Speeches

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, thanks to Donald Trump, we learn that the BBC is financed by the Americans, but also by Brussels: £1.3 million in 2023. An invisible figure in the Commission's financial transparency system, which shows 39 million euros paid to the English channel since 2014. Why does Brussels finance media? Can Reactive, a Europhile media outlet, criticise the Commission if it receives EUR 36 million from the Commission? Why fund foreign media? Why fund Internews, which no one has ever heard of, who receives money from Mr. Soros or vaccine lobbyists? In Paris, their office on rue Jeanne d'Arc is deserted. Yet Brussels would have paid them 72 million euros and the Americans, via USAID, nearly half a billion dollars. Its president would earn nearly $400,000 a year, and last year in Davos, she recommended demonetizing news sites by developing ad exclusion lists. The Commission must explain to us and above all must stop these hidden subsidies of media control and potential corruption.

Madam President, Commissioner, Mr Szłapka, ladies and gentlemen, coincidental timing: While Ursula is with the globalists in Davos, we are still talking today about the Digital Services Act, which many want to use for political purposes. Elections cancelled in Romania, contested elections in Georgia, election deadlines this year in Germany, Poland, Hungary, Denmark: This is panic in the ‘good camp’. And what a confession - "We did it in Romania, we can do it again if necessary in Germany" - signed Thierry Breton, former European Commissioner and new employee of Bank of America! Strengthening the DSA with the creation of a special ‘Democratic Shield’ committee, with censorship, with the banning of TikTok, X... But when all the subsidised media campaigned for Macron, it did not bother anyone here. The obsession of many leaders in France and Europe with Musk and his supposed hold on our democracies speaks volumes about what we have become. A chilling, motionless country and continent ruled by the fear of losing power. Years you're spoiled children rotten by a press at your command. Unable to accept their failures, some here say they cuddly leave X. And the Tesla, you're going to burn it? In fact, this desire to strengthen the DSA is not to protect European consumers, but to control voters’ ballots. Yet the best answers are innovation, ambition and competition and, don't you displease, the Patriots in power. As the Commissioner says, the objective of the DSA is the protection of fundamental rights. I therefore call on the Commission to reason, not to give in to the injunctions of the bad losers. Yes, freedom of expression, like freedom of thought, is a fundamental right.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner, you talk about 'democracy in action', 'house of democracy', 'shield for democracy', but who are you laughing at? How do you look at yourself in an ice cream? In less than a year, you have turned the DSA, this regulation on digital platforms, into a tool for censorship, for violating democracy. Thierry Breton was in the crosshairs X. Now it is Ursula who is attacking the Chinese giant TikTok. You don't like the election results? You are interfering in the democratic process by insinuating that the culprit is TikTok, and you are cancelling elections in Romania. You don't like a candidate? You cancel the opposition candidacy in Moldova the day before. You don't like patriotic parties? You are setting up an undemocratic cordon by flouting your own rules of procedure. In fact, you are afraid of democracy, afraid of losing your compensation, so you attack those who want to give back to the people. Patriotic leaders, you take them to court to kill them politically; This was the case for Salvini in Italy, and for Marine Le Pen in France. Another example, the European Constitutional Treaty rejected by referendum in France and the Netherlands in 2005 ended up being imposed with sanctions. Your vision of democracy is one-way, without opposition parties, without debate. Be honest, you dream of a dictatorship of single thought. But what is this feeling of superiority that drives you? Take responsibility for your hypocrisy, take responsibility for your poor record and accept that the people no longer trust you and want a different future for Europe. Be sure of one thing: What does not kill makes us stronger, and I extend my full support to the Romanian people.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, Ms Emily O’Reilly, Commissioner, first of all, I would like to pay tribute to the importance and quality, dear lady, of the work you have done over the past ten years, and especially since 2020, the year of the COVID-19 madness – in this regard, I welcome the 393 investigations you have opened for 2023 alone. Maladministration has become the system. This is how Europe is run, and we seem to think this is normal. Complaints, reports, hearings... but a Commission that just shrugs its shoulders and continues, as if nothing had happened. Many hypocrites here criticise Ms von der Leyen, but kiss her and give her back her immunity for five years. European citizens no longer want these political tricks. Undeclared travel of Ursula to Greece, ‘Qatargate’, ‘Pfizergate’, multiple revolving door cases: scandals follow one another, and they are ignored. As a mediator, you have worked to ensure that the European Commission put an end to its opaque practices, delays and cronyism, to no avail. That's all it takes: you can count on us to hold this new von der Leyen Commission to account. I welcome your repeated calls for the Commission to respond to requests for justification and clarification – which it has often done only late, if at all. You leave office after two terms, and citizens committed to transparency can say thank you. Now, I hope that your successor will continue your valuable work. I also regret that the shadow rapporteur finally respected the anti-democratic cordon imposed by the EPP-S&D-Renew-Verts/ALE axis, which prevents this report from being improved.

(start of non-microphone intervention) ...Immunity for Ursula von der Leyen. We are a week before the criminal trial of hidden text messages for the purchase of COVID vaccines. This interference is inadmissible. Will the clan around Ursula use this vote of approval from the Commission to put pressure on the judicial process? Couldn't we wait a week before validating a clean, competent and consensual person? This vote on the agenda of the European Parliament is a trial of accomplices. Today, some MEPs approved someone who avoided publicly explaining to MEPs about Pfizer's contracts, despite rulings by the Court of Justice of the European Union, the Ombudsman and the European Court of Auditors' report. Someone who refused to stand in front of voters in the European elections in 2019 and 2024, to defend his record; It also wants to implement a programme presented by Mario Draghi, a former minority Prime Minister in Italy – a programme published after the elections that took stock of the Commission’s liabilities. A minority in France, Spain, Belgium, Czechia, Slovenia and Hungary, Ursula has also not really convinced Polish, Greek or Cypriot MPs, which represents a total of nearly 200 million people. For my part, today I am proud to have voted against this Commission.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner, I would like to thank the President of the Court of Auditors for this excellent report, which is very useful here for all of us. In France, it is the fiscal shower, the country is ruined, but here in Brussels, we continue to enjoy ourselves, and I will give you three examples. Do the French know that our money is being used to build bicycle garages in Eastern Europe? Do the French know that Brussels accepted a €6 million bill from an NGO in Africa that paid up to 62% more for its fuel than the local price? Do the French know that Brussels sent twice as much money to Afghanistan after the Taliban took Kabul as before, while our soldiers were fighting? In the end, they died for nothing... If you take a closer look at some of the figures in this report, it's just scary: 91 billion pledges for technocrats’ pensions, 104 billion euros of high-risk spending, 458 billion in loans, 110 billion more in one year, 712 billion euros of off-budget post-COVID recovery. A phantom plan, without any financial traceability. Even the Commission says that it does not know who the final beneficiaries are. Brussels’ debts took the elevator, and the French took the stairs to repay them. Brussels flares up while the French are no longer able to heat themselves. I thank you for this excellent report, which sheds light on all these excesses.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner, here we are on the road to five more years of teutonries. It had been hoped in 2019 that the first von der Leyen term would reflect sound and honest management. But we had the motorists bludgeoning, a budget slippage and Pfizer's tricks. So tonight we are talking about the European monitoring of e-commerce markets, while our local shops close one after the other. The sale of dangerous, illegal, counterfeit or stolen products is still legion on major platforms. This fight, however, was what you promised when all previous legislation on this issue was adopted. Your slogan? “The Digital Services Act will protect your children.” Today, it is no longer a Digital Services Act, but a Digital Surveillance Act that has been put in place, under the leadership of the resigning Thierry Breton. Consumer associations reported last April the Chinese giant Temu, because it did not ensure the identification of sellers. This is Article 30 of the DSA. These same associations have reported cases where the consumer is manipulated by prices that change or do not correspond to the chosen product. This is Article 25 of the Digital Services Act. We had the 1998 directive on price indications, the 2005 directive on prohibited commercial practices, the new rules on the safety of toys and the reform of the Customs Code. But the reality is a jungle of standards that prevent our French or European companies from developing, and third countries, such as China, the world leader in e-commerce, that easily circumvent our rules – according to an OLAF inspector – or, worse, that benefit from exemptions from customs fees for purchases whose value does not exceed EUR 150. A jungle where, in the end, it is Brussels that shoots a bullet in the foot of European e-commerce.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, dear democrats, dear legalists, I would like to make a point of order. Rule 219 provides for respect for gender equality in the composition of committee bureaux. However, this equality is not respected, nor is the result of the ballot box, i.e. democracy. Indeed, Madam President, you have agreed not to respect democracy by granting a derogation from the principle of gender equality for Mr Weber in several committee offices, thereby ignoring more than 20 million of our voters. How can you accept that the CONT committee, which controls the EU budget – and has to lead by example – continues not to respect our rules? You want to export gender equality to Kazakhstan or dedicate a week to it in December, but this principle is already not respected in CONT, at the very heart of our institution. By not having a fourth Vice-President, the composition of the CONT Bureau violates our Rules of Procedure. Madam President, thank you for taking the necessary steps to put an end to this hypocrisy and to respect our motto, 'United in diversity'.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner, do you remember one of the biggest fake news stories of recent years, during the COVID-19 crisis, with 'All vaccinated, all protected'? We knew quite quickly that this was not true and it was forbidden to say it, says this weekend a journalist of CNews. "Forbidden to say it," outright. The media has long been under control, owned by billionaires or subsidized by the regimes in place. But that's not enough for you. You produce fake news, you censor everything, as Mark Zuckerberg just pointed out, and you even let go of Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks. And since from Iraq to Afghanistan, wars go on, here's what he said: Almost every war that has started in the last 50 years has been the result of the lies that have been publicized. The media could have stopped them. If they had done their research rather than relaying government propaganda, they could have stopped them. What does that mean? This means that people do not like wars. People do not agree to go to war with their eyes wide open. People must be manipulated to accept wars. So if we had a healthy media world, we would have a more peaceful world. I would rather say that with a healthy media world, we need above all a healthy political world that respects, do not displease you, all political parties, without inventing new anathemas such as "populism".

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, today we are debating anti-whaling activist Paul Watson, who was arrested in Greenland on 21 July 2024 and is awaiting extradition to Japan. This extradition request will be examined on 2 October. The arrest is related to events in the Southern Ocean in February 2010. Watson is charged with complicity in assault and intrusion on a ship, two charges that are related to the collision of a Japanese ship, the Shōnan Maru 2. As a matter of law, States have exclusive jurisdiction over vessels flying their flag while on the high seas. This means that Japan can treat the collision of the Shōnan Maru 2 as if it had occurred on Japanese territory. He issued an international arrest warrant for Paul Watson in 2012. I do not know Paul Watson personally, but I note that France, Brigitte Bardot and more than 700,000 people have mobilized for him by signing a petition against his extradition that would be fatal to him. But over the years, Paul Watson has become famous and even the emblem of the defense of whales, dolphins and other marine mammals hunted around the world. We respect the people, culture and state of Japan. I respect Denmark, Greenland and it will be their decision in the end of course, but this case raises questions. The Kangei Maru, Japanese whaler inaugurated in May 2024, is a war machine designed to kill thousands of whales even in the most remote corners of the planet. Japan is acting in violation of the international moratorium on the whale meat trade, which entered into force in 1986 and which Denmark has ratified. He is shedding the blood of whales at a time when a global mobilization is being organized to free their greatest defender. This pursuit to white hair and the death of a man, this extradition reminds me of others: Those of Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, truth fighters, freedom fighters, whistleblowers, they have been chased around the world. Japan has been tracking Paul Watson since 2012 with a red notice issued by Interpol. A 2017 European Parliament report denounces the multiple abuses and misuses of the Red Notice system, used by some governments to track down political activists and opponents. The case of Paul Watson is cited as one example of this kind of abuse. Our challenge today is to find a balance between the fight against animal suffering and the persistence of human traditions, without entering into the game of geopolitical tensions that often underlie these fights.

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, Digital Service Act or rather Digital Surveillance Act. While your friend Mario Draghi, the man who helped Goldman Sachs and Greece by concealing deficits, paints a disastrous picture of the European Union in terms of technology and innovation, France handcuffs the director of Telegram in the middle of the summer and the Commission hunts down Twitter, or X, which offers interviews with Donald Trump. Even the director of Proton Mail talks about economic suicide. Commissioner Breton, prolix of his lounge chair to send missives in the middle of summer to Elon Musk, is a commissioner who has resigned since yesterday in Brussels and will finally no longer be able to explain himself to MEPs. Yes, a dirty summer for freedom of expression and innovation under the pretext, I quote, of protecting European citizens. Protect them from what, after all? Freedom to think, to think differently? The word "disinformation" has never been heard as much as it is today. The more votes the good side loses, the more it screams to fight disinformation. Parliament even urges us to ask you for stricter control of Telegram. We saw it during the COVID period, with this crazy censorship and vaccine propaganda, questioned a few days ago by the director of Meta who was forced to follow the instructions of the governments. You are finally the puppet of a dying system. The Union you want, even with an 800 billion euro plan, will not go far, but that may be the scam.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, I want to make this last statement and I dedicate it to Michèle Rivasi, who has fought hard for ethics and morals. Following the scandal of bags of tickets or free travel of Qatar, dubious contracts with Pfizer, after having paid a director convicted for rape €18,000 for seven years, the Commission announces to establish a body in charge of ethical standards for the European institutions. Alleluia! However, we already have this: it is the European Court of Auditors, it is the European Ombudsman, it is the European Prosecutor and, ultimately, it is the courts. What happened is very clear; a four-year-old can understand it. The Court of Auditors and the Ombudsman have already explained to President Ursula von der Leyen that there is a serious problem in the way she manages or hides her activities. This new body will depend on the Commission, it will obviously not be independent. Self-assessment, confidential and non-binding opinions: Well, we understood the maneuver. In all these directions and directives, we are told about legal persons; We should also talk about immoral people. As it is time for pre-electoral retraining, I want to say here, in reading Article 5, that Mrs von der Leyen does not meet the conditions for retraining as one of the five so-called independent bureaucrats at EUR 12 000 of this new thing, which will also be at the Commission’s orders. Throughout her career, she has not exhibited impeccable professional behaviour.

Madam President, Commissioner, dear rapporteurs, ladies and gentlemen, as a French member of the Rassemblement National, I obviously support this proposal to promote the repair of goods. Yes, the era of disposable everything and planned obsolescence has led us nowhere. It is not our project of civilisation and it is not our model. Recycling and repairing are also local jobs, here in France, here in Europe. I know this is a bad word for some macronists, but those who pay our salary are not your distant friends, they are European workers. They are the ones we must serve. And we did it by way of amendment, but unfortunately, for political reasons, you ignore them. "Brussels doesn't know how to serve, but Brussels can hurt," Molière said. So today, in Brussels or Berlin, you realise very late that you have destroyed entire parts of European industry. We can no longer stand these frequent lessons and feigned sweetnesses of the Macron/von der Leyen majority, all these virtue-seasoning preachers. The right to repair must strike the right balance between the purchasing power of consumers and an acceptable cost for industries. However, this Brussels Commission has broken our industry with absurd decisions that have caused gas and electricity prices to skyrocket and our jobs to flee. Are our diesel cars repairable or disposable? Is the Fessenheim power plant repairable or disposable? Is Nord Stream repairable or disposable? You broke our automotive industry, you broke our nuclear momentum and shut down the Fessenheim power plant while it was working. Germany dismantles its wind turbines that do not work to take back coal. You are wasting the energy of Europeans and driving our businesses away. What services have you provided to Europe and France? We're still lagging behind. France has now fallen to the level of Greece in terms of the share of industry in GDP. If we repair trains in Bulgaria, who will repair the SNCF? Where is the take-off of French, if not European, digital technology? After decades of industrial destruction, it is also time, yes, to repair Europe. See you on June 10th.

Mr President, allegations of corruption and embezzlement of EU funds in Spain during the pandemic: Thank you for adding this item to the agenda. But let’s go further than Spain and the masks. Some individuals in ministerial cabinets are suspected of corruption. We are told about socialists, we are told about EUR 53 million of COVID-19 masks allocated under the urgency procedure to a company that knew nothing about the sector. We know the music. Today, you all agree to talk about this €53 million for masks, but not contracts for €71 billion COVID-19 vaccines, for 4.6 billion doses to be discarded. Nobody here wants to talk about it, neither the ‘Qatargate’ left, nor the caviar right, nor the green ayatollahs, and especially not Ms von der Leyen. Suspicions of corruption, conflicts of interest affect Spain, but what about Brussels? I asked the Commission where the doses were; it has just replied that it was not in a position to comment on the number of COVID-19 vaccines delivered and administered in the European Union in 2023. However, on January 16, it ordered 146 million doses. Scandals like this, unfortunately, you're going to get shoveled.

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, today we are not talking about green algae, but about green claims. These unsubstantiated, imprecise and ambiguous claims are indeed liable to mislead consumers. All of you here are familiar with these greenwashing allegations. Moreover, they apply perfectly to this biodegradable Commission in Brussels: President von der Leyen, who calls herself ‘zero carbon’, but who travels by private jet 23 times in 2023 or by armoured car with bodyguards and driver to walk a few metres between Brussels offices; a Chair who refuses to comment on the allegations attributed to her for lack of transparency or conflict of interest in the staggering contracts for the purchase of COVID-19 vaccines; an administration whose founding act was an integration trip to Ethiopia with 27 Commissioners and a plane packed with hundreds of staff; to an environmentally friendly President who is still travelling to Frankfurt on 28 June 2021, in the midst of COVID-19, to present a Banker of the Year Award. The banker's sustainability values: Here they are, the true European values. This Waste Commission, with billions of doses thrown away, will have dared everything: buy electric cars for €50,000 – let the useless walk! Let the beggars take the bus! No more showering, no more bathing, and lowering the temperature! The carbon that must finally disappear is us. This administration, these so-called friends of nature, sign with New Zealand to import cargoes of butter and cheese, and it tells us about respect for the environment. Twenty thousand kilometers, while butter and cheese, we have here at home. False honey, counterfeiters, the ghosts of ecology are Brussels. Look, if we switched to the hammer-pilon, as Saint-Exupéry said, the miles of paper that your administration has produced over the past five years, Europe would be better off. Europe is dying of your miles of standards and paper. You finally reject Europe, the real Europe, the Europe of business and the real problems.

This is a big topic! Surveillance is important. And indeed, today we have legislation at national level that already regulates this surveillance aspect. The problem is the drift associated with the use of these new tools. Biometrics may be useful for some services, especially at airports, to facilitate passage, but it needs to be regulated. We also have to see which company uses this type of data because we know it very well, it is data that is important and some companies use it. This was seen in the Facebook case: that company resold the data obtained to other organisations. So yes, supervision, it needs to be supervised and we will continue to do so. But we need to know what use to make of it, which is why we need to regulate it; it is necessary to be there as a safeguard against those who use these useful means for society. This has been seen in the case of the COVID crisis: there have been abuses, with discrimination against certain populations. In my opinion, this is the risk for the future, if we put this in the hands of, say, authoritarian services and authorities.

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, you wanted to include the QR Code in the body of our fellow citizens. No transportation, no medical care, no nightclubs, standing cafes, sitting, lying down or dynamic beach. July 12, 2021 will remain for France a black day for our freedoms. This temptation of the QR Code and social credit in the Chinese way, some dream of it here. The temptation to deprive liberties and access to public services and care, the temptation to identify obedient citizens and punish deviant citizens by blocking their bank accounts, such as in Canada, China or Italy. Obviously, we know the digital facilities, and I would have no fear in a democracy-friendly state. But we lived with COVID an authoritarian drift on convictions that turned out to be wrong. Yes, digital identity can drag us to another model of society. And I will end with this passage by George Orwell, in his book "1984", which predicted the total surveillance by the cameras of Big Brother: ‘Winston could still decipher on the façade the artistic inscription of the three slogans of the Party: WAR IS PEACE/ FREEDOM, IS SLAVERY/IGNORANCE, IS FORCE". Welcome to 2024! (The speaker agreed to answer a blue card question)

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner, some of you met with lobbyists here in Strasbourg last month with Moderna and BioNtech and this week you will probably see others. FleishmannHillard works for Pfizer and has 63 lobbyists with an EP badge. Medtech Europe, a new lobby for the digital health market, has already met with the Commission 40 times. This von der Leyen commission thus ends as it began: under the sign ‘Big Pharma’. After billions of contracts secretly arranged with Pfizer-BioNtech Moderna, CureVac, Gilead, after the wasted trash doses, here they want to change the pharmaceutical regulations in their favor. Today we are talking about patents, supplementary protection certificates. Of course, we are in favour of research in Europe, but we must dare to tell the truth: it is a bandage on a wooden leg. For 20 years, which industrialist has invested in European researchers? The result is production going to India and China, with the dogma of generics, and shortages here of essential medicines. So the pharmaceutical cartel found the parade. To make small profits, it is easier to create shortages, to do tax evasion, to make a fake publication to kill an old medicine, easier to do two-month clinical studies instead of two years to find no side effects, easier to convince some bureaucrats by pernicious lobbying. The urgency is to regain control of this sector. Covid-19 bingo has short-circuited all the usual procedures and has spawned bad habits, naive or complicit, in some authorities. Our health must not become a funfair where the illusionist pockets you and disappears.

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the von der Leyen presidency will have been the mandate of the moral slide, and, as you well know, when morality slides, public debts unravel. Some here tell me that I talk too much about Pfizer-BioNTech’s €71 billion vaccine contracts, that I talk too much about hidden text messages, hidden prices and, today, wasted doses. But it was your parties that decided not to invite the President to explain to this Parliament. It was your parties that decided not to condemn these behaviours and not to remove the badges of Pfizer lobbyists, despite the refusal of its CEO to testify on the biggest contract in the history of the European Union. Result: Brussels Commission officials do not report publicly on their meetings with tobacco industry representatives in Davos or Brussels. It is not me who says it, it is the European Ombudsman. In its decision of 19 December, it specifically appointed the administrators of the internal market, for whom Mr Breton is responsible, and an employee of Michel Barnier. I quote: “The Commission did not keep minutes of all meetings that took place in 2020 and 2021. The Ombudsman therefore wonders how the Commission can reassure the public that its interactions with tobacco lobbyists do not undermine public health policies [...] if minutes do not exist.” In the face of these lobbies and temptations, we are not asking for holiness, but Europe is not destined to become a banana republic of oblique right.

Mr President, Minister, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the biggest thing is to have believed that these new digital laws would protect our internal market from defective Chinese inflatable dolls or fake Rolexes from the Philippines. Indeed, since the acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk, it has become the main obsession of the Commission, which absolutely wants to protect us from the Great Evil X. A few days ago, Ms von der Leyen told Davos that the main concern for the next two years was not conflict or climate, but disinformation or misinformation, and that this had been her priority since the beginning of her mandate, with the Digital Services Act and the definition of the responsibility of large internet platforms for the content they promote and propagate, statements supported by Emmanuel Macron in Sweden. So exit the climate, exit the armed conflicts, exit the pandemics, and haro on disinformation, this evil of the century that, in your opinion, spawned Brexit, Donald Trump and, why not, the 2005 referendum. 2024 is an important year, as you said, when half the world will be called upon to vote, to express its choice, even when it displeases the camp of the good. The camp of good is those who decide to set up in this democratic forum a cordon sanitaire against those who do not rank behind the right, Macron, the socialists, the greens or the left, this wonderful little world that is recovering from the prizes of the best MP. The freedom to express your opinion, in the end, is this information that you do not control and that hinders you, under the guise of fighting disinformation or illegal content. A political party, a different discourse on COVID-19 does not suit you? Illico is censorship. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 marked the fall of the communist regime in Europe, with its procession of propaganda tools. Trente-cinq ans après, vous reprenez ces mêmes recettes staliniennes avec ce nouveau ministère de la vérité pour contrôler le récit politique et la censure 4.0. Big Brother is watching you.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner: , as our former colleague Radek Sikorski, Chair of the Delegation for relations with the United States, said after the explosions that hit the Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea. This delegation, through which Washington tells us that, in order to regain our autonomy in semiconductors, we must conclude a treaty with Taiwan. Thank you, USA. Microsoft is recovering the market for our health data, the few industries that we have left are exiled to the United States thanks to the attractive subsidies offered there, Pfizer obtained the vaccine market until 2027, we even almost had an American woman at the head of the protection of European competition, and today we are pleased to be the first in the world to have standards on artificial intelligence while our main competitors sell us artificial intelligence. Thank you, USA. Solar panels are the same. Commissioner, you gave us an unhappy picture of the situation of the European solar industry: Congratulations! But the finding is not new: Ms von der Leyen seems to worry only when German companies complain and when Mr Meyer Burger relocates. You are now discovering that the only company left in Europe will go into exile in the United States. You are responsible for this industrial disaster. You surfed on crises to finish us off, to destroy the little independence we had, when we were proposing, with amendments, the defence of our national jewels. You have destroyed French nuclear power, our cheap energy for our industry and our fellow citizens. It was absolutely necessary to close Fessenheim, abandon Astrid to Bill Gates. Result: electricity and gas prices are skyrocketing, and we have become an industrial desert. Now you have come to tell us that this is terrible. Finally, wind turbines, solar panels, German or Spanish plants are unable to do so. This administration is not a strategy, it is a tragedy; it is the opera-comic of sovereignty. On the purchase-waste of COVID-19 vaccines, on billions of variable rate loans, on the agricultural issue: 90% of the problems are in Brussels. But "thank you, USA". And a tip to our German friends is to buy Emmanuel Todd’s latest book. The Defeat of the West.

Madam President, Mrs von der Leyen is in Davos at the moment to restore confidence. But what a confession! Yes, let’s talk about fraud, since nobody talks about it. The Brussels Commission published the BIP, its annual report on the protection of financial interests, with a total of around €2 billion of fraud in 2022. But one line is missing in the table: the fraud line in Brussels. No conflict of interest, no free travel to Qatar, no influence trading. Saint Brussels, pray for us. The Pfizer-BioNtech giant contracts case revealed a culture of opacity, impunity and incompetence. €71 billion, ten doses per person, doses that continue to be purchased while already €4 billion have been discarded. Restoring trust. How can we describe the scene of the European Public Prosecutor’s investigation into SMS messages where there is a hesitation between the stealth inspector and the ghost of the opera? What I see is that Mrs von der Leyen was unable to interrupt the huge sums paid to Pfizer-BioNtech. But in 2023, it blocked EUR 1,000 per Erasmus student funding with Hungary, penalising 40,000 Hungarian and European students. Weak with the strong and strong with the weak. That is why I voted against fraud but for Hungary.

Madam President, Madam Ombudsman, Commissioner, the bubble of illusion is about to burst. The illusion of fabulous Pfizer contracts, wonderful stocks, this bubble will burst. And it is also thanks to the European Ombudsman that I warmly welcome: you have fought with talent for transparency against a champion administration of mismanagement. Brussels, this administration which gives red cards to certain Member States, forgets its duties. No response on SMS, no response on risk-benefits among young people, no response on dose stocks or prices. The opacity assumed, the suspicion of conflicts of interest, the systematic avoidance of responsibilities signal a leakage forward. Mr rapporteur, congratulations on your report, which dares to quote Pfizer. Mr Terheş, your amendments are excellent. Ms O’Reilly, you have rightly investigated and criticised the Commission for its lack of transparency and accountability. More broadly, as we have understood, it is the culture of service and respect for fundamental rights that are at stake. Let us list each year the podium of the Commission’s less transparent services, such as the Directorate for Health, which, after the revolving door of its director in a US laboratory, after the Pfizer contract scandal, why is the Commission hiding documents relating to the European Health Data Space, or the documents promised at the hearing by Emer Cooke, the director of the European Medicines Agency? As for your survey on the tobacco lobby and the WHO, it is very useful and thank you very much. Let's also look at the lobbies of pharmaceutical companies and the foundations of Bill Gates. Madam Ombudsman, once again, thank you for your very valuable work and also for your service and I wish you good luck and, above all, my best wishes for this new year.

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, for once I agree with my colleagues. When a petition arrives here, when citizens complain, the Commission does not act on it because, supposedly, these complaints concern individual cases or various facts. This is also the attitude of the European Medicines Agency and your Brussels administration, which counts 12,000 deaths and millions of side effects of vaccines against COVID-19, Pfizer and others, without drawing the consequences and which hide the information from the public at the bottom of a drawer. The Commission's current approach of not giving access to documents and SMS, of ignoring petitions, of ignoring citizens by sending petitions back to countries, results in the blocking of procedures for years in the pre-litigation phase, without transmission to the courts and without access to essential documents. Faced with this opaque bureaucracy of Brussels, the best defense is the attack, as the Emperor Napoleon said. Let us talk about the latest report of the European Court of Auditors on public procurement in Europe. Every year, some €2 trillion is procured. The Court concludes that the duration of administrative proceedings has doubled in ten years. Neither Eurostat nor the Commission monitors public procurement prices. The level of competition has decreased over the last decade. Two key indicators are used by the Court to measure non-competition between public contracts: no invitation to tender and single tenderer. Does that remind you of anything? Me, it reminds me of the contracts for the purchase of COVID-19 vaccines with these prices and secret clauses. Finally, I will quote the Court of Auditors: Since public procurement involves large sums of public money, there is a risk of fraud and corruption. In public procurement, transparency is therefore essential to ensure that decision-makers are all held accountable for their actions. The European Ombudsman asked us last week to fight corruption and she is right. This must be a priority for all of us, and Qatargate must not hide the Pfizergate.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, we are going to vote to ban the vacuum on both sides, to bring containers of wine, milk and cattle from New Zealand. Brussels therefore wants to ban vacuum in cartons, ban camembert boxes or fruit crates. So like you, if I were a bureaucrat in Brussels, I would also force children to finish their Lego in shops to avoid these useless boxes. If I were a bureaucrat, I would impose a single size for cabin suitcases. If I were a bureaucrat, I would replace steaks with insects because cows threaten Argentinian glaciers. I would also ban fuel-powered cars and cheap planes. If I were a bureaucrat, I would also ban Twitter and put in place widespread surveillance. I would also ban the words ‘Christmas’, ‘Madam’, ‘Sir’, ‘He’, ‘She’. It is with these methods that bureaucrats find themselves banning our camembert boxes because they saw plastic waste on a beach during their holidays in Bali. Of course we are in favour of recycling packaging and against these useless plastics. We already have a law in France, so let the French live in French, and the Europeans live in Europeans.