What Joachim spoke about.

15

Dec

2022

DE Speech

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Major interpellations (debate)

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen. I can hear the message, Mrs. Kyriakides, but I lack the belief that there is indeed the intention to find out: Who committed these attacks, who destroyed these lines, and what can be done to eliminate or at least mitigate the damage. According to my information, one strand of the Nord Stream 2 line should still be intact. If this is true, then I…

14

Dec

2022

DE Speech

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Upscaling the 2021-2027 Multiannual Financial Framework (debate)

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen. I have only recently predicted here that the 2023 budget is not sustainable and will soon burst. Today I can repeat this, because today you want to re-adjust the seven-year plan by continuing to inflate this huge ball with money that you do not yet have and probably will never take in the necessary amount with the planned own resources. And then…

23

Nov

2022

DE Speech

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Amending Council Regulation (EU, Euratom) 2020/2093 of 17 December 2020 laying down the multiannual financial framework for the years 2021 to 2027 - Amending Regulation (EU, Euratom) 2018/1046 as regards the establishment of a diversified funding strategy as a general borrowing method - 'Macro-Financial Assistance+' instrument for providing support to Ukraine for 2023 (debate)

Madam President, Minister, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen! I should like to ask three questions on this point. The first question concerns the European Court of Auditors. The European Court of Auditors delivered its opinion, but it writes that it had only 12 days to deliver it. What happened there? And why were we only able to get them yesterday and can no longer debate them now, about the goo…

22

Nov

2022

DE Speech

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2023 budgetary procedure: joint text (debate)

Mr President, Commissioner Hahn, ladies and gentlemen, Mr Minister! Congratulations on this budget! They managed to say goodbye at the last second, so to speak, to this household sewn on edge. They were, of course, doomed to success, so to speak. They could not help but reach an agreement. If you had not done so, we could have started all over again and the budget would not have entered into force…

21

Nov

2022

DE Speech

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Borrowing strategy to finance NextGenerationEU (debate)

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen. My eldest grandson asked me this weekend: ‘Grandpa, where does all the money come from?’ I replied to the 13-year-old: “I will explain this to you through the Corona Reconstruction Fund: So, first of all, it is determined that the fund should be worth €750 billion – that much would be needed to pay for the damage caused by the government-imposed…

19

Oct

2022

DE Speech

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Presentation of the Court of Auditors' annual report 2021 (debate)

Madam President, Commissioner, dear Tony Murphy! Congratulations on your new post! Unfortunately, I haven't been able to talk to you yet, but maybe we can catch up. Today I just want to say thank you. First of all, thank you for mastering the – in my view – completely unjustified attacks by a French newspaper, which unfortunately have also been picked up by parts of this House, and for being stron…

18

Oct

2022

DE Speech

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General budget of the European Union for the financial year 2023 - all sections (debate)

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen. Let's be honest: The 2023 budget is basically already a waste before it was adopted. The draft resolution lists dozens or many problems in paragraph 2, but the solutions do not correspond to these problems at all. Instead of giving discharge to the EU – EU citizens – the draft acts as a continuation of the current backward-looking EU policy. Alm…

3

Oct

2022

DE Speech

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The EU's actions in the field of freedom of religion or belief worldwide (debate)

Madam President, Minister, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen! We are truly living in turbulent times, and there is a danger that we will lose sight of really important problems, especially the fate of the people persecuted for their faith, because of the fear of a world war or of a new pandemic or of the ideologues and priests of the new climate religion. The number and severity of cases have inc…

3

Oct

2022

DE Speech

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European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control - Serious cross-border threats to health (debate)

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen. The proposals presented in the report to strengthen the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) sound good at first. No one is against us being better prepared and prepared for upcoming pandemics and cross-border health threats. But why do I not get rid of the dull feeling that these useful reasons for strengthening the ECDC ar…

7

Jul

2022

DE Speech

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Developing an EU Cycling Strategy (debate)

Mr President! . Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen. The nice thing about this topic of cycling strategy is that almost everyone has experience with cycling and can have a say. I got my first bike for my sixth birthday 60 years ago. I still know exactly where and how I made my first driving attempts. Compared to the naturalness with which my grandchildren learn to cycle today at the age of three or…

7

Jul

2022

DE Speech

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Better regulation: joining forces to make better laws (debate)

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen. Everyone complains about the bad laws, but all attempts to make better laws have failed so far. Previously, laws were created from a single source. Then, by the way, they were pleasantly short and easy to understand. The Ten Commandments, for example, in the Bible had less than 300 words, the Constitution of the United States less than 10,000 words…

6

Jul

2022

DE Speech

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The arrest of Cardinal Zen and the trustees of the 612 relief fund in Hong Kong

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, We probably all condemn the actions of China with regard to Cardinal Zen and the four confidants. And that's a good thing! But I miss the determination of Parliament and the Commission to oppose clearly and unequivocally the persecution of dissenters, especially Christians. We find strong words for the decision of the Supreme Court On th…

6

Jul

2022

DE Speech

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Financial activities of the European Investment Bank – annual report 2021 - Control of the financial activities of the European Investment Bank – annual report 2020 (debate)

Madam President, Madam Vice-President, Mr Hoyer, ladies and gentlemen. Unfortunately, I have to pour some water into the wine, because not everything that shines in the EIB is gold. I would like to make two points: Firstly, the sharp decline in transparency, which has already been mentioned. In 2010, 96% of all projects were published three weeks before approval by the Management Board. In 2020, i…

9

Jun

2022

DE Speech

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Illegal logging in the EU (debate)

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen. This resolution on illegal logging is another attempt by the EU to seize competences in the fields of nature conservation, environmental protection and forestry. Under the pretext of large-scale logging, which takes place mainly in countries such as Romania, Greece and Slovakia, tracking and tracing systems as well as certification systems for wood…

8

Jun

2022

DE Speech

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The massacre of Christians in Nigeria (debate)

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen. I was shocked to learn of the massacre in the Catholic Church of St. Francis Xavier in Owo, Nigeria, in which more than 50 people were killed in a terrorist attack. It's hard for me to put my disbelief and grief into words. While we cheerfully celebrated Pentecost here, the service ended in a bloodbath in Owo. Persecution and terror on religious…

8

Jun

2022

DE Speech

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Violations of media freedom and safety of journalists in Georgia

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen. When we talk about freedom of the press in Georgia, I wonder what freedom there is when Georgia is only 89th out of 180 on the list of freedom of the press; and if recently, as already mentioned, the cameraman Alexander Lashkarawa was found dead in his apartment after filming a counter-demonstration; and when Nika Gwaramia, former Minister of Ju…

4

May

2022

DE Speech

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Discharge 2020 (debate)

Madam President, Mr Hahn, Mr Lehne, Madam Minister, ladies and gentlemen! Today we are talking about the budgetary discharge for 2020 for the EU institutions and agencies. But we are not talking about issues of geopolitics and the pros and cons of pushbacks, and abusing the debate on discharge even for personal petty wars, that should be condemned by all of us. In the Committee on Budgetary Contro…

7

Apr

2022

DE Speech

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Mental Health (debate)

Mr President! Hello, Mrs Jourová, dear colleagues! We all agree, I believe, that this is a central, important issue, which can not only be considered superficially, as if the COVID crisis or also the Ukraine crisis were to blame for the fact that it has gone so high. We have been laying the foundations for years for our children, for our society to have lost its roots. We cut our own roots, we des…

5

Apr

2022

DE Speech

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Guidelines for the 2023 budget – Section III (debate)

Madam President, Commissioner Hahn, ladies and gentlemen. When we look at the general guidelines for the Commission's 2023 budget today, it is striking that the report seems to have fallen out of time. I would like to point out this in four points and this time I do not want to go into the war in Ukraine. Firstly: The report comes without the now rapidly rising inflation. I'm afraid this inflation…

23

Mar

2022

DE Speech

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MFF 2021-2027: fight against oligarch structures, protection of EU funds from fraud and conflict of interest (debate)

Madam President, Commissioner Hahn! Thank you, Mrs Hohlmeier, for this great report. I think we all agree that oligarchic structures, corruption and fraud, no matter who they are, must be fought relentlessly. We certainly also agree that the main obstacle to an effective fight against fraud is the lack of or often prevented cooperation of our anti-fraud authorities with the national stakeholders c…

10

Mar

2022

DE Speech

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Transparency and administrative standards - the treatment of public access requests based on Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 (continuation of debate)

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen. Today we are talking about a central and important topic: transparency of all administrative actions within the EU institutions. I find it really embarrassing that your boss, Mrs. von der Leyen, is not present. Because the elephant in the room is not the transparency rules that we could certainly agree on. The elephant in the room is Mrs. von der L…

17

Feb

2022

DE Speech

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The surge in commodity and input prices in the agricultural sector (G-001004/2021 - B9-0005/2022)

Madam President, Well, for the sixth time today, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen. As the son of a farmer, I know very well how difficult it is if not only the droughts from which we had it this morning at the beginning, but also the price increases make the life of a farmer almost impossible. And yet: If now answers are sought in the direction of making interventions in the market, then I can o…

17

Feb

2022

DE Speech

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Strengthening the system for protecting PDO and PGI denominations in the EU after the Prosecco/Prosek case (G-001003/2021 - B9-0004/2022)

Madam President, Commissioner, Madam Bizzotto, ladies and gentlemen! It is important and necessary for the EU to protect designations of origin and geographical indications. They represent a kind of copyright, and we do well to protect this intellectual property right in the future. Therefore, we support our friends from Italy in this case. These indications are not protectionist measures, as some…

17

Feb

2022

DE Speech

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Political crisis in Burkina Faso

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen. I am experiencing a déjà vu again today. We talk about situations in states that have abysmal problems, and we wonder why we can't offer solutions. We are obviously a powerless organization, because we can do almost nothing. Today, these talks with the African Union are starting – wonderfully. But will it lead to a solution for Burkina Faso? I d…

17

Feb

2022

DE Speech

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The death penalty in Iran

Mr President, Commissioner! I am grateful for the ECR resolution and also for this debate here that we are talking about the death penalty in Iran. And I hope and pray that it will serve to save the lives of the political prisoners and that we will also be made aware of the unspeakable suffering of the persecuted Christians and the Baha'is. However, I cannot resist the impression that some of us, …