What Andrius spoke about.

14

Dec

2022

EN Speech

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Upscaling the 2021-2027 Multiannual Financial Framework (debate)

Madam President, colleagues. I would like to say a few words about the major message of the report. And that message is very simple: we are living in a time of war, but not with our finances, since the MFF was planned and approved for permanent peace. We need to understand that this war is also our war, and it demands from us mobilisation of all of our resources. In order to win the war, you need …

23

Nov

2022

EN Speech

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Amending Council Regulation (EU, Euratom) 2020/2093 of 17 December 2020 laying down the multiannual financial framework for the years 2021 to 2027 - Amending Regulation (EU, Euratom) 2018/1046 as regards the establishment of a diversified funding strategy as a general borrowing method - 'Macro-Financial Assistance+' instrument for providing support to Ukraine for 2023 (debate)

Mr President, dear colleagues, we in the European Union need to understand we also are at the war, that is why we need to move from ad hoc decisions to systemic decisions. You cannot win the war without weapons and without war finances, properly and systemically established. We are still not able to deliver finances what we promised at the beginning of this year and that is shameful for the Europe…

22

Nov

2022

EN Speech

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New EU strategy for enlargement (debate)

Madam President, dear colleagues, we have a good report on the significance of enlargement. The report is very clear in its most important message. Enlargement is the most effective EU foreign policy instrument, and enlargement should be brought back to an ambitious and dynamic track like it was with enlargement towards Central Europe. The later so-called enlargement fatigue, especially to Eastern…

19

Oct

2022

EN Speech

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Preparation of the European Council meeting of 20-21 October 2022 (debate)

Madam President, dear colleagues, I hope that the Council and Commission will find proper solutions for this energy crisis and also will understand what kind of our mistakes and dependencies in the past led to it. I will speak about geopolitical crisis of war, which Europe is also facing. Two weeks ago Josep Borrell in our plenary openly and bravely admitted, that till now the EU had no Russia str…

18

Oct

2022

EN Speech

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Impact of Russian invasion of Ukraine on migration flows to the EU (debate)

Mr President, dear colleagues, Russia as a terrorist country was and is weaponising immigration. Since last year, Russia started to weaponise on illegal immigration through Belarus of people from Africa and Middle East into Lithuania, Poland, Latvia. With the beginning of the brutal and criminal war against Ukraine, Russia was hoping that millions of war refugees from Ukraine will not be accepted …

5

Oct

2022

EN Speech

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Russia’s escalation of its war of aggression against Ukraine (debate)

Mr President, first of all, of course, congratulations to the victorious Ukrainians. It is clear that the end of the war depends only on how much weapons the West delivers to Ukraine. In some way it’s a shame for the EU that the United States delivered EUR 25 billion value of weapons and the whole European Union support, together with all the Member States, is only less than EUR 6 billion. The sam…

14

Sep

2022

EN Speech

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Human rights violations in the context of forced deportation of Ukrainian civilians to and forced adoption of Ukrainian children in Russia

Madam President, dear colleagues, there is no need to repeat that forced deportations of Ukrainians and their children to Russia, to faraway Siberian regions – that this is a huge crime against humanity, and this is a war crime of genocide. There is no difference in between of crimes of deportations to Gulag camps during Stalin’s time and deportations done now during Putin’s time. We need to speak…

13

Sep

2022

EN Speech

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EU response to the increase in energy prices in Europe (debate)

Madam President, dear colleagues, it is very clear that we are facing both short-term and longer-term challenges. There is a need of quick strategic decisions for this winter, showing to Putin that he will not win with his strategy against the European Union. We did not allow the pandemic to kill our economies, and we shall not allow Putin’s energy crisis to kill our economies again. But with shor…

13

Sep

2022

EN Speech

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The situation in the Strait of Taiwan (debate)

Madam President, dear colleagues. We are witnessing how China is becoming more authoritarian and more aggressive. And that is the same development which we saw in Russia during the last 20 years. It started from violations of human rights and it ended with an invasion of Ukraine. Stability and status quo are very important, but we cannot keep status quo in our position when China is dramatically c…

13

Sep

2022

EN Speech

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Question Time (VPC/HR) The state of play of the war in Ukraine

A very short comment or additional question. We congratulate that the Commission really found a way to allocate 9 billion. The question is about next year. Up to 70 billion to finance the daily business of the Ukrainian Government, paying salaries to teachers, paying salaries to medical doctors – that will be needed. So my question is, and suggestion really, to the Commission to come out with a mu…

13

Sep

2022

EN Speech

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Question Time (VPC/HR) The state of play of the war in Ukraine

Mr President, really, first of all, we can be quite happy with the recent developments on the military front in Ukraine. We can congratulate the Ukrainian soldiers on leadership and, of course, they’re doing such a great job because the West is providing weapons. But my questions would be about the future and not about the military future. Really things in Ukraine are very much damaged by Russian …

22

Jun

2022

EN Speech

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Preparation of the European Council meeting of 23-24 June 2022, including the meeting with Western Balkan leaders on 23 June - Candidate status of Ukraine, the Republic of Moldova and Georgia (debate)

Mr President, dear colleagues, first of all, I would like to congratulate the courage of the Ukrainian people. Their heroism opens the doors for the historical decisions of European Union to give candidate status to Ukraine and Moldova. But today, after authoritarian Russia started criminal war against democratic Ukraine, we need to say even more. First, enlargement policy is the most important ge…

8

Jun

2022

EN Speech

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Violations of media freedom and safety of journalists in Georgia

Madam President, dear colleagues, today we are discussing our concerns about media freedom in Georgia. Why we are discussing this issue is a lot of concern, because we are absolutely sure that the Georgian people deserve to be part of the European family. We want the Georgian people to be members of our Union. But in order to become a member of the EU, it is not enough just to have people wish to …

8

Jun

2022

EN Speech

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Conclusions of the special European Council meeting of 30-31 May 2022 (debate)

Mr President, the Council made important decisions, but still there is a lot to be done in order for us to come out from this geopolitical crisis becoming stronger. In order to do that, first of all we need to look back and to name our mistakes of the last decades, which allowed this geopolitical crisis to happen. I see two major mistakes: first, for too long we were considering that dialogue with…

19

May

2022

EN Speech

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The fight against impunity for war crimes in Ukraine (debate)

Mr President, it is important that the resolution defines the establishment of a special international tribunal for the crime of aggression committed by Putin. The establishment of such a tribunal will serve not only international justice, but also will have a major political impact on how the war will proceed further. It will be a very clear signal that the community of democracies has a politica…

18

May

2022

EN Speech

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Prosecution of the opposition and the detention of trade union leaders in Belarus (debate)

Madam President, dear Commissioner, dear colleagues, it’s very clear that the continued persecution of opposition and trade union leaders in Belarus is a heavy crime committed by the illegal Lukashenko regime. Today we are standing together with all the persecuted fighters for a democratic Belarus and with the legitimate leader of democratic Belarus, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya. We should not be naiv…

5

May

2022

EN Speech

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State of play of the EU-Moldova cooperation (debate)

Mr President, we all know what Moldova has faced during the last 40 years: occupation of part of the territory by the Kremlin, money laundering and Kremlin-loyal political parties in government and things like that. Now we have a totally different picture. We have a pro-European president and a pro-European government, and we have Kremlin threats to Moldovan sovereignty. We know what this means. A…

4

May

2022

EN Speech

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The social and economic consequences for the EU of the Russian war in Ukraine - reinforcing the EU’s capacity to act (debate)

Mr President, I would like first of all to congratulate and to thank the Commission President for this statement about sanctions and about Ukraine’s reconstruction package. It is our war, and we need to take care, first of all, of the biggest needs – and this is Ukraine. We shall have problems also, but our economies will not go down by 50%. It is obvious that reconstruction after the war will dem…

3

May

2022

EN Speech

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The follow up of the Conference on the Future of Europe (debate)

Madam President, dear colleagues, the European continent is hit by a huge geopolitical and security crisis – Russia’s war against Ukraine. Such kind of a crisis is showing that we, unfortunately, have been weak in our capacities in foreign and security policy to avoid such kind of crises. ‘Europe will be forged in crises,’ said Jean Monnet, one of the founding fathers of the European Union, ‘and w…

6

Apr

2022

EN Speech

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Increasing repression in Russia, including the case of Alexey Navalny

and there are also terrible pictures from Bucha. We should not forget that the road to this terrible war started in 2000, when Putin replaced Yeltsin and began to destroy Russian democracy. Now we see that autocratic Russia without democracy is the biggest threat to European security. Navalny in Putin’s prison and the terrible Bucha pictures are very strongly interconnected in between them. Long—t…

6

Apr

2022

EN Speech

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Cooperation and similarities between the Putin regime and extreme right and separatist movements in Europe (topical debate)

Madam President, as you have seen recently from the picutres of Bucha – terrible pictures – the Putin regime is a real neo—Nazi, neo—fascist and neo—totalitarian regime. Putin hates democracy because democracy is a mortal threat to his dictatorial regime. That is why Putin is so afraid of democracy. That is why he is so afraid of domestic fighters for democracy like Navalny or democracies in the n…

23

Mar

2022

EN Speech

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Debriefing of the European Council meeting in Paris on 10 March 2022 - Preparation of the European Council meeting 24-25 March 2022 (debate)

Madam President, it’s our war too. This war is fought not only in Ukraine; the fight is also going on in EU capitals. The only real way to end the war now is to introduce the maximum sanctions on Russia now – an embargo on oil and gas, an embargo on ports, and SWIFT sanctions on all Russian banks, and doing so in such a way as to push Putin to capitulate and withdraw. Unfortunately, there are capi…

8

Mar

2022

EN Speech

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The deterioration of the situation of refugees as a consequence of the Russian aggression against Ukraine (debate)

Madam President, unlike with the previous refugee crisis, we now have war on the European continent and Europeans from Ukraine are moving into other European countries for shelter. We have a simple European moral obligation to take care of all of them, our fellow Europeans. I would like to praise the Commission, the national governments, NGOs and individual citizens, especially in Central Europe, …

1

Mar

2022

EN Speech

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Russian aggression against Ukraine (debate)

Mr President, dear brothers and sisters in Ukraine, dear colleagues, first of all I would like to praise the heroism of Ukrainian people. I would like to praise heroism of Ukrainian soldiers and the heroic leadership of President Vladimir Zelenskyy. Ukrainians are facing and defending themselves against the war launched by a real new Nazi regime in the Kremlin. Putin is a real war criminal. Ukrain…

16

Feb

2022

EN Speech

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EU-Russia relations, European security and Russia’s military threat against Ukraine (debate)

Mr President, today we need to understand that Russia under Putin is a declining post-imperial power. Russia under Putin is a desperate new ‘sick man of Europe’. Internally Putin is afraid of Navalny, externally, he’s afraid of the example of success of a democratic Ukraine. Authoritarian Russia under Putin is the biggest threat to security on our continent. Putin will not change himself. Threats …