What Damian spoke about.

13

Feb

2023

EN Speech

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REPowerEU chapters in recovery and resilience plans (debate)

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 an…

15

Dec

2022

EN Speech

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The humanitarian situation in Ukraine due to Russia’s attacks against critical infrastructure and civilian areas (debate)

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, th…

24

Nov

2022

EN Speech

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The European Year of Youth 2022 Legacy (debate)

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…

23

Nov

2022

EN Speech

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The need for a European solution on asylum and migration including search and rescue (debate)

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, …

21

Nov

2022

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Assessment of Hungary's compliance with the rule of law conditions under the Conditionality Regulation and state of play of the Hungarian RRP (debate)

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 i…

9

Nov

2022

EN Speech

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REPowerEU chapters in recovery and resilience plans (debate)

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…

4

Oct

2022

EN Speech

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Commission proposal for measures under the Rule of Law Conditionality Regulation in the case of Hungary (debate)

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’ mone…

15

Sep

2022

EN Speech

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Statute and funding of European political parties and European political foundations (debate)

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 nee…

22

Jun

2022

EN Speech

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Implementation of the Recovery and Resilience Facility (debate)

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 …

22

Jun

2022

EN Speech

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Implementation of the Recovery and Resilience Facility (debate)

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 ti…

9

Jun

2022

EN Speech

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The call for a Convention for the revision of the Treaties (debate)

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…

8

Jun

2022

EN Speech

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Parliament’s right of initiative (debate)

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 p…

8

Jun

2022

EN Speech

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The Commission's proposal for "Attracting skills and talent to the EU", particularly the Talent Partnerships with North African countries (topical debate)

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 b…

7

Jun

2022

EN Speech

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The rule of law and the potential approval of the Polish national Recovery Plan (RRF) (debate)

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 Sta…

3

May

2022

EN Speech

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The follow up of the Conference on the Future of Europe (debate)

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?…

3

May

2022

EN Speech

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The follow up of the Conference on the Future of Europe (debate)

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 w…

3

May

2022

EN Speech

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The follow up of the Conference on the Future of Europe (debate)

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 o…

3

May

2022

EN Speech

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The follow up of the Conference on the Future of Europe (debate)

Actually, I think I will retract my blue—card because I don’t think I’m getting anywhere.

3

May

2022

EN Speech

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The follow up of the Conference on the Future of Europe (debate)

Mr Benifei, I was just wondering if you would ever run on a transnational list?

3

May

2022

EN Speech

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The follow up of the Conference on the Future of Europe (debate)

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 parlia…

3

May

2022

EN Speech

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Artificial intelligence in a digital age (debate)

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…

2

May

2022

EN Speech

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Election of the Members of the European Parliament by direct universal suffrage (debate)

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 U…

2

May

2022

EN Speech

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Election of the Members of the European Parliament by direct universal suffrage (debate)

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 o…

2

May

2022

EN Speech

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Election of the Members of the European Parliament by direct universal suffrage (debate)

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…

6

Apr

2022

EN Speech

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Violations of right to seek asylum and non-refoulement in the EU Member States (debate)

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…