What Pascal spoke about.

15 Sep

2026

DE Speech

Devastating heatwaves, wildfires and droughts in Europe: lessons from summer 2026 (debate)

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Madam President, Commissioner! There have been devastating fires in Europe this year. Not just last year, but again this year. Many devastating forest fires, even on my doorstep in my homeland; The High Venn, one of the largest raised bogs in Europe, burned down to its roots. Worse things could be prevented. Why? Because European solidarity really worked. Fire brigades from Germany, the Netherland…

8 Jul

2026

DE Speech

EU’s response and preparedness to protect people against recurring heatwaves and upcoming wildfires (debate)

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22 Oct

2025

DE Speech

First anniversary of the DANA floods in Spain: improving EU preparedness (debate)

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Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, Over the last five years, a total of 500 people have been killed by floods in Europe, including in Valencia. Nature strikes relentlessly. It tears people to death and devastates entire regions. The flood destroys countless habitats and thus countless life dreams. All experts agree: The increase in these disastrous natural disasters is no…

9 Sep

2025

DE Speech

Devastating wildfires in Southern Europe: the need to strengthen EU aid to restore the massive loss of forests and enhancing EU preparedness (debate)

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Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, We debate forest fires every year. Let's also talk about those who extinguish these wildfires: Our firefighters, especially the many volunteers. They deserve not only our respect, but also concrete support. They need strategies that can be implemented in practice, that make their use easier and not more difficult. Two points I would like to point o…

20 Jan

2025

DE Speech

Powering Europe’s future - advancing the fusion industry for energy independence and innovation (debate)

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Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, When a deuterium and a tritium hydrogen isotope merge in the plasma state at an extremely high temperature, energy is generated. Whether this energy can then generate electricity at an industrial level is perhaps one of the most interesting questions of our time. Fusion energy can play a promising role in combating climate change and in our ener…

18 Sep

2024

DE Speech

The devastating floods in Central and Eastern Europe, the loss of lives and the EU’s preparedness to act on such disasters exacerbated by climate change (debate)

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Mr President! The images we are seeing right now from Eastern Europe are dramatic, and they remind me very much of what happened in Belgium in 2021. Our sympathy should therefore be with these people in Eastern Europe. And yes, it has a lot to do with climate change. Europe must show solidarity: We have two mechanisms, the Civil Protection Mechanism and the Solidarity Fund. I will tell you a littl…

28 Feb

2024

DE Speech

European Digital Identity framework (debate)

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Madam President, Commissioner! Today, we are dealing with the European digital identity. It is a tool to be on the go digitally, to identify us or to perform services securely on the Internet. For it to work, this instrument must first be trustworthy and secure, otherwise it will not work. If that is the case – and the discussions we had in the committees on it were extremely complex, extremely te…

27 Feb

2024

DE Speech

Driving licences (debate)

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Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, This proposal is about how we keep the driver's license or how we obtain it. I will perhaps explain this proposal to you from the point of view of a person living in the countryside or in a rural area. There were two things that are important to me or that are disturbing in what has been proposed: on the one hand, the limitation of drivi…

12 Dec

2023

DE Speech

European Health Data Space (debate)

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Madam President, Commissioner! I don't think anyone here denies that health data is the most sensitive thing we actually hold in our hands. I will explain to you this file, which sounds very theoretical, using a practical example from my own family: Someone from my family had to go to a specialist in Germany to have their foot treated, and X-rays were taken there. However, she would have liked to …

21 Nov

2023

DE Speech

Packaging and packaging waste (debate)

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Mr President, Commissioner! Each of us produces around 177 kilograms of packaging per year. For my small household with my wife and my two children, this means that we produce over 700 kilograms of packaging. This corresponds to about a full-grown horse, which therefore lives in my kitchen. Everyone here agrees that we need to reduce this. Everyone agrees that we must also recognize packaging as a…

13 Sep

2023

DE Speech

Amending the proposed mechanism to resolve legal and administrative obstacles in a cross-border context (debate)

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Dear Vice-President Wieland, dear Commissioner Ferreira! As a Belgian and a child of a border region, I can tell you a lot about the borders that cross-border cooperation still encounters. The reason for this is often procedural differences that create legal uncertainty or simply prevent a joint project. I will give you two very concrete examples: Emergency interventions at the border still presen…

14 Feb

2023

DE Speech

CO2 emission standards for cars and vans (debate)

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Madam President, Vice-President of the Commission, ladies and gentlemen. Mr Vice-President, I do not agree with you. I think this decision to ban the incinerator from 2035 is a huge strategic mistake. No one denies that the electric car will play an important and central role in reducing our CO2 emissions in Europe in the future. But already putting everything on a single horse has nothing to do w…

13 Feb

2023

DE Speech

REPowerEU chapters in recovery and resilience plans (debate)

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Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, Those who manage to sustainably produce energy in sufficient quantities at reasonable prices will dominate the fight against climate change worldwide, guarantee the competitiveness of their companies and make our continent more independent from difficult partners. Ergo: Every penny in such energy infrastructure is therefore correct. Any acceleration in permit…

9 Nov

2022

DE Speech

REPowerEU chapters in recovery and resilience plans (debate)

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Dear Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, What is REPowerEU about? REPowerEU is about galloping energy bills and the question of whether Europe can shape its energy supply autonomously. Accordingly, we acted quickly and purposefully in this energy crisis. We have launched REPowerEU. We need to implement this now. Among other things, this strategy aims to become independent of Russian …

14 Sep

2022

DE Speech

Economic, social and territorial cohesion in the EU: the 8th Cohesion Report - EU border regions: living labs of European integration (debate)

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Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, I come from Eastern Belgium, a border region in the heart of Europe. At this point I have already talked very often about the difficulties people have to deal with there when they live and live on the one hand and work on the other. Here are two examples: Special rules were reached for cross-border workers during the COVID pandemic to al…

7 Jun

2022

DE Speech

Binding annual greenhouse gas emission reductions by Member States (Effort Sharing Regulation) - Land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF) - CO2 emission standards for cars and vans (joint debate – Fit for 55 (part 2))

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Dear Mr President, dear representatives of the Council, dear Vice-President Timmermans! It is important and right that we now make the right decisions to make our mobility climate-neutral. The European Commission therefore proposes that by 2035 only new vehicles that are powered by a battery will be permitted. So far, so good. However, there are many unanswered questions that cannot be answered se…

4 May

2022

DE Speech

Competition policy – annual report 2021 (debate)

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Mr President, Commissioner Vestager, rapporteur Schwab! By 2030, we want to reduce 55% of our emissions. We even want to be climate neutral by 2030. However, this will only work if we take the many small and medium-sized enterprises, the SMEs, into this process and also support them. SMEs are the backbone of our economy. Without them, nothing works in Europe, not even the energy transition. If the…

3 May

2022

DE Speech

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

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Madam President, Madam Commissioner! The future is made of courage. These 56 pages, these 353 conclusions of the conference have strengths and weaknesses. But they have a strength, and that strength is that they exist and that they have been worked out by many people together. This is the original idea of the European Union. I therefore ask three questions to the representatives of the Member Stat…

19 Oct

2021

DE Speech

Climate, Energy and Environmental State aid guidelines (“CEEAG”) (debate)

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Mr President, dear Foreign Minister, dear Commissioner Vestager! I want to use this minute for an appeal. We all agree that climate protection can only be achieved if we invest massively, invest in a transformation of economic structures. The state – the EU – must help to take massive money into its hands and invest in this transformation. And between the money and the investments lies precisely t…

6 Oct

2021

DE Speech

The Council's lack of will to move the European cross-border mechanism forward (debate)

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Mr President, dear Minister! Whoever says A must also say B. Or: Whoever says Interreg must also say ECBM. I come from a border region, I was Interreg negotiator for this House, and from practical experience I know very well that many cross-border projects simply fail because of legal and administrative obstacles, they do not arise. This is very frustrating for project promoters and the people liv…

14 Sep

2021

DE Speech

Brexit Adjustment Reserve - Draft amending budget No 1/2021: Brexit Adjustment Reserve (debate)

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Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Even at a late hour you can and must talk about important things. Brexit has now been a reality for a good eight months – a reality that does not represent a real advantage for anyone. I do not want to explicitly address the empty department store shelves in the United Kingdom or the slump in certain trade flows. Even in very specific regions in the Member State…

14 Sep

2021

DE Speech

Natural disasters during the summer 2021 - Impacts of natural disasters in Europe due to climate change (debate)

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Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, The people of Eupen in Belgium, Pepinster, Trooz, Erftstadt in Germany, Schuld or Bad Neuenahr or Venlo in the Netherlands, to name but a few, will not be able to forget July 14th and 15th. The flood came overnight and carried everything away. It was devastating. People have died, families have lost everything – without notice, without pity. People who lose ever…

8 Jul

2021

DE Speech

Sustained price increase of raw and construction materials in Europe (debate)

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Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, You probably know people who want to build or renovate a house today. You probably know carpenters, bricklayers, roofers, electricians, plumbers who get up at five in the morning to build or renovate these houses, or company managers from 5- to 10-man or 10-woman companies who are at the heart of the construction industry. These people, like me, will certainly h…