Speeches

I condemn Putin's invasion of Ukraine, but I have great doubts that the instruments chosen in this resolution are the right way forward. If Article 42 of the resolution welcomes measures concerning Russian athletes and cultural workers, then I am sure that the wrong people are being addressed here. Rather, it promotes a division of society once again and does nothing with regard to the military situation in Ukraine. A ban on the broadcasting of Russian television channels and the call for online blocking of so-called war propaganda also seem to me to be doubtful, since citizens in the Member States themselves are intelligent enough to decide for themselves, by the means at their disposal, what they think is right and what they think is wrong. There is no need for paternalism in the sense of selection by the EU. And those who, like Commission President von der Leyen in paragraph H of this resolution, call for Ukraine's accession to the EU, are pouring additional oil into this conflict instead of acting in a de-escalating and prudent manner. Above all, we will hit ourselves with these sanctions, because we need security of supply and affordable prices. This resolution will do exactly the opposite.

Mr President, for months we have warned about the Commission interfering in elections in Member States. We raised concerns about Romania, about pressure on platforms, about expanding reach of the Digital Services Act. And then the American Congress did what this. Parliament refused to do: they investigated and found the Commission did interfere in free speech and in elections. You chose to ignore the report and our requests for committee and plenary debates. And not only did you dismiss the concerns of the majority of the US Congress, you went out of your way to invite a single voice of the opposition, a Democrat, and by doing so, you confirmed everything the report is accusing you of. You pick and choose opinions. You want to steer discussions in this House, in Europe and across the pond. The First Amendment says that the state stays out of speech. You are doing the opposite. You want to limit free speech. You aim to shape public debate and narratives and seek control over what people think and say. And we will fight, fight, fight this!

Madam President, all of us respect and want to protect motherhood, we share the objective of supporting mothers in this House. However, allowing proxy voting for Members who are pregnant or have recently given birth raises a question of democratic principle. The mandate belongs to the elected Member. It is, in our constitutional understanding, strictly personal, non-transferable and non-delegable. It has been entrusted by the citizens and should not be exercised by anyone else. Of course we should accommodate mothers. Maternity leave must be possible, and remuneration and allowances must not be affected. Colleagues, I recognise the dilemma we are trying to solve. Being a Member of the European Parliament is not an ordinary job: it is a duty and an honour, but it is also a public office. Citizens elect a person, a human, and they understand the times private life takes precedence. So let us support mothers, let us improve practical support without changing core principles. But let us also be careful not to weaken the strictly personal nature of the mandate.

Madam President, On behalf of the ESN Group, I would like to request that the agenda be expanded to include the item ‘Declarations by the Council and the Commission on the limitation of EU legislation’ – Ursula von der Leyen is being asked to do just that today in Berlin by Chancellor Merz and the CDU parliamentary group – and to be able to focus instead on competitiveness. The Commission is led by the CDU. It would be easy to cut back on regulations. But if even demands from its own ranks do not change anything, if even the CDU does not succeed in ensuring that its own Commission President delivers, then that is more than ridiculous. It could be so simple: In this House, there is a majority in favour of simplification, the reduction of bureaucracy and the strengthening of competitiveness. Let us remind Ursula von der Leyen of this majority and add this debate to the agenda. Orientation – and more importantly: the limitation – EU legislation needs to be discussed here and scaled back from here.

Madam President, this agreement is supposed to give Parliament better tools to scrutinise the Commission, and this is exactly what should happen in a democracy. But apparently the Commission does not want to be scrutinised. How else would you explain that answers to written questions are regularly given well beyond the deadline, and are always vague while carefully avoiding the actual point? The same applies to the press: the Commission President asked journalists to submit their questions in advance. If the questions must be pre-approved, what exactly is the point of a press conference? Access to documents is also frequently delayed for months or even years. The Ombudsman called it 'maladministration', and we saw the peak of obstruction in the so-called Pfizergate case: the Commission simply refused to produce text messages concerning a multi-billion euro contract, and even the General Court of the European Union has annulled the European Commission's decision to refuse access to text messages, ruling that doing so violated EU law and breached the principle of good administration. In a democracy, no executive body should have free rein like this. Executive power must be scrutinised so it can be held accountable. But since the Commission's President, Ursula von der Leyen, does not seem to be interested in any of that, I must conclude she seems to aspire to rule like King Louis XIV. To Ms von der Leyen directly: 'L'état, ce n'est pas vous, l'état c'est tout le peuple'. Also, Ms von der Leyen, let me remind you: the European peoples have gotten rid of absolute kings and rulers a long time ago and they have done so more than once. Trust me, we will do it again.

Madam President, what happened in Minneapolis is first and foremost a legal dispute, a tragic incident, an incident during a law-enforcement operation. Investigations will follow. Evidence will be gathered. In the end, a judge will decide. And this will all happen in an American court, under American law, by American judges, not in this Chamber. And it will certainly not be decided by the hyperventilating left. Scream and fume all you want. Law enforcement must enforce the law and return illegal immigrants. Left activists interfering with operations, creating chaos and escalating tensions. And all this because of your silly notion that no one is illegal. Fact check: yes, illegal immigrants are indeed illegal. What you call civil resistance is, in reality, inciting violence. If you truly cared about preventing tragedies, you would stop antagonising law enforcement simply for doing their job. Illegals are to be deported. Period. Just get with the programme!

Mr President, governments pretend to care about children to propose the most intrusive measures. An example is chat control – it is a ruse. The EU wants to scan private messages sent from your phone; they say it is about illegal material online, but in practice it means scanning everything that people say. Once again: it is a ruse. We are talking about a social media ban for those under 16. A trick – they say it is to protect minors from addiction and exploitation, but it would inevitably require identifying every user through digital ID. Cyberbullying must be taken seriously, but it is up to parents, schools and local communities to address that and not the EU Commission, AKA the 'Ministry of Truth'. Where does the EU Commission get off in assuming it has a say in how children are raised and what happens on local schoolyards? That would be subsidiarity, God forbid. But what would you actually do? You would monitor, you would verify and you would scan. That is called surveillance. Putting one's own citizens under surveillance is a practice best known in totalitarian regimes. Do you really want to go there?

Madam President, I am taking the floor because I was mentioned by name in a Rules of Procedure request. But I will have to say: Mr Sieper, I really do not know what you are actually doing in this House. As you said, you had 250 speeches. All you do is really use this as a platform to promote yourself. And in other news, you can call me whatever name you want. It doesn't faze me in the least. You do not get to define me. So please, to stop stealing all of our time with your ridiculous requests.

Madam President, AI-generated sexual deepfakes are vile. For the women and children targeted the harm is permanent and real. They violate dignity, privacy and basic decency. And, yes, they must be stopped. Period. But let's be honest about the ritual we are performing here today. A new technology appears. It is abuse. Platforms have a problem. Parliament hyperventilates, especially when it comes with a familiar villain. And conveniently, the villain is someone everyone already dislikes. Yes, Elon Musk runs X, yes, Grok's behaved irresponsibly, but some here seem almost relieved. Finally, a safe target for perfectly choreographed outrage. But we do not need hysteria. We need enforcement. And criminal law must be enforced by the Member States. When crimes are prosecuted, the crimes and behaviour stops. So let's calm down, enforce the law and protect the victims. I do have one request though: Hey, Grok, please put the Commission out of office.

Madam President, against Covid, Ursula von der Leyen had a master plan. Stay at home, wash your hands and take an experimental mRNA shot. These shots we were supposed to take were ordered centrally, via her now infamous text messages. In ridiculously vast quantities, so vast, in fact, that the Commission built up a massive stockpile, much of which later was discarded. Millions of doses, billions of euros wasted. The Critical Medicines Act turns this exception into a permanent model for the EU. Today, any producer of medicines in Europe is confronted with a massive cumulative regulatory burden. Compliance costs are enormous, environmental rules, reporting obligations, supply requirements and, on top of all of that, companies are taxed into oblivion. This is why production is declining. This is why innovation is leaving Europe. And this is why we are increasingly dependent on imports from abroad. Because if you produce less at home, you inevitably have to import more from elsewhere. We will not solve this problem by legislating even more. The CMA alleviates none of the underlying obstacles. On the contrary, it favours Big Pharma and crowds out innovative start-ups and smaller producers and all of this on a questionable legal basis. The Treaties do not provide the union with the general competence for industrial planning in the pharmaceutical sector. The real problem is not a lack of legislation, the problem is the Critical Medicines Act itself ... (The President cut off the speaker)

Mr President, some colleagues here suffer from a new condition, 'botophobia': the irrational fear of bots. But bots are simply the digital equivalent of a leaflet. During the Cold War, Europe was flooded with political pamphlets from every direction, yet no democratic government claimed that it must regulate these leaflets. This is actually what free speech means. Bots, however, are just a convenient bogeyman. In truth, you want to go after X; you want to go after Elon Musk and after the dissenting voices that use his platform. You want X to follow your narrative and to downgrade whatever views you find undesirable. That is seizing editorial control – the digital equivalent of confiscating a newspaper printing press. Yes, it is! But let's be honest: the voices you seek to silence are overwhelmingly on the right, where common sense is at home: AfD, Rassemblement National, Trump, Nigel Farage. It has nothing to do with foreign interference; it is about suppressing political opposition. Should you succeed, however, you will not silence dissent – you will actually multiply it, and rightly so. And the more you try to control the debate, the more citizens will despise you for it. Because your concept of our democracy has nothing to do with democracy: it is sanctimonious and, yes, it is indeed totalitarian. Leave the people alone, for God's sake! They haven't done anything to you. So just stop it and leave the people alone. That would be democracy.

Madam President, Yesterday, at least 15 people were brutally murdered in an anti-Semitic attack on a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney. An Islamist terrorist attack – we mourn with our relatives. On Friday, the German authorities prevented an Islamist attack on a Christmas market in Bavaria. All this does not come unexpectedly at this time of the year. We're used to it now. Today marks the anniversary of a number of Islamist attacks: the Berlin Breitscheidplatz Christmas Market in 2016, the Magdeburg Christmas Market in 2024 and, of course, the attack on the Christmas Market here in Strasbourg in 2018. You, Madam President, have invited us to the commemoration tomorrow. But it is not enough to speak abstractly, like the Greens, of terrorist attacks without naming their roots. We are dealing here with anti-Semitic and anti-Christian Muslim terror. We have to have this debate, in Australia and also here in Strasbourg. This is what citizens expect from us, and rightly so, from everyone who sits here, no matter what political group. We must have something to counter this madness.

Mr President, the Commission wants to build a Democracy Shield. You say it will protect us from foreign interference, but all of your tools end up pointing inward. EU‑funded trusted media, EU‑sponsored fact checkers and now an EU‑run network of influencers selected, trained and coordinated by Brussels. This is not a shield, this is a 'Ministry of Truth'. Influencers are meant to be authentic voices, not extensions of government propaganda. The moment a political institution pays someone to explain the right narrative, that person is no longer an influencer. They become spokespersons. You want an army of influencers and fact checkers to manufacture consent. The biggest threat to democracy is not trolls in Moscow. The biggest threat to democracy is an EU Commission, which does not consider citizens to be rational and intelligent decision makers, but thinks of them as immature and naughty little children who need supervision. Quite frankly, the people are sick and tired of it as they have every right to be. Please stop imposing your version of democracy on the citizens.

Thank you for the question. I totally agree with you. The left side has taken such a shot at the hatred against white men, and consequently only white men can be the offenders according to their views. The reality, however, is quite different. As I said, the ‘cityscape’ has already been tried. We see it in our cities. Women just aren't safe anymore. And it is not the white men who commit these assaults. However, when it comes to surrogacy, there are countries that really stand out. The women are kept there like slaves, that they carry the children, and it is usually the buyers ...

Madam President, Violence against women and girls is unfortunately a daily occurrence, and it is a disgrace. That is consensus here. But you look away when the cause of violence doesn't fit into your narrative. The ‘cityscape’ has already been addressed. We have assaults on women – always the same types of perpetrators, always the same culture. But you are blind to this violence. We can also look at the translobby: Medical experimentation on children – state-sponsored female body mutilation. You are blind to this brutal violence. Political violence – the left often sees it as justified. Charlie Kirk – executed in cold blood. But not only does the left celebrate his murder, it also protects itself from Ilaria Salis, a member of the ‘hammer gang’. You are not only blind to this violence, you even celebrate it. What we hear here are always the same slogans, always the same general places. What I want to hear is the clicking of handcuffs and the humming of deportation planes.

Madam President, Ms von der Leyen, it's me again. I'm sorry. But looking at your work programme, I have to say I haven't seen a document this full of ridiculous promises since you, Ms von der Leyen, swore to save all of your emails. But you have the audacity to call it 'Europe's independence moment'. Independence from what? Common sense? Well, congrats, you nailed that one. Common sense would mean scrapping the Green Deal, smashing the ban on combustion engines, stopping the boats, shredding the DSA, cutting red tape and taxes, recognising there are only two sexes – men and women – and, most of all, cutting back on the EU's power. Instead of trusting the Member States to make their own choices, you micromanage them into oblivion. The truth is, you can't even be trusted with running a lemonade stand. You would spend three years writing a lemon strategy, only to find out that you don't have any lemons – for which, of course, you would then blame Trump, Putin and Orbán. What Europe really needs is for you to step down – the sooner, the better.

Well, I'm glad you were shocked about what I said today even though there was nothing shocking about it. And please do not talk to me about violence against women in Germany. What we are seeing on an daily basis is two brutal gang rapes every single day in Germany right now. And this is not counting all the other rapes where there's only one perpetrator. So please do not. This is exactly what I'm talking about. You flood our countries with illegal migrants, and then the women get slaughtered, raped, beaten within an inch of their life. And you have the guts to talk to me about violence in the family? Yeah, there is violence in the family. But what we're experiencing is real violence in the street against women and girls. Shame on you.

First of all, I'm terribly sorry that you thought my speech was not enlightening to you, maybe you should have listened more closely. What I actually propose is let the people just be people. I'm a woman – I don't want to be anything else. When you go this way – what are we doing? It was all about raising women in society, but with your politics, especially with this whole transgender madness that you're pushing down people's throats, you're actually annihilating women once again. They're being beaten the crap out of in public spaces, and they get medals around their necks. This is your politics. It's disgusting.

Mr President! Yes, a small left-wing minority is once again waging a war against reality – with strategies and laws, just as if biological facts were subordinated to left-politically correct nonsense. But the reality remains. There are exactly two genders: Man and woman. And they are biologically different – different strengths, weaknesses, preferences, ambitions. However, the resulting life decisions are not the result of a social injustice, as you want us to believe, but simply the result of lived freedom, which must be respected. Their quota of women incapacitates women and is based, as I believed, on the traditional notion that women are too weak to achieve anything in life without government support. But even benevolent sexism remains sexism, ladies and gentlemen. Please stop patronizing women and take care of the real harassment and displacement of women by men in women's clothes.

Mr President, five years ago, the Commission promised a Europe fit for the digital age. We were to have world‑class chips, sovereign clouds and 10 000 green data centres humming in harmony. The Chips Act, the Data Act, the AI Act: the Commission seems convinced that if only they regulated innovation hard enough, it would just magically come into existence. Today, the dream of chip sovereignty remains a mere PowerPoint slide. Yet amid all these noble failures, there is one area where the EU truly excels: controlling and restricting speech. The Digital Services Act has turned platforms into pre-emptive censors. Saying the wrong things online will actually now land you in jail. Congratulations for that! And now chat control – mass scanning of private messages – looms on the dystopian EU horizon. With your digital rules, you do not seek to protect European sovereignty. You seek to protect yourself from scrutiny and people's justified criticism. Instead of a digital future that empowers citizens, you are building a system to intimidate and silence them. You are indeed creating a totalitarian hellhole. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Yes, the point is quite simple: The EU Commission interferes in everything, and where it might have been needed, there is silence in the forest. And by the way, I can only say: The political death, the political death of this EU Commission is a mandatory prerequisite for peace, freedom and security in Europe. Ursula von der Leyen should be measured by this. Unfortunately, it does not – all the worse. But this woman must finally leave!

Madam President, It is a pity that Mrs von der Leyen has left the plenary just before I take the podium. Maybe she was afraid of me, I don't know. But nevertheless: Of course, if the President's plane loses the GPS signal, Brussels will immediately call: “It was Russia” even before any data were available. You don't hear about it anymore. Why? Well, it wasn't Russia. Then it was probably a blatant lie what the President of the Commission has launched here – as so often. Nord Stream 2 is being blown up - Europe's most serious act of sabotage. Not a word of death from the President of the Commission. Well, it probably wasn't Russia. So no investigation, no explanation – nothing, nothing at all. Yes, Russia is attacking Europe with cyberattacks, propaganda and the like. And that also needs to be answered. But just now that we need credible institutions, this commission is staging itself in a cheap smear theater. It incites fear, strikes false alarms, playful of the little trust that may still be present. This Commission is everything, but it is not credible – its resignation is long overdue. Tomorrow would be a very good day for that. For this reason, the motion of censure against Ursula von der Leyen and this ridiculous, incompetent, dishonest cucumber troupe must absolutely be approved. There must be an end to this.