What Damian spoke about.

16 Sep

2026

EN Speech

Stop gold-plating, relieve SMEs: Member States must implement EU legislation without adding extra bureaucracy (topical debate)

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Madam President, I couldn't have said it better. Our businesses have to do two jobs at the same time at the moment. One is their real job, what they're doing, their profession. And the second one is to report on it. Just yesterday, I spoke to a friend who runs a bakery in Berlin, and because of European rules and their German interpretation, he is now currently considered a packaging producer beca…

16 Sep

2026

EN Speech

State of the Union (debate)

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Madam President, dear Prime Minister Carney, I'm really excited we are formalising our long-distance relationship. Of course, our history has had its ups and downs, but hey, we recently had a bad break-up with the Brits, and you seem to be going through a rough patch with the US. So, clearly, we are both open for something new. For us, choosing you – Canada and Mr Carney – is quite easy. You have …

9 Jul

2026

EN Speech

Provision of digital euro services by payment services providers incorporated in Member States whose currency is not the euro and amending Regulation (EU) 2021/1230 of the European Parliament and the Council (A10-0183/2026 - Fernando Navarrete Rojas) (vote)

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Madam President, dear colleagues challenging the digital euro. I have listened carefully, but your arguments simply don't add up. First, you call yourself patriots, and yet you oppose the one instrument that could loosen the grip that Donald Trump has on all our payments. If you are true European patriots, vote for the anti-Trump coin. Second, you tell us how much you love the privacy of cash. And…

7 Jul

2026

EN Speech

Presentation of the Action Plan on Cybersecurity and AI (debate)

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Mr President, Executive Vice-President, colleagues, Europe is becoming a colony of the US and China. That is the clear message of the Europe 2031 simulation and similar ones looking into our immediate future. They claim that all companies and governments will have to use frontier models to stay competitive and safe; that all labour is replaceable by the mix of AI and robotics, meaning that a signi…

6 Jul

2026

EN Speech

Financial activities of the European Investment Bank Group – annual report 2025 (debate)

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Madam President, colleagues, Commissioner, Mr Vice-President, Europe is basically the Silicon Valley's unpaid internship. We tell our founders to dream very big and then we offer them small change. Despite all our big words on Draghi, we are just not serious enough when it comes to the money, sending so many of our founders of our potential next unicorns on direct flights to the Silicon Valley. Am…

15 Jun

2026

EN Speech

Time for European economic independence (debate)

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Mr President, colleagues, not every explosion makes a loud boom, but last Friday, I could definitely feel the earth tremble. Because last Friday, Trump actually pressed a 'red button'. He issued his export control directive to stop Anthropic giving access to its best AI models to Europeans. Colleagues, this is a huge middle finger towards Europe, and it tells us two very important things. First, T…

20 May

2026

EN Answer

High time to deliver on the Single Market, providing certainty and predictability for EU businesses and quality jobs (continuation of debate)

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My main point is honesty. Honesty. We talk about the single market for years. We hear from the Council, we hear from the Commission: the single market is so important. It will help so many of us. But then, let's be honest, if we want a single market, this means that we will change the Ministry of Finance position in Germany right now. There is nothing stopping the German Chancellor and the German …

20 May

2026

EN Speech

High time to deliver on the Single Market, providing certainty and predictability for EU businesses and quality jobs (continuation of debate)

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Madam President, Vice‑President, colleagues, Europe is like a football team where every player plays on a different court under different rules, and then we wonder why we lose globally. And, of course, we nod our heads when our coach Draghi tells us to maybe train a bit more together. But I wonder, if everyone here agrees – the Council, the Commission, Parliament – we need a single court, we need …

19 May

2026

EN Speech

EU governance under pressure – institutional responses to global challenges (debate)

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Mr President, dear colleagues, I'm incredibly grateful that we are having a strong debate about the institutional changes that Europe needs now. But I also have to say that I'm a bit tired of the false narratives that come up here in this House every time we discuss this topic. People on the far right and on the far left say Europe is undemocratic. Then we propose to make it democratic with instit…

19 May

2026

EN Question

EU governance under pressure – institutional responses to global challenges (debate)

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Dear colleague, I have to say, I do not understand a word of what you are saying because you say that we want less power for the nation states, but that is completely wrong. We have all lost power. All of us. The nation states, the European Union. We are not able to defend ourselves. We are not able to act. So, what we need to do is to make sure that everyone can take decisions on the European lev…

19 May

2026

DE Question

EU governance under pressure – institutional responses to global challenges (debate)

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Mrs Bischoff, first of all I wanted to thank you because you are so strongly committed to the changes in the European treaties in the last mandate and also in this mandate. But I still wonder: As the European Parliament, we have already called for Treaty changes. We triggered Article 48. It is actually no longer a choice at all whether the Council, whether the heads of government sit down and actu…

29 Apr

2026

EN Speech

Topical debate requested by a political group (PfE) (Rule 169) - Commission interference in democratic process and elections (topical debate)

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Mr President, dear colleagues, I have to agree with Ms Hayer that it's quite ironic to have the far right request a debate on election meddling. That is very ironic because Alice Weidel, the boss of the AfD, got a lot of likes from Nigeria, and I'm not sure it's because she's so very friendly to foreigners in her speech. It's ironic because Viktor Orbán is really the pinnacle of a person that unde…

11 Mar

2026

EN Speech

Savings and Investments Union: time to accelerate the process to deepen market integration (debate)

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Madam President, the war in Iran is more than thousands of kilometres away, but the impact that we feel on our economy is immediate. Around 20 % of the world's oil passes through the Straight of Hormuz, and when it stopped, the oil prices, of course, increased. We see a 10 % increase in oil prices raises the inflation of the euro area by 0.3 percentage points. So, we know that there's an immediate…

10 Mar

2026

EN Speech

European Semester for economic policy coordination 2026 - European Semester for economic policy coordination: employment and social priorities for 2026 (joint debate)

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Madam President, colleagues, the new world order – or the old world order – is dead. We have heard this this week from the Commission President and it is true. That means that prosperity is something completely different now. Prosperity of individuals means resilience and democracy, and prosperity of the European continent means that we can stand up to blackmailing. This is where the European Seme…

11 Feb

2026

EN Speech

Urgent actions to revive EU competitiveness, deepen the EU Single Market and reduce the cost of living - from the Draghi report to reality (debate)

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Madam President, colleagues, tomorrow our European athletes will continue to rock the Winter Olympics, while Merz, Macron, Meloni and and Co will sit down to think about how we can have more world champions in our industry. But without tough choices, this is pretty much the same as putting me in very shiny tights and giving me great skates to compete in figure skating – it's not going to work. Dea…

11 Feb

2026

DE Question

Urgent actions to revive EU competitiveness, deepen the EU Single Market and reduce the cost of living - from the Draghi report to reality (debate)

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Mr Schwab, forgive me for always asking you, but you always say such clever things, so I have to ask. My question goes in the direction: They say that simplification is the only thing we need to do for the single market. What I'm wondering is: What about harmonisation? What would be a concrete proposal for harmonisation, where the European Union could now really take the next step towards simplify…

10 Feb

2026

EN Speech

European response to the attacks on the Ukrainian energy system causing a humanitarian crisis (debate)

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Mr President, 'Holodomor': dear colleagues, have you ever heard this dark term before? Its literal translation is 'death by cold'. It's a war crime you'd expect to read about in history books, not in Europe in 2026. But this is exactly the reality that Ukrainians are suffering right now as Putin's bombs leave millions to freeze in Arctic weather conditions. Colleagues, there's not a single power p…

21 Jan

2026

EN Speech

Presentation of the Digital Networks Act (debate)

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Madam President, Commissioner, colleagues, I have to say I'm still a bit under the impression of the rambling of Donald Trump that I was just listening to from Davos, and it just reminded me once more that every initiative that we take now has to look for resilience – military resilience, democratic resilience and of course also economic resilience. And so I think the Digital Networks Act comes in…

21 Jan

2026

EN Speech

European Council meeting (joint debate)

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Madam President, dear Mr Costa, this is the House of European citizens, and the European citizens I talked to are pissed. They're very, very angry. They're angry at Trump for attacking Europe. They're proud of Europe. They like our culture. They like our values. But they're also very, very disappointed with the 27 national leaders. So, the one message that I have from European citizens to your clu…

19 Jan

2026

EN Speech

The 28th Regime: a new legal framework for innovative companies (debate)

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Madam President, colleagues, there's only one and only one priority at the moment, and that is to establish European independence. Every action we take now, every law we adopt, has to establish this independence: military independence, democratic independence and, yes, economic independence. Commissioner, it is therefore a major failure of your Commission that we do not see a fundamental harmonisa…

17 Dec

2025

EN Speech

Preparation of the European Council meeting of 18-19 December 2025, in particular the need to support Ukraine, transatlantic relations and the EU’s strategic autonomy (debate)

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Mr President, dear Commissioner or – as it should be – dear Minister of the United States of Europe, please thank your boss for her unwavering support for Ukraine. It's absolutely clear we need to make Russia pay for the mass murdering that they're doing in Ukraine. The fact that Trump does not support this is another sign that the transatlantic relationship is really drowning in the trans-Atlanti…

16 Dec

2025

EN Speech

EU Defence Readiness (joint debate)

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Mr President, colleagues, Commissioner, all we want for Christmas is for Europe to be able to defend itself. I am happy we are making some baby steps towards a common and multiannual procurement, and I am happy that we are improving military mobility. But we are working with the assumption that the world is the world of yesterday. I think the US security strategy, as well as the negotiations for p…

25 Nov

2025

EN Speech

Increasing the efficiency of the EU guarantee under the InvestEU Regulation and simplifying reporting requirements (debate)

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Madam President, colleagues, I think we all like simplification. When life is simple, it's nice. I have to say that the current proposal here – and what we voted on and what we will vote on – is not really a simplification, sadly. I think there's a lot of money coming back and we are using it, and I think that's very good because InvestEU is a great programme. But to change the definition of SMEs …

25 Nov

2025

EN Speech

Digital Package (debate)

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Mr President, Executive Vice-President, I have to say, I'm really annoyed because the Data Act is a new law. It came into force only two months ago and you're opening a core provision of what this is about. If we want to make it very simple, what the Data Act was about is that if you own a device, you have access to the data that leaves that device and you can sell it. We clarified this so that th…

25 Nov

2025

EN Question

Digital Package (debate)

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I will later share my opinion on the whole package, but I just have a very clear question: which rule in any of these laws is currently hindering innovation, concretely?