What Laurence spoke about.

18

Jun

2026

FR Speech

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Joint Declaration on ‘Culture for Europe - Europe for Culture’ (debate)

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the Cultural Compass is a beautiful statement and we thank you for it. Culture, as you said, is our common good. It is the basis of freedom of expression that is also the basis of our democracy. However, this cultural policy in Europe is today a course without means, since culture remains the lowest budget of the European Union. However, our cultur…

29

Apr

2026

FR Speech

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Danger of normalising relations with Russia, including its participation in major cultural and sports events (debate)

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the reintegration of Russian athletes under the Russian flag at the last Paralympic Games in Milan-Cortina is particularly serious and worrying. What happened to the International Paralympic Committee and the Italian government to give in to Russian pressure? That really calls for answers. We cannot accept Russia's return to sports competitions …

11

Feb

2026

FR Speech

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International Day of Education, fighting inequalities in access to education (debate)

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, at a time of major geopolitical upheaval, European sovereignty is a necessity and education is key to a competitive, free and democratic Europe. Thanks to the objectives of the European Education Area, the results are as follows: between 2002 and 2024, early school leaving rose from 17% to 9% and never before have so many young Europeans graduat…

21

Jan

2026

FR Speech

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Online piracy of sports and other live events: urgent need to address unsolved issues (debate)

Mr President, Commissioner, we are urgently calling for a legislative proposal to finally effectively counter the piracy of sporting events and other online content. Piracy is unfortunately on the rise. The Paris 2024 Olympics were indeed victims of five times more cases of piracy than the Tokyo Olympics, only three years earlier. Any piracy is a shortfall for our cultural and creative industries,…

21

Jan

2026

FR Speech

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Attempted takeover of Lithuania’s public broadcaster and the threat to democracy in Lithuania (debate)

Mr President, Commissioner, the situation in Lithuania is alarming and – as we can see – very inflamed. Under the guise of revising the budget and amending the statutes, the coalition government between the Social Democrats and a far-right party is attacking public broadcasting and its director head-on. This is all the more serious as it is a retaliatory measure against journalists who have done i…

21

Jan

2026

FR Speech

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Preparations for the EU-India summit (debate)

Madam President, Madam High Representative, the subject of trade agreements is debated when it comes to bad agreements. But at a time of instability and geostrategic recompositions, the European Union needs to open up to new regions of the world. India is a partner of choice. It is a democracy, it is a demographic force, a geostrategic power on the Indo-Pacific axis, it is a technological champion…

20

Jan

2026

FR Speech

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Presentation of the programme of activities of the Cyprus Presidency (continuation of debate)

Madam President, Mr President of the Republic, ladies and gentlemen, the Cyprus presidency is opening in a context of major international turbulence. We're counting on you. In the face of Russia, in the face of China and now in the face of the United States, it is time for Europe to fully assume its power. We have the means to do so, but we still have to have the political will to do so. In the fa…

26

Nov

2025

FR Speech

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Implementation of the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement (debate)

25

Nov

2025

FR Speech

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Digital Package (debate)

Mr President, Madam Vice-President, ladies and gentlemen, Europe is the first political space to have created a rule of law on the internet. The first, with a regulation on the protection of our personal data, the GDPR; with the DSA and the DMA to give particular responsibility to the very large US and Chinese operators; with the act on artificial intelligence. Today, these rules would be too comp…

23

Oct

2025

FR Speech

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Audiovisual Media Services Directive obligations in the transatlantic dialogue (debate)

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, Donald Trump has an obsession, attacking our European laws to destabilise us. After the offensives on the climate, trade, defense, industry or even our agriculture, Donald Trump persists and signs and now calls into question our cultural model. Last February, the Trump administration, well helped by the "majors" of film and video-on-demand, rele…

6

Oct

2025

FR Speech

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Role of EU policies in shaping the European Sport Model (debate)

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, let us imagine a football match between two Spanish teams taking place in the United States. Does that sound absurd to you? Yet this is the project of the Liga Spanish, and this is one of the last examples of attempts to weaken our European sports model to Americanize it. These attempts are the exact opposite of the model that must be respectful of…

11

Sep

2025

FR Speech

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A new vision for the European Universities alliances (debate)

Mr President, I am deeply convinced of the strength of these European university alliances and I am delighted to see that we broadly share this view in Parliament. These alliances represent first of all an intellectual asset, because discovering new ways of thinking, exchanging ideas, developing innovative curricula, bringing together professors and researchers, all this beyond national borders, i…

11

Sep

2025

FR Speech

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A new vision for the European Universities alliances (debate)

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, Europe has already been built up by intellectual and academic exchanges for more than 1,000 years, from the founding of the University of Bologna in 1088, to Erasmus' travels in the 16th century and the Grand Tour, the educational journey through Europe undertaken by young men between the 17th and 19th centuries. It is in the continuity of this ric…

8

Jul

2025

FR Speech

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State of play of implementation of the European Media Freedom Act in the Member States (debate)

Mr President, Minister, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, on 8 August the Media Freedom Regulation will come into force. This law, the first to provide a clear framework for the structuring of the European press and for the protection of journalists, is now a pillar of our democracy. Why? Because it allows the European Commission to act decisively on media concentration. This is essential becaus…

17

Jun

2025

FR Speech

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Combating the sexual abuse and sexual exploitation of children and child sexual abuse material and replacing Council Framework Decision 2004/68/JHA (recast) (debate)

Madam President, Commissioner, in France almost 10% of children are victims of sexual abuse and girls are twice as victims as boys. In France, it is every three minutes that a child is the victim of rape, incest or sexual abuse. This update of the 2011 Directive is therefore a great step forward because it updates and unifies our definitions of child sexual abuse offences and it is a great step fo…

1

Apr

2025

FR Speech

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Safeguarding the access to democratic media, such as Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (debate)

Mr President, Commissioner, Radio Free Europe, for millions of Europeans, it is the voice of the West, the voice that has brought down authoritarian regimes and brought down the Iron Curtain. On 15 March, by a simple email, Trump ended seventy-five years of US defence of press freedom and freedom of information in countries where these freedoms are under threat. The announcement was severely criti…

31

Mar

2025

FR Speech

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Situation of European academics and researchers in the US and the impact on academic freedom (debate)

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, ‘freedom is the freedom to say that two and two are four. When this is granted, the rest follows. This quote from Georges Orwell has a particular resonance today in Donald Trump’s America. The search for truth, science based on facts: all this is swept on the altar of Trumpist ideology. For two months, for American universities, it is only froze…

31

Mar

2025

FR Speech

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European Cultural Compass as a driving force for economic competitiveness and resilience (debate)

Madam President, Commissioner, promoting our culture also means defending and imposing ourselves. Our cultural compass is our compass of sovereignty. As attacks on our European model multiply, let us not give in to American threats. Abandoning our digital regulation and not defending tooth and nail the recognition of copyright in the face of artificial intelligence would be historic mistakes, the …

12

Mar

2025

FR Speech

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Union of Skills: striving for more and better opportunities to study, train or work in the EU and to bring our talents back home (debate)

Mr President, Madam Vice-President, ladies and gentlemen, the Union of Skills is a real step forward for the European Union. Finally, we implement the Draghi report's recommendations for our competitiveness – because, yes, behind our economies there are mostly women and men who make it work and who need to be trained throughout life. The initiatives announced are progress, and I particularly remem…

12

Feb

2025

FR Speech

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Honouring the memory of Ján Kuciak and Martina Kušnírová: advancing media freedom, strengthening the rule of law, and protecting journalists across the EU (debate)

Madam President, Commissioner, to honour the memory of Ján Kuciak and Martina Kušnírová, seven years after their assassination, is to reiterate the vital importance of the media in our democracies. Their deaths highlight the risk faced by those who seek the truth in Slovakia and wherever press freedom is threatened. I would therefore remind you: the European Union now has a regulation on media fre…

11

Feb

2025

FR Speech

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Boosting vocational education and training in times of labour market transitions (debate)

Madam President, Madam Vice-President, Commissioner and Minister, ladies and gentlemen, there will be no sovereign Europe without a Europe of competences. That is what the Draghi report on competitiveness says. Major industrial challenges, disruptive innovations like AI are profoundly transforming the world of work and our skills needs, especially in the field of vocational training and lifelong l…

28

Nov

2024

FR Speech

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Foreign interference and espionage by third country actors in European universities (debate)

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, there is a blind spot in the fight against foreign interference: These are our universities and our higher education. That is why I have asked for this debate to be held with my Renew Group. Universities are at the heart of the battle for our European research and competitiveness. While we must of course continue to welcome foreign students and def…

24

Oct

2024

FR Speech

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Abuse of new technologies to manipulate and radicalise young people through hate speech and antidemocratic discourse (debate)

Madam President, Commissioner, neo-Nazi propaganda has recently become cool. It’s called ‘pop fascism’, it’s flourishing on social media, it’s ready-to-think for young people. A few weeks ago, I was deeply shocked to discover a video clip and a video game on the subject of remigration created by the youth wing of the AfD, a German far-right party of which 14 Members sit here in this Parliament. Th…

9

Oct

2024

FR Speech

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Protecting the EU budget and ensuring that EU funds do not benefit entities or individuals linked to terrorist or Islamist movement (debate)

Madam President, Commissioner, there are clearly still shortcomings in the allocation of Erasmus grants. After the Femyso linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, we are told of a Turkish university receiving European funding and whose rector is said to have publicly supported the Hamas terrorist organization. This is unacceptable. The European Commission must do its job more scrupulously in examining ca…

7

Oct

2024

FR Speech

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Facing fake news, populism and disinformation in the EU - the importance of public broadcasting, media pluralism and independent journalism (debate)

Madam President, Madam Vice-President, our democracy dies every day from disinformation. Yes, there are interferences, there are troll factories, but their fuel is the algorithms that accelerate the dissemination of false content because they are sensational, and the sensation makes money. We have put large platforms face to face with their responsibilities with the DSA and the DMA, but we still h…