Speeches

Mr President, between palm oil, soybeans and beef, EU imports account for 16% of global trade-related deforestation. The result? We are the second responsible for the destruction of tropical forests in the world. To give an image, the area of soybean crops affected by these imports reaches the area of France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands combined. The deforestation regulation that you are presenting here is a step in the right direction. Unfortunately, it runs into huge contradictions and serves as a sex mask for the European Commission's nefarious activity in the field of ecology. Indeed, for years, the European Union has multiplied trade agreements with countries around the world against environmental interests. How can we not think, for example, of the one with Mercosur that, in addition to killing our economy and our farmers, will accelerate deforestation in South American countries? Faced with this threat, we must categorically reject all these destructive market logics of peoples, natural resources and the wider environment. In return, Europe must preserve forests by ensuring sustainable use, thereby ensuring the sustainability of all natural ecosystems.

In this case, death threats are made against people who speak like me. In the present case, today, J.K. Rowling and Dora Moutot. Yes, death threats, ma'am. So we may not be going to reverse the accusatory burden, because in this case, the people who are threatened are just those who say that a woman is a woman and a man is a man.

Madam President, this quote from Simone de Beauvoir, 'We are not born a woman, we become one', has long guided feminist activism. However, it is a decoy that breaks out in the open of violence against women who refuse to be monkeyed or denied. For the reality is this: you are a woman and you assume it or not. Feminist militancy is plagued by the smoky concept of convergence of struggles. This idea that all minorities, because minorities, have common interests, regardless of whether the objectives are contradictory. Yet it is from these contradictions that feminist activism is dying. The convergence of struggles explodes in the collision of struggles. Indeed, which feminist can walk alongside Islamists who want to make women's bodies invisible? Which feminist can accept surrogacy, which is none other than renting a uterus? Which lawyer can plead for a rapist in transition to join a women’s prison? Which sportswoman can celebrate the victories of transsexuals sweeping all the chances of competitors? Which pubesity may not laugh at men’s menstruation and pregnancy? The fractures of activism are gaping and numerous. And worse, they now generate death threats, such as against J.K. Rowling or Dora Moutot. So yes, let’s say it again, we’re a woman and we assume it, or not. (The speaker agreed to respond to a blue card intervention)

Mr President, this text symbolically marks the end of globalisation, which is supposed to be happy, but which in reality has only compartmentalised the world into zones: industrial production areas, consumption areas, service areas and trash areas. Asia, legitimately asking for more respect and respect, has returned European and American waste, making it necessary to review our economic and ecological model, which is at least wobbly and unfair. The waste trade market represents more than €80 billion, with 182 million tonnes traded worldwide. Waste that, for the most part, is sent to poor or developing countries, where recycling conditions are not guaranteed, where workers' rights are violated, where traffickers and operators of all kinds are rife. This waste often ends up buried or dumped into the sea, further exacerbating the pollution of our oceans. They are transported by container ships, which are responsible for a large proportion of greenhouse gas emissions. This is the reality of waste shipments and of a world without borders that go as far as absurd. Because yes, it is absurd to find French milk bricks on the other side of the world, German batteries or used Spanish cartons, when we advocate a virtuous ecology over time and COP. Free trade and the free movement of goods without hindrance or reflection have come up against their gigantic trash can, and that is a good thing. At the foot of the wall, let’s organise the relocation of an activity that is fundamental to our future: recycling. By restricting exports, this text acknowledges the need to curb globalisation, strengthen our European industries and foster the circular economy and short supply chains, which we have always defended against you. Let us hope that the European Union becomes aware of the urgency of these relocations to respond to the industrial and climate emergency we are experiencing.

Madam President, the protection of all minorities, whether ethnic, national, religious or linguistic, is fundamental. I note, however, that there are more majority minorities than others on the media-political agenda. This prioritization is unacceptable. There is a lot of talk about Uighurs or Rohingyas, rightly so; But why, then, do we systematically ignore the Christian minorities, whose members are the ones who suffer the most violence in the world? Expulsion of Afghan Christians by the Taliban, attempted murder of Christian refugees by Muslims on migrant boats, purification of Christian Serbs in Kosovo, or repression of Armenians. The list is still long, alas! Sixteen Christians are killed every day. Here's the record. Meanwhile, the European Parliament is preventing a debate on the massacre of a Nigerian woman killed a few months ago, when the Commission took more than a year to appoint a special envoy for religious freedom. When it comes to protecting minorities, it is imperative to remain impartial and not make a deal based on the political interests of the moment.

Madam President, this commemorative EU-ASEAN summit is based on, I quote, 'common values and principles, effective multilateralism and free trade'. The European Union could have been satisfied with the last term, because in reality, its action is motivated only for and by the market – a market that, unfortunately, is caught in the savagery of free trade, destroying our industries and our agriculture in favour of a logic of low costs and immediate gains. The only common value is that of the container ship, on a path contrary to your wishes to defend the environment. Of course, you promote your purely commercial exchanges by advocating cooperative work on human rights. In truth, these are flouted in many countries with which we trade and which ignore your shy and often hypocritical rodomontades. Business first. Nevertheless, it is imperative that we have balanced diplomatic relations with the ASEAN countries in order to break the face-to-face relationship between the Chinese bloc and the US bloc. But is there only such a balancing power as the European Union? Apart from the fact that you do not have a mandate to exercise it, our national sovereignties, which are the basis for it, have been lowered and replaced by a European impotence, which is illustrated in particular by our subservience to Washington, which also reduces the diplomatic relations that we could develop with other countries in the world, including those in South-East Asia.

Madam President, for decades the European Union has been striving to establish and promote free trade and globalisation. For this, it has multiplied the free trade treaties, which have been constantly impoverishing our agriculture and breaking up our industry. The impoverishment of our campaigns, which have been abandoned in favour of the start-up nation, in the words of our French President, is a direct consequence of this. On the world market, French or European agricultural and industrial products are no longer competitive. That is why our campaigns have been abandoned in favour of major cities. The findings are as follows: desertification of rural areas, catastrophic demography, closure of public services and persistence of white areas. However, these are realities largely attributable to EU policy. And what does it propose to remedy it? A rural pact, a rural test and a European rural observatory. But what are these terms? Rural Europeans are not laboratory rats that have to undergo tests and other observations. In addition, the CAP and the EAFRD exist for this purpose. I therefore infer that they do not work, since the Commission is proposing a new pact. Moreover, at a time when Mr Macron is planning to settle entire populations of migrants in our neglected countryside, the Commission is seriously considering basing its policy on, I quote, ‘inclusive communities of intergenerational solidarity, fairness and renewal, open to newcomers and promoting equal opportunities for all’. They're chimeras. In order to develop a healthy vision of rural areas, the European Union should question the ultra-liberalism and globalism that characterise it, in favour of smart protectionism and the relocation of activities in rural areas.

Madam President, there is a certain irony in advocating for more and more of the European Union when, precisely, the European Union has proved that it is unfit to do better on certain subjects, in particular the COVID-19 and health crisis. Do not displease, in the context of the COVID-19 crisis, the most appropriate, quickest and most effective responses have been community-based solutions. To want to preempt a subject that belongs only to sovereign states in order to be even more awkward, ever more distant from patients and above all less transparent, as during the COVID-19 crisis – which resulted in an oversized order for vaccines, negotiated under conditions to which even MEPs could not have access – is thus a matter of hubris. You care about serious cross-border health threats: start by re-establishing borders – this is a first prevention – and make sure that the European Union does not spend its time relocating the pharmaceutical industry. Indeed, how can we not worry that 80% of the active ingredients in our medicines come from India or China? Let the states manage their health systems and instead make the European Union a tool to strengthen our drug independence and these agencies joint research hubs whose aim is to create, move forward together, not to split the Member States.

Mr President, the fires in Europe this summer have left their mark on consciences. The conclusion our ideologues have drawn from this is that we need to fight global warming. This term, which is ultimately too vague, is terrible. Terrible, because it relieves all actors of their responsibility. Because yes, there is political responsibility. Yes, we need to maintain an operational Canadair fleet and invest in our infrastructure. In France, at the height of the fires, we had seven out of twelve operational Canadairs, barely more than half. A disgrace! Yes, we need to get out of the ideology and put all firefighters suspended for non-vaccination back into service. In France, we are foolishly amputated of 5,000 firefighters. Yes, it is necessary to prune and therefore cut in places trees, bushes and groves to dry fire pits and allow paths for firefighters. This is the opposite of the planned disaster at La Teste-de-Buch. But above all, let's stop this deception. Global warming is only when it suits your plans. What have you really done to make our land wooded, shaded and temperate, but also healthy? Maintaining green spaces in urbanised areas lowers the local temperature by 2 to 3 degrees in a day. And a healthy land absorbs heat and curbs flooding through natural soil absorption. Global warming does not explain everything; your negligence, a little more. You prefer to reopen coal-fired power plants because you have not been able to maintain nuclear power and you believe in energies that are decarbonised only by name. For wind turbine or solar panel fields, which are mostly Chinese in addition, you destroy forests that, however, ensure lower temperatures and the maintenance of biodiversity. Let us therefore put an end to this logic of the European Union leading to the metropolisation, concretisation, excessive trade and degradation of our soils, which takes advantage of the slightest disaster to advance an unrealistic ecological ideological agenda at the expense of the environment itself!

Mr President, in the resolution voted in May, which opened up the possibility of creating a new tax on windfall profits of energy companies, the aim was to combat rising prices and strengthen the European Union’s energy independence. The duration of this tax had to be limited in time and had to respond to a specific crisis. In the current context, this tax is necessary and must be applied. However, we cannot ignore some of the larger limitations and emergencies. There are very different situations in different Member States. While Italy was able to recover a few billion through this tax, France refuses to use such a tax, because electricity companies have already helped offset the effects of the crisis. Moreover, such a tax is likely to jeopardise investment, especially if we really want to achieve the objectives of carbon neutrality. At the same time, the European Union maintains targets to combat greenhouse gas emissions that severely constrain our European industries and, driven by necessity, reopens coal-fired power plants across Europe. From an ecological point of view, this is an aberration, a direct consequence of the sanctions against Russia. This should have led to increased funding for the less polluting and perfectly competitive nuclear industry. Without support for the nuclear industry, we will have to choose between fighting Russia with sanctions or fighting global warming. The same resolution also called for the rapid elimination of fossil fuel subsidies: this could lead to a dizzying rise in prices. The accumulation of sanctions against Russia, the rejection of nuclear power, the rejection of fossil fuels and the European Union’s sickening blockage of the idea of questioning the European energy market are leading us straight to the dramatic price explosion that will bring our economies and even millions of Europeans to their knees... (The President withdrew the floor to the speaker)

Mr President, the Pegasus case is a double humiliation for Europeans. First, it shows how easy it is for states to spy on the digital lives of thousands of individuals. Despite recurrent discourses on resilience against cyber-attacks or on strengthening the European cyber-surveillance framework, which remain only at the speech stage, whistleblowers, political leaders, journalists or big bosses see their ideas stolen by foreign powers thus undermining any possibility for Europeans to develop their digital, scientific, diplomatic or economic strategy. Second, the Pegasus case reveals European hypocrisy in digital sovereignty. Where was the European Union when NSA services plugged into Danish telecommunications cables to spy on politicians in Germany, Sweden, Norway or France? Far from being cautious, a few years later we gave access to our so-called sovereign European Gaia-X club to Palantir or Google, funded by and working with the same US intelligence. Is it therefore Europe’s destiny to always welcome Trojan horses? I don't think so. If I am happy to see our institution finally rise up against these unfair methods of espionage, it would be good for European countries to take offence at the attitude of their allies or at certain harmful provisions, which they themselves put in place and which make us vulnerable. Neglecting European digital sovereignty means killing any hope of being part of the concert of the great powers. The subject thus becomes crucial and even vital for our continent.

(start of off-micro intervention) ... racial violence, economic theft, sexual abuse is obviously systemic. Men's violence against women would therefore be born in school textbooks. Except for cankers, we will have to explain the violence of learning spelling or mathematics. To treat such a sensitive and increasingly present subject with crazy ideology is a real betrayal. Online violence is just the unfiltered mirror of the violence of our societies: exposure to pornography at too young an age, the reign of immediate enjoyment and of the individual king and, last but not least, the unspoken nature of this relationship, which is nevertheless an essential part of online and offline gender-based violence, the establishment, by the millions, of young men with mores and cultures openly hostile to women. But as this is the result of your policies, you keep it quiet and prefer to blame the preference of little boys for ball games. In addition to being crazy, you are therefore cowards. Online violence will only be addressed by appeasing our societies. Both the school and the family unit must be sanctuaries where the intellect dialogues with benevolence. It is up to parents and supervisors not to give up their role on the Internet. But it is also up to the politicians to act. We must put an end to the Islamist gangrene that first strikes women and girls reduced to being consumed, then subjugated or destroyed. So stop your incomprehensible chatter for the victims: Act on the real, if you want to protect the virtual.

Madam President, at the beginning of the COVID crisis, Europeans discovered with dismay that 80% of the active ingredients of our medicines were manufactured in China or India. We were accustomed on your part to the loss of industrial, technological or agricultural sovereignty. Here we live with violence the loss of pharmaceutical sovereignty, abandoning our health to foreign and distant powers, and therefore to the vagaries of diplomacy. Far from being an electroshock, the European Union embarked on this occasion on a single solution: foreign vaccines whose conditions of purchase were at least opaque and whose cost is sufficiently exorbitant to increase by a thousand dollars of profits per second the bank accounts of laboratories. The EU has not proposed any alternative for another vaccine from honest and transparent clinical trials or even for treatments. How can we talk about a strategy if there is not the beginning of an ambition? It is urgent that we put an end to this dependence, which primarily affects anti-infectives, anti-cancer drugs, emergency resuscitation drugs, cardiology drugs or anaesthetics. First, let us relocate or rather help European nations to relocate vital production units. Secondly, let us no longer leave the market as the sole decision-maker in the production of medicinal products. For this to happen, the European Union must commit violence and set targets for the pharmaceutical industry. Indeed, if the market is the only decision-maker, we will have plenty of anti-wrinkle creams and treatments against erectile disorders. But too little investment in research into treatments for cancer, Alzheimer’s or orphan diseases. Finally, the European Medicines Agency must become an independent body of counter-expertise, so as not to leave laboratories the role of judge or party or, worse, the role of shadow legislator. The Cahuzac case in France had indeed exposed the harmful power of laboratories and their influence on political life. In the name of democracy, but also in the name of the health of all Europeans, it is essential to regain control of this vital industry, in order to put it at the exclusive service of health and scientific progress.

Mr President, this report is frightening because it is about the brains of the younger generations. Yes, education is paramount, which is why the school must remain a sanctuary and not the blank page of your delusions. Depressive disorders and suicide attempts among young people have exploded as a result of the health crisis. At the same time, our schools suffer all the ills of our societies: downsizing, increasingly violent harassment, downsizing of authority, rise of Islamogauchism, woke ideology, cancel culture and sometimes murder of professors like Samuel Paty, guilty of teaching freedom of expression. Meanwhile, Asia is methodically waging a brain war. And you, what is your answer? Raise awareness of global warming, which adds anxiety to the anxiety of young people, non-gendered recreation classes or the hysterical fight against populism. But where do you have your head? Is this the priority of education? Is this how you will revitalise life and the joy of learning and training? You are prophets of misfortune and you want youth to follow you. Do you want a free, smart and happy school? Make individuals capable of thinking before making sheep to obey you. Only in this way will Europe become once again a civilisation of millennial wealth, passion and intellectual profusion.