What Bruno spoke about.

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NL Written Statement

Competition policy – annual report 2024 (debate)

We are deeply concerned about the precarious situation of the steel sector and many energy-intensive industries in Europe today. Global overcapacity, illegal state aid from China, Trump's trade war and high energy prices, due to our dependence on fossil fuels, make our industry very difficult. We expect the Commission to swiftly come forward with results-oriented actions to create a framework that…

7 Oct

2026

EN Speech

Ensuring promotion of clean energy in European policies (debate)

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Madam President, Commissioner, colleagues, Mario Draghi caused a bit of a panic when he proposed to build a competitive European economy based on energy independence, because he priced it at a cost of around EUR 800 billion of annual investments. But at current prices, we will be spending at least EUR 500 billion this year alone in buying fossil fuels outside of Europe, and probably another EUR 10…

7 Oct

2026

EN Speech

Urgent need for a tax on super-profits of polluters: protecting people’s health and lowering energy bills in times of the climate crisis (topical debate)

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Mr President, colleagues, Europe will pay hundreds of billions of euros more this year for its addiction to fossil fuels – and apart from some luscious bonuses for all executives and a bit of investment in some football clubs probably – most of that cash will flow out of our continent. When desperate European governments subsidise fuel prices at the pump with money they don't have, we can borrow i…

18 Jun

2026

NL Speech

Circularity requirements for vehicle design and management of end-of-life vehicles (debate)

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17 Jun

2026

NL Speech

Electrification Action Plan (debate)

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11 Mar

2026

NL Speech

Building Europe's clean, independent and secure energy following the 2026 North Sea Summit (debate)

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10 Mar

2026

NL Speech

Presentation of the Energy Package (debate)

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Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, when energy prices exploded in 2022, there was one group in Belgium that slept on both ears and those were citizens who were members of energy cooperatives and who had invested in renewable energy themselves. Their energy bills increased by a total of 0 euros. Now that we are going through yet another turbulent period in the oil and gas markets, it…

16 Dec

2025

NL Speech

Grids package and tackling raising energy prices through robust infrastructure (debate)

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22 Oct

2025

NL Speech

Ending all energy imports from Russia to the EU and closing loopholes through third countries (debate)

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Mr President, my congratulations to Commissioner Jørgensen on having done what needed to be done, which should have been done a long time ago. Because even after the aggression in Crimea in 2014, after the invasion in 2022 and to this day, as Europeans, we continue to contribute billions to the Russian war machine that threatens us. It gives a whole new meaning to the concept of ‘digging your own …

18 Jun

2025

NL Speech

Electricity grids: the backbone of the EU energy system (debate)

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Mr President, Commissioner, our citizens are seeing negative electricity prices and high energy bills at the same time. Member States are shutting down electricity production because it cannot be connected to the grid, while in others energy prices are unreasonably high. Companies that want to invest are on waiting lists because they can't get a connection and in some streets you can't charge a ca…

7 May

2025

EN Speech

Resilience and the need to improve the interconnection of energy grid infrastructure in the EU: the first lessons from the blackout in the Iberian Peninsula (debate)

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Madam President, Commissioner, colleagues, anyone with common sense knows that electrification is Europe's only realistic road to affordable energy and to competitiveness. And events like the blackout in Spain and Portugal make it crystal clear that robust grids are as essential to that as highways are to road transport. In that sense, the obsessive debate between renewables and nuclear today is s…

2 Apr

2025

NL Speech

European Steel and Metals Action Plan (debate)

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Mr President, the Commission puts its finger on the wound in its action plan for the steel sector, but real action will not be taken for the time being. Keeping scrap in the EU for recycling is a justified ambition, but its implementation will depend on circular economy legislation, which we can expect at the earliest by the end of next year. Electrification is rightly put forward as the only way …

13 Mar

2025

NL Speech

Action Plan for Affordable Energy (debate)

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Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, even worse than having half a billion Europeans held hostage by Vladimir Putin is having half a billion Europeans held hostage by Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. The best way to escape this is to build our prosperity with the energy we produce and control ourselves. This is also the basis of your action plan. Let's take action now. The European En…

12 Mar

2025

EN Speech

Accelerating the phase-out of Russian gas and other Russian energy commodities in the EU (debate)

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Mr President, Commissioner, colleagues, Europe has performed a remarkable feat in reducing its dependency on Russian gas and oil after the attack on Ukraine. But the work is only half done. Not only are we still importing Russian gas, but by simply switching to other suppliers, we have found little more than a quick fix. Because if depending on Vladimir Putin was naive, then repeating the mistake …

27 Nov

2024

EN Speech

Rise of energy prices and fighting energy poverty (debate)

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Madam President, Commissioner, colleagues, high energy prices are a social issue that today leaves millions of families struggling to afford basic comfort in their homes. And yet millions of those homes are leaking heat as if it were for free, because owners cannot afford a renovation. With energy prices higher than in competing markets, they are a burden on our industry's competitiveness. Yet at …

27 Nov

2024

EN Speech

Topical debate (Rule 169) - Budapest Declaration on the New European Competitiveness Deal - A future for the farming and manufacturing sectors in the EU (topical debate)

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Mr President, dear colleagues, besides agriculture, the Budapest Declaration rightly highlights the importance of industrial renewal through decarbonising as an absolutely key objective. We have actually reached a point where it makes little difference if you do it for the planet or you do it for the European steel industry, because without an effective net-zero policy, neither of them has much of…

8 Oct

2024

EN Speech

The crisis facing the EU’s automotive industry, potential plant closures and the need to enhance competitiveness and maintain jobs in Europe (debate)

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Mr President, let's be very clear on what crisis we are actually talking about here today in this debate, because European car manufacturers have, in recent years, followed a very deliberate strategy of building fewer but more expensive cars. This has created record profits for all of them in the past years. But it has come at an obvious cost for their workers and for European consumers – European…