Speeches

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, Bruno Kahl, the head of the German secret services, is a calm, measured and cautious man. When he announces to the Bundestag that Putin is preparing a war against an EU member state before 2029, he should perhaps be taken seriously. But are European leaders doing this? Do they take our security services seriously? I doubt that. If not, how can we explain this slug rhythm in the construction of European defence or in helping the Ukrainian resistance? Let's stop betting everything on an American umbrella that can close at any time. Do we really want to make all our security dependent on Donald Trump or Elon Musk? No. So there is no more time to waste to integrate our defence industries, invest together, buy together, develop defence systems together and innovate together, as we have faced the pandemic. Finally, as Europeans, let us raise the necessary funds and pool our orders and our productions! The first duty of a political leader is to ensure the security of his city. Failing to do so means plunging into nothingness. And we simply have no right to fail.

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, despite repression, Georgians are demonstrating for freedom, for democracy and for Europe. And what are European leaders doing to respond to their calls? Nothing. Nothing or almost nothing. For ten years, this European passivity has allowed Putin to place his men in Tbilisi. She let a French-passported oligarch, Bidzina Ivanichvili, buy a country on behalf of the Kremlin. It has allowed the hunt for opponents and journalists to become a norm. It has allowed homophobia or xenophobia to become a dogma. It allowed former President Saakashvili to be imprisoned and Georgian democracy to be dismantled. Your passivity, in the Commission and in the Council, has, in a word, betrayed the friends of Europe in Georgia. So stop being passive. Finally, follow the repeated requests of this Parliament, sanction Bidzina Ivanichvili and her followers. Don't be content with words anymore, don't let Putin kidnap one more European nation without reacting. Sakartvelos gaumarjos!

Madam President, Madam Vice-President, ladies and gentlemen, Europe is not a Chinese colony, and it will never be the 51st American state. When you want to operate with us, well you have to respect our laws. It’s simple, it’s basic. The Digital Services Act was adopted here in this House by an overwhelming majority of Members and by the unanimity of the Council. But what good is it to have laws, no matter how beautiful, if we don’t have the courage to enforce them? For weeks now, in the face of Musk's incessant interference (in England, Germany, all over Europe), your Commission has seemed to be stunned. So here we are a majority to tell you one simple thing: Don’t be afraid! Publish the results of the X and TikTok surveys! Demand algorithmic transparency! Sanction those who violate our laws, however powerful they may be! Do not give in to pressure from the United States or some European governments, to the attitudes of lackeys! Do not listen to the voices of submission here! Let's show together that we are not mats! Let us be inflexible, and then we will be respected!

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Crimea is the laboratory of Russian colonial expansion. Those who dare to claim that it has always been a Russian land only slavishly repeat the propaganda of an imperialist regime, whose specialty is the rewriting of history. And if there is one people that is systematically erased by this rewriting, it is the Tatar people, an indigenous people oppressed by the Tsars, massively hit by the Stalinist deportations, persecuted by Putin. Crimean Tatars were victims of a chemically pure colonial and then neo-colonial policy. And it would be good if all the nationalists who say they care so much about the right of peoples to live at home and all the anti-imperialists who sympathise with Putin out of hatred of the West could hear what the Crimean Tatars have to say about imperialism, colonialism, the methodical destruction of a culture or a nation. Decimated yesterday, they are now, together with Crimean Ukrainians, suffering from the fierce repression of the occupier, coupled with a policy of systematic russification of the territory – 800 000 Russians have already been installed by the authorities on Crimean soil, for a population of 2 million inhabitants. We demand that those responsible for erasing a people be punished. We demand recognition of the rights and sufferings of the Tatars as well as of all peoples deported by the Soviet imperialists or denied by their Grand Russian heirs, be they Chechens, Ingushetia, like so many others. Peace cannot be achieved by denying the rights of the Tatar people or Crimean Ukrainians. Europe stands with them, alongside the principles that underpin its existence, and we will give up nothing – nothing! – the imperialist power that threatens the existence of entire peoples while attacking the security architecture of our continent.

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, a few figures: 85 000 cyberattacks, 8 million subscribers of the more than 100 influencers who were mobilised to promote the campaign of the pro-Russian candidate Georgescu, 25 000, i.e. the number of active accounts on which the information manipulation strategy was based. Credited with 1% of the voting intentions four weeks before the election, this candidate wins almost 23% of the votes in the first round of the presidential election. But not the slightest reaction from TikTok when the Romanian services alerted the platform to the ongoing destabilisation operation. So, in this debate, I hear the voices of these far-right pseudo-patriots who are absolutely undisturbed by foreign and Russian interference, especially in our elections. But protecting the sovereignty of our nations means first and foremost protecting the ability of our peoples to express themselves freely without being victims of foreign manipulation through platforms that undermine our democracies. The attack on Romanian democracy is part of the hybrid war launched against our democracies by Putin’s regime. For five years, when I was the head of the Special Committee on Foreign Interference, I alerted my colleagues to try to make them understand the gravity of the situation. Romania is not an isolated case. It is our common future that is threatened if we do not wake up. TikTok, presented as a simple entertainment platform, is a powerful manipulative tool. Foreign actors, first and foremost Russia, are exploiting its algorithms to distort our public debate and sow chaos in our countries. These platforms must now obey our rules, or we will have to ban them.

Mr President, High Representative, ladies and gentlemen, in Aleppo, Hama, Homs and Damascus, Syrians are celebrating the end of a long night of blood and tears, a night of ashes and death. So yes, the future is uncertain, and I share some of the concerns that have been expressed here. But let us be honest, ladies and gentlemen, who listened to the Syrians when they were dying under Putin's bombs or in Assad's jails? We were barely a few hundred, even a few dozen, in increasingly sparse demonstrations, trying to support them. In our chancelleries, the proponents of normalization with the regime were gaining ground. In our public debate, the far right methodically denied the victims’ words and took a selfie with their executioners. It was joined in abjection by a certain left, slavishly relaying the tyrant's propaganda by forceful anti-Americanism. Everything was done to invisibilize the Syrian revolutionaries. So here I would like to make their voices heard through the words of Firas Kontar, tireless activist of the Syrian revolution: “Since 2011, in the face of the immensity of the crimes committed by Assad, Putin and the Iranian militias, we have been abandoned. Democracies, despite their rhetoric, have offered only symbolic support in the face of boundless barbarism. Today, after the fall of the regime, do not leave us alone. The country is devastated. Our orphans number in the hundreds of thousands, and we are constantly discovering mass graves. We will spend our next few years exhuming the bodies of the 100,000 Syrians who disappeared in Assad’s jails. You cannot, once again, abandon us in the face of the challenges that lie ahead. Syrians need massive support to rebuild their country and heal the immense wounds left among us. Be there this time! Colleagues, this appeal must be heeded. We have not been there to help the Syrians in the war that was being waged against them, we have a duty to be there in the peace that they must now build.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner, Boualem Sansal is in prison. This absurd sentence alone condemns the power that encloses it. What is the crime of Boualem Sansal? A terrible crime, an unforgivable crime: His crime is to write, to think, to speak, to dream as a free man. And that is enough to constitute, I quote, an "attack on territorial integrity". A betrayal that makes you incur, perhaps, life. How much self-doubt does it take to be so afraid of the words of a 75-year-old writer? The Algerian regime that embalms him tonight resembles all those regimes throughout history that persecuted, arrested, deported poets whose feathers and souls refused to submit. Those who today, in France, make the intellectual trial of the writer rather than wear iron against his jailers are the worthy heirs of the cohort of bureaucrats of thought, who once instructed the trial in reaction to Soviet dissidents instead of raising their voices against their executioners. Ladies and gentlemen, this evening, from the very heart of European democracy, we unreservedly condemn the iniquitous arrest of Boualem Sansal. We demand his immediate release and we urge the European authorities to do their utmost to obtain him as soon as possible.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, there was a pro-European coalition to support you in July. Why, then, should Fratelli d'Italia be included in the group of Vice-Presidents who are leading the Commission politically? Nothing compelled you to do so and we do not accept it. And why is the EPP allying itself with the most radical far-right to dismantle the deforestation directive? Democratic politics, as you said, is an art of compromise. But it's not an art of compromise. So, to massively support the Ukrainian resistance, to build a Europe of defence, to defend the European Green Deal, to defend Europe's economic sovereignty, to develop an industrial policy, to strengthen solidarity, to advance on the path of equality, we will be at your side. But every time this unnatural coalition is re-formed, mixing Adenauer's supposed heirs with the most anti-European forces in this Parliament, well, we will be there to stand up to it and resist.

Madam President, High Representative, ladies and gentlemen, let us not be ostriches. Don't worry, Putin is not going to invade Ukraine – and Putin has invaded Ukraine. Trump was just a parenthesis – and Trump is coming back to power even more powerful than before. And now we're gonna hear: No, but Trump is not going to do what he said. Well if, think again, Trump is going to do what he said and we have to prepare. Preparing us for what? First, the fact that the United States is threatening to stop aid to Ukraine. If they stop helping Ukrainians, are we ready? Are we ready to double or triple our military support to Ukraine? Are we prepared to ensure the security of our European citizens alone, when the head of the German security services talks about a likely Russian invasion of an EU or NATO country before 2029? Let's put it bluntly: No, we're not ready. We are not ready because we did not do what we should have done. While North Korea alone has delivered 9 million rounds of ammunition to Russia, Europe as a whole is struggling to deliver a third of that to Ukraine in three years. So today we are living in a moment of change and it is up to us to bring out of this crisis a sovereign European power, capable of ensuring its own security.

Madam President, steel was the foundation of European integration. Yet everywhere in Europe today, our steel mills are under threat and hundreds of thousands of jobs can disappear. Why? Largely because China is flooding the world with high-emitting steel, massively subsidized and dumped at low prices in all markets. Because it produces far more than it consumes and because, mainly, global overcapacity corresponds to four times the EU’s steel production. The steel industry is suffering and the outlook is bleak. The clock is ticking: in June 2026, our import quotas will be lifted and we will no longer be able to extend them. Our trade defence instruments will no longer be sufficient to deal with a problem that has become systemic. We are faced with an existential test: Will we continue to let our industry be ratiboised by unfair competition, or will we finally react? Basically, the question we are asked is simple: Do we want to become a continent of mere consumers or do we want to remain producers – producers of goods and of the future? It's time to wake up. I hear here the attacks on the Green Deal; but the solution is not to sacrifice ecology. The solution is to protect our market from unfair competition, which is destroying the climate and our jobs.

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, you can therefore lock up opponents and journalists, you can jeopardise the lives of people as courageous as the D.r Ibadoghlou, you can stab your opponents in the streets of our cities, you can carry out ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh and constantly threaten your neighbour, Armenia, you can bypass European sanctions against the Putin regime by selling us Russian gas, which we are boycotting … and you can still receive the whole earth with great pomp at the COP. It is deeply lunar. This gas tyranny organizes the international fight against global warming. The weakness of our leaders vis-à-vis this regime is insignificant. Then it's time. It is time to defend the dissidents who have found refuge on our soil. It is time to support Armenia more strongly, to suspend the EU-Azerbaijan gas deal, to show that crimes have consequences, even when you are juggling the billions. It is time to show that we still have some principles and that we are not ready to sell them.

Mr President, at last! Finally, this mechanism starts to make the aggressor pay. But, let’s say, it’s, as usual, too little and very late. For the past two years, we have been doing everything in the European Union to keep Ukraine afloat. But we are not doing enough to allow him to win the war. So the question is simple: When will we finally seize the 200 billion Russian public assets frozen in our banks? When are we going to give Ukraine the financial and military means to win this war, which defines the future of Europe? Ladies and gentlemen, in two weeks' time, Donald Trump can once again become President of the United States, and the European Union can find itself alone, alone in the face of this war, alone in the face of Putin, the only real supporter of the Ukrainian resistance. Are we ready for that? Have we really understood the stakes? As France rebuffs its military aid, as our countries continue to impose absurd restrictions on the use of European weapons by the Ukrainian resistance, and as the song of capitulation – as it is on the far right in this Chamber – is heard everywhere, let us doubt it. It's time to wake up.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner, ten years ago Ilham Tohti was arrested by the authorities and sentenced to life imprisonment. Gulshan Abbas was also arrested and sentenced to 20 years in prison. Ilham Tohti and Gulshan Abbas are the faces of these millions of persecuted Uighurs, kidnapped from their families, locked up in camps, forcibly transferred to work in factories, and subjected to re-education programs and forced sterilizations. What crime did they commit? None, except the crime of being born Uighurs. Colleagues, the violence of Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party does not stop at China's borders. Those who escape repression and raise their voices to denounce these crimes are hunted down, intimidated and chased to our cities, to our streets, by agents of the Chinese regime, such as Gulbahar Jalilova, recently in the streets of Paris. I call on the European leaders who so often court Beijing's tyrant to get out of their complacency and indolence. Chinese regime agents acting on our soil must be punished. Products made by slaves must be banned. The architects of Uyghur oppression must be punished. Ilham Tohti and Gulshan Abbas embody human dignity. Now is the time to show that Europe stands by them.

Madam President, Prime Minister, we are here at the heart of European democracy to tell you one simple thing: You and your friends will not pass. Pressure on the press, stranglehold on justice, nepotism, corruption, attacks against LGBT people, stigmatization of exiles... Mr. Orbán, the more you strive to dismantle the rule of law in Hungary, the more we will defend it everywhere on European soil. The more you collaborate with Mr Putin in his war against Ukraine and against Europe, the more we will support the resistance of the Ukrainian people and the more we will build European defence. The more you support the interests of the Chinese or Azerbaijani dictatorships, the more we will defend the general European interest. You and your friends from the European far right are today the faces of capitulation in Europe. You are not patriots, you are Trojan horses of hostile foreign interests, determined opponents of who we are and who we want to be as Europeans. You are strong only of our weaknesses and this weakness must end today, now!

Mr President, Madam Vice-President, ladies and gentlemen, the heart of the Georgian people is beating for Europe. In the streets and squares, the country's youth waved the starry blue flag as a standard of freedom and dignity. We must stand by his side. The European-loving Georgian democrats look at us and expect us to be infinitely firmer in the face of the oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili and his convicts, who are undermining the foundations of Georgian democracy. We need to make this clear: you cannot do business with the Kremlin and get closer to Europe. We cannot increase the number of liberticide laws or anti-LGBTI attacks and get closer to Europe. We cannot keep Mikheil Saakashvili in prison indefinitely and get closer to Europe. With the so-called Georgian Dream threatening to plunge this beautiful European nation back into its old Russian nightmare, it is time for Europe to make itself heard and stand with its allies, the democrats of Georgia.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, Putin is attacking our democracies, Trump is in danger of becoming President of the United States again, and everywhere in Europe, everywhere, we are seeing their far-right allies progress. We are living in a time of change and our collective responsibility is immense. We European Social Democrats will be there. We will be there to block the way for the enemies of democracy, to build a powerful Europe that ceases to depend on China or the petromonarchies of the Gulf. A Europe that defends the Green Deal and accelerates the green transition. A Europe that plans its reindustrialisation, a Europe that puts in place a great plan for housing, a Europe that promotes equality between men and women and defends the rights of minorities. Finally, a Europe that is ecological, supportive and democratic. To build this Europe, we will be there and we will be intransigent, not tolerant of weakness or compromise. And we will make sure that the means, the investments, the actions follow the words. We will be, in this Chamber, the artisans and fighters of this great democratic, ecological and European power that we so desperately need.

Mr President, Vice-President, ladies and gentlemen, Putin’s war did not start on 24 February 2022 and is not limited to Ukraine’s borders. This war, in its hybrid form, has been targeting our democracies for too long. And in this war, Vladimir Putin found relays within our institutions, starting with far-right MEPs and European nationalist leaders. They claim to be nationalists, they claim to be defenders of our nations, when in reality they have been working for years for a foreign tyranny, hostile to the principles and interests of Europe. I chaired this Parliament’s special committee on foreign interference for more than three years and I can tell you that corruption is, together with information manipulation and cyber attacks, a central element of this hybrid war. Two months before the European elections, Russia multiplies its attacks with a goal: destabilising our democracies, making the valets of the Rassemblement national in France or the AFD in Germany triumph. We must fight these interferences firmly. There are times in history when showing any weakness is criminal. We are living in one of those moments.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, ethnic cleansing of Karabakh was not enough. All of Armenia, its freedom and sovereignty are now under threat. The Aliyev regime refuses to recognise Armenian territorial integrity and threatens to attack. While Putin's is stirring up chaos by trying to turn the population against his democratic government. Why? Because the Armenian government, and first of all its Prime Minister, Mr Pashinyan, and the European aspirations of the Armenian people, pose a threat to all dictators in the region. In Baku, Moscow and Ankara, the autocrats are seeking to destabilise the country, and in the face of these attacks, France and the European Union must be on the side of democracy and Armenia, forcefully and consistently, without the ambiguities of the past. France multiplies its aid to Yerevan. The EU needs to monitor and increase its support. We must encourage and support the European perspective of the Armenian people, increase humanitarian support tenfold, liberalise visas, help the Armenian army to defend its territory, and above all no longer bind us to Baku through an energy partnership that resembles handcuffs. There must be no more doubt. We are on the side of the Armenian people.

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, on 1 February 1954, just seventy years ago, Abbé Pierre made a radio call to French citizens. In the face of their brothers dying of misery, only one opinion must exist between men: the desire to make it impossible for it to last. That call was a shock. An immense stream of solidarity arose, an admirable national mobilization. But, seventy years later, it is clear that the French and European public authorities have failed to make it impossible for this to last. During the Nuit de la solidarité, held in Paris last month, more than 3,500 homeless people were identified. Among them, 450 children, who sleep every night on the street. And it lasts. Around 900 000 people are homeless across the European Union. And it lasts. Millions of European families are in a situation of absolute precariousness, fail to find shelter, heat, or are forced to skip meals regularly. We are the richest, most stable, most educated continent in the world, they say. Colleagues, how can we tolerate this lasting? I want to pay tribute here to all these volunteers, all these organizations, all these women and all these men who are mobilizing with the poorest. They are admirable, but their task is endless, and they fill the absence and bankruptcy of public authorities. It lasts and it must not last. In Paris, Barcelona, Berlin and Prague, foreign private investors and pension funds buy residential buildings and convert them into Airbnb apartments for rent at night and at golden prices. Housing has become a speculative asset, bought and sold for profit. This must stop. Housing is a right. European public authorities must tackle the causes, regulate investors in the real estate market and tourist rentals, invest heavily in the construction and renovation of affordable housing. Finally, the housing model first introduced in Finland needs to be generalised across Europe. The European Union is not just a peace project, it is a justice project, and democracy is not just a set of institutions, it is a solidarity regime.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, plenary sessions follow one another, and so do our debates on the attacks of authoritarian regimes on our democracy. Our institution is under attack, targeted by various foreign actors. Once again, we are ashamed of the behaviour of some members of this House. Let's be clear: Working for Russian interests is a betrayal of Europe and a betrayal of democracy. The war launched by the Putin regime did not start on 24 February 2022 and is not limited to the borders of Ukraine. It aims, in its hybrid form, at the very heart of our democracies. While in four months' time the citizens of the European Union are called upon to take part in a huge democratic meeting with themselves, this new case highlights the extent to which European democracy is a fragile edifice, to be defended, cultivated and constantly protected. So let us not let go in the fight against foreign interference and against the corruption that allows it. Let's not let it go. For four years, we have warned daily about the risks of interference in this institution and in democracies in general, and we have repeatedly said the same thing: If we do not get out of our apathy, we will witness, like impotent Roman senators, the fall of the common democratic house. Being a Democrat or a pro-European of comfort is no longer allowed. We must once again become democrats of conviction and struggle.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, we believed that Europe had awakened from its long geopolitical sleep, that sinister 24 February 2022. We had hoped that, after so many mistakes and weaknesses, our leaders would finally open their eyes and understand. But sleepwalkers continue to wander, haggard, condemned to perpetual lethargy. It's been two years. Two years! So how is it that the 200 billion Russians frozen in our banks have still not been seized? How can we explain the dropping of these weapons and the shortage of ammunition that is hitting the Ukrainian resistance? Where is the war economy promised every fortnight? It has been two years, and France is now proud to deliver 2,000 shells a month while Russia fires 10,000 shells a day at the front. All this is pathetic. We act as if we are supporting Ukraine out of solidarity, while it is realism and awareness of our vital interests that drive our support. Putin’s war is not a war for Donbas or Crimea. It is a war against Europe, against our democracies, against us. The clock is ticking and the alarm clock is still ringing. Slava Ukraini! Long live Europe!

Mr Bütikofer, I would really support it, and I am supporting it, because when I’m looking at the Kiel Institute ranking – ranking the help to Ukraine – I’m ashamed. I have to say I’m ashamed. I am ashamed first of my own government. Because when you see that France is in terms of help to Ukraine, it means that in Paris people did not understand what’s at stake. As you mentioned very clearly, it’s not out of generosity that we are helping Ukraine. It’s because it’s our security, our sovereignty, our stability that is at stake, and it’s high time for capitals to understand it in Europe.

Madam President, Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, fortunately Viktor Orbán has not succeeded in killing European financial aid to Ukraine. But, honestly, there is no point in poaching, because this aid is not enough, and it will be even less enough if the Americans elect Donald Trump in November and leave us alone. So where to find the necessary funds in Europe to massively support Ukraine even though European taxpayers are already in a difficult situation? Well, this resource exists, we have it in front of us for two years: More than €200 billion of Russian public assets are immobilised in European banks. Yes, more than €200 billion is kept warm until the war is over – and probably returned afterwards. This is completely absurd. This 200 billion is to be seized and then allocated to support Ukraine. Such a decision, taken with our G7 partners, would be a legitimate countermeasure against an aggressor state and an anticipation of the reparations that Russia must pay. It does not cost European citizens a euro and it finally sends a clear message to Moscow: there will be no turning back. Why don't we do it? Why are Paris and Berlin so strongly opposed to this option? We need answers. (The speaker agreed to answer a blue card question)

Madam President, Commissioner: A, S, A, P. ASAP. As soon as possible. “As soon as possible” – if I am not mistaken. I still wonder today, at that time, what the Member States did not understand in ‘As soon as possible’. One million rounds of ammunition promised to the Ukrainian resistance, 300,000 delivered. Meanwhile, North Korea alone is delivering 1 million shells to Russia, and Putin is reorganising its productive capacities. We, our stocks, are shrinking, and we are struggling to produce. I welcome your personal efforts, I welcome the Commission's efforts, but it is clear that the Member States are not following suit, as if they had not understood the seriousness of the moment. Their leaders talk about war economy, but they do nothing. The instruments adopted this year are moving in the right direction, but the resources allocated are laughable. In September, the President of the European Commission promised a new major programme, therefore. Yes, of course, but what means? When, at the heart of the pandemic, the European Union made it possible to place bulk orders for vaccines, a colossal effort was produced in common, and it worked. So why are we unable to do in response to Putin's war what we did in response to a virus? More than ever, we need our industrial capacities and, above all, a mental revolution in the Member States!