What Damian spoke about.

Mr President, Commissioner, Minister, Maite has just said it has been seven years since we started with the first proposal – since you started with the first proposal on the common European asylum system. And since then, year by year we have been discussing and not much has happened. We have failed more or less to come up with such a system. And every day the right—wingers in this House are very, very happy about this because they can instrumentalise this to grow. And we have seen this. How did Lega get big? How did the AfD get big? How did Marine Le Pen get big? It’s all by capitalising on the fears of migration. This, for me, was one of the reasons of founding a European movement, because I feel that we have not found a system to actually take decisions to solve this issue. And what happens instead is that we have a system of basically deterrence by suffering. We fund Libyan coastguards, we fund billions for border controls, we criminalise NGOs, but we have not found a solution yet. So I would urge you once again, please set up a European search—and—rescue mission. Please ensure that we have mechanisms to embark asylum seekers and please make sure that maritime law is upheld and NGOs are safeguarded.

Madam President, Commissioner, dear colleagues, after three years in politics, I think I have identified the real big threat for humanity: it’s unhinged, uncontrolled men. Uncontrolled individual men who somehow lost it because of their ego, their delusional narratives, their hunger for power, their narcissistic need to feel important. They are the real problem. We have seen it with Donald Trump in the US. We have seen it in China quite recently. We have seen it in Qatar with the Ayatollahs in Iran and with Putin in Ukraine. Uncontrolled men can be deadly. And sadly, Viktor Orbán, in his own way, is heading in a similar direction. He is unchecked by the media. He is unchecked by the justice system, which he controls. He is unchecked by his party, who would never vote him out of power. He is unchecked by the opposition, who he threatens. And he’s unchecked by the Hungarian people who he lies to, blatantly. However, Orbán does know that you, Commissioner, could actually rein him in by cutting the funds that oil his corrupt machine. And that’s why he’s blackmailing today. But this time he has gone too far. His blackmail is too outrageous and too dangerous. Today he’s vetoing the NATO membership of two EU countries, effectively putting the citizens at risk. He’s vetoing sanctions against Russian oligarchs. He’s vetoing the 18 billion for Ukraine that they need so urgently. And he’s vetoing the global minimum tax on Apple and co., depriving us of better schools and of higher pensions. So, Commissioner, as we can see with Trump, the only language that these people understand is the language of hard power. Therefore, I ask you again, stand firm. Once Orbán reinstates the justice system, allows for fair elections, stops stealing EU cash, invites the European Public Prosecutor’s Office and stops this blackmail, we can talk about unblocking funds. Until then, stand firm.

Mr President, dear colleagues, dear Commissioners, this week because of COP, climate dominates again the narrative and the minds of Prime Ministers and Chancellors, and that’s great. But obviously it’s not enough to just have speeches without clear action behind them. We need immediate and concrete action. And today, colleagues, and tomorrow is a point where we can actually make this happen. Right here with REPowerEU we can ensure that we act on climate. How? We can make sure that there’s not additional money pumped into oil infrastructure. And we can do much better than throwing processed food at Rembrandts and Monets, because here we can actually vote on stopping billions of EU money flowing into the hands of the oil lobby and the oil industry. So this is where it counts and so I ask you, colleagues, please uphold the ban on any money flowing into oil infrastructure, because here today we have the chance to actually make this happen. It is true that we need to ensure energy security, but don’t let yourselves be fooled: we need to be absolutely clear that the current energy crisis does not require investment in fossil fuel infrastructure that will be operational in five years. This does not help the current energy crisis, and we need to make sure that everyone understands that. Solving the current energy crisis means a fast transition to sustainable and renewable energy, and with our votes tomorrow we can make sure that this happens. So thanks a lot for the good cooperation to the rapporteurs. Thank you for the positive negotiations that we had, and I look forward to the vote tomorrow.

Madam President, Commissioner, for three years I’ve been in this house now and every year the situation in Hungary got worse. For three years we have debates here, we have condemnations, we have strong resolutions. And what did Orbán do in this time? He circulated racist rhetorics about mixed races, he had unfair elections and – yes – he continued to steal money every day, European taxpayers’ money. So now finally you have him. You have him because we gave you the power and the tools to actually hold him accountable. So I ask you now, once again: don’t push the conflict down the road to the RRF milestones and targets; make the money only available if there are actual reforms. And as a final remark, I have to say, I think this shows us again that we need to elect the European Commission directly, that we actually reform the European Union so that we can hold our government accountable and actually push for change. Thank you very much.

Madam President, Commissioner, Minister, it’s amazing that we have managed to write down that European political parties should follow the Treaties, but that should be a given. I think our lack of ambition when we look at this regulation is not sufficient. I’ve been trying to build a European party now for five years with 18 member parties in the different Member States. I can tell you that we need to rethink how we can make them visible and how we can ensure that they are transparent, so that we see where all the money comes from, especially if we have a war of disinformation running. This is not sufficient. The recast procedure, to be honest, didn’t allow us to really go into detail to find these ways of making the political parties more visible and being ambitious in our approach. We have heard a couple of examples where that could have worked, for example, the European political associations. We have new ideas in other legislation that we could have transferred into this one to allow for real European elections. Again, if I see what was happening with the Commission President yesterday proposing that we have a European Convention, we need to be more bold. We need to actually deliver on a European democracy.

So then I will wrap up very quickly. So what can we learn from this? I think we need more parliamentary oversight – that’s clear – so that such things can’t happen, like the Polish recovery plan. We need to make sure that we turn the tool into a permanent tool because we can see that new crises are coming up and we need a permanent fiscal architecture to be able to address the challenges that are coming. And we need to make sure that all conditionality, when it comes to the rule of law and green spending, are upheld. Thank you very much for that additional time.

Madam President, I was informed there would be additional speaking time because my colleague Ernest Urtasun cannot come, so it will be a bit longer. The Recovery Fund negotiations were extremely intense – and I can still feel parts of this mini—trauma when I see the colleagues here, because of all the all—night sessions that we spent – but they have also been extremely successful. For the first time ever, the European Union decided to take up common debt of such as size to invest us out of the Corona pandemic crisis and all the horrible social and economic effects that ensued. With a large majority in this House, we decided that we wouldn’t just build back in any way, but that we would build back better, that we would build back by fuelling the green transition, by fuelling the digital transition, by making sure that we have new standards for green investment when we do that, and that we also apply this new standard for green investment to cohesion funds. Since then, actually, a lot of remarkable things have happened. We have seen countries implement reforms that have not been tabled for years. We have seen a lot of countries with very good and innovative ideas of how to actually do this green and digital transition. And we have seen that and we have also fought for the fact that no euro should actually go into any form of spending that would harm the environment. That’s the positive side. But we have also obviously seen some issues and I think it’s really important that we point them out so that we can address them and also learn for the future. Some countries still did greenwashing, and I can name Germany with their hybrid cars is one example. Some Member States refuse to adhere to the necessary safeguards for our European taxpayers’ money when it comes to, for example, the rule of law. We have talked about this in the last session, obviously in the case of Poland, but also when it comes to corruption.

Mr President, I think the first thing that a reformed Europe should do is improve our train system. Colleagues, I want to take one second to thank those individuals who had the foresight to build this Union that we are currently debating in. I think it’s a huge achievement that we have this chance to debate here together. But since the founding, a lot has changed and we have discussed it and heard it here. There are a lot of topics that we need to work on here together in the European Union so the ‘what’ has changed. But also we realise the examples of the ‘how’ that need to be improved. We have heard about the veto. I would add, in general, that we should also improve the Council as a whole, maybe abolish it and replace it with a more functioning body. But I just want to say one thing. This debate is not about left or right. It is not. It is about giving citizens the chance to choose what kind of direction their Europe should take. It’s about empowering a government that is elected by a parliament to make decisions and to be able to act. And if the citizens don’t like it, in the next elections they can vote this government out. So let us not make it about left or right. Let’s make it about daring more democracy.

Mr President, dear colleagues, you all have said – and I think it’s absolutely clear – that we need the right to initiative. I just want to make this very haptical. This whole House is built on the trust of citizens in their elected officials. We need to live up to this trust. That means that we can do two things that all parliamentarians should be able to do: one is that we are actually able to propose laws and also amend laws that already exist; the second is that we can vote for the European Commission. Then we can transfer the trust that citizens gave us into the actual representative democracy that we should be. I think tomorrow we have a good chance to start this process of Treaty change to bring all of these ideas of a better parliamentary democracy into the European Union. I’m very happy that we are going this way.

Mr President, similar to Mr Oetjen, when I talk to SME founders or start-up founders, what I often hear is that they really need talent as one of the key success factors. Talent is a key success factor for European competitiveness, but we punch way below our weight. Why is that? Because we have 27 completely separate labour markets still. It’s not as attractive as if we had one big labour market because we have these harmful and hurtful narratives that we just heard again here in this House, and the very closed idea of what an identity can actually look like in Europe. And we have an insufficient equalisation of rights which needs to be strengthened. So I want to thank the Commission to bring forward this new package. I think there are very good elements in there when you look at the long-term residence directive. We need to increase European mobility. We need to make it easier to get access to a long-term residence permit. And I want to especially thank you for the talent pool, because this is an idea that I brought to the Commission two years ago, so I’m very happy that it has now been taken up. I think it’s really cool that international talent now has the chance to express their interest to work in Europe and then be matched with European employers. We have to work on that, make it interoperable with what the private sector is already proposing so that we can really attract talent to Europe and make Europe more attractive. So let’s get to work.

Mr President, I would like to thank the Minister and President von der Leyen for coming here in person for this crucial moment for our Union. Madam President, I said this to Prime Minister Morawiecki when he was here, and it has to be absolutely clear. Our Union is based on Treaties, and treaties need enforcement by a functioning justice system. If we have political puppet courts in our Member States, the laws that we write here are worth nothing. Now, you caved in to the pressures and blackmailing of the Polish Government, and we have seen absolutely zero improvement on the Polish side when it comes to their justice system, and yet you still recommended the recovery plan for approval. The majority of this House, and some of your commissioners, believe this to be a huge mistake. We have little trust that the milestones you negotiated will prevent the Polish Government from sanctioning and dismissing judges, or flooding Polish courts with political appointees; I think this actually falls behind your own criteria. Colleagues, to ensure that the rule of law is upheld, we have to do two things. First, we need to ensure that our national governments do not approve the Polish recovery plan until the judgments of the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights are implemented. Second, it needs to be clear that we will use all the tools available to us to make sure that the Commission does not approve any European taxpayers’ money, as you have said, flowing to Poland without real reforms taking place. And yes, this also includes the tool to force the Commission to resign. We have to ensure a Union where the Treaties are upheld and a rule of law is in place. So, Madam President, please do the right thing.

Apparently it’s my democratic right to ask questions, so I will make use of that. I wanted to ask you, if you, as an Italian running on a French list, believe there is something like a European identity?

So I think it’s very good that you made the effort to go out there. And I think it’s also okay to have a different vision of how Europe should go, which is a vision of where prime ministers and chancellors sit in backroom deals and battle all the deals out on how Europe should work. I just believe that we should fight and I’m fighting for a Europe, where you have a parliamentary democracy, where we can have these debates and where we can fill the government that can then be dis—elected if people don’t like it. I think this gives more voice to citizens also if they’re critical about different policies. But I’m having these conversations and I’m happy to see your study results as well.

Madam President, fellow Europeans, earlier today, Vladimir Klitschko, who is the mayor of Kiev, wrote that, for Putin, Ukraine is a provocation because it is a democracy. Democracy is a provocation for some people. And we can also see this, sadly, in this Chamber. So what do we have to do? We have to dare more democracy. That’s exactly what they fear. Let us dare more democracy. I said this also on Saturday at the conclusion and I say it now after we voted positively on the transnational list, we need to dare more democracy. If you look at the conclusions that all these citizens that actually dared more democracy came up with, you see that there’s a lot of very positive stuff in there: abolishing the veto, making the Council more transparent, calling it a Senate to make it a real second chamber, and giving more rights and powers to Parliament, including the right of initiative, budgetary powers and so on. So we need to seriously follow up on this. I am very happy that from the Constitution Committee we already requested to trigger Article 48, to trigger Treaty change, and I hope that the countries will follow up, but I also hope that we can follow up on all the other ideas that don’t need Treaty change. (The speaker agreed to take a blue-card speech)

I just have a very simple question. I was here on Saturday and saw the conclusions, I also read the conclusions and my question is: why are you misrepresenting what’s in there, which is actually that we want to strengthen regional parliaments and that we want to strengthen cooperation between national and the European Parliament? So there’s nothing about abolishment of the national regional parliaments, so why are you misrepresenting the results?

Mr President, Executive Vice—President, dear colleagues, first of all, I also want to thank you for the great collaboration. I think we had long hours trying to figure out what the best use of AI in Europe is. But let me go one step back. When we hear AI, I think – and this is thanks to the movie industry – we often think of bots and of holograms of all of us, MEPs, of the Executive Vice—President to be just replaced by AI in this kind of futuristic scenario. But that’s not what AI really is about. In all seriousness, it’s about an objective function. It’s about probabilistic models, and very often our companies are still trying to grapple with what AI is about. So they’re making their way from a very analogue life to an AI—based business model. In this struggle, we see that we have some issues. For example, one is that there’s a strong tendency to market dominance, and that is just the case because you still need a lot of data to train your AI algorithms. I think Europe is trying to find its way in this struggle, and we’ve seen that if you give too much market dominance, there can be abuses of that. We need to find ways to counter that. And we have seen that, for example, maybe in the Chinese model, AI is used to control society. We have to also fight against that. So what can help us to make these steps correct? I think it’s crucial that we make our algorithmic function focus on human agency, and this has been said before. So we need to safeguard fundamental rights, but we also need to find markets concentration. That can be done if we enable our start—ups, our companies, to enter these markets so there’s no closed markets, and there’s no market dominance. I think this is a struggle that is worth fighting and that is also very much represented in the report. Let us continue the struggle, in the Data Act and all other files that are still being discussed in the AI world, so that we create a European way of looking at AI and make it possible for our companies to thrive.

My question is in regard to the European parties. I mean, how many of your voters really know the EPP? That’s my first question. And the second question is: if you don’t like the transnational list system, what is your idea of improving the European Union? Because we have already lost one Member State, the United Kingdom. We need to get more democratic. What’s your idea of improving the European Union?

Paolo, there’s no animal like the EU, so you won’t find any comparisons in other systems. The second point, on bringing European citizens closer; you change nothing by just giving them a second vote. How can that bring citizens further away from the European Union the first time they can actually vote for a European party that you’re part of? And third, on the Spitzenkandidat, there is no system on this earth where the Spitzenkandidat is actually registered in the law. So this is in Germany – I don’t think in any other system – this is by practice, so why do you think that this is worse than, for example, the German system?

Mr President, 18 years ago today, 10 countries joined the European Union in enlarging the ‘original club’. And I think what we have learned and seen over the last 20 years is that basically, the backroom deals between chancellors, prime ministers and presidents do not work anymore. And why is that? Because they are too non—transparent, and they’re inefficient. And so what we need to do now in this mandate as well is to give a voice to European citizens. And this is exactly what the second vote does. It gives a second voice to citizens, allowing them to actually express what kind of Europe they want. Is it a more restrictive Europe, a conservative Europe, where migration is a bit curbed, where you have more money for small and medium-sized businesses, and money for Europol? Or is it a more social Europe, where you have minimum wages and I don’t know what? Or is it more liberal, or is it more bold, whatever kind of Europe they want. So you dare more democracy, you don’t take a single thing away from citizens – you give them a vote. So don’t listen to those people who tell you it’s otherwise. Don’t listen to those who say, ‘28 people, they are so far away from the citizens’. That’s not what this is about. It’s about bringing European parties closer to citizens; that they can, actually, for the first time in their lives, vote for them, say: I like this European programme, I like this European candidate, I like this European party, I want this. Currently, they can’t. And so this is what this is about. Don’t listen to the people who say, ‘oh, the small and medium—sized Member States, they won’t have a voice’. This is not true. In the first place, if you look at Europe, small and medium Member States field the biggest and most prominent figures already. But it’s not only that. In the file, as Verhofstadt also said, there are enough conditions in there to ensure that this is not the case. So don’t listen to them. This is really about all of us thinking, as a Parliament, how can we ensure that we can make the step towards a European parliamentary democracy, how we can dare more democracy? And that’s why I would really ask you to vote in favour. There are other positive elements, we have heard about them. There’s voting age 16, and this is an indication which is positive. There’s a better gender representation with quotas and zipped lists, and there’s a lot more positive in there that is in regard to minimum standards. But there’s also one really negative element in there and I have to mention this. We introduce a threshold of 3.5% for Germany, which, from my perspective, is really sad and bad. I have not heard a single sound argument why this is needed. There’s not a single sound argument out there, and it does take away five million votes from European citizens. That is as much as the smallest five Member States together. I would still ask you to vote in favour, even though it reduces my likelihood of getting re—elected, because I think it’s so important that we give citizens a voice, and that we dare more democracy with the second vote.

Madam President, dear Commissioner, dear colleagues, I travelled to Greece recently and I saw – and have heard this before – that a systematic violation of the right to seek asylum in Greece is happening. I will try to outline it to you. Basically, since March 2020, no-one has been returned from Greece to Turkey, and that is Turkey’s fault. But just a year later, the Greek Government still imposed a law, which is the inadmissibility procedure or joint ministerial decree, which basically says that everyone who comes through Turkey, and who comes from Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia, Pakistan or Bangladesh, has to be returned to Turkey. But as I just explained, no one is being returned to Turkey. So this was, from the beginning, absolutely trying to stop the right to seek asylum. And so we have a Kafkaesque situation, where people are being told to go to police stations to be returned, to then ask Turkey whether they would take them, and Turkey doesn’t even answer this. Then the people are being told: okay, you have to wait for a year. They don’t have access to food; they don’t have access to accommodation. We really have to stop this. I ask the Commission to do something about this to guarantee the right of asylum in Europe.

Madam President, I wanted to start by thanking Angelika Niebler for the very constructive cooperation that we had on this file. It was very nice working with you and very fact-based. That was exemplary. I think today’s vote shows that we have actually advanced quite far in our digital policy. You will hear that my voice is still a bit deep because I have jetlag from coming back from the US and talking about data policy to the different stakeholders over there. I realised how close we are to the sweet spot of personal data protection and still enabling innovation at the same time. This is built on the fact that we had a European success with saying that there is a philosophical right of your own data being your own, in a sense, of having that right. Now, we need to transfer that to the industrial data space. We also need to get to a situation where the usage rights for industrial data are equally clear. The Data Governance Act is really helpful because it basically makes it possible to have neutral platforms and data intermediaries if you want data stock exchanges that you can trust and actually share and trade your data. And then, when we get to the data act, I think we have the obligation to ensure that basically we are now applying what we learned from GDPR to the industrial data space in clarifying who is able to trade co-generated data sets. The whole idea behind this is that we can really unlock the innovation potential that we have in our start—ups and that we have in our industries with a lot of very innovative and new concepts and new business models that, as the Commissioner said, will create a lot of jobs.

Mr President, every morning when we wake to the live documentary of this terrifying war on social media, I feel helpless when I see the images of bombed streets, burning nuclear plants and lines of people fleeing. I feel helpless. But while our options within Ukraine are limited, our options for helping those who are fleeing the war are not. That’s why I wanted to thank you very much, Commissioner, for your swift action and for bringing all the countries together to grant legal protection so fast. And that’s why I want to thank everyone who’s opening their doors currently in Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Romania, but also all across the continent. But much more needs to be done and we have to adapt to the situation and every moment. So, I would ask you, Commissioner, to also ensure that everyone who’s fleeing is protected, no matter their skin colour or nationality – also the Russians and Belarussians fleeing their crazy tyrants. Even if we decide that some can’t stay, please make sure that they’re all covered by health protection so that they can go to the hospitals to tend to their mental and physical wounds after fleeing. And please ensure that we have a new approach to the European asylum system, so that we can learn from this humane reaction to the fleeing refugees, in our new asylum system.

Mr President, thank you to Anna, and on behalf of Erik, I would like to thank everyone – the rapporteur, shadows and technical staff, for the great collaboration on this report. It’s a very timely report indeed. The recent intensified crackdown on civil society in Belarus and Russia shows one important truth: an organised civil society is a horror for any form of autocratic leadership because it shows if and how they fail their societies. But we don’t need to look that far. Sadly, we see civil society organisations also being targeted and limited in our own Member States. Some leaders don’t want to allow societies to correct their mistakes. I’ve witnessed systematic persecution and criminalisation in the field of migration, an area where all our governments are currently failing. And the recent events in Ukraine show another and more humane face for Europe in that matter. So let us build on this humane Europe and show that every human being is worth saving, no matter how far they’ve travelled and no matter what their skin colour. Let us build a humane Europe, Commissioner, by supporting civil society organisations, ensuring sufficient funding for CSOs and developing a green strategy for safeguarding civic spaces in the EU.