the State of Israel not once but twice. Measures that the State of Israel is obliged to follow. This House is not a court, but we can all see it. The ICJ has seen it. What is the world doing about it? What are we doing about it? If we have any morals left, or ethics, or even the slightest piece of empathy, the smallest thing that we can ask for and demand is a ceasefire, now.

Madam President, just a point of order. I want to make you aware of the statement given by my colleague calling Israel ‘a cancer in the Middle East’. I would like you to investigate this as an anti-Semitic speech, because I, myself, who is from the region, do not accept that kind of speech towards Israel.

Mr President, thank you very much. Commissioner, thank you very much. Colleagues! Being yourself is a human right. Yet people with disabilities are prevented from doing just that. I see it in politics. I see it in traffic. I see it in this house, in schools, in universities, in workplaces. We have built inaccessibility into our societies, and we have started from the majority norm, and now is the time to roll back this terrible development. Therefore, the disability card is needed, but it is not enough. There are parties in Sweden that refuse to recognise the equal right and value of all people, such as the Sweden Democrats, who consistently vote against all this kind of legislation here in the European Parliament. There are parties at home in Sweden that are currently in power and that believe that just such efforts cost too much, it is a cost issue. But we in the Center Party, we refuse to give in, and we will keep the limit; keep the limit of the right to function, keep the limit of freedom, keep the limit of inclusion of all in democracy. Everyone should have a chance at an independent life. Because we have to keep the limit. This is a first step, but the fight for everyone's equal right and value, the fight for accessibility, is far from over.

Madam President, thank you very much. Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen. If you leave 20 minutes from this house, you can buy a woman’s body – free to rape without any consequences. We are thus 20 minutes away from misery where women, girls and boys are exploited, used and used as a throwaway in a store. I hope you're uncomfortable with this thought, because that's the feeling we're going to carry with us. Because now we have the chance to send a signal to the whole EU that buying sex is never acceptable. I hope that you, colleagues, take on the responsibility of being on the side of every woman, girl and boy who is and has been a victim of human trafficking and prostitution. There are no words to describe the importance of the EU taking its responsibility and banning the purchase of sex and destroying this business model based on the preferences of the brothel lords. And to you men who buy sex: Your days as users of women’s bodies are numbered, you who, through your economic power, believe that it is okay to rape a woman’s body – for no body should be for sale. No one should have to go through the psychological and physical terror that your brothels and trafficking involve.

Madam President, thank you. Allow me to give a big thank you to this House and to you personally on behalf of the Swedish people for always standing up for the hostages from Sweden, taken illegally by the Islamic Republic of Iran. And we have now taken also an initiative and I would like to kindly ask you to participate in signing a request and a demand to the Islamic Republic of Iran to immediately release both Johan Floderus but also all EU citizens who are held illegally and arbitrarily in Iran at the moment, and to demand from Iran to stop its hostage diplomacy. The letter will be outside the plenary room here, and I really kindly ask you to take just a few minutes of your time and sign your name. Side by side, together, we stand for our European citizens, no matter where they are, if they are in the hands of a terrorist regime.

Madam President, thank you very much. Commissioners, ladies and gentlemen. I was forced to flee to my beloved Sweden as an unaccompanied refugee when I was 15 years old. There were no legal ways in. Today, there are no legal pathways to safety. We cannot leave this issue in the hands of the barbed wire right who want a closed Europe without heart or respect for international law. Nor can we leave this issue in the hands of the dreamy left who would rather see chaos and no legislation for this first step. Nor can we leave this issue in the hands of smugglers and criminal networks. This is a first step, a first step for a common European, sustainable, legally secure, humane refugee, migration and asylum policy. This is a first step towards solidarity between our countries. It is together and only together that we can create better protection for people fleeing oppression and war. And it is only together that we can stand ready for the next refugee crisis and keep the border with the criminal smugglers of people.

Madam President, it is not about the agenda of today, but rather about the day: today marks the Eid of the many European Muslims that are celebrating. I just wanted to take this opportunity and send from this House of democracy to all European citizens that we do share this day with them and wish them Eid Mubarak on behalf of Parliament, the representatives of all people of the EU.

Mr President, thank you very much. I cannot believe that, in 2024, I am standing here in the European Parliament, trying once again to defend the right of women to decide over their own bodies, in the only democracy in the world, where human rights and the rule of law should prevail for all. Yet men in different countries, conservative men in the EU, imagine that they have the right to decide over women's bodies. I can't believe it – country after country they make it harder. In Germany, in Romania, in Slovakia, in Slovenia, they make it harder for women to have abortions, to control their bodies. Not to mention Malta, which has a total ban on abortion. You're just making it unsafe for women to end an unwanted pregnancy. You send them straight into disease, into death. That's what you do when you make access to safe and legal abortion impossible. It is time to enshrine the right to abortion in the Swedish constitution and in the EU's constitutionally protected human rights. Nothing else is good enough. Everyone has control over their own bodies, and so do women.

Mr President, it’s not just bombs that are killing children in Palestine. Mass starvation is a silent killer in Gaza. Premature babies die of malnutrition, newborn babies die because their mothers are too dehydrated to feed them, and there is no baby formula. Children die because their bodies start to break down due to lack of nutrition and clean water. Pregnant women die because they can no longer support two lives in one body. How can we let this go on? Because we are letting this go on, and on, and on – for five months now. This is not starvation caused by a natural disaster or an order by God. This is mass starvation used as a weapon of war. This this action must be stopped! International law demands it: an immediate ceasefire! Let the aid enter Gaza. It is as simple as that. It all comes down to what you want to do: either we save the lives now, or we keep using starvation as a weapon in the war.

Mr President, there are no more words to speak about what is going on in Gaza. There are no more laws to break. There are no more appeals that we can do to what’s going on. The hypocrisy is obvious. Our collective humane has failed. We said that we won’t fail, but we are failing again. Human rights have a skin colour, and the darker you are, the less human rights you have. We have been tried to be silenced. They have tried to make us look like anti-Semites. They have tried to make us look like we don’t care about the safety of the Israeli people. All of that still to make it possible to kill more Palestinians, unfortunately.

–Thank you so much for taking this blue-card, colleague Mandl. I have a question for you. You said that Israel was the only rule of law state in the MENA region, thus making it clear that Israel has to follow international regulation and international law. Where is it, your breaking point? How many more Palestinians have to be killed? What other atrocities can Israel do? Where is your personal breaking point to see that what is going on is not any more self-defence? It is something else. What is your breaking point, Mr Mandl? How many more Palestinians have to die?

Mr President, Mohsen Shekari, 22; Majidreza Rahnavard, 23; Mohammad Mehdi Karami, 21; Seyyed Mohammad Hosseini, 39; Majid Kazemi, 30: the list is very long of all the young people that have been put to death. These are the names of the heroes. Heroes who stood up though on the other side there were guns pointed at them. These are the names of the heroes who spoke up, though on the other side there was the terrorist IRGC. These lives were taken. Their dreams, hopes, futures, their light, they were taken. They were murdered by a terrorist regime. And still, though these young people are being executed, our governments cannot put the IRGC on the EU terrorist list. We owe it to these young lives and to all the women protesters ˗ Balochis, Azeris, Persians, Kurdish. We owe it to Jina Mahsa Amini. Put the IRGC on the terrorist list. Jin, Jiyan, Azadi: Woman, Life, Freedom.

Madam President, dear Commissioner, dear colleagues, let me give you some pictures from Europe today. The Swedish party leader used artificial intelligence to address the Muslim and Arabic-speaking community in Sweden, asking them basically to leave Sweden if they do not totally give up on their culture and religion. And the Chair of the Justice Committee in the Swedish Parliament wants to forbid Islamic symbols such as half-moons and minarets because they scare him. And another example, the Alternative für Deutschland wants to put forward a proposal that would make it possible to mass deport Muslims, Arab Africans. Thousands of Germans went to the streets to demonstrate how the German society is united against racism and fascism, but when people holding the Palestinian flag wanted to participate in the rally, they were spitted on, kicked on, beaten, not allowed to participate. The same very people that AfD wants to mass-deport. How ironic is that, don’t you think? And this House reacts very differently when the oppressor is a black person, or a Muslim or an Arab, while when the victim is Muslim or Arab, that’s a totally different reaction you get from this house. When 10 000 children are killed in three months, it’s called the right to self-defence. When hospitals and schools overcrowded with refugees are bombed, international law is thrown out the window. It’s time to check ourselves. Because if ... (The President cut off the speaker)

Mr President, in an average school in Sweden, there are around 200 children. If Sweden were Gaza one school, full of children would be killed every other day. One school full of children would be bombed by the Israeli occupation forces to death every day. Since the Israeli war against Gaza, over 10 000 children have died. Many more are still missing, buried under collapsed buildings. Thousands have been seriously injured. More than 1000 children have lost their legs. If this is not a reason to lay down every damn weapon in this conflict, then this world has gone completely mad! In December, I visited the Rafah Crossing between Gaza and Egypt, and there I saw humanitarian help desperately needed in Gaza, but not reaching the people who are suffering and starving. Suffering primarily because of Israeli bombs. Starving mainly because of the Israeli blockade. Without a ceasefire, this catastrophe will just go on and on and more children will be killed. I call upon the EU to demand an immediate ceasefire, so our humanitarian aid can actually reach, to respect any decision made by the International Court of Justice regarding the ongoing violence in Gaza, to raise our voices and open our eyes, to be the defendant to the end of every child’s right to life.

I was just wondering, did you really mean that the civilians in Gaza have anywhere safe to go when bombs are falling on them? Is that what you are saying? And did you also mean that the Palestinians are not worthy of our own state? Is that what you are saying? Because if that’s what you’re saying, you need to explain that really, really clear here in this Chamber because that would not mean that you see all people’s lives equally.

Mr President, Mr Commissioner, let’s not choose sides. Let’s choose principles, always principles first and foremost. Let us choose international law. Let us choose the humanitarian law. Let us choose democracy and democratic values and rule of law. When I look at Binyamin Netanyahu, I see how his government, his policies have been for years feeding the movement towards Hamas. When I look at Hamas, I see how they have been using civilians as shields. When I look at us as Europeans in this House, when I look at the US, I see how we justify the killing of innocent civilians, children in the thousands in overcrowded refugee camps. Talking about that, there is another people’s right, to defend themselves. Let us not believe in that narrative that the Israelis’ safety is built upon Palestinian blood, because it is not. It is only together. It is absurd and shameful, and shameful that we are living in a time where the word ‘ceasefire’ has become dirty and controversial. Let us stop fighting over the words. Let us use all our tools to stop the fighting and start the peace negotiations. Let us get personally invested in that and see to a two-state solution where both Palestinians and Israelis are safe living … (The President cut off the speaker.)

Colleagues, it has been more than one year since I cut my hair here in this very Plenary in protest, where the EU did not show the same courage as the Iranian women who were shouting on the streets on the top of their lungs, ‘Woman, life, freedom.’ (The speaker used a slogan in a non-EU language.) Still to this very day, the regime of the mullahs in Tehran are still arresting, arbitrarily detaining, executing everyone who stands against their oppression. The last known victim is 16-year-old Armita, a young girl who took her last breath while in coma after being beaten by the morality police. At her funeral, the human rights advocate Nasrin Sotoudeh was arrested – alongside with her sister in the fight, Nobel Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi – and it has not stopped there at all. It also is holding EU citizens as hostages. The latest known victim that we know is the Swedish citizen Johan Floderus. We, the European Parliament demand to list the IRGC on the EU terrorist list. We demand the unconditional release of all arbitrary detainees, women’s rights defenders and all EU citizens, like Johan Floderus, and we demand to stop all executions in Iran.

Mr President, allow me to start by apologising to the children of Gaza on our disappointing positions so far. We have let them down. We have let their lives be taken away from them and not defended their equal right to life. And let me thank also Mr Borrell for finally raising his voice in a just way, standing up for all humans’ human rights, because something that has been very clear and strongly shown is that we have applied double standards when it comes to implementing human rights for all. The people of Gaza, the Palestinians have been treated with double standards, and that is just a fact. Yesterday I listened to the Israeli former Ambassador, Élie Barnavi, and he said that we have to show courage. That means that we have to now start to force both sides into the peace negotiations. We have to have a Marshall Plan for Gaza, and we have to recognise the state of Palestine and bring on the... (The President cut off the speaker)

Madam President, thank you very much. Commissioner, thank you very much. It's hard to explain to my three children what the world is doing right now. The images of all violence stick to the retina and it is difficult to sleep. But there is also Europe, a beacon of hope. There is also the EU; When we are united, we can change the world forever. We can leave footprints, become globally relevant, together. Freedom is not free. Now is the time to drop the prestige, because the unity between us, it is the one that makes us relevant and makes us a global player, where Europe is the last defender of democracy, freedom and openness, where Europe is a great power. In my Europe, there is no one alone; in my Europe alone is not strong. In my Europe, leaders are not waving their veto power to threaten support for Ukraine. In my Europe, EU leaders don't go to China to attend conferences with the Taliban or cuddle with their Sugar Daddy Vladimir Putin. Yes, I'm talking about you, Viktor Orbán. Your days where you can use your veto to block our support for Ukraine are now numbered. Freedom is not free. Alone is not strong. Only together can we be a global player that inspires respect. Only together can we be the European Union as a great power.

Madam President, thank you very much. When thousands of people gather in a city for a football game – it is a time of joy. Yesterday was a time of sadness. Two of the Swedish fans who were in Brussels to watch the football game against Belgium will not come home. A terrorist took their lives just because they wore Swedish national team shirts. Exactly the same shirts that I usually buy in child size for my football-loving children, when they cheer with endless joy and enthusiasm for their favorite national team – the Swedish national team. I would like from all over Sweden to thank the Belgian Government and the people who took care of our citizens, protected them and comforted them yesterday. Alone is not strong. We stand together. Terrorism cannot take our freedom, our security, our right to speak, to think, to sing football songs, to walk together in the streets wearing our blue-yellow colours. Our thoughts go out to the victims and their families.

Mr President, thank you very much. Like vultures, right-wing populists are waiting for us to fail. In every tragic fatal accident in the Mediterranean, on trains along our borders, they see their chance to put an end to the EU's migration pact. They've even declared a cultural war against anyone who doesn't look like them. They are talking in big words about defending European civilisation. They wait like vultures and sit there for free Europe to die so that they can throw themselves over our Union, reintroduce border controls, lay barbed wire in the valleys. They are even prepared to pay other countries' coast guards to sink migrant boats, because their wet dream is walls on our shores. Because their dream society is based on suspicion of each other, where, if you do not have the same origin as them, you are automatically a criminal. We in Renew and the Centre Party are fighting for the survival of open Europe against barbed wire, against walls, against populists and extremists. In Europe, there are no cemeteries. My Europe also includes me who came as an unaccompanied refugee, both in the village team in Sweden in the Swedish countryside and here in the plenary session in Strasbourg. Parliament has delivered. The Commission has delivered. Now it is time for the Council to deliver and stop fattening the vultures who sit here and build barbed wire around Europe.

Madam President, Madam Commissioner, esteemed colleagues, this Union defends democracy. Let that be heard. When authoritarian leaders within our Union are silencing the voices of those who oppose them, we will push back. When disinformation sows its dark seeds online or offline, we will shut them down. When journalists are attacked, spied on or silenced or prosecuted, we will protect them. When politicians can’t keep their hands off the free media, we will slap their fingers. When free speech is threatened or silenced, we will slam a big-ass law on the European table because this Union protects democracy. Let that be heard.

Mr President, Mr Commissioner, (The speaker used a slogan in a non-EU language) women, life, freedom, three words that have been shaking the world since the killing, the murder of Jina Mahsa Amini. And the killings have continued, the arrests have continued, the executions have continued, and all that in the name of God. Let it be known that there will be no God, there will be no history book, there will be no Iranian, be it Farsi, Kurdi, Baluchi, Arab, Azeri that will ever forgive this murderous regime. And this, Mr Borrell, has been rewarded by the governments of the EU with negotiations, negotiations with the murderous regime that has been holding its own citizens hostages for the last 44 years, and now even keeping EU citizens hostages, like the Swedish diplomat, Johan Floderus. Stop the mumbling. Stop the press releases. It is time to act. It is time to put the IRGC on the EU terrorist list. It is time to freeze their assets, to confiscate their money. It is time to act, and it’s time to show a real stand of solidarity with the women of Iran. Let us stand with the women of Iran. (The speaker used a slogan in a non-EU language) Freedom! Freedom! Freedom for all Iran!

Madam President, my dream is for Europe to be a real northern star for democracy, a light that shines so brightly for the whole world to see that it is possible to build a Union of democracy that is built on freedoms, that is built on everyone’s equal value. My dream is for Europe to step onto the global stage and finally show that human rights, transparency, democracy, the rule of law matter everywhere, and not only in the EU. I am so proud to represent the people in our House of European democracy, and I know that for us to properly take on the global moral compass, we have to start at home. Yes, that means fighting illiberalism, but also to protect our democracy in action in this House from foreign interference, punish officials and staff when they cross over to the dark side, strong rules on transparency for Members of Parliament and for lobbyists. Let’s not give anyone an excuse to question our commitment, the EU commitment to the rule of law. My dream is a Europe that is an example for the whole world. Now let’s make sure that northern star is shining so brightly for the whole world to see!