Speeches

The sanctions under the Global Magnitsky Act, imposed by the US authorities (OFAC) on several Bulgarian persons, are unprecedented in the history of our Union. They clearly show that the anti-corruption mechanisms in Bulgaria are inefficient at best. What is more troubling, they are a clear reminder that the EU mechanisms for guaranteeing the Rule of Law are not effective. Bulgaria is subject to two monitoring mechanisms by the European Commission and one by the Council of Europe. Yet, the central problem with the failure of the Prosecutor General and his office to fight political corruption persists. Judiciary reforms are stalled at the 2015 level. The overall deterioration of the institutional framework is ongoing. The persons sanctioned by the US authorities seem untouchable in Bulgaria. All 14 investigations against ex-MP Delyan Peevski have been dropped; no investigation against Zhelyazkov has ever started; none of the charges retained against Vassil Bozhkov is for corruption. Colleagues, we all know and agree, that US sanctions have no legal force in the EU whatsoever. But hundreds of thousands of Bulgarians, protesting corruption and for judicial reforms, rightfully wonder why the EU is so silent about problems clearly visible from across the ocean.

Madam President, Madam Commissioner, colleagues, just recently, a mining project in my home country, Bulgaria, opened in the 17th year after it applied for permitting. So, obviously, I do agree that permitting in Europe is awfully, painfully slow, confusing and difficult. Yet we here all know that Europe doesn't make environmental assessments and doesn't issue permits. So-called 'Brussels' doesn't make permitting. And clearly the stakeholders point to national authorities, different national regimes, overlapping regulations, new layers of regulation – by the way, often deliberately designed to protect local industries or to please the public opinion. They openly mention lack of coordination on a national level, lack of knowledge, lack of capacity and, I would add, clear cases of corruption. So what can we do? What can Brussels do? It's the most simple and most difficult thing: we need to protect our businesses from our governments.

Madam President, colleagues, it has been clearly revealed that the so-called Trump peace plan is nothing but a poor translation of Russian speaking points. And yet, today, we listen to the far right and the far left in a coordinated message about the so-called Istanbul negotiations a few years ago – yet another translation of Russian speaking points. What we are missing is a clear European plan, not only for peace in Ukraine, but on the architecture of European peace in the decades to come. We do not have the unity to achieve it because of the unanimity of decisions required in foreign policy. But what we could make is to have a real European Defence Union, based on such a vision for the security infrastructure for the decades to come, and any government willing to support the plans of Trump, Witkoff, Putin and so on is free not to join.

Madam President, dear Minister, dear Commissioner, dear colleagues, I'm afraid there is a challenge we are overlooking here in in this debate: the widespread feeling of many of our citizens – expressed, by the way, in a rather radical way, by our far-right colleagues – that the EU is making big sacrifices to no avail, that we are leading the way of climate ambition while our global competitors are following only to stab us in the back. There is a certain truth in this, we must admit. But most importantly, we must address this public concern because it is serious. We might not agree with it, but we certainly need to communicate with the people who express it. And this, in my opinion, should happen exactly at the highest possible diplomatic level, which is the Climate Change Conference in Brazil coming in just a few days. This should happen in quite an open and sincere way, in my point of view, by saying that our climate ambition is strong – it is sincere, but it is hardly unconditional. Any new targets that we impose on our economy, society and industry should depend on China's, India's and Brazil's reduction. And I mean effective reduction of emissions, not only reduction emission pledges.

Madam President, ‘What is going on in Bulgaria?’ is the question I hear most often in the corridors of this building. And the problem is that now, in 60 seconds, I have to try to explain an 80-year crisis of the rule of law. All right, in a nutshell. The powerful state apparatus, the special services, the prosecutor's office do not serve public policy, but try to make policy and exercise power, do not protect property rights and the free economy, but try to seize property and control the economy. They do not guarantee the separation of powers, but seek full concentration of power – media, financial, political, even party – by creating or taking over political parties. Just like the Communist State Security and its offshoots, the criminal groups of the 1990s. Therefore, there is no way to guarantee the European orientation of our country. I stress that this is not a party issue and it is a question without an easy solution, but if this Parliament does not want to strengthen the anti-European sentiment, it must show that every Bulgarian citizen, as a European citizen, has the right to protection from Europe there when his country fails.

Member of the Commission. - Mr President, the temptation to solve any problems through public procurement criteria is very strong, because, as has been said many times, they are a very strong tool. We can solve problems in the social sphere, the environment, technology, even moral dilemmas that we face. But to keep in mind that this is a rather inclined plane, because non-market criteria in public procurement have a very strong potential to increase both corruption and inflation. For this reason, we must be extremely careful and focus precisely on protecting strategic sectors, which is inevitable, and protecting the strategic autonomy of the European Union, which is also inevitable in today's times. In this sense, I believe that the rapporteur, the colleague from the Conservative Group, has put forward a very sensible and very balanced report, which we should stick to.

Madam P President, Commissioner, colleagues, the recovery and resilience plans have fulfilled the task of meeting the Covid strike on our economies and welfare systems, and the European Union has come out of the crisis with lower debt than the United States and China. I am referring to countries, plus the Union, because colleagues in the Group of Sovereign Nations clearly do not know how to read data. The countries in Europe that have been the most successful in investing the funds from the recovery and resilience plans have also been the most successful and accelerated in the post-recovery period. But the recovery and resilience plans did not fulfil the main task of the Next Generation EU programme, which was modernising the industry and introducing new technologies. This task remains ahead of us, as do the lessons of the recovery and resilience plans, namely to finance through smart financial instruments rather than direct subsidies, and to finance industries rather than countries.

So it's the second time I hear from the ESN Group that the RRF has somehow sharply increased the European debt burden. But I look at facts and figures, and I see that during and after Covid, our debt has increased much more slowly than the Chinese and the US debt and is now below the Chinese and far, far below the US debt. So doesn't it seem, at the end of the day, that the RRF was a rather efficient financial instrument?

Mr President, first of all, I would like to say very clearly that we should support this very sensible project to simplify the regulation and thank the rapporteur, Mr Decaro, and the entire negotiating team. Secondly, and more importantly, I note that this can only be the first step towards the necessary changes to the CBAM Regulation, because in its current form, combined with the overall European customs policy, it poses a very high risk to the European light industry. We currently import steel and aluminium with very high tariffs – up to 25% – from the main producers. On this we will also charge CBAM certificates, while importing finished products made of steel and aluminum with average duties of the order of 25%, including products from electric boilers, heat pumps, to high-tech products such as electrolysers. In this situation, we have only two choices. One is to ease the overall customs duties that the Union collects, which would be highly unreasonable given China's aggressive policy of overcapacity and dumping and the protectionist policy of the United States. The other option is obviously to extend the scope of CBAM to light industry products, and this is a task that we need to tackle as urgently as possible.

Madam President, dear Commissioner, dear colleagues, we call it a deal and we policymakers request from energy intensive industries quite a lot in this deal – to ensure our security and defence, to enhance our competitiveness, and last but not least, to transform to net zero. But do we offer enough to industry? Here my answer is no, not at all. Looking at the green industrial deal communication of the Commission, I must say it's a rather long document to state there is no money. What we have to offer to the industry – what we need to offer to the industry – is a very clear and simple transformation support package consisting of only two parts. One is financing of technology transformation, be it CCU, be it electrification, hydrogen or ammonia installations and the other is energy security support, be it secured PPAs or grid modernisation or storage facilities or own energy sources. Then, and only then, would that be a fair deal between policymakers and heavy industry in order to secure our three main objectives.

Madam President, Radio Free Europe was created to preserve the unity of the Western world in times of violent division, occupation and dictatorship, to preserve the unity between the politically free in Western Europe and the free only in spirit in Eastern Europe. And he managed to do it, mainly thanks to the community of people born in all individual countries from east to west who worked in it, as well as in many other democratic institutes. I would like to stress that it continues to do so today, even in democratic countries where, however, there is a need for a journalistic standard of freedom of speech, there is no free media market. Today we are facing a new division of the free world. I am convinced that it will also be temporary and that the people in Radio Free Europe and the people in this community of free citizens will be our main human capital when we start rebuilding it.

Madam President, dear colleagues, I followed the whole debate and I heard really many reasonable voices from almost all the groups in this Parliament. It seems that we are united around the evident truth that European security is our natural, first and common priority. To that, I would say common defence makes common sense, that security requires more than a Commission proposal and a Council consent, but a strong common effort to build a strong European industry, from steel to chemicals, from raw materials to weapons, and from food to space technology. Above all else, it requires real unity, a grand political coalition of pro-Europeans crossing national and ideological lines, leaving the cultural wars behind and building consensus around universally accepted European values and interests.

Dear colleague, I must say I accept some of your positions, but I have a very concrete question: are we in the same position regarding the Paris Agreement as the US? Can we do the 'drill, baby, drill' policy in Europe? And Italy, having a right to far-right government – and having some gas deposits, by the way – have you started exploiting these gas deposits or not? And if not, why not?

Madam President, I think we should speak frankly. Without the participation of the United States, the goals of the Paris Agreement are unattainable, and we all know it. We also know that without international cooperation, our own 2050 targets are highly questionable. And as representatives of the citizens of Europe, it is good to say it honestly and include it in the amendments to our climate law. Does this mean, however, that we should abandon modernisation and decarbonisation policies altogether? Certainly not, because we are importers of fossil fuels. For us, decarbonisation, new technologies are a matter of progress and independence, of autonomy, because we have a strong position in clean technologies and we should not give them to China. On the contrary, we need to get back what America attracted with the Inflation Reduction Act. But we also need to change these policies, because for five years they have been more of a stick for the industry. Now it's time for a carrot, for encouragement, for support.

First, colleague, I very much agree with you that we should use our single market as leverage because it is a huge leverage in international and trade relations. Then I have two very brief questions to you. Do you say that Europe must be more united, that Europe must act together, that we need more and stronger Europe in order to defend together our interests? That is the main point.

Mr President, no one disputes the harm of tobacco, no one. But I do not know whether you take into account the harm caused by such proposals on the authority of the European institutions? And do you really think it is the job of the European Parliament to determine whether residents, for example in the town of Pavlikeni in northern Bulgaria, can smoke an electronic cigarette in front of the pub or at the bus stop? And we have a lot of problems to solve before us, very hard, and a lot of them created by us here in this room. But the issue of outdoor smoking must first be addressed to municipalities, and secondly to public health authorities. Thirdly, to the scientific community, especially with regard to electronic and new types of products. And only then can it be the subject of debate at European level. Let's be aware of that.

Madam President, I am surprised by the absence of the representatives of these Bulgarian parties who voted in the Bulgarian Parliament on the law on so-called "propaganda". They did not come out today in this debate to defend their legislative creation. Perhaps their argument is that the place of this debate is not in the European Parliament. Indeed, I would like to emphasise that family law and education are the prerogatives of national governments, and so it should be. Yet the place for this debate is precisely here, because the European Parliament is the guarantor of the rights of every European citizen. Because the European Parliament is the guarantor against humiliation, violence, isolation, discrimination of these children, of these students who are gay. Because he is a guarantor of the right to freedom of speech and freedom of conscience of Bulgarian teachers.

Madam President, dear Commissioner, dear colleagues, to put it concisely, we cannot win the world championship in protectionism, subsidies and foreign debt, and we do not want to. It's a vicious circle, a race to the bottom, where China and, to a certain extent, our US partners are leading us. Of course, we need to protect our industry now, because it's a matter of prosperity and, above anything else, still a matter of national security for all European countries. But we know that trade measures, protectionist measures, on the one hand increase consumer prices for producers, for consumers, for the car industry in Europe; on the other hand, they only work on the short term. So during the period of inevitable trade measures to protect our industry, we need to very wisely invest not only in technologies that will make our steel greener, but technologies that will make our steel cheaper and more competitive on the world market. In all the new technologies invested into the old steel technology that we all insist to sustain.

Mr President, again and again in this debate, we have heard the argument that we lag far behind China and the United States in electric car technology in all its aspects. What we did not hear in the debate, however, is a very simple fact. The United States, China – I dare say, and Korea, which is also ahead of us – do not have a ban on internal combustion engines. They achieve their success not by banning certain technologies, but by promoting more modern, cleaner technologies. It's obvious we're missing something. Obviously, it is purely logical and that what we lack are not administrative prohibitions. What we lack is the encouragement of innovation. What we lack is the encouragement of advances in technology. Finally, I would like to stress that Europe is at the forefront of internal combustion engines, so it must invest very seriously in solutions for new alternative fuels.

Mr President, when, at the end of 2014, then as a Member of the Bulgarian Parliament, I visited the European Commission for the first time, it was all wrapped in banners advertising the European Energy Union, the priority of the Juncker Commission just elected at that time, I honestly do not remember who was Commissioner for Energy. Since then exactly 10 years have passed and now, in the last few months, we see that systematically the price of electricity in Southeastern Europe, starting from Greece and reaching Hungary, not infrequently Slovenia, Slovakia and Poland, is two to three times higher than the price in the rest of the European Union. And when Mario Draghi's report says that the price of electricity in Europe is two, three times higher than in the United States, it means that in all these months in Southeast Europe it was 4 to 6 times higher than in the United States, which quite logically led in my country, in Bulgaria, already to the closure of several serious industrial enterprises and to a significant reduction in production volumes in other energy-intensive industries. What does all this mean? It means that after ten years in which the Energy Union has been a priority on paper for the European Union, we are facing a failure of this policy. The Energy Union does not exist. And the reason is not that he's a bad idea. The reason is that the European Commission is clearly failing to manage to impose this common European interest on the selfish plans, programmes and policies of individual European countries, which is why the connectivity of our markets is far from necessary to achieve our ambitious energy goals. To conclude, without an integrated European energy market, decarbonisation is nothing more than a utopia.

Madam President, I won’t take two minutes, I’ll put it very briefly. I urge you, colleagues, to support the trilogue agreement reached by the Parliament and the Council. First of all, because institutionally, we do not break our agreements. We insist on our political credibility. Second, because it was a very successful agreement for the Parliament and no one doubted it when we achieved it – it passed practically unanimously through the respective parliamentary committee. And I really hope for your support. It is a very, very difficult balance between the health of our citizens and our environment, the competitiveness of our industry and, last but not least, of course, the interests of our farmers. But it is not an agricultural file, it is an industrial file affecting each and every European citizen through the toxic emissions and his health. And of course, we are facing the farmers’ protests now. And of course, we need to answer. And we have a very strong review clause in the legislation for 2026. And that is why I am really looking at the European Commission and calling on the Commissioner first to explain the many options we gave to Member States to make the life of farmers easier with the present revision of the IED, but also to explain what the vision of the Commission for the future review of the legislation is.

Mr President, as rapporteur for the opinion of the Committee on the Environment, I support the agreement reached on this directive on energy efficiency in buildings and I sincerely hope that it will be approved tomorrow. We all know that building renovation is good for both family budgets, the environment and our energy independence. We all also know that such a huge task cannot be achieved in any way by public funds alone, and it is not fair that the bills of the rich should be reduced by the taxes of the poor. That is why I believe that the most important part of the agreement reached, the greatest success of the Energy Committee in this Parliament in its negotiations with the Council, was to regulate smart and fair financial instruments for the renovation of buildings and instruments that ensure that owners do not pay more than they save as a result of the renovation.

Madam President, every normal person sees the horror in the Gaza Strip and in eastern Ukraine, and every normal person wants peace in both the Middle East and Europe. He wants this monstrous carnage to stop. But the truth is that in the framework of this debate, no one said how. And we have to admit that we may not have an answer how. Because once started, war has its cruel logic of pain, of hatred, of natural escalation, which we see before our eyes. Yet there is an obvious step towards peace. A step that depends on the aggressors, and a step that has not been taken. Those who started the war in Ukraine, Putin’s regime, in February 2022, and those who started the war in Gaza, the terrorist organisation Hamas, with their attack on 7 October 2003, do not recognise their opponent’s right to exist. Putin does not recognize Ukraine's right to independence and self-determination. Hamas does not even recognize the right to life of the citizens of the state of Israel, and this is contained in the slogan that morons at universities in the West repeat from the river to the sea. This is a call for ethnic cleansing. So the path to peace begins with the recognition of the right to life, freedom and self-determination of the citizens of the Israeli state and the citizens of Ukraine.