Speeches

Madam President, colleagues, I find the debate on how the Russian Government is supposed to support extremists in Europe somewhat cynical. First of all, for you, an extremist is slowly anyone who has their own opinion, if this does not agree with the prescribed opinion. It is enough for a person to say that he does not want a third world war with the Russian Federation or he does not want an energy collapse of Europe, he is automatically labeled as an extremist who needs somehow to be tamed. Secondly, you are talking here about extremists in Europe. And I ask, who are they in Ukraine? Now I'm not talking about ordinary Ukrainians protecting their country. I'm talking about militias like Kraken, Freikorps, or the Azov Battalion, which has the logo of the Nazi SS division right in the symbol. Suddenly, no one cares. The West gives them arms and money. If we want to be fair, let us also condemn this extremism, because it is just as bad as all the extremism you mention here. Otherwise, it's just hypocrisy.

Mr President, I agree that young talents should be sought and that smart young people should be supported. But why are you dragging those Africans back here? Why? Where are all the rocket engineers and doctors who came in as part of that illegal immigration? Where are they? They are abusing the social system. They came to steal, to rape and, in many cases, to murder. Because of them, many Europeans, millions of Europeans, cannot walk their own streets in their own cities because no go zones are created. I'm really fed up with how to find a solution to every problem, that there are more Africans in Europe. Yes, let talent be promoted, but let it be promoted among European youth, among Europeans, among the present generation, among the next generation, among our children! Let's not just look for a solution in Africa. But let's finally look at our young smart people in Europe! Let's look for the future! That's our future!

Mr President, many of you are saying here that Europe must immediately disconnect itself from Russian gas because, by buying Russian gas, we are supposedly financing the Russian war. I ask you what nonsense this is. What is nonsense, after all, by buying gas, we primarily provide our European, for me Slovak, industry, which would not last a day without gas. That's just a fact. Should we stop buying products from China now because we are financing the communist regime or Arab oil because we are financing the Arabs? Slovakia is one hundred percent, one hundred percent dependent on Russian gas and all clever people who say that we need to disconnect immediately, I ask why Ukraine is not setting an example for us. Why Ukraine, also one hundred percent, dependent does not disconnect first, why Ukraine still pays for Russian gas. Are we supposed to accuse them of financing the Russian invasion? No, we're not. I am in favour of finding a cheaper and more advantageous energy supplier, we can easily buy oil and gas from anyone. But if there is no such supplier, which is not the case, then I call for prudence and a cool head.

Madam President, I feel that for the European Union, every citizen with a different view is slowly becoming an extremist. Ten years ago, the word extremist didn't even exist properly in politics, and today, under the government of intolerant liberals, everyone is being called an extremist. I remember a few years ago when not me, but the serious Western media labeled the Ukrainian right sector and that battalion of Azov as neo-Nazi organizations. Suddenly no one. No one sees anything. No one cares. I wonder if that's the objectivity. Why is left-wing extremism never mentioned here in this plenary, which is equally dangerous, even more dangerous, because many left-wing extremists are in power. On the one hand, they talk about personal freedoms, but they introduce compulsory vaccinations and Covid passports, on the other hand, they talk about freedom of speech, but they introduce censorship. People are not blind and they are not stupid, so please see who the real extremist is, who robs them of their freedoms, who robs them of their dignity. And one day, I think, they'll count all these people in the election.

Thank you, Mrs. Sojdrová, for the blue card. As far as those sanctions are concerned, of course, no one doubts that they should be directed against the Russian Federation. It's natural and that's the purpose. But it is also clear from the reactions of Slovak farmers, industrialists and traders in general that many of these sanctions are more damaging to Europe, to the European Union, to European industry than to the Russian Federation itself, because the war is still going on and European companies are no longer doing well and they are also getting into economic difficulties. And we will see which side will last longer to endure this sanctions war, whether it be the Russian Federation or Europe and European industry. That's a pragmatic thing, that's not defending Russia or defending Russian aggression right now, just someone has to think a little rationally. Not everyone can just lament the misfortune that is currently happening in Ukraine, but we must think about what will happen to Europe next. This is the way to look at it in the future.

Madam President, when I see the impact that some of those sanctions are starting to have on the European economy, how some of the basic raw materials are starting to be lacking, how the factories are ceasing to produce, the big automakers are closing down, how the prices of energy and food are rocketing, I must ask you whether the aim of those anti-Russian sanctions is to punish the Russian Federation or to devastate Europe economically, because many of those sanctions are really prepared very badly to the detriment of Europe. We are now talking about the coming food crisis. We have been calling for a fundamental reform of the European Union's common agricultural policy for years. Nothing's been done. Instead, nonsense is being dealt with here, as was the case in the last plenary when the lack of toilets for the third sex was voted on. That is why I am proposing a constructive solution, let us start immediately with the revival of agriculture in Central Europe. There is huge potential for producing quality, affordable and healthy food for millions of people. It's not used, nothing is done about it. We could start thinking a little constructively and finally address this region as well. (The speaker agreed to answer the blue card question.)

Mr President, the current overcharge that people are feeling is nothing compared to the overcharge tornado that is rolling on us. We see it in advance on the stock market. The price of gas has risen tenfold in recent years. The price of wheat has risen from EUR 150 per tonne to EUR 400 per tonne. All prices continue to skyrocket. Do you want to import gas and oil from Russia? All right. What alternative solutions do you offer people? Importing gas from Australia? Or overpriced green technologies? What do you say to people when food prices are half as high? Will the price of gas double? Or if we pay for a liter of gasoline two or three euros? Are you going to tell them to be humbled? That they should stop heating or that they should turn off the light bulbs, as recommended by the Slovak ministers? Or are they supposed to be warmed up by the Commissioners' marketing phrases about how we can do it together? With $30,000 in pay, they can do it. I have no doubt about that. But what about ordinary people? If it were up to us, we would certainly seek solutions and try to avoid conflict, try to avoid war and do everything for the benefit of the people.

Madam President, the war in Ukraine is frightening and must end as soon as possible. What really scares me even more, however, is the wave of aggressive war politics or rhetoric that has taken over the whole of Europe. And this applies not only to the liberal media, but also to many liberal politicians, some of whom are sitting here, honourable gentlemen and ladies, who are also calling for censorship, calling for cleansing, calling for weapons, calling for the silence of any other opinion that does not agree with you. This is not how peace is built. This is how emotions are stirred up, this is how anger, hatred and, ultimately, war are stirred up. Fighting foreign influence in elections or in the media is, of course, the right thing to do, and on this occasion we could look not only at Russian propaganda, but also at propaganda from some American NGOs. On the other hand, to abuse the fight against Russian propaganda now to silence any opposition media or opinions is something wrong. Europe must not lose its freedom and democracy in this war.

Mr President, before I speak on Ukraine, let me ask you a few perhaps difficult but honest questions. Where were the international sanctions when the United States killed 200,000 civilians in Iraq because of the fictional pretext of weapons of mass destruction? Where were the condemning resolutions when the US, again in violation of international law, bombed Yugoslavia, Libya or Syria? Where was Europe when Ukrainian mercenaries killed children in Donbass or burned civilians in Odessa? I hope that the events of the last days are a lesson for all of us, that every war is bad, friends, every war is bad. Not only those led by the Russian Federation, but also those led by the United States of America. Every war must be condemned. What is happening in Ukraine is horrible and it must end. It has to end. But there is also the horrible hypocrisy of some of you, colleagues, who overlook wars simply because they are not waged by Americans.

Madam President, the European Court of Justice has today approved that the European Union can punish Hungary, Poland and other states for not respecting so-called European values and the rule of law. Hungary, for example, has passed a so-called Orbán law that bans pedophiles from entering schools. You know what, congratulations. You have brought the Bolshevik principle that law is the will of the ruling elite above the law to absolute perfection. You live in your own world. You lose touch with reality. You don't see the world around you, and that's what it looks like. This is how the whole of Europe suffers. You think you are the masters of the whole of Europe. You sit here proudly as some peacocks, and you want to dictate to everyone what they can and cannot do and punish anyone who disagrees with you. It is no wonder that Great Britain has left the European Union, and sooner or later other countries will leave, because this is not the European Union that we have joined. This is just disgusting political totalitarianism. We keep our fingers crossed for Poles and Hungarians. Slovaks are with you.

Mr President, dear progressive anti-Russian cockroaches, you have been talking for months about how Russia wants to attack Ukraine. For several months now, liberal media have been writing articles about how Russia is some demon who wants to threaten them all over Europe. A few days ago, U.S. President Biden published a senile prophecy that the Russian Federation was supposed to invade Ukraine today. What happened? Nothing. I will tell you on behalf of more than half of the citizens of the Slovak Republic according to statistics. We have had enough, and this is a message, especially for all American warriors and their minions in Europe, in the European Union, to pack up the American army and leave Europe and not drag us into their conflicts, into their wars. Europe wants peace. Please take good care of these provocations in Ukraine. Look at Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán as in peace, constructively discussing cooperation, cheaper energy prices in Moscow. This is the path that Europe must take. Cooperation, not war.

Mr President. After the unrest in Ukraine and Belarus, we are witnessing another attempt to destabilise another post-socialist country, this time Kazakhstan. Mainstream media first reported that the protesters in Kazakhstan were just ordinary people who were bothered by the 10-cent increase in energy and gas prices. U.S. President Biden even warned the Kazakh government and the Russian Federation against violating the human rights of protesters because otherwise America would have to intervene. But then some of these protesters took up arms and set fire to government buildings, set fire to four television seats, occupied an international airport, and cut off the heads of two young police officers. Terrorists who attempted a coup d'état in Kazakhstan. And I do not consider it right that now the West or the European Union should confirm Kazakhstan just because, with the support of the Russian Federation and other countries, they have prevented this coup d'état. The only ones to be condemned here, and loudly, are the terrorists who unleash, fund and support these coups d'état.

Mr President, after two years of lockdowns, bans, masks, Covid passports and vaccines, the situation across Europe is worse than ever. I think it is quite obvious that these restrictions and measures are no longer a virus and that they will not pull us out of the epidemic. Perhaps 20% of those restrictions are really aimed at fighting the epidemic, but the remaining 80% are politics, the imposition of censorship and control over citizens, and the outrageous pharmaceutical business. Everyone says you need to get vaccinated, get vaccinated, get vaccinated. Anyone who can't get vaccinated is like a criminal. I wonder where the natural immunity has gone. Does it no longer exist? Are there any commissions? Why does the European Union not recognise antibody certificates, such as those recognised in Switzerland? Why is the average age of Covid victims not compulsorily disclosed to make it clear that it is absolutely meaningless to vaccinate young people and children in particular? Ladies and gentlemen of Europe, Mr Šefčovič, do you want to fight the epidemic? So please stop serving pharmaceutical corporations, start fighting the virus, start treating the sick, and stop bullying the healthy.

Madam President, from what I am listening here, it is absolutely freezing. Do you really want a war with Russia? That is exactly what this conflicting policy is all about. You are asking the Russian Federation to withdraw its own army from its own borders. Tell me where to go. They are in their own territory. The U.S. military is 8,000 miles away from Washington, so please tell me who's provoking who here, who's provoking who? The Americans say the Russians need to be pushed back somehow because they are threatening to prepare an invasion. We've been listening to that for the last seven years. We heard in Iraq that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. And where were they? In the end, it turned out to be an ordinary lie, an ordinary lie for another American attack. These provocations that are being shown here are really pure madness. Don't you realize that all this can actually lead to war? To a real war, where people will die even in the territory of Central Europe and where we Slovaks will have to take care of the victims covered with blood? That's on your head, I'm sorry.

Madam President, Commissioner, colleagues, police violence in Europe is not just about the Roma. Soldiers and police across Europe are increasingly being used to suppress human rights and to impose all those totalitarian measures. Governments in both Europe and Slovakia are using police and force forces to push lockdowns so that people can't protest, to push bans so that people can't criticize the government. In Austria, the government wants to make vaccination mandatory with a vaccine that has only conditional approval from the European Medicines Agency. In Latvia, unvaccinated parliamentarians do not get into the parliament building. Europe is literally drowning, drowning in the rise of police regimes. We shout here, we say, we stand up for those people, but unfortunately the leadership of the European Union does not listen. The world's biggest democrats are suddenly deaf and blind. It's terribly hypocritical, terribly hypocritical.

Mr President, it has recently been voted here that Europeans should eat more insects instead of meat, because meat/cattle is said to produce greenhouse gases that cause the planet to warm. This was approved as part of the Farm to Fork European food strategy, and as part of it, the European Commission has already approved some two types of caterpillars or locusts that people should eat. Unfortunately, it is not much better with this agricultural policy, because here too there is a lot of ecological nonsense, and especially this agricultural policy has long been unfair to Central and Eastern European states, which receive several times less support than Western European farmers. Slovakia was once a food-sufficient country. Today, we have to import 1,000 trucks of food a day to have anything to eat. This is also the result of unfairly set subsidies. If you want to call this agricultural policy common, then first of all let's equalize the amount of subsidies.

Madam President of the European Commission, Prime Minister Morawiecki of Poland, I have only one minute, and that is why I will say this quite frankly and politically incorrectly. Message to Liberals: Please stop bullying Central Europe for intentional failures and mistakes! Whatever those Hungarians and Poles do, you will always find some reason why you want to punish them, why you want to insult them. Let's not complain, let's face it. The European rule of law that you are advocating here is nothing but an alternative tool to push the liberal agenda into the conservative Central European states. And as conservative-minded citizens of the Slovak Republic, I declare that Poland has our full support in protecting its sovereignty. To the liberals of the West: Don't provoke us, don't provoke Central Europe! Let us go back to why the European Union was created, to economic cooperation, to generally beneficial trade, but do not try to impose on us an ideology and a way of life that we do not agree with.

Mr President! Well, we've got it here. The European Union is going to set up another agency. This time, 500 other officials to take care of how immigrants are cared for. The Regulation literally states that, in particular in the context of the expected future Resettlement Framework Regulation. This new European Asylum Agency is to monitor the implementation of asylum procedures in European countries, even to have liaison officers in individual Member States and the possibility to carry out unreported checks on how they take care of emigrants, of asylum seekers. Colleagues, this is not how the Union cares about the rights of Europeans. According to the Agency's work, it should be able to impose or initiate the imposition of fines on states that do not comply with asylum procedures as envisaged by the European Union. I say that in this case it is clearly a matter of depriving the Member States of their competence in the assessment of immigration, in the assessment of asylum. I say a clear "no" to European pro-immigration policy.

Madam President, since 2016, the European Union has sent EUR 6 billion to Turkey. Friends, that is EUR 100 million per month, at a time when European citizens have to moderate themselves when they have to struggle with a lack of money because of the COVID restrictions. We all expected that sending money to Turkey would end. Especially when the geopolitical situation in Syria has improved, and especially when this economic corona crisis has occurred. Nevertheless, this proposal states that the European Union should continue to provide support to Syrian and other refugees and host communities in Turkey. There is also only one sentence on the forty-five pages of the proposal to ensure that Turkey does not use migration flows to blackmail the European Union. Colleagues, I do not agree that this unsustainable state of affairs should be further stretched. Why should we even count immigrants from Asia towards the costs of Europeans? Why should we send billions of euros to Turkey again?

Mr President. European sanctions against the Russian Federation have been in place for seven years. I want to ask you all straight here. What have these sanctions really solved? What did they really help with? Apart from harming European companies, apart from leading to an increase in energy prices, they solved absolutely nothing. Mr President, Commissioner, who is not here, colleagues, honourable representatives of the governments. In my opinion, it is high time to say this clearly. The anti-Russian rage was enough. It's really enough. It is time to take the path of dialogue with the Russian Federation. It's time to stop listening to Americans. Europe is our continent. Europe has a right to decide. Europe has the right to choose good relations with the Russian Federation. On behalf of Slovakia, I appeal and urge, please, let us embark on the path of peace and cooperation. Not by way of confrontation and increasing tension.

Madam President, today's Europe has two faces. On the one hand, we have information on how, for example, Slovak citizens cannot get into their own country without vaccinations or without having to pay for PCR tests, and on the other hand, we have information on how NGO ships rescue migrants in the Mediterranean and bring them to the territory of the European Union. Just yesterday, the non-governmental ship Ocean Viking brought 572 migrants to the European Union. Please, what kind of Europe is this? Which countries are more likely to receive illegal immigrants from Africa than their own citizens? The €10 billion that the European Union wants to allocate to the Asylum and Migration Fund must be spent 100% for the benefit of Europeans and not for the benefit of foreign nationals.

Madam President, this new sanctions regime, following the example of the United States of America, is intended to enable the European Union to impose sanctions on selected representatives of foreign states. Dear colleagues, I ask you in this regard, will this not only serve to escalate pressure on the Russian Federation? Isn't it just a tool to defame Moscow in line with U.S. geopolitical interests? And the European Union will have the courage to apply the same standard to all those who violate human rights, be it Saudi Arabia or the conflict in Palestine, for example. I do not think it is right to try to forcibly export Western-style democracy, including by unleashing military conflicts or unleashing a spiral of sanctions. Let us instead focus on a constructive and balanced foreign policy, with understanding and respect for national specificities.