Speeches

Mr President, Commissioner, let us be direct: you have accepted this deeply unfair agreement against an illusory promise of stability and security which will unfortunately be breached very quickly. The President of the Commission went to Scotland as we go to Canossa and Trump took great pleasure in humiliating her, and us through her, between two rounds of golf. So, let's never forget: We are the first market in the world. We have the means to engage in a balance of power with the United States. And if no one has an interest in a trade war, by refusing to engage in this balance of power, we have prepared Trump's future blackmails and incited the various predators of this world to despise our principles as well as our interests. Let's wake up! Trump won't help us. Not about Ukraine, not about anything. He'll walk on us if we let him. So the only way to be respected and finally build our power is to believe in our own strength. When you're trying to soften an opponent, he usually takes it for weakness and Trump doesn't tolerate any weakness.

Madam President, Madam President von der Leyen, you came to tell us this morning that Europe is in an existential struggle, and you are right. It must be said that Europe is under threat and must fight. But is it fighting to submit commercially to Donald Trump in Scotland? Is it a fight to still not seize the 210 billion Russian public assets in our banks? Is it fighting to let X or Tik Tok destabilize our democracies? Is it a fight to refuse to apply the DSA firmly? Is it fighting to let Gaza be reduced to ashes without European action? Is it a fight to let Orbán and Fico trample on the rule of law within the Union itself? Is it a fight to propose a multiannual financial framework with so little ambition and so little justice? "Words, words, words," Hamlet said in Shakespeare. Well, today we need more than words. If you want to turn these words into deeds, we will stand by your side, including against the Council and against the far right. But if it's just words, then in this case, Europe is off to a bad start.

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, wherever they attack rights and freedoms, we will have to be there, and we will be there. So when Viktor Orbán decided to ban the Budapest Pride, we decided to go. On 28 June, we saw more than 200 000 Hungarians defy its ban, march with determination and joy, and once again make the heart of Europe beat in Hungary. The Orbán regime bans prides, stigmatises LGBTQIA+ people, carpets his country with anti-Ukrainian and anti-European posters, tramples on universities, instrumentalises judges, gags journalists and acts like Putin’s Trojan horse – (to the extreme right of the Chamber) like you, in our institutions. And what are these institutions doing? They are weak in their defence of the European ideal. It is time to show infinitely more firmness and send a message to both these far-right MEPs and the Orbán regime that Putinism has no place in Europe and never will!

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, wherever they attack rights and freedoms, we will have to be there, and we will be there. So when Viktor Orbán decided to ban the Budapest Pride, we decided to go. On 28 June, we saw more than 200 000 Hungarians defy its ban, march with determination and joy, and once again make the heart of Europe beat in Hungary. The Orbán regime bans prides, stigmatises LGBTQIA+ people, carpets his country with anti-Ukrainian and anti-European posters, tramples on universities, instrumentalises judges, gags journalists and acts like Putin’s Trojan horse – (to the extreme right of the Chamber) like you, in our institutions. And what are these institutions doing? They are weak in their defence of the European ideal. It is time to show infinitely more firmness and send a message to both these far-right MEPs and the Orbán regime that Putinism has no place in Europe and never will!

Mr President, in accordance with Rule 60(4) of the Rules of Procedure, I would like to request referral back to committee for the opening of interinstitutional negotiations.

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, Vladimir Putin simply does not want peace. Why? Because war is the foundation of his regime. Russia has been in a state of war since 1999 and its coming to power: Chechnya, Georgia, Syria, Ukraine. Each country is only one stage in this long Putinian war and it is a war that targets us. So the white flag you mentioned today is not the flag of peace, it is the flag of betrayal. It is the one you have been raising in the ranks of the far right since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine. And this flag will not bring peace to Europe. On the contrary, it will bring war, destruction and the end of the European project. Hoping to exchange peace for territories is both a dishonor and an illusion. So, with or without Washington, we must do everything to arrest Putin in Ukraine. Trump is betraying Europe, that's a fact. But are we ourselves up to our rendezvous with our own history? It is not Trump who refuses to seize the 210 billion frozen Russian public assets. It is not Trump who refuses the Kallas plan of 40 billion euros in aid to the Ukrainian resistance. "Slava Ukraini" and live Europe!

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States is a bully who sees the world as a playground and, faced with a bully, looking down is useless. Hoping to pass between the drops is also useless. We must show that Europe is strong. So rather than a classic approach, "you tax my wine, I tax your whiskey," an approach that would be too expensive for our businesses and too predictable to deter Trump, let's show that we're willing to target, if necessary, the core of his power: American digital services, the pillars of the famous Trumpist "broligarchy". By finally using the strength of our market, let's apply our digital laws, work together on sovereign European alternatives to Amazon, Facebook, X and others. The historic moment we are going through is the emergence of a sovereign European power in terms of trade, defence or industry. A power whose very birth certificate is also an act of divorce. The choice we make now will define the nature of Europe for decades to come. The status quo is impossible, so you have to move forward.

Madam President, Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I sometimes wonder whether we are all really aware of the gravity of the moment we are going through today. The German, Danish, Estonian and Polish services all say the same thing: Putin’s Russia could invade a country in the European Union before 2030, and every word, every decision, every step of Donald Trump confirms something new: We are alone to ensure our own safety. So I have questions. Why? Why are we unable to deal, in the face of such a threat, with what we have faced in the face of a pandemic? Why is the big common loan for defense still blocked? Why only propose national solutions? Why is the only truly European defence programme, EDIP, funded at this ridiculous EUR 1.5 billion? And why is the Ukraine Support Instrument, which comes with EDIP, funded to the tune of EUR 0? The current crisis will be the cradle of European power, or it will be its tomb. We have little time to act.

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, it is commendable and necessary to repeat that we will support the Ukrainian resistance for as long as it takes, but it is even better to prove it. The Europeans must send a powerful signal to Moscow and Washington that we can make up for the fragile American support. Europeans know this: this support is not simply an act of solidarity with Ukraine; it is an act that will ensure the security of our continent. So how do you explain that 210 billion Russian public assets are still frozen in Europe right now? The legal argument against their seizure does not hold, because international law provides for legitimate countermeasures provided that they are proportionate and reversible. Russia will have to pay reparations: it is therefore a down payment, which is perfectly proportional. The only reason for our inaction is our political weakness, which Moscow and Washington have understood extremely well.

Madam President, it is actually a point of order. It's a point that will show that we have solidarity among ourselves as Members of this Parliament. Yesterday evening, on Russian TV, Vladimir Solovyov, the main propagandist of Putin's regime, attacked, insulted, threatened one of us: Pina Picierno, Vice-President of this House, has been assaulted with terrific violence on Russian TV. And then you had campaigns of trolls and bots inside our own territory. So today it's time for us to show solidarity in front of fascist propagandists ...

Madam President, Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the great writer and fighter of Free France Romain Gary wondered why the French elites had not followed General de Gaulle to London in 1940. Was it because they were violently anti-Semitic? "No, not really," Gary tells us. Pro-German or pro-Nazi, then? No more. The reason was more sadly commonplace, according to Gary: because they liked their furniture too much. Great storms require breaking the habit, and now is the time for us too to get rid of our furniture. Russia threatens us directly, and the United States abandons us cowardly. Well, this is Europe’s moment of truth. It is now up to us and to us alone to massively help our first line of defence, the Ukrainian resistance. The European Council affirms this, but this means taking strong decisions, which our states are still backing down on, such as seizing the 209 billion Russian public assets frozen in Europe and allocating them to Ukraine. It is also now up to us and ourselves to ensure our own security and build an autonomous defence. Our leaders say so, but that means going further than what was announced on Thursday. Let us launch a joint loan financing European programmes and make sure that this money is used to develop European industries – not to stack the F-35s. We need to act more, and more as Europeans. Слава цкра ⁇ н ⁇ (‘Slava Ukraini’)! Long live a free Europe!

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, three years ago we all said here that the Russian war against Ukraine is a war against Europe. We were right to say so. But have we acted accordingly? Ukrainians astonished the world with their heroic resistance, but did European leaders rise to the occasion? Are the 200 billion Russian public assets frozen in our banks seized as I speak? Have European imports of liquefied natural gas or French cooperation with Rosatom ceased? Have we delivered all the weapons that the Ukrainian resistance needs and run our factories at full capacity to equip it? No, and it's a strategic bankruptcy. In Mar-a-Lago, Ukraine may seem far away and Trump may think he's playing with Putin. But not us. For us Europeans, it is our security and our freedom that are at stake in Ukraine. For us Europeans, the Ukrainian resistance is our first line of defence. So let us not listen to the voices of capitulation and submission that once again rotted this chamber this morning. Let us not listen to Vladimir Putin's servants and say forcefully that the survival of Ukraine is the freedom of Europe.

Madam President, Commissioner, Minister, ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States is deciding on tariffs that will hurt our production, that will hurt European industries. And what do the pseudo-Patriots do? Instead of advocating resistance to their new hero, what they are doing is attacking the Green Deal, the Pact on Migration and Asylum, and they don't have a word to defend European productions against the one who is hurting them right now, that is, Donald Trump. Yes, Donald Trump whose affiliates you are in this chamber. So, we who are really patriots, we who really want to defend European industries, we ask the Commission to be much firmer. We have the instruments to deal with this balance of power imposed by the new US administration: Instrument for the exercise of customs and Union rights, Anti-Foreign Subsidies Instrument, Coercive Instrument, Digital Services Act. We have the tools to resist and we, as patriots, will defend the interests of Europeans against the US administration if necessary.

Madam President, Boualem Sansal will be sleeping in prison again tonight. So it's been 69 days and 69 nights that the great writer is locked up in a jail, for speaking, for writing. 69 days and 69 nights of shame for his jailers. Colleagues, the Algerian regime, like all authoritarian regimes, is afraid of feathers, afraid of free men. Remember how he trembled in front of his people during the Hirak, this great popular revolution that showed, once again, the courage of Algerians. The regime then responded with repression and today Boualem Sansal shares the fate of many other prisoners of conscience, such as Mohamed Tadjadit, the Hirak poet, who has just been sentenced to five years in prison for denouncing state violence and social misery. So, Commissioner, Europe can help, it must help to secure Boualem Sansal's release. Do not remain silent, do not remain apathetic, put pressure on his jailers, repeat with us that we are not free while Boualem Sansal sleeps in prison.

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.