Speeches

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, hugged by shame, filled with anger, aware that citizens demand that we be firm and intransigent, we must act quickly. "Today is the time to get rid of old burdens that have become cumbersome": These words of Altiero Spinelli should serve as a compass. The old burdens of carelessness, indolence, the culture of impunity and the ethos of compromise must now be removed. It is now time to make a quick decision. We need a committee of inquiry. There is a need to establish a high authority for the transparency of public life at European level and a European rule on the capture of elites by foreign regimes. However, imposing new rules will not be enough. What we need today is the courage, the courage to face the lobbies that penetrate our institutions, the courage to counter these foreign regimes – Qatari, Russian or even Chinese – that make their market at home. For two years now, together with the members of the INGE special committee, which I chair, we have been trying to warn about interference and corruption. Well, now is the time to send a message to the world: European democracies are not for sale.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, one leader is fighting for diamonds, the other is fighting for luxury, the third is fighting for uranium. There are enough of these negotiations of carpet dealers, of heads of government who act in VRP of private sectors. It weakens our democracies, it weakens our sanctions. When war rages, it is vital for the city that the public interest again takes precedence over private interests. So how can we accept that large European groups continue to make money with the Russian regime? How can we tolerate, for example, that Total derives astronomical profits from its shares in Novatek, a supplier of kerosene to the planes of Vladimir Putin’s terrorist army? Winter is coming and the necessary sacrifices will only be made if they are just. So the message to European leaders in the Council is clear: cap gas prices. Tax the super-profits. Attack the war profiteers. Fill the holes in the sanctions. Show that politics has taken over. Only then will the European Union have honoured its rendezvous with history.

Mr President, very good question. Thank you for your response. I like it very much. It has been fun, by the way. My second question is: of course the era of naivety is over, but how do you react when you learn that the German head of cybersecurity is actually working with Russian interests? When will we have a total clean—up of our institutions that are supposed to protect and guarantee our security?

Thank you. And hello, Vice-President. I have a question on the attacks, but you already responded. My question will be, therefore, on money. I mean, how can you tell us that what happened with Germany and the strategic gas storage owned by Gazprom cannot happen anymore? And what do we do about Huawei investments, for instance, in critical infrastructure? Is there any plan to actually address the fact that such kind of companies cannot have any say in our infrastructure? And second point, what’s inside this defence of democracy package that President of the Commission came and announced in front of the Parliament? We were all very happy about it. But what will you put in it that would make sure that infrastructure that is critical for democracies – like, for instance, the Belgian Parliament which could not actually have a debate on Uyghurs – will not be attacked anymore? What kind of sanctions, what kind of protection?

Mr President, Mr Vice-President, finally, finally, we are starting to put things right and stop confusing the end with the means. Because yes, trade is a means and not an end. It must serve a greater purpose than it, starting with sustainable development. The Commission seems to have partially heard the message we are trying to convey and we will therefore be able to sanction tomorrow the violation of the Paris Agreement or of social rights by our trading partners. You're not meeting your emissions reduction commitments, you're violating trade union freedoms, we're reintroducing tariffs. Putting our market power at the service of our principles and strategic interests is the way forward. This approach must now prevail in all ongoing negotiations and in all agreements already negotiated. But we must go further, for example by inserting mirror clauses in all our agreements to promote the adoption of our agricultural standards, to put an end to unfair competition and to anchor our professions of ecological faith in practice. A break with 40 years of laissez-faire, laissez-passer is sketched. It is only the beginning, ladies and gentlemen, for us to transform the Union and its market into a global normative power.

Mr President, Mr Vice-President, Mr Minister, ladies and gentlemen, they call themselves patriots and serve a foreign tyrant. They call themselves truth seekers and relay the crudest fake news. They claim Orwell and empty the words of their substance, abolish the principle of non-contradiction. They are Putin's digital, political, and media proxies. They're not in Kherson or Donetsk. No, they're in their living room or on our TV sets. But they too are participating in the Russian war effort by denying his crimes and relaying his lies. They are often far-right, like Matteo Salvini or Marine Le Pen, but not always. They sometimes also come from the left, like Ségolène Royal, or from the right like Silvio Berlusconi. In peacetime, they are useful liars or idiots. In times of war, they are accomplices of the enemy. Colleagues, let us finally make it clear that this war did not start on 24 February 2022 and is not limited to the borders of Ukraine. This war is not just about Kiev, Kharkiv or Kherson. This so-called hybrid war targets our democracies. For many years, the Russian regime has been waging a hybrid war against our democracies by playing on their vulnerability, seeking on the one hand to weaken their immune defenses through the corruption of their elites and on the other to plunge them into chaos by supporting populists and plotters. In the Special Committee on Foreign Interference, which I have the honour to chair, we have analysed and dissected this war, which our leaders have long refused to see. This war abolishes the differences between the virtual and the real, inside and outside, foreign policy and domestic policy. It is time to rise to the level of peril facing us. While the EU estimated, before the invasion of Ukraine, the Russian funding of disinformation at EUR 1 billion and the human resources mobilised at more than a thousand full-time, the Union currently has only a budget of EUR 11 million and 41 agents to respond to this threat. We need to invest massively in the day before, the detection, the response to the attacks coming from Russia. Let us take the President of the Commission at her word before Parliament. We will not let any Trojan horse launched by an autocracy attack our democracies from within. We need to act now. We have no choice. We have no right to offer Putin the victory at home that the Ukrainians deny him at home. The issue is not just Ukraine's freedom, it's ours.

Madam President, Madam Vice-President, ladies and gentlemen. The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, announced yesterday here a great pact for the defence of democracy. This is what we have been calling for in the Special Committee on Foreign Interference for a long time now. It is urgent to take the measure of peril and strengthen our democracies. This text participates in it. European political parties and foundations are key players in our democratic life and as such, I am pleased that the revision of their statute and funding aims to ensure their better visibility, simplify administrative procedures and facilitate their participation in certain national campaigns. Nevertheless, I would like to alert you to a specific point: the possibility of funding through contributions from Council of Europe member countries is problematic. It puts the European Union in a position of dependence on other institutions and sends a dangerous signal to the Member States to which we call for a revision of their electoral law in order to ban foreign funding of political life. So be careful and alert.

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, remember the Mariupol theatre in front of which the locals had written the word ‘’ (‘Children’), hoping for a hint of humanity on the part of their tormentors. Remember that the Russian army bombed anyway. Keep in mind that Ukrainian children are therefore targets of the Russian war, as were Syrian children yesterday and Chechen children the day before yesterday. Keep in mind that tens and tens of thousands of Ukrainian children have been deported to Russia and many of them have been forcibly adopted to be russified. And then you will understand that Putin is not just a dangerous and tough autocrat, he is a criminal against humanity. That his war is not merely a war, but an attempt to annihilate a nation. May all European politicians or commentators who relay his propaganda here be complicit in his crimes. And that there is a place for him before an international criminal court, in a cell, and a place for them, his European servants, in the trash cans of history.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, dare to keep your head up when everything pushes you to bow your back: that is courage. Cardinal Zen, 90, is now the face and name of human dignity, and with him Jimmy Lai, Joshua Wong and hundreds more. In Hong Kong, the list of political prisoners is growing every day, cells are full and puppet trials follow one another. Collusion with a foreign power, incitement to subversion, apology for terrorism, conspiracy to distribute a seditious publication: Beijing criminalizes any desire for freedom. The Chinese Communist Party intends to build the world's first hub for banking and financial services in Hong Kong. It does so on the cemetery of the democratic hopes of a people. Our own financial markets, our banks, our multinationals act as accomplices. It is time to put an end to these complicities, to support the Hong Kong Democrats, including by sending observers to each of their trials, and to echo in this forum their slogan: Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times.

Madam President, Madam Vice-President, ladies and gentlemen, in the Special Committee on Interference, which I have the honour to chair, we have been working for two years on the ‘how’. Now is the time to ask the question of ‘why’. Why is Vladimir Putin sponsoring far-right movements across Europe? Why do its networks support both anti-Western pan-Africanists and Western white supremacists, the most radical Catalan separatists and the most virulent Spanish nationalists? Why are Kadyrov’s militias, which exalt jihad against Europe, supported in the same way as the most anti-Muslim movements in the very heart of our cities? Why these apparent contradictions? Why do Russian propaganda channels film any incident in our countries as if it were the beginning of a civil war? Why is the Kremlin using the wheat weapon to raise the spectre of famine in Africa? Why are Russian hackers attacking our hospitals in the midst of a pandemic? Answering these questions is vital. We are engaged in spite of ourselves in a confrontation that will be long and brutal. And to understand the opponent’s ambition and strategy, we need to get out of ourselves, give up the clichés about the chess player and stop believing that our enemies reason in the same way as we do. We would have been less surprised by the return of the war to European soil if we had read, listened to, analyzed the texts and speeches of the Russian leaders for 20 years. We would have understood then that they feel they are engaged in a fight to the death against our democracies. We would have been less surprised if we had carefully read the stories of Mr. Sourkov, for example, Putin's polytechnologist, long in charge of his Ukrainian policy, and in particular his new "No Sky": it is the story of a people whose sky has literally fallen, who live in the forest and who dream of taking revenge on the inhabitants of the neighbouring city – a clear metaphor for the European Union – not to enjoy its wealth, but to plunge it into chaos. Yes, the strategy put in place by Putin, Surkov and the Russian leaders has a name: this is the strategy of chaos. Regardless of losses and contradictions, what matters is spreading the disorder. Putin's bet is simple: We will not be able to live in chaos and we will give in. So let’s stop dreaming of a return to reason and get ready for the coming winter. There will be no peace, ladies and gentlemen, until the engineers of chaos are defeated.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, a crime against humanity has haunted our cabinets and our shops for too many years. The deportation and enslavement of the Uyghur people. When you buy a Zara shirt or a pair of Nikes, you may find yourself unknowingly, unwittingly, bound to the Chinese concentration system. Why? Because there is no law in Europe, no instrument to prevent the import of the products of forced labour. Because our market is open to the four winds and nothing comes to frustrate the greed of multinationals willing to do anything to free up their huge margins and pay their delusional dividends. The time has come to turn the page on irresponsibility and impunity for good. On this day, we, the representatives of the citizens of Europe, send a clear message to the most greedy exploiters. You will now have to follow rules. This vote is the result of several years of mobilization. It was made possible by the courage of hundreds of thousands of European citizens. The requirement that these young people from France and elsewhere have formulated for us is simple, basic: Let us dress, move, call without being complicit in crimes. Dare, dare to face lobbies and tyrants. Finally, be worthy of the mission we have entrusted to you. Our resolution, so widely supported, draws a simple and effective instrument to banish the products of slavery from the European market. Next day, the customs officers of Le Havre or Rotterdam will seize cargo ships from China or elsewhere and block the products of forced labour before they arrive in our stores and in our cabinets. To this day, we will not let go. We will be worthy of our mission. And finally, finally, we will dare to face the greed of these multinationals who think they can enjoy an endless world without rules.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, one day we all wondered what we would have done in the Europe of camps in 1942 or in the USSR of the gulag in 1947. These questions, bequeathed by history, cannot be answered. But there are other questions that we can and must answer. What are we doing today in the face of the camps of our time? What are we doing in the face of the deportation of the Uyghur people? What do we do with the "Xinjiang Police Files" and the thousands of faces of victims emerging from the concentrated darkness? What are we doing in the eyes of Rahile Omer, a young girl as young as 15 years old who was locked up and tortured in a Chinese camp? The time has come for us to respond, to break the silence that allows crime, and to finally name evil, as this resolution does: slavery, crimes against humanity, serious risk of genocide. To say, therefore, and to act, by punishing those most responsible for the crime, by banishing from our markets the products of the enslavement of a people. History looks at us and judges us. Finally, let us live up to the principles we claim to uphold.

Mr President, Commissioner. Systematic rapes, civilians tied up and shot dead in the street, torture, hospitals and schools razed... The strategy of terror of Russian soldiers in Ukraine is limitless. Why would he get in the way? Impunity has existed for 20 years: impunity for crimes committed in Chechnya, impunity for crimes committed in Syria, impunity for crimes committed in Russia itself, impunity for crimes committed in Georgia. Impunity has turned the massacres of the Russian army into a norm. It is time to break this impunity, to end this impunity. Justice is not just what we owe to victims: It’s about preventing the crimes of tomorrow. And so it also means preventing the temptation – which is emerging in some capitals – to consider a return to business as usual after the war. We do not talk, we do not pretend, we do not ally ourselves with war criminals and criminals against humanity. Vladimir Putin's place is in court, not in Brégançon.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, you are too ugly. We'll let you live so you can tell everyone. That's what Putin's welders told a 17-year-old girl, after raping her mother and 15-year-old sister in front of her for days and nights and beating them to death. Why did her tormentors let her live to speak? Because systematic rape of Ukrainian women is not just barbaric, it is a strategy of terror. It does not just satisfy the abject impulse of the warrior, it is the war itself in the eyes of these fascists. Rape of women has been at the heart of Putin's terror since Chechnya for 20 years. Humiliate, desecrate, defile the bodies of women to break the resistance of a people, break Ukraine by raping Ukrainian women. When we went to Bucha, we saw, we heard and we made a promise: make every effort to ensure that justice is done. The tormentors must pay and the mechanisms for documenting and collecting testimonies must be systematized. We also call for clinical and psychological support programmes to be set up by the EU, as rape continues in the infinite suffering of the victim. Finally, while a very large number of Ukrainian refugees are being welcomed by Poland, the Commission must ensure that victims have access to all their fundamental rights, including abortion. Colleagues, Ukrainian women are now targets, they are also at the heart of the resistance. And I want to conclude by echoing the words of Ludmila, whom I met in Irpin and who commands a battalion of volunteers, today on the Eastern Front: “We need doctors, judges, refugees, listening, solidarity, but above all we need weapons to defend ourselves.” So that the executioners do not win, the first thing to do is to help those who resist them.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, Halal bodies. The first time I heard this expression in the mouth of a Uighur doctor forced to participate in forced organ harvesting from shotguns, I did not understand. He told me: Wealthy clients in the Gulf are asking for halal organs. They are then taken from Muslim deportees. This is the law of supply and demand”. That was in 2020. I asked him to repeat this sentence ten times, as the horror seems inconceivable. Yet testimonies and investigations call into question a system of organ trafficking. The forced harvests first targeted Falun Gong, then prisoners of conscience, and it is now the Uighurs who are the victims. Everything is bought and sold in the country of the Communist Party of China. The buyers would come from North America, the Middle East and Europe. We need to highlight this crime against humanity. We therefore demand full transparency from the Chinese authorities. We demand an end to transplant tourism, to reassess any hospital cooperation with Chinese institutions and to punish those responsible for this trafficking. In the face of such crimes, everyone must choose his side. Mine will always be that of prisoners of conscience and Uighur deportees.

Madam President, Madam Vice-President, ladies and gentlemen, Bucha's lying bodies, Mariupol's martyrdom, women raped, children tortured, civilians executed: This is the true face of Putinism. The face of an evil that, for 20 years, our leaders have not wanted to see, name and fight at our borders and at the very heart of our cities. Today, the war in Ukraine forces us to open our eyes. The moment is so serious and so decisive that it would be suicidal to hide the truth. And the truth is that European political forces have for years chosen the camp of a regime that has set itself the task of weakening, destabilising and undermining our democracies. The truth is that a far-right international has found in Putin his boss, his financier and his model. The truth is that French, Austrian and German political leaders, who spend their time teaching patriotic lessons, have chosen to serve a foreign tyrant, hostile to the principles and interests of our nations and of Europe as a whole. The truth is that we have all too often bowed our heads in the face of these cheap patriots and now we have to look them in the eye and face them relentlessly. The truth, ladies and gentlemen, is that in France, a presidential candidate owes millions of euros to oligarchs close to the Kremlin and that she is obligated by the enemies of European democracy. Yes, the truth is that Marine Le Pen sold herself to Vladimir Putin a long time ago and she can, perhaps tomorrow, become President of France. This truth, no sleight of hand should make her forget. In the aftermath of the invasion, the National Rally attempted to remove 1.2 million leaflets. Why? Because they contained a photo showing her, all smiling, shaking hands with Vladimir Putin. But there are other photos. There are hugs with Rogozine, there are hugs with Narychkin. Yes, you know, Naryshkin, the head of the SVR - the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service - who was humiliated by the Tsar in this surreal scene shortly before the war. This is the man who has been directly managing the Le Pen family, aunt or niece, for the Kremlin for over a decade. And we no longer count, around the Le Pen, the servants of Russian interests, those who have passed in this chamber, those who are still there, Messrs Schaffhauser, Chauprade, Mariani, Lebreton. These close ties with Moscow are by no means a French specificity. They are found in all European far-right parties – AfD, Lega, FPÖ, Vox –: No wonder these so-called sovereignists never had a word to condemn the Russian attacks on our sovereignty. Not a word to denounce the cyberattacks against our hospitals in the midst of the pandemic. Not a word to condemn the murders of opponents on our soil by the Russian services. Not a word to stigmatize Wagner's mercenary attacks on France on the European continent. The foreign party, as they say, is them. The collabos, as they say, are them. Do not be surprised, it is a tradition. Joseph de Maistre once published his counter-revolutionary burners from St. Petersburg, and the accursed of the French collaboration would dissert on Jewish France at Sigmaringen. Whether in Russian or German, our extreme right always speaks the same foreign language to democracy, that of the autocrats. Colleagues, sometimes the truth is painful, but we have no choice but to say it to the end. To be credible in our fight against Putin and his European affiliates, we must also clean up our own ranks, left and right. The Social Democrats have Gerhard Schröder, the Conservatives, François Fillon, the Liberals Esko Aho. But nowhere but on the far right has this corruption become a political and ideological project. Then we can't let go anymore. Our states and institutions must urgently ban foreign funding and anonymous donations to political parties and foundations; to impose full transparency on the funding of NGOs and associations that feed the public debate; to highlight and break the ties between the Russian oligarchs sanctioned by the European Union and European politicians. Our democracies have too long sinned out of weakness, laziness, indolence, corruption. Barring Putin’s path in Ukraine and that of his valets in our own countries is one and the same fight. The fight for freedom and democracy in Europe, I do not see today any more sacred or urgent. Let's take it together to the end.

Mr President, Mr High Representative, ladies and gentlemen, we have not received the slightest support from Beijing against the invasion of Ukraine. But how could it have been otherwise? Why, then, would a regime that parches Uyghurs in camps, intends to vassalize its neighbors and sees us as strategic adversaries help us stop a regime that massacres Ukrainians, intends to vassalize its neighbors and sees us as strategic adversaries? Ideas matter, and so does the nature of political systems. So, it is time to assume the balance of power imposed on us: to no longer depend on Russian energy, therefore, but also to no longer depend as much on the Chinese productive apparatus; time to stop being destabilized, attacked or bought without reacting; time to remind our elites of the minimum duty of loyalty they owe to our countries and institutions; time to alert our former leaders who have gone to serve Huawei that they will sooner or later experience the opprobrium of those who have gone to serve Gazprom. In the face of Putin or Xi Jinping, our principles and strategic interests come together, they do not oppose each other. And the best way to deter China from one day invading Taiwan, well, is to lose Putin in Ukraine.

Madam President, Mr High Representative, the future of Europe is decided in the ruins of Mariupol and Kharkiv, in the streets of Kiev and Odessa. If we do not arrest Putin in Ukraine, we will no longer have peace on our continent. Then we will not intervene militarily, but we can do much more than we do today. Every day, we fund the war machine razing towns and villages with more than €600 million. Every day, our gas and oil imports destroy schools and hospitals. Then it is time to put an end to it. Yes, this decision will cost our nations, but our states have the means to cope, to help households, to put the energy giants to work. The ‘whatever it costs’ of the pandemic is for peace and freedom in Europe. If the price of inaction is high, the price of action, well, we can raise it. Ladies and gentlemen, politics, at the end of the day, is this question: know what price a city is willing to pay for its freedom and sovereignty. The future of Ukraine, but also the future of Europe, depends on our collective response to this issue.

Madam Vice-President, Madam Minister, Mr High Representative, allow me first of all to welcome and thank the work of the rapporteur Kalniete and all the members of the committee whom I have had the honour of chairing for 18 months. We have shown that the defence of democracy is not left-wing or right-wing and transcends all political divides. Colleagues, for 20 years, bottled up in the myth of the end of history, convinced that they no longer have enemies, the European elites have shown a confounding naivety. They did not see, they did not want to see what Putin was doing on our doorstep, in Chechnya, Georgia, Ukraine. Even more incredible, these same intellectual, political and cultural elites did not see, did not want to see these attacks even within our nations, at the heart of the European Union. There are times in history when indolence confines itself to treason. That is why, on the first day of this mandate, we called for the creation of this special committee on foreign interference in our democracies. Democracy is our common treasure and it is under attack today. For 18 months, from hearing to hearing, from study to study, we have analysed all the forms of these attacks: financing of political parties hostile to the European Union and present here, cyber-attacks, disinformation campaigns, investment in strategic infrastructure, capture of elites and espionage, etc. These attacks are not episodic. They are systematic and plunge us into an in-between. We are not at war, but we are no longer at peace either. They blur all the boundaries that have hitherto shaped our thinking. There is no longer a separation between foreign policy and domestic policy, between inside and outside. The conflict that we wanted to flee so much is everywhere and we have no choice but to take it on board. Our responsibility is immense and the mental revolution that is needed is enormous. I therefore call on the Commission to immediately address the recommendations made in this report: Let’s harmonise electoral laws and ban foreign funding for political parties and parties, track down nominee citizens and shell companies, invest heavily in our cybersecurity and punish much harder the states that coordinate attacks against our institutions, impose responsibilities on digital platforms, build a sustainable system to protect the European information space. Let's do it fast. And above all, let's track down this corruption that has undermined our cities. How could we tolerate our ministers, our heads of government, going to work for Russian and Chinese interests? How could it be tolerated, for example, that, from Gerhard Schroeder to Marion Scheller, those who have decided on German energy policy for years become employees of Gazprom? It is time to restore to our democracies the strength and virtue without which we will perish.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, Elina was 20 at the end of 2013. A philosophy student, she was one of the first to take to the streets, with a European flag in her hands, to launch the revolution. Andrei was 25, and he was a DJ. I saw him, at the beginning of 2014, with an iron shield attached to his arm, facing the bullets of the snipers. Want to be free, aspire to join the family of European democracies: this is the only crime of Elina and Andrei, this is the only crime of the Ukrainian people, this is why Crimea was annexed and Donbass occupied, this is why 130 000 Russian soldiers are currently being massed at the borders and threatening to turn our continent into war; because a European nation wants to live free in Europe. We often doubt ourselves and our democracies; But let us listen, let us look at the Ukrainian youth, and we will grasp the deep meaning of our cities, the value of this Union that we are trying step by step to build. It is now in Kiev that we have the best understanding of what it means to be European.

Mr President, Mr Vice-President, ladies and gentlemen, how long are we going to tolerate tyrants spending on us the money they steal from their people? How long are we going to let the brigands of Vladimir Putin enjoy their villas on our coasts, their chalets in our mountains, their yachts in our ports? Alexander Babakov, Vice-President of the Duma, is one of the poorest members of the Russian Parliament, according to official asset declarations. It has a luxurious apartment in Paris and a castle in the Yvelines. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov collects apartments in the most chic districts of the French capital. Denis Popov, prosecutor general of Moscow, multiplies the residences on the Costa Brava like rolls. The list is long. Alps, French Riviera, Sardinia, Marbella, Paris, Berlin... All these great scammers of European decadence love our beaches and ski slopes. So it’s up to us to show them that we can’t go to war at our gates and get your yacht wet in our ports. Colleagues, the fight against corruption is a high priority in our foreign policy. But it will not work as long as we welcome here the money stolen there, as long as our banks offer asylum to looters’ loot, as long as the Member States sell a European nationality to the first oligarch to come, as long as our leaders negotiate their golden retirement with Gazprom or Huawei. Ladies and gentlemen, we demand the most basic consistency in this report. We call for European legislation on the confiscation and return of ill-gotten property. We call for a mechanism of targeted sanctions against those guilty of high corruption. We call for common rules to put an end to the betrayal of those leaders who, from Schröder to Fillon, sell themselves to hostile foreign interests. In a word, we ask for courage. This is what will make us powerful.

Mr President, Mr High Representative, ladies and gentlemen, 'Words, words, words...', Hamlet repeated. "Words, words, words..." We talk a lot about human rights, but the question before us is simple: What powerful interests are we willing to offend to give our words the weight they lack? We condemn forced labour, but our multinationals have their products manufactured by Chinese suppliers who exploit Uyghur slaves. We donate hundreds of millions of euros to child protection projects, but our industrial champions use subcontractors who send children to mines in Niger. We will be taken seriously when we are serious, and we will be serious when we step up to these multinationals who trample on the principles we claim to defend. Ladies and gentlemen, in the coming weeks, the European legislation on corporate due diligence offers us a unique opportunity to turn our words into action, to show that impunity for the powerful is not inevitable and to prove that defending rights is not just a posture. We have the opportunity to be true to what we claim to be. Let's not miss it.

Madam President, Mr President, there are apparently crimes too great and criminals too powerful to find any place in your long speeches. You have sung about human rights in general, but you have again ignored the worst crime against humanity of our time: deportation and eradication of the Uyghur people. But what are human rights worth without the courage to defend them? Courage is not to be silent when millions of human beings are parked in camps. Courage is about being strong with the strong and not just the weak. Courage is about confronting the private interests that drive us to cowardice. These multinationals such as Zara, Nike or Volkswagen benefit from the enslavement of a people. The courage is to finally ban the products of slavery from our markets. Courage is about standing up to the hundreds of thousands of young people who are urging you to take action. The only time in four years that you mentioned the plight of the Uyghur torturers was to say that France alone could not do anything and that the European scale alone made an impact. You are now the head of the Union and... And still nothing. That's the problem. We know the principles. We defend human rights. What is missing is the courage to wear them.

– Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, Vladimir Putin is afraid. Admittedly, its power is not immediately threatened. Admittedly, it controls weapons, money, the media, civil servants. But he will be afraid as long as there are free consciences in Russia. And there he is afraid of Memorial, afraid of law and truth, afraid of every light that illuminates the dirty night of thieves and killers. And when tyrants are afraid, that is to say, deep down, every day of their lives, they repress and murder. Natalia Estemirova, a heroine of our time, was investigating for Memorial the countless crimes committed in Chechnya. She was shot in 2009. Oyub Titiev and Yuri Dmitriev were embalmed, and now Oleg Orlov and Svetlana Gannouchkina face prison or exile. They are my role models, as was my friend Anna Politkovskaya, who was killed in her building hall on Putin’s birthday. Colleagues, the primary meaning of this resolution in support of Memorial is to remind Europe and the world what courage is. Defending in Grozny teenagers tortured in Kadyrov jails or filing a complaint in Moscow against mercenaries of Wagner Group, Putin’s secret army, for crimes committed in Syria: that is courage. Memorial is the name of the Russia we love, we admire, a name that reminds us that we are not fighting a nation, but a regime. So let us offer our help to Russian society, let us offer our support to the exiles and let us strike this regime of looters where its heart beats, i.e. at the wallet. Those who throw heroes into prison, plunder their people, persecute minorities, trample on our principles and our interests must no longer be able to enjoy their villa on the French Riviera or their chalet in Courchevel. It is as simple as that, sometimes, politics. Solidarity with the victims requires the seizure of the yachts and the bank accounts of the executioners. Colleagues, the time has come for us to have even one hundredth of the courage of the members of Memorial.

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I had planned a speech, but it is no longer useful because after hearing Mr Mariani and Mr Krah, the French far right and the German far right, it is time to come here and say how tired we are. We're tired of seeing these useful Kremlin idiots come to squeeze out Russia's propaganda elements every time. Putin invades Georgia, it is the fault of the Georgians. Putin is annexing Crimea, it is the fault of the Ukrainians. Putin is again threatening Ukraine, it is still the fault of the Ukrainians. It is never Vladimir Putin’s fault. In fact, the European far right has absolutely nothing to do with the rights of nations. It claims to be sovereignist and nationalist, but this extreme right, it is in fact only at the service of the international financed and sponsored by Vladimir Putin. You no longer have the right to define yourself as patriots: even when Putin interferes in our affairs, threatens our democracies, attacks our hospitals, you defend him. In the end, you prefer the interests of Russia to those of Europe. One day, voters will understand and make you pay for it.