Speeches

Mr President, it is the practice of thugs to denigrate those they meet. This is exactly what the US is doing by applying the principle of extraterritoriality of US law, i.e. the application of its right to the entire planet. This is the western. All the pretexts are good for bringing the companies they have targeted under their jurisdiction, prosecuting them and convicting them. Under the pretext of legal moralisation, it is in fact a question of subjecting non-US companies to US rules – and, in reality, to US interests. It is also a question of weakening competitors, stealing their know-how and even destroying them legally and in the media in order to buy them more easily. This extraterritoriality of US law is a veritable process of economic warfare, an act of legal piracy from which many European companies, particularly French companies, suffer. This is evidenced by the organised looting of Alstom, a French flagship artificially trained in a legal-criminal soap opera, to be picked up in unworthy conditions by its American rival General Electric. We cannot ignore this little-known but real threat to all our businesses and ultimately to our economies. If there is a level at which it is relevant to act, it is at European level. Europe, the real Europe, by its history, by its nature, cannot be satisfied with remaining in a position of vulnerability and vassalage. (The speaker refused a blue card question by Marie-Pierre Vedrenne)

Madam President, in a few months you have seen two election warnings coming from the Netherlands. First in April, with the victory of the Citizen Farmers’ Movement, the BBB, and more recently with the victory of Geert Wilders’ PVV. This major shift, with the crushing defeat of Frans Timmermans, the promoter of your Green Deal, is interpreted as a disavowal of your ‘decreasing’ policy. In France, at the moment, a protest movement is growing in the agricultural world, where the Dutch were returning the flags as a sign of a call for help, the French are returning the city entrance signs. It is a way of saying that you walk on your head. You will have noticed when you came to Parliament that the entrance sign to the city of Strasbourg, where we are sitting today, has also returned. Our farmers express their exasperation at the abuse of standards (rhythms, costs, etc.). What they condemn is the absence of mirror clauses in your free trade treaties – which creates unfair competition – an ecology that is not participatory but punitive, a logic not of improvement but of limitation and prohibition. You cannot pretend that nothing is happening.

Mr President, everyone agrees with the idea of combating over-consumption, waste, unnecessary production and, from this point of view, the tracking down of packaging, which is both ephemeral and useless, can only win support. In principle, no objection, but it is the implementing text that causes problems. As every time, you are in the "all or nothing". You are sinking into absurd normative madness. In this case, you include in your regulations our boxes of cheese made of wood, camembert or other, traditional and biodegradable packaging that are essential to make the product live and give it its taste quality. You have the genius to turn a good idea into an aberration, a consensus into a pushback. In reality, this lack of nuance and knowledge, this lack of discernment and elegance, this lack of savoir-vivre and this contempt for people are emblematic of what the European Union is deeply about: a bureaucracy that knows only accounting or statistical logics, a moralizing empire that wants to eliminate national realities. We do not forget that Europe is first and foremost people, people with their way of life.

Mr President, how is it that there is a Member State, Spain, where there are demonstrations of a million people, where an opponent is the victim of an assassination attempt and you can remain silent? To stay in power at all costs, Pedro Sánchez's socialist government is waiting for the Spanish Constitution. He decides on an amnesty for fugitive, factious criminals, some of whom are in Brussels, which is quite symbolic. It also sets Spain on a path of separatist dislocation, not to mention unworthy police repression. Spain faces a clear violation of the rule of law, a violation of institutional legality and political morality. The silence of the European institutions, which are so quick to punish Poland and Hungary for alleged breaches of the rule of law, is deafening. If you continue to look elsewhere without demanding respect for the Spanish rule of law, not only will you discredit yourself, but you will disgrace yourself.

Madam President, how can we fail to subscribe to the joint will of the European Union and the United Nations to work for the happiness of humanity? The problem is that you have taken the side of viewing man as a predator. Based on this premise, at least simplistic, you have developed a system of thought and action that aims to limit human activities, all human activities: activities that cause nuisance, which is easily conceivable, but also – and this is more questionable – essential activities, such as agriculture and livestock farming. Industry has become a dirty word, which should no longer be spoken, and energy is a matter entrusted to sweet dreamers. We have moved from sustainable development to the race to extinction of all anthropogenic activity. We have moved from green growth to zero growth – and zero growth in the economy means stagnation – and now to decay. Degrowth, in terms of energy and industry, means the submission of our states to more realistic countries on the laws of history. The agricultural decline on Europe’s most fertile land in the world inevitably leads to food shortages. The food shortage will have three consequences: the explosion of world hunger, given population growth, the food dependence of our countries and, for European consumers, the explosion in the cost of food. What is most serious about all of this is that you, supposedly progressives, caught up in your anti-humanist impulse, have also fired science.

Madam President, the presentation of the Commission programme for 2024 should be an opportunity for the Commissioner to take stock of his trajectory. For you, the Commission, there are two priorities: deepening and widening. There are two major projects: the Green Deal and the Migration Pact. However, on all these issues, just as there is a profit warning – a ‘warning of results’ – in the cases, you have seen policy warnings, but you have not taken them into account. On deepening, you suffered the stormy divorce of Brexit, which was for the European Union not only a failure, but a humiliation. On enlargement, you see, every day, the difficulties of functioning at 27. And despite everything, Mrs von der Leyen’s empire of the European Union is caught in its logic of unlimited extension. On the Green Deal, which stems from a totally unreasonable ideology of degrowth, you have come to the end of the patience of your own troops. You begin to see the signs of rebellion. Finally, on the Pact on Migration, you know better than anyone that your immigrationist logic is rejected by the people, which is why you are trying to make it go downhill. In my country, 70% of immigration is denied. You have to threaten Italy to join. And even Germany is starting to doubt your ‘station hall’ model, which is not suitable for anyone. Since you are always talking about democratic values, let me remind you that democracy is about admitting disagreements – especially when they come from people and elected representatives –, being able to listen to them and being able to draw all the consequences.

Madam President, as a Member of the European Parliament, I went to Lampedusa to see the situation. What I have seen is beyond comprehension. The centre, which had welcomed 7,000 migrants the day before, was empty. All arrivals, without exception, had left it to reach the mainland by air or boat. You have organized between Tunisia and Lampedusa a real sea bridge. No refoulement, no serious control, neither administrative nor sanitary. Lampedusa is just a step to rest, eat, charge mobile phones before getting lost in the nature of our countries. For you, the problem of immigration is not the flow, or even irregular arrivals, but the reception. It is not even the law since no situation is seriously verified. The Pact on Migration is not approved as it is already applied in Lampedusa, where immigration enters on a continuous basis. You know that the people of Europe condemn this crazy policy and that is why you are speeding up the adoption process.

Mr President, the European Union has a know-how that it has raised to the level of an art: Turning a beautiful idea into hell. Under the title seller – it must be said, sympathetic – to improve air quality, who might not subscribe to it, you reserve for us your decreasing obsession. It is not a question of reform but of prohibiting, not of improving, but of punishing. This text, like all those we see falling session after session, is regressive. They turn their backs on the very idea of progress. They are not texts to seek technical or scientific solutions, they are stubborn and sentient indictments, followed by excommunications, limitations and prohibitions. By targeting traffic pollution, industrial pollution and residential pollution, by pointing to food production with no other solution than deconstruction, you are challenging all human activity. What you ultimately blame men for is breathing. Your de-escalationist approach is not only a sign of Europe’s planned economic suicide, but is the result of deeply anti-humanist thinking.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, artificial intelligence, AI, is a great revealer. A revealer of the movement of the world and, by comparison, a revealer of your inertia. You have not seen the digital revolution coming and now, with artificial intelligence, the cognitive revolution. As China and the United States increase each day by mastering machine intelligence, their search capabilities, you strive to normalise, like a traveller who runs after a train without ever being able to get on it. Our finance minister, Bruno Le Maire, shone this week by proudly announcing a GPT Chat for 2028. A GPT chat when GPT chat will be ranked as digital antiquities. You pride yourself on being progressive, but you are still lagging behind. Worse, at a time when the knowledge society is demanding brains, you are letting our brains go and organising with the immigration pact the massive arrival of an under-skilled workforce. We measure the dramatic discrepancy between your little palavers, who are often moralistic and useless, and the speed of a world that no longer awaits you.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, no one here is indifferent to the fate of the planet and everyone is aware of the need to reform a system based on unbridled consumption. Europe, the European Union wants to be the best pupil in the world class. With the Green Deal, she embarked on a race in which radical environmentalists set the rules, stages and objectives. Your approach is not pragmatic, but ideological. We have moved from sustainable growth to zero growth, and now to degrowth. Energy degrowth, industrial degrowth. And at a time when humanity needs to feed billions of human beings, agricultural decline. You have made the unfortunate Holland the laboratory of your project to destroy livestock. A project largely inspired by the anti-speciesist ideology which is an anti-humanist ideology. This morning's vote is a warning that you must take into account. Otherwise, you will see the peoples, far from following you in your environmental follies, rebelling to restore Europe, a continent that believes in science and in the future.

Madam President, the digital revolution – and even the cognitive revolution – is on its way, and we support the EU’s willingness to make the necessary regulations. However, this normative response is not sufficient. Experts predict that the machine will surpass human intelligence in 2029 and that by 2045 it will be a billion times smarter than all human brains. The European Union has missed all the technological milestones of the last 30 years: telephone, AI, nanotechnologies, space and cyber defence. Perhaps our continent's only digital and AI backlog seals its downgrade. Technological and therefore industrial decommissioning, scientific and therefore economic decommissioning, military and therefore political decommissioning. Our backwardness makes us countries of the digital third world. We export our raw materials and grey matter, and import high value-added digital products and services. Every day that passes makes the delay more difficult to catch up. This failure means our inability to control our military systems, connected objects, nuclear power plants, air traffic and self-driving cars. The EU needs to pull itself together. But is it capable of doing so when it has adhered to the ‘decreasing’ ideology conveyed by Greens who dream of extinction? How can the post-modernist European Union move towards the third millennium when it resigns itself to digital vassalage and has revoked all trust in science and any idea of progress – because, in the end, it has given up the very idea of power?

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, France is preparing to set up a super electric battery factory in Douvrin, France, in Pas-de-Calais. This is to be welcomed. This installation, which came out of the forceps, is in a way a catching-up action, since the European Union has embarked on the ‘all-electric’ without having thought about the sector and, above all, without having integrated the dependencies – with regard to China, in this case – that this choice could engender. It was high time to address this. But politics cannot be reduced to a communication about a factory: it must include a whole reflection on the entire sector, from start to finish. On this occasion, I would like to remind the European Union that there is one of the best nickel production in the world in a distant French land, New Caledonia. And since we are talking about dependence in the electricity sector, particularly vis-à-vis China, I would urge it to plan to supply our continent there. It would be an act of European solidarity, but above all an intelligent industrial, economic and political choice.

Mr President, no one can be insensitive to the tragedies taking place at sea, whether in the Mediterranean or in the English Channel. However, there is only one aspect to the question: rescues at sea. These tragedies, which we deplore, are the result of the lack of anticipation of immigration, which calls for cooperation with the countries of emigration, the installation of host cities around the areas in crisis – the so-called ‘Asilia’ –, the control of migratory routes, the disqualification of smugglers, the prevention of departures. Not only do you not do any of this, but you encourage crossings by giving a bonus to those who try it. Collected at sea are not taken to the nearest African port, as international law would have it, but in Europe, and, moreover, you impose on States their reception. As long as a migrant hopes to find a place in France or Europe, he will be there to try to cross. Your migration pact is not going to make things right, as it is a call to submerge Europe. But it is true that immigration is not a problem for you, but a project.

Mr President, after Qatargate, which concerned elected officials, the press is now echoing the travels that a senior European official could have benefited from and is in charge of negotiating a very important air agreement with Qatar. This announcement is all the more disturbing given that the agreement in question seemed lean in the light of Europe's interests. The European Commission, which came to the Transport Committee to explain this agreement, has, let us say it nicely, found it difficult to convince the Commissioners of the transparency of the negotiation procedure and the relevance of the agreement. That is to say whether these revelations about a possible conflict of interest are embarrassing and deserve special attention on our part. And when I say from us, I say from the whole institution. It is not a question, for us elected as we are, of erecting ourselves as prosecutors and even less as judges. But I believe that the Commission should have at heart, for the image of the institution, to shed full transparency on this matter.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, when it comes to punitive ecology, the European Union is characterised by ‘always more’. The ecological transition cannot resemble the Chinese Cultural Revolution. As far as motorists are concerned, this is all the less justified given that it is not cars that are the main cause of pollution. By hounding them, you are in the logic of the scapegoat. You cannot act against reality, against people, often modest, for whom the car is not a luxury, but a necessity. You cannot continue in the "all-electric", when we have neither the production capacity nor the control of the components essential to the sector. Your approach shows, once again, a resolutely ideological background, the same one that led you to excommunicate nuclear energy, which is nevertheless decarbonised. This excommunication has sealed Europe's energy dependence and this blindness is now leading our countries to a crisis for which we have not finished paying the price.

Madam President, the biggest failure of the European Union is to have missed the digital revolution. You have not seen the arrival of data, laptops, tablets and AI. Europe does not have the GAFAMs or the BATXs, and in terms of technology, you only have to present the pitiful and endless Galileo dossier. Your response, strictly normative, does not make us catch up digitally. The emergence of ChatGPT technology shows us the solution. ChatGPT is the conversational intelligence that processes data into texts. It directly threatens Google. The entry ticket for this technology was financially accessible: a billion, knowing that the price is rising fast. The moral of this story is that we can return to the digital race if we know how to take advantage of technological gaps and find revolutionary innovations that bypass the digital giants. We have intelligence in Europe. We need political will and the mobilization of resources. It is this approach that must mobilise Europe.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, this debate on enlargement reflects your inability to take account of reality and evaluate the policies you are implementing. You cannot work at 27 and you still want to expand. You're in a leak forward. With Schengen, which you want to expand, you have made Europe a sluggish continent, which, from the Frontex migrant reception agency to the Ocean Viking, shows its shortcomings in the control of migration flows every day. The extension you propose is an endless extension, characteristic of an empire, an empire whose name is the European Union. However, empire means imperialism, that is to say, the idea of the submission of peoples to a higher order, to a central authority, an emperor who is in this case a technocratic nebula in the service of a commodity ideology. But the promises of eternity always associated with empires inevitably clash with the people’s instinct for survival. This has always been the case in history. The EU will not escape this brass law.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, if the subject was not so serious, we could have fun seeing you debate your contradictions. The proposal for a regulation on the use of more environmentally friendly fuels for maritime transport is obviously commendable and we will vote for it. But how not to highlight the inconsistencies, not just of your approach, but of your model? You are struggling to find substitutes for heavy fuel oil, the worst fuel in the world, which is the fuel of supercargos, even as your economic model induces the generalization of this type of transport. There were, according to Equasis, 57,700 cargo ships on the seas in 2018. There are almost 100 000 of them today. We can see the limits of the exercise of reconciling globalism and ecologism, reconciling your theological principle of unbridled free movement with the just protection of the planet. The opposite of mobility is not immobility, but proximity. Your virtuous proposals for ecological regulation will only be credible if, at the same time, you have the lucidity to review your globalist software, which is by nature ecocide.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, you invoke religious freedom. I do not think it would come to anyone’s mind here to challenge this freedom, which is so essential to man. However, you go astray when, under the pretext of a misguided inclusive policy, you promote the Islamic veil – and I would even say the veil Islamist – throughout your corporate communication. Women and even girls appear veiled, as if they were to be reduced to mere objects of male concupiscence. Freedom cannot be used to promote a symbol of women’s oppression, nor can the submersion of public space through permanent demonstrations, even in clothing. At a time when Iranian women are standing up for their freedom, your indiscernment goes against the emancipation of women. In France, which has historically been a country of terrible religious wars, we have struck the right balance between the free exercise of religion and respect for the consciences of all: this is called secularism. You'd better be inspired by it.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, the energy crisis is just pointing. It is a good war for you, if I may say so, to invoke the Ukrainian conflict to justify the situation. But crises, as we know, reveal loopholes more than they create them. The EU-led Europe is now bearing the brunt of three mistakes. A fault in energy choices, by collapsing the nuclear industry. When you make us dependent on the sun and the wind, you make us dependent on the Russians. A geostrategic fault: While sanctions against Russia were certainly necessary, they had to be adapted for their effectiveness and considered in their consequences. Finally, it is a conjunctural fault, because you agree to be hostages of speculation. More generally, we pay for your ultra-liberal ideological design, which does not make the difference in value between products such as water, essential food or energy. Who believes that everything can be abandoned by the invisible hand of the market? And if you had agreed to make the energy independence choices that Marine Le Pen has been proposing for 15 years, with nuclear and energy, we would not be there.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, while we share the desire expressed in the report to combat poverty and hunger and to establish respectful and fruitful relations with the African continent, it seems to us that your ideological presuppositions lead you astray. You reason in terms of big global trade when the solution lies in the creation of local supply chains – what we call localism – in food independence that combines research and cooperation, in the right of peoples to live on their land. You see relations only as adhering to your globalist economic model, which is polluting, destroying local industries and even traditional economies. And then you bind necessarily free movement of goods and people. At random from the text, you hang up trade to safe and organized immigration, understand: further submersion of Europe. It is time to depart from your quasi-theological vision of "non-frontierism" and free movement as theocratic dogma. You claim in this to participate in the peace of the world. In reality, you are preparing the enslavement of peoples and people to economic and predatory logics on both sides of the Mediterranean.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, there is no good policy that is not evaluated. What does it cost? What does it bring? It is an upstream and downstream assessment to measure cost-benefit. The principle you apply is this one in all areas except immigration. This is Cologne syndrome: When it comes to immigration, you don't want to see the reality. Why impose labour immigration on the whole of Europe when, for example, my country, France, is experiencing mass unemployment? The question of competences can be resolved through inter-European cooperation or training. What about the ethical question of withdrawing from emerging countries their living forces and trained elites? For you, immigration is not a problem, or even an economic necessity, but a political and ideological project. When it comes to legal or illegal migration, our countries have reached a saturation point. You want us to believe that we are going to bring in doctors and engineers when in fact, with your immigration, we are leading to the chaos of the Stade de France.

Mr President, Commissioner, when you raise the issue of energy poverty, you are discussing a real problem: the current explosion in the cost of energy – gas, electricity and fuel – is giving rise to a legitimate climate of revolt in my country. But it is not enough to talk about problems when ideological presuppositions, at best forbid you to provide answers, at worst contribute to making them worse. It must be noted that policies of fiscal persecution of motorists or normative inflation for the use of fossil fuels will be particularly harmful to two categories of people: the poorest, who cannot change cars, and the rural ones, who do not benefit from a public transport offer. Under the guise of ecology, your policy only contributes to worsening social or territorial inequalities, to strengthening metropolization. We believe that we must go in the opposite direction, which is de-metropolization, i.e. rebalancing between urban and rural areas. This obviously involves the need to rethink economic development, infrastructure, but also a public and private transport offer that is no longer penalizing.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, when it comes to energy, we can give the European Union at least the credit for continuity; continuity in error. In terms of method, you proceed by objectives, in the form of ultimatums, regardless of the sectors, the economic balances, the histories of each country. You add too restrictive deadlines to your injunctions and thus threaten individuals or states with unfair retaliation. As usual, you are stripping away the tax weapon, regardless of whether it first affects the working classes of our countries, which are so hard-pressed by the leaching of globalisation. Not everyone can afford an electric car, which is otherwise unsuitable for the countryside. On the bottom, you continue to trash our landscapes with your wind turbines, on land or at sea, for intermittent, evanescent, exorbitant energy and finally, because of the lifespan of installations that are difficult to recycle, polluting. And then there is the issue of nuclear energy, decarbonised energy if any, which the promoters of coal in Germany would like, out of pure ideology, to deprive France and Germany of. This religious excommunication forbids our countries the means of their power and energy independence. Together with French nuclear power, we have a sector of excellence that ensures cheap, constant, clean electricity, which can be extended to decarbonised hydrogen, when you are stuck with renewable hydrogen. On such an important issue for the future of Europe, you are definitely trapped in your ideological whims.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, when the European Union tells us about organising a common area of education, we have a few reasons for concern. First, because the responsibility of the public authorities is not, in the first place, to meet the problems of education, but of instruction. This question arises in particular for my country, France, where the school system is difficult to transmit basic knowledge: reading, writing, counting. I would add that, in our view, education is the responsibility of the family and the nation. We are also concerned because there is no action by the European Union that is not devoid of ideological ulterior motives. And indeed, this case does not escape the rule. Under the pretext of education, the EU wants to put in place the ideological formatting of our countries’ school systems. How else can we understand the stated priorities of raising awareness of climate change, the fight against populism, the denunciation of disinformation, i.e. the justification for censorship? You want to make this educational space a vehicle for influencing your imperial vision. What you are aiming for is not an education system, but a programme to rehabilitate people.