What Damian spoke about.

Mr President, dear colleagues, Volt – the political movement that I represent – is technically a start-up, maybe by now a scale-up. And we are very much aware what it means to deal with compliance requirements, trying to find affordable lawyers and fight artificial market barriers. Colleagues, we all talk and we love to talk about the backbone that SMEs are for our economy. But we really need to look into the details of the laws to understand what we can do to help them. We need to make sure that they do not need lawyers and legalists to be able to understand what the law looks like. I can give you some positive examples where we have managed to do this. For example, in the Data Act, we ensure that some compliance criteria don’t need to be fulfilled if you’re a small company. And also in the Ukraine facility, we are trying to currently channel a lot of the money also to the SMEs to ensure that we help them. Why? Because SMEs are not only the backbone of our economy, they are also the backbone of our society and they are the ones asking for democracy and for free societies. So we should really help them strive.

Mr President, so we rubber-stamp this proposal by the Council with the 15 extra seats, the deletion of the transnational lists and the invalid budget effect. Okay, we can do that. But I think we have to see that we have learned two things: first, that the Council can be extremely fast if it wants something; and second, that we in Parliament can be extremely weak even if we have negotiating power. Why? What I mean is: what if the Council also acted quickly on the electoral law? We have been waiting for one year to even hear from you on this regard. The transnational lists should be decided there and I am happy that we will have a chance to do that. But this also applies to treaty change. From my perspective, this Parliament already triggered Article 48 more than a year ago as a follow-up to the Conference on the Future of Europe. And what about us? We can say that a consent procedure is not a strong procedure, but the MFF is also a consent procedure, on the seven-year budget, and there we have a full negotiation team actually fighting. The approval of the Commission President is also a consent procedure. So let’s learn how to be stronger and how to really defend our citizens’ interests rather than to bend to national party leaders.

Madam President, colleagues, it’s really high time that we come forward with this report. It has been months since Qatargate happened and we haven’t done much. So I’m very happy that now with the majority of the groups, we actually come – thank you, Gabi – forward with this report. I just want to say it very clearly – transparency does not conflict with the freedom of the mandate. We have nothing to hide and we have a lot of trust to win back. So it’s good that we show what kind of side income we earn, what kind of meetings we have, because we have nothing to hide, and how we spend our money, because we have nothing to hide. Transparency is not in conflict with the freedom of the mandate. I am proud that I could contribute to a more transparent House, and I wish that we all vote in favour of the most important report that we will vote now. Let’s live up to the trust that we need in this House because why should people follow laws if they don’t trust the process that actually makes them? Let’s live up to it. Let’s vote in favour of this report.

–Mr Benifei, I just have a very short question, which is in regards to the freedom of the mandate. People who criticise the new rules often say it would somehow infringe on the freedom of the mandate. Can you understand that argument?

Mr President, it is true that, when we started using ChatGPT, I think we all realised it is a bit like this book On Bullshit, by Harry Frankfurt, the great philosopher, who showed us that, you know, the bullshitter doesn’t really know what the difference between truth and lie is, and he’s much more dangerous actually, than the liar because of that. But to be honest, the more I used it, the more I understood its potential. It helped me actually write a code to, you know, write my own chatbot in Python, commit it to GitHub and then like upload it to Heroku to somehow make it work. I couldn’t do this without the help of, basically, ChatGPT writing that code for me. So what do we learn from this? I think we need a couple of principles out there to help us really work with it. The first one is that we should make sure that large models are safe to use and not biased. We should educate our kids, but also our politicians to be able to understand what this technology is. We need authenticity labels to understand what kind of content is AI created. We need to make sure that those who own the data benefit from it or have the right to safeguard it. We need to tax locally to stop concentration of wealth. We need to make sure that public data is used for public good. We need to make sure that we have a start—up friendly ecosystem to be able to have good AI models here, and we need smart enforcement in global coordination.

Madam President, I just want to remind us of what happened exactly six months ago. Six months ago, in a small household in Portugal or in Bulgaria, every child on their phone, on Instagram and so on heard about the European Parliament. That’s really cool. We bridged the communication gap really to everyone! Sadly, what they heard is that we have bags of cash in our pockets, and we have not been able to win back that trust that we lost back then. We have not been able. This report is going in the right direction, but it’s not going to do that either. So, the key question for us has to be: what can we do to win back trust? Especially since in one year we have elections again and, if we don’t win back that trust, people don’t go to vote or they vote for the radical people who say, ‘Oh, they’re all evil anyway. They’re all corrupt.’ For me, the key question is: what can we do? We can show who we meet publicly, because we don’t have anything to hide. We can show how we spend our public funds that are given to us, because we don’t have anything to hide. Let’s be transparent about the way how we work, and then we can maybe win back some of the trust.

Madam President, I have to say, when I listen to this debate, I’m always amazed by how much tax as a debate is ideologised – how populist it can become – because if I listen to the right, it’s often about safeguarding the wealth that is there, not destroying the wealth. And on the left side, I often feel that, you know, the rich are the evil people. I have to say that, from my perspective, tax is always an infringement of rights. And if I then look at who are we infringing upon – because we do want to have the public goods that we are having and we have to finance them – I would actually also say that we definitely need to radically decrease income tax, labour tax. It’s too high. At the moment, it’s really hard to afford to buy your own flat, to afford to even come through the month in a good way. And I believe we have to look at the tax revenue. And if we look at it, I mean even The Economist – which is not seen as a very leftist paper – said that the tax that actually has the least negative incentive is the so-called death tax, inheritance tax. So let’s try to really ensure that we don’t have generational wealth so much, but that everybody has a new and good chance by decreasing income tax and increasing inheritance tax.

Madam President, colleagues, I just want to go back to what actually happened, which is that almost 600 people died. I think we hear a lot of talk about asylum, about smuggling and so on, but we should really picture what that means. I mean, here there are around 700 people if the room is full, and what that would mean if almost 600 of them would die. I think it’s important to picture, for a couple of moments, people actually drowning in the bottom of a boat. Then we talk about search and rescue, and I ask myself why do we actually call it ‘search and rescue’? Eric, you described it quite well. They were first ignored in this boat and then they were not rescued but they were towed away, which is why the boat very likely capsized. So we shouldn’t call this ‘search and rescue’. We should call this something like ‘ignore and risk their lives’. Costas, you said that’s a crime. Yes, it’s a crime – and the crime is not that we’re not following up with smugglers, the crime is that we’re not doing enough to save these lives, that we are stopping NGOs from going there. And yes, that is an Italian problem as well as it is a Greek problem. I really believe we need the EU—led search and rescue mission, we need to monitor what happens and we shouldn’t forget the lives of these people that are lost.

Madam President, this is now the second plenary in a row where we hear this far-right kind of fearmongering about migration. And it’s clear because, in the end, this is the only topic that actually drives your voter base. You take a highly complex issue and you trying to propose inhumane, complex and unpractical solutions. I have seen it with the AfD: it was a dying party but then they took the issue of migration and try to grow on that. But we have to be honest to our citizens: the real solutions don’t lie there. We already fund third countries like Libya – actually militias over there – to build camps, to host people there. And we see murder, we see rape and we do not see a humane solution. So if we want to really defend the European way of life, our European values, we have to find solutions that are actually in accordance with that. So let’s find a European asylum system with a European asylum application. And then I’m sure the far right will deflate like a popped balloon.

Mr Körner, these are exciting statements that you have made. What I'm wondering is: If you really look at the recovery fund now and we have seen that there was actually no bank run, that none of the European countries actually ran into any debt trap and we managed to get out with a higher economic level if possible, wasn't it really worth making this recovery fund and taking on the debt here?

Mr President, Commissioner, colleagues, I have to say I’m extremely happy that 78 years after the end of the Second World War, I came across the French border and I’m discussing now a common European debt instrument. That is a huge, let’s say, satisfaction for me as a federalist and as a speaker of the pan-European party. The instrument has been a huge success if we look at the fact that we were able to invest ourselves out of the corona pandemic and that we as the EU have shown that we can be a stable borrower. So I think we have to say this first, but obviously more needs to be done. We need a European finance minister in order to actually organise the own resources taxes that would make us independent at a federal level. Obviously, we also need to make the RRF, the Corona recovery fund, a permanent tool that would allow us to implement reforms and push for investments whenever it’s needed.

Madam President, I think we can see that the colleagues from the far-right managed to get a lot of speaking time to spread their poisonous agenda, nativist agenda on migration. But what I have to say, what surprises me is that they didn’t open actually all the laws, because my law is not part of the asylum pact. This law is part of the talent and skills package. It’s about attracting international talent to Europe. So I do not understand why you challenge this, because this is actually about the fact that we are losing workforce: 50 million people over the next 30 years. Our start-ups, our hotels, our companies need talent. We need to find ways to be more attractive. This bill actually allows permanent residents to be able to work all across the European Union. When you come as a migrant to the EU you don’t face one labour market, you face 27 markets. And even under Trump, the US was more attractive to international talent than the EU. Why? Because if you get fired in New York, you can find a job in San Francisco. When you want to find a new job, when you work in Sofia or Berlin, you have to go through the whole procedure of getting a visa again. So let’s vote in favour of this bill. I thank my shadows and I thank you for the strong support for this bill.

Mr President, I have to say, I’m still amazed by this debate because it should be about saving lives, but instead we repeat our points about the asylum system. I think what’s clear is that we currently let people die in the Mediterranean. We let them die by ordering container ships and fisher boats to stand by and wait, we let them die by criminalising and jailing those who want to pull them out of the water, we let them die by systematically funding Libyan coast guards that bring them back to their man-made hells, where they face exploitation, rape and murder. Colleagues, it has been said, but we have to say it again: we need state-funded, state-led search and rescue missions. We need a truly European system of solidarity, where we also allow for disembarkation across Europe. And we need to stop scandalising migration because this actually just drives the points for the far right as we can see now. The real solution is to find a European common asylum system, because otherwise we will delegitimise the European Union as a whole and we need to stand up to our values.

Mr President, thank you very much for giving me the speaking time. I have a very quick question regarding the fact that, obviously, the closer you get to death, the more you decide about the future, which is just a fact due to the demographics that we are currently facing. So I was wondering, in regards to more hard power for youth, would you support a voting age of 16, as we’ve also asked for in the electoral law act from the European Parliament? And what do you generally think in terms of allowing younger people to participate, not only in elections but also when it comes to standing as candidates for these elections?

Madam President, dear Commissioner Breton, dear Pilar, dear colleagues, more and more devices – windmills, ships, aeroplanes, paper-cutting machines – are connected to the internet. It’s the internet of things, after all. But who can have access to the non-personal data that these devices produce and who is allowed to share it with others? That is what the Data Act is about: deciding who should have access to what kind of data coming out of connected devices. That’s why I think this law is actually right up there with GDPR and the Digital Services Act when it comes to the importance for the European digital economy. I think overall we have risen to the occasion, and here I want to explicitly thank Pilar and all the other colleagues for the very good cooperation that actually helped us improve the Commission’s proposal. Let me give you two examples of where I think we definitely improved the proposal. First, we put the user, the owner of the connected device, back into the centre. They can decide who they want to engage in contracts with and who they want to share the data with. Second, we created incentives for both the user and the data holder to share data on data markets. And that’s really the core. We need liquid data markets so that new cool startups can come use this data, connect it and build new ideas and applications. However, there’s one point where I don’t think we got the balance correct, and that is what kind of data can be shared. Here, we gave a million excuses to the data holder to not share data. Trade secret protection, security settings, non-compete provisions, complex algorithms; we made the list so long that the Data Act is in the risk of becoming a data suppression act, allowing data holders to basically not share data. That’s short-sighted protectionist policy. We need to make sure that in the next step, when we negotiate with the Council, we have the maximum amount of data to be shared with the user who is actually producing the data with its use. So let’s fight for that.

Madam President, so I asked an artificial intelligence to tell me how to regulate artificial intelligence in Shakespearean English and here is what it said, ‘Good people all, lend me thine ears. A tale of import I bringeth here, of something great that cometh nigh, an age of AI that dost defy. It hath the power, and speed as well, but also doth bring a weighty tale to tell. We cannot stand idle and let it be, but must regulate it, lest it harm thee. Regulation we need of this device, to guide its course and set the right prize. It must not bring bias to the fore, nor infringe upon our rights, that’s more. Transparency must be its guiding light, and accountability with all its might. And not just some, but all shall gain. Equality and fairness shall not be in vain. So let us act with heart so true and regulate AI as we ought to do. It is not a hindrance, but a path made clear, to make progress sustainable and bring good cheer.’ Thank you very much. I think it’s very insightful into how AI works.

Madam President, colleagues, Commissioner, I just wanted to also chime in here one second, because as a former negotiator of the European Space Programme, it obviously makes me happy to see that we are taking the successive steps to actually make this European moonshot a reality. We all know that we can try to save old industries, curb state aid and really try to preserve what’s already there, but I think what’s much more fascinating is to build on the innovative capacity of the European Union. We have amazing start—ups in the space industry, and I’m very happy that you also mentioned the downstream commercialisation. If we make data available, if we make the internet available, what kind of opportunities, possibilities do we have for new bright minds across Europe to actually make use of that and make us competitive by new ideas, by new frontiers, that we can obviously best see in space?

Mr Engerer, I very much agree with your idea of having transparency in all meetings that all MEPs have. I was wondering what you think about the transparency on staff meetings. So for assistants, but also for the administration.

Madam President, it has been two months, two months since bags of cash were confiscated. Since then, multiple of our colleagues, people who we work with, people who make laws or who have made laws for all Europeans have been jailed. Every household across the European Union knows about this. But there is a second scandal. And the second scandal is that we haven't done anything since then. Nothing has happened. What have we done? We have written resolutions. We have a new task forces. We have working groups for transparency, working groups for the rules of procedure. But we haven't tangibly changed a thing. This is, for me, a second scandal. We need to act now and we need to get back the trust now. We need to win back trust now by implementing the changes we all know. Further protection for whistle-blowers. cooling-off periods for MEPs, stringent transparency on conflict of interests and financial declarations, biting sanctions. But also transparency on every meeting that every one of us has, no matter the capacity, with lobby groups and interest groups. This is simple. Let's win back trust now, let's win back trust for the European Parliament.

Madam President, thank you, colleagues, thank you also, Commissioner, for the positive words. Just one quick word upfront to our colleagues from the far right. I think you’ve still not really understood history because nations were created to overcome smaller units called kingdoms and dukedoms, and back then being a nationalist was being for progress. And I think you really misunderstood the concept of progress. When I started thinking about the theory of democracy, basically when I started building the movement, I heard very often that people don’t really care about the theory of democracy or voting. And I do think that’s absolutely wrong. I think people care very much if they exercise their freedom to move across borders and then are deprived of the democratic rights. I think people care a lot if they’re trying to vote or stand as a candidate and they can’t do that because the voting booth is not accessible. I think people care very much if their vote is unjustly stolen because of unjustified thresholds. I think they care very much if candidates don’t have the chances to present themselves. So, colleagues, democracy is fragile and I think we should really use every opportunity to create trust in democracy, to improve our democracies, and ensure that we strengthen it with all our power. And so I’m very happy that we take this step here now, also as a step towards better democracy, against autocracy and for our common European values.

Madam President, President Zelenskyy reminded us last week of what it means to be European. Europe is the ideal of diversity, the rule of law, social justice and, above all, peace and democracy. A democracy that, for example, just in the previous debate, we can see where we are fighting for our political ideals rather than just for national interests, at least in principle. But our democracy has left some space for improvement. Over the last 40 years, we didn’t really update the foundations of how we vote, and over the last 15 years, we didn’t update the functioning of the European Union as such. Why? Because our national leaders don’t seem to care too much. If you look at it last year, we triggered the treaty changes and there was no real effect yet until now. No national leader really reacted. We triggered electoral law reforms and, again, nothing. When we look at the right of initiative, there’s also no improvement from the Council side and the same for the right of inquiry. But we should really safeguard our democracy and so I’m happy that at least on this side, when we now look at the rights of mobile citizens, of those citizens that move from one Member State to the next, we do see some improvement. And I do want to thank the shadows for the good cooperation in trying to strengthen their rights. What have we achieved in this report? We propose to the Council to allow for immediate registration so that whenever you come to a new country, you don’t leave your rights as a citizen of the European Union at the borders, but you can actually take them with you and exercise them easily. We want to make it more accessible to vote. So that means that we want to make information available in all languages. We want to make it easier for vulnerable and marginalised groups to vote. We want to make it easier for even people with disabilities, older persons, homeless people to cast their vote. It’s also important that we take note of what works well in different Member States. And so we also recommend to update electoral laws when it comes to postal voting, advance physical voting, proxy voting, mobile polling stations, and also electronic and online voting to make use of modern technologies. We do believe that it should be possible for everyone without derogation to stand as a candidate, as an EU citizen in the different Member States. And it’s now, I think, imperative that we stand together and try to put pressure on the national leaders to actually implement these rights. Because if you look at it, from the 11 million EU citizens who live in different countries right now, only a very marginal part actually stands as candidates. There’s a low voters turnout as well but it’s really striking that in the 2019 elections only over 1 % of the candidates were actually coming from a different Member State. We can do so much more. We can be a real transnational, pan-European democracy. But for that, dear colleagues, we really need to make sure that our strong results that we got in our negotiations are also implemented by the Council and that we do get a treaty change and that we do get an update of our electoral law in general.

Madam President, dear Commissioner, dear colleagues, the EU’s reaction to the corona crisis was, in hindsight, quite impressive. It brought us the Recovery Fund, led to coordinated vaccine production and ultimately made sure that no EU country fell significantly behind. I’m therefore a big fan of the Recovery Fund, I’m a fan especially also because it basically conditioned all spending on green and digital investment and made sure that not a single euro would go into projects that harm the environment. But now I have to admit that the recent reaction I don’t find that impressive. To diversify from Russian gas, we are now subsidising private companies with public money to build LNG terminals and gas pipelines. We fought hard to limit these potential spendings in oil and gas, and I ask the Member States to make sure that they do not spend any dollar in these industries. I think also, if I look now at the newest ideas of State aid, there’s again the idea of potentially allowing gas and oil companies to benefit, and I would just repeat once again that innovation and competitive power come from good institutions and good competition and not by weakening State aid and furthering gas and oil.

Mr President, dear Commissioner, dear colleagues, yesterday we celebrated the brave people of Ukraine and at the same time there were drone attacks in the middle of Kyiv, in the city centre. I was myself in Kyiv this summer and I fell in love with the city and with the people who are trying to live a regular life despite the constant attacks from the air. But behind their remarkable resilience, there’s a huge and immense tragedy, with attacks on households, families and children at any given point in time. So we must do three things. The first one is we need to look at our sanctions and see if they are economically biting Putin at this very moment and instantly. Second, we need to invest not only with public sector but also with private sector money in the areas of Ukraine that are currently safe with the help of war insurances. And thirdly, we need to make sure that our weapons deliveries are actually working from all our countries, including Germany, with the tanks that are needed. I think we have a chance now with a sanctions package to also sanction political parties and all their party members to make sure Russians have a choice: leave the parties that are pro-war or face sanctions.

Madam President, Commissioner, colleagues, this week we celebrated the 70th birthday of the European Parliament, which, by the way, is also the average age of a conservative politician in this House. I am obviously joking, but I have to tell it to all of us. We have to be honest. If you listen to the Beatles, the Foo Fighters or Limp Bizkit, you’re not young anymore. If the people that go clubbing over the weekend are half your age, you’re not young anymore. So the reality and the funny thing about an ageing societies is that if you’re older, you outvote the young or, to say it a bit differently, the closer you are to death, the more you decide about the future. This obviously leads to absurd situations where you have a German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, campaigning as a full campaign promise to never touch pension schemes. That’s a great strategy if you want to get the old ones. A year of youth won’t change these structural issues. And so we have to ask ourselves, what can we actually do? I think what would really help is to actually give voting rights to 16-year-olds and also to ensure that every 18-year-old across this continent has the right to stand as a candidate for elections. We should prioritise the issues that will have a longer-term effect, which means we should not concentrate too much on the short term. The longer-terms are the ones that will actually affect the people who are young now or that are still to be born. That does definitely include the climate. And then I think as parties, as politicians, we need to make a step, an extra effort, to talk to young people more and to basically show them that it’s more fun to be here to fight against oil and gas than to throw processed food at paintings.