Speeches

Mr President, ‘we do not yet have full scientific evidence about the effects of vaccination, but we cannot wait for all these questions to be answered’. This is what Commissioner Didier Reynders said in this plenary on 28 April 2021. We received guarantees from him in front of us that this Green Certificate is not going to be used to violate people’s rights, but it will be used to facilitate the freedom of movement. And look what is happening right now all across Europe. We heard just today that the Commission is acknowledging that Member States are abusively using this certificate to violate people’s rights. And the Commission says implicitly that that is OK. What we saw happening this year is that this certificate was used to coerce people, to mandate people, to force people to be vaccinated against their will. So the question to the Commission is, why would someone accept that EU citizens be vaccinated with medical products based on these contracts that weren’t released to the public? So I’m asking publicly here the Commission, before we even talk about prolonging the Green Certificate, to fully publish the contracts that the Commission signed with the companies concerned.

Madam President, in 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed, Ukraine ended up having, at that time, over 3000 atomic bombs, making Ukraine the third nuclear power in the world. In 1994, Ukraine trusted the guarantees received from Russia, as well as the West, and agreed to denuclearise so it signed the so-called Budapest Memorandum. In exchange for denuclearisation, Russia affirmed in that memorandum its obligation to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine. Ukraine and the West has kept their end of the bargain, but Russia has not. In 2014, Russia illegally occupied Crimea and then occupied parts of eastern Ukraine. Now, Russia under Vladimir Putin is threatening to invade Ukraine and start a war unseen in Europe since the Second World War, which is unacceptable. Ukraine is a sovereign country and it has every right to pursue its desired direction. I call on you, therefore, to support the national sovereignty, independence and internationally recognised borders of Ukraine and use all the necessary means to help Ukraine defend itself.

Madam President, the question in this debate today should have been how to combat COVID-19, not how to vaccinate the world. It’s not the job of the European Parliament nor its duty to vaccinate the whole world. The job of this Parliament is to legislate for the people and to exercise its control over how the Commission is spending European citizens’ money. The problem is that as we’ve seen in the last year, none of these things happen. The Green Certificate was passed and Commissioner Didier Reynders said in this plenary that this regulation should pass to facilitate freedom of movement, and we see now in Europe that people cannot exercise their basic fundamental rights unless they have this Green Certificate. As far as budgetary control goes, since the contracts signed by the Commission with the vaccination companies are not published yet, how can this House exercise its mandate? So, I’m asking the Commissioner directly: who is liable in the event people have side effects from these vaccines? And lastly, when are you going to publish these contracts so that all Europeans will know what they contain?

Madam President, dear Commissioner, the protection of the fundamental freedoms and rights of every person is the foundation of the European project and the reason for the EU’s existence. The founding fathers of this European project, like Schuman and Adenauer, envisioned a Europe where the governments and bureaucrats would work for the people, not against them, not to control them, as happened in the Soviet Union. Under the leadership of Ursula von der Leyen, unfortunately, the European Union is transitioning from a democracy to a tyranny, and the Green Certificate is proving this. From a Union in which decisions are taken as openly as possible and as closely as possible to the citizens, as the EU treaty says, we are now seeing the EU becoming less transparent, with important decisions being taken behind closed doors or far away from the people. The contracts signed between EU and the vaccination companies are proving this. Since we have the Commissioner here, I am openly asking her to fully publish all the contracts signed between the European Union and these vaccination companies so the EU citizens, as well as us MEPs, will know exactly what they contain.

Mr President, it is shocking to see from plenary to plenary proposals put forward by the European Commission that are leading to the Chinafication of the European Union, where people are stripped of their basic fundamental rights and a Chinese-like social scoring system is applied. We heard today that the reason why this system is implemented is to facilitate the freedom of movement. We heard the same narrative when the green certificate was implemented, and we see today in the European Union people who cannot go to a store or even enter the European Parliament to exercise the rights that they received from the people who elected them. The introduction of the European social security pass system is another step towards a centralised, bureaucratic, unaccountable mass control of the European citizens. This means more power to the unelected bureaucrats and less rights for the people. We must not forget that the EU is an area of freedom, and we must fight to protect that.

Mr President, dear European citizens, under the current leadership of Ursula von der Leyen, the European Union is transitioning from a democracy to a tyranny. By imposing the mandatory Digital COVID Certificate on people, the EU is becoming the graveyard of fundamental human rights. This digital certificate is the precursor of the Chinese communist social credit system, which is already proposed by the Commission under the label of European Digital Identity. Initially, the European bureaucracy said that this certificate is needed to ‘facilitate freedom of movement’. Now, people cannot freely exercise their fundamental rights in the EU unless they have a digital certificate, which is obtained in one case by vaccinations against COVID-19. We know for a fact know that these vaccines have side effects. When there are risks, people have to have choices, which is why I call today on the European Commission and this Parliament to immediately abolish the mandatory Digital COVID Certificate so that people can freely exercise their rights and pursue happiness in a Europe that is supposed to be an area of freedom and not a prison.

Mr President, freedom of the press is not an end in itself, but a means to achieve a free society, said a former US Supreme Court judge. The SLAPP lawsuits are a clear threat to the freedom of expression of journalists, and we need to protect them. But journalists also have a duty to the people and to the society to seek, investigate and report the facts without prejudice, fear or favour. In the last two years, for example, during this pandemic, many journalists have forgotten, unfortunately, their duty to speak the truth to power and not act as PR agents of the governments or medical companies. In September, the European Ombudsman sent a press release stating that the European Commission is under investigation on how Ursula von der Leyen personally negotiated and signed a contract on behalf of the EU with the Pfizer company to buy 1.8 billion doses of vaccines. Two weeks after that press release, only two articles were written about that story. Elected officials have an obligation to protect the journalists who speak the truth. But those journalists also have the duty to seek the truth and tell it to people, because that is only how the truth will set us free.

Madam President, life is the precondition for any human being to possess fundamental rights, because only a human being that is alive has the legal capacity to hold rights and obligations. The representatives of Texans decided that they, as a society and a state, have to protect the ones among them who were not yet born but their hearts started to beat, so they passed the Texas Heartbeat Act. Considering that abortion is a fundamental right, it is simply absurd that the European Parliament is criticising now the Texas legislator for this act that protects the life of the unborn with the heartbeat. Instead of giving money to NGOs in the United States to promote abortion among the most vulnerable communities over there, we should support providing actual choices for mothers-to-be, such as maternity leave, parental leave, flexible working hours, early child care, business literacy, or jobs for single mums, or adoptions. Europe is dying, dear colleagues, and this is a fact. If we really care about the future of Europe, instead of ideologically-empty talks, let’s get together to identify and promote feasible solutions for women to choose life so Europe can have a future.

Mr President, this report is another brick in the social engineering construct intended in the European Union that places Marxist ideology over biology and physiology, which, at the end, would lead to chaos. An important topic like domestic violence or child custody, which affects many couples especially now due to the pandemic, was hijacked by this report and transformed into an ideological weapon that is disregarding the EU Treaties, the solidarity principle and the biology. Firstly, the proposals from this report are violating the EU Treaties, which say that according to the subsidiarity principle, the European Union has no competence for the development of policies related to family, criminal law, education and healthcare. All of these are prerogatives of the sovereign Member States and any intrusion of the institutions into these prerogatives is undermining the foundation of the European Union. The report fails to identify and propose real solutions for women and their children faced with domestic violence, but proposes instead redefining norms and terms which lead to more confusion. A woman and her children that are abused do not need a redefinition of terms, but concrete measures to protect and safeguard them – measures which are not mentioned in this report. In conclusion, Parliament proved once again that the social engineering construct intended to redefine and redesign the European Union is more important than providing concrete solutions to real problems in the European Union, like child abuse and domestic violence.

Mr President, dear colleagues, we have heard here, in this House, now that it is being said that these vaccine contracts are being classified, in order to protect the interests of companies. But I ask you: But who protects the interests and rights of the citizens of the European Union? EU citizens have the right to know the price of these vaccines and, in particular, the contractual clauses on who is responsible for the adverse side effects of these vaccines. When the Digital Green Certificate was discussed, Commissioner Reynders Didier said in this plenary and I quote: “the effects of vaccines are not yet fully known”. Is it right, then, for European bureaucrats or politicians to expose European citizens to risks and negative effects of vaccines that are not yet fully known, and for citizens not to know who is actually responding, if there are such adverse side effects? Pfizer, for example, changed its leaflet and acknowledged that its vaccine can cause myocarditis and pericarditis, especially among young people. It is unfair, therefore, to make the digital green certificate conditional on EU citizens exercising their rights on the basis of an injection of such a medical product, the side effects of which are not yet fully known. Beyond the lack of transparency about these vaccines, there is another problem: For months, it has been publicly stated that these vaccines are the only solution to end the coronavirus pandemic. But we see countries with the highest vaccination rate have the highest infection rate in the world, which contradicts all the rhetoric we've been told for months. The EU has today come from an area of freedom, where the fundamental rights of everyone, everyone, are respected and protected, a camp where the exercise of fundamental rights is a matter of obtaining a green certificate. This certificate is issued on the basis of receipt of this vaccine which does not stop the vaccinated person from becoming ill or spreading the disease, or on the basis of an artificial test, which gives very large errors. This is not the first time in history that Europe and the world have been in a pandemic. However, this is the first time that the exercise of fundamental rights and freedoms is conditioned by medical products that do not stop the spread of the virus that generated this pandemic. I ask you not to lose sight of the fact that Europe was conceived as a space of freedom. That is why you have an obligation to respect and protect the rights of all and not to create a Europe where people are discriminated against or segregated according to whether or not they receive a vaccine whose effects are not yet fully known.

Madam President, I say to President von der Leyen: in 2019 as a candidate for the office you are holding right now, you said in this plenary, and I quote: ‘the foundation of our European civilisation is Greek philosophy and Roman law’. What you did not mention in that speech is the fundamental role that Christianity, and implicitly the Judeo-Christian values, had in developing the European civilisation. Based on these Christian values and the belief that all human beings are created in the image of God, the fundamental and inalienable rights were developed which later were specified in treaties and conventions, as well as national constitutions and laws. Reducing the European civilisation only to Greek philosophy and Roman law and ignoring the Judeo-Christian values you will find arguments for inequality and slavery, as there was in ancient Greece, and tyranny, as there was in ancient Rome. Under your leadership unfortunately, the European Union became from an area of freedom, a concentration camp in which people cannot travel, eat in restaurants or go to movies unless they have a green certificate. I urge you, therefore, to promote and defend in the European Union the Christian heritage and values based on which we are all created by God, equal and born free.