What Jan-Christoph spoke about.

10 Sep

2025

FR Speech

Case of Abdoul Aziz Goma, arbitrarily detained in Togo

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Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, today we are talking about the case of Abdul Aziz Goma, an Irish citizen arbitrarily detained in Togo since 2018. After six years of inhumane pre-trial detention, he was sentenced in an expeditious trial, which lasted only one day, to ten years in prison: a flagrant violation of international law. This is also the view of the UN Working Group on Ar…

10 Sep

2025

EN Speech

Case of Victoire Ingabire in Rwanda

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Mr President, Commissioner, colleagues, today we must speak for Victoire Ingabire, a woman whose only crime is demanding peaceful democracy in Rwanda. She is the opposition leader and a laureate of the 2024 Liberal International Prize for Freedom. On 19 June, Victoire was unlawfully re-arrested in Kigali. She is now held in solitary confinement, denied contact with her family and international law…

10 Sep

2025

DE Speech

Serious threats to aviation and maritime transport from Global Navigation Satellite System interference: urgent need to build resilience against spoofing and jamming (debate)

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Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, Aviation is a strategic sector in Europe and one of the backbones of our economy. Many people fly, connect cities in Europe, and since 2018/2019 navigation data has become more and more disruptive – navigation data is disrupted by simple attempts to disrupt radio signals. But now things are getting worse, because Russia in particular is trying t…

10 Sep

2025

DE Speech

Package travel and linked travel arrangements: make the protection of travellers more effective and simplify and clarify certain aspects (debate)

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Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, As draftsman of the opinion of the Committee on Transport and Tourism on the Package Travel Directive, I would first of all like to say that for us consumer protection was the highest objective. It must be clear to the consumer when he is booking a package and when he is not booking a package. This is extremely important, because sometimes customer…

8 Sep

2025

DE Speech

Circularity requirements for vehicle design and management of end-of-life vehicles (debate)

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Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, This end-of-life car regulation is a super example of why it is so important that we as a Parliament are deeply involved in the legislation here at the European level. There was much, much excitement because the Commission put forward an unfortunate, bureaucratic, unrealistic proposal. Not that you misunderstand me: Circular economy is very importa…

9 Jul

2025

DE Speech

Democratic Republic of the Congo-Rwanda peace deal agreement (debate)

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Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Glad the war is over. It is good that there is an end to the operation of the M23 militias from Rwanda in the Congo. It is good that Rwanda stops plundering Congo's resources. All right, then? No. In Rwanda, the opposition continues to be suppressed. We do not have freedom of expression in Rwanda. And I would like to point out that on June 19, the opposition lea…

18 Jun

2025

DE Speech

Rise in violence and the deepening humanitarian crisis in South Sudan (debate)

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Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, Sudan is a crisis-ridden country, one of the poorest countries in the world, and since the independence of South Sudan, after a short period of calm, there has actually been only a very, very bad humanitarian situation there. We must bear in mind that people are being displaced, that people are starving and that there is no access for aid organisations to the…

17 Jun

2025

DE Speech

Latest developments on the revision of the air passenger rights and airline liability regulations (debate)

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Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, It took 12 years for Member States to finally respond to what the Commission presented in 2013. And what comes out of it? Instead of strengthening passenger rights, passenger rights are being weakened. Instead of being compensated after three hours of delay within a European flight, it should only be the case after four hours in the future. This attack on pas…

17 Jun

2025

DE Speech

EU framework conditions for competitive, efficient and sustainable public transport services at all levels (debate)

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Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner, of course, local public transport is the most widely used means of getting people from A to B. Especially for people who go to work every day, this is, so to speak, the means of choice. You are right that it is actually necessary to decide on the spot how exactly the structures are set up. It is good that the European Union – and you have promised …

7 May

2025

EN Speech

Arrest and risk of execution of Tundu Lissu, Chair of Chadema, the main opposition party in Tanzania

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Madam President, Commissioner, colleagues, we talked today about Tundu Lissu, who is the opposition leader in Tanzania. He got arrested after having advocated for free and fair elections. We had high hopes here in the House after Samia Suluhu Hassan became President of Tanzania, and we hope for reforms in the country. But it appears that it's not a positive way that Tanzania is taking at the momen…

2 Apr

2025

DE Speech

The importance of trans-European transport infrastructure in times of stalling economic growth and major threats to Europe’s security (debate)

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Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, dear Commissioner! Infrastructure is the lifeblood of our economy, and that is why we obviously need to complete the trans-European transport networks. I would like to say at this point that, of course, we need finances for this, but we also need the willingness of the Member States, especially the Member States, to bottlenecks, which are present in cross-bor…

12 Mar

2025

DE Speech

Action Plan for the Automotive Industry (debate)

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Madam President, Commissioner, Minister! It is prudent to react to a regulation that has fallen from the time when the world was still another by revising that regulation. That is why it is right, Commissioner, that we should now address this regulation and prevent the payment of penalties to car manufacturers, or even that these car manufacturers should have to transfer money to their Chinese or …

11 Mar

2025

DE Speech

Clean Industrial Deal (debate)

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Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, Europe is not competitive. In my view, the Commission makes correct findings in the analysis. Energy costs are too high and need to be reduced for industry and consumers. The cost of bureaucracy needs to be addressed, and I would go much further than the Commission's proposals today. We need to become more innovative in Europe to get the best pr…

11 Mar

2025

DE Speech

Presentation of the proposal on a new common approach on returns (debate)

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Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner! Repatriation was not part of the migration package. In this respect, it is right, and I would like to thank the Commission for finally having a paper on the table on this subject. It has already been mentioned, and I would like to emphasise here: A well-functioning rule of law includes well-functioning and good asylum procedures, but it is of co…

11 Feb

2025

DE Speech

Escalation of violence in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (debate)

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Mr President! Ladies and Gentlemen! For more than two decades, a civil war has raged in eastern Congo, hundreds of thousands of displaced people. This war is sometimes in the media, sometimes it is not, but it is always there. This war – where young women and children are used as human shields, in a conflict involving not only Congolese but also supported fighters from neighbouring Rwanda. I would…

18 Dec

2024

DE Speech

Restoring the EU’s competitive edge – the need for an impact assessment on the Green Deal policies (topical debate)

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Mr President! Commissioner! It is already an exciting debate because one side of the House says that there is no competitiveness without climate protection, and the other side says that there is no climate protection without competitiveness. Somehow, both are probably a bit right. And I believe that we should be careful not to actually change the climate goals we have set ourselves. But what we sh…

17 Dec

2024

DE Speech

Use of rape as weapon of war, in particular in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan (debate)

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Madam President, ladies and gentlemen! War is terrible. But if we imagine what these young women, children in part, are going through, it is even more terrible – that is hell on earth. Imagine soldiers coming to your village, to your home, raping your mother, raping the children, one by one. Girls are kidnapped, forcibly married, traded as slaves. This is what happened yesterday Human Rights Watch…

22 Oct

2024

DE Speech

Situation in Tunisia (debate)

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Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner, you have shown very correctly what the situation in Tunisia was like in the elections, and it is not really possible to call it elections what happened there. The only thing I'm missing is the answer to the question: What are the consequences? We already had the referendum, which was highly faked. The reward for the referendum was a s…

21 Oct

2024

DE Speech

Implementation of the Single European Sky (recast) (debate)

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Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen! It took us ten years to get this law, this single European sky, off the ground. Not because it would have taken us a long time here in Parliament, but because it was up to the Member States, which have been hiding behind national competences for a very long time. These national competences have served to conceal the fact that there are state monopo…

9 Oct

2024

DE Speech

Strengthening the security of Europe’s external borders: need for a comprehensive approach and enhanced Frontex support (debate)

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Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen! Protecting the external borders is a very, very important concern for us Free Democrats, for two reasons: On the one hand, we have the objective that we do not need internal border controls, that we have the free movement of goods and persons in the Schengen area. And secondly, we have the goal of bringing order to migration, because for far too lo…

8 Oct

2024

DE Speech

The crisis facing the EU’s automotive industry, potential plant closures and the need to enhance competitiveness and maintain jobs in Europe (debate)

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Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen! For us as liberals, the goal is to keep the European automotive industry competitive – competitive in order to secure jobs and create value for the future. That is why, in my view, it is important that we do not put the automotive industry under further pressure in the short term with impending fines. This applies not only to manufacturers, but …

7 Oct

2024

DE Speech

The reintroduction of internal border controls in a number of Member States and its impact on the Schengen Area (debate)

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Madam President, Commissioner! For us liberals, for the Renew Europe Group, the Schengen area is one of the most important achievements in this European Union. And that has also been one of the driving forces behind why we here in this House have given so much thought to the European Pact on Asylum and Migration in the last legislative period and have finally adopted it. And now it is a matter of …

18 Sep

2024

DE Speech

The Hungarian “National Card” scheme and its consequences for Schengen and the area of freedom, security and justice (debate)

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Madam President, ladies and gentlemen! What is happening right now in Hungary is that the Hungarian government, Viktor Orbán, is trying to destroy the Schengen area from within – this greatest achievement, one of the greatest achievements of the European Union – that many of our citizens are experiencing, using and appreciating. I believe that with this single-handedness that the Hungarian governm…

16 Sep

2024

DE Speech

Need to prevent security threats like the Solingen attack through addressing illegal migration and effective return (debate)

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Madam President, Commissioner! Our thoughts are with the victims of Solingen, of course. But at such a moment it is important to remember that in Europe security can only be guaranteed if we all work together, because attacks such as those in Solingen have also happened in various other places. And that is why I want to remind you at this point that we have made a lot of progress in the joint figh…

25 Apr

2024

DE Speech

Framework of measures for strengthening Europe’s net-zero technology products manufacturing ecosystem (Net Zero Industry Act) (debate)

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Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I am travelling a lot at the moment – as many of you probably are – and I visit many establishments: small farms, large farms. It should be noted that the willingness to invest in European industry, and German industry in particular, is declining significantly. If no investments are made, this means: We will not keep these companies competitive in the long run. …