Speeches

Mr Sieper, it is wrong to assume that it would be in Russia’s interest to dominate and control Ukraine as a whole. Because then you wouldn't have gone into invasion with such a small army. The goal of Russia is: no NATO membership of Ukraine and the return to Ukraine's neutrality status, as was the case until 2014. That was and would be the best thing for this country, and that is why we should support it.

Mr Sieper, thank you very much for the question. Due to its temporal interpretation, the EDIP project will no longer be able to benefit Ukraine in any way. What it will do, however, is to provide a strong incentive for Russia to move the western border with Ukraine, the line of contact, as far west as possible. This is not in Ukraine's interest.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen! It is perfectly true that the European states themselves want to master the technological and industrial foundations of their defence capabilities. However, it is completely wrong to include Ukraine as an equal and even privileged partner in this project. Because the country is in a war that it threatens to lose and is paralyzed by notorious corruption. Supporting the Ukrainian Armaments Industry? Definitely not! Secondly, it is true that strategic autonomy can only be achieved by a small group of leading states. However, it is wrong to place the major strategic projects in the hands of the Council of the European Union alone, without the involvement of the national parliaments concerned. The EDIP Regulation lays the foundations for a supranational defence union. The ESN Group will therefore not vote in favour of this Regulation.

Mr Colleague, the mistake you are making is that Russia would ever pay reparations. Russia simply won't do that. How are you going to force Russia to make such reparations payments? You can't do it. The result is: Either the central bank reserves must actually be expropriated, or the EU will remain seated on its gifts to Ukraine.

Madam President, The planned seizure of Russian assets is not an expression of the rule of law. It's their hollowing out. State immunity is a cornerstone of the international order. Does the EU want to bring down this order? A reparation loan sounds harmless, but here is nothing more than the legally camouflaged expropriation. In doing so, the EU opens a Pandora's box. If we confiscate foreign central bank reserves today, who will trust the euro tomorrow? The warnings come not from us alone, but from the ECB, the IMF and Euroclear itself. They all speak of a risk to financial stability, capital flight and loss of confidence. Colleagues, it seems that the EU states no longer have the means to counter the Russian advance. Her latest project is therefore an expression of sheer despair. Wars create new realities. You, too, are finally coming to reality!

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen. If you want to make the EU a central state, you should say so to EU citizens. Those who lay their hands on the unanimity principle – and this is exactly what this report does – lay their hands on the sovereignty of the Member States. They claim that Article 49 allows for a transition to qualified majority voting without amending the Treaties. Here we are apparently to be duped, because Passerelle is in Article 48(7) and does not apply to the provisions on membership and accession under Article 49 TEU. They propose to abolish unanimity in proceedings for the protection of EU values and to make the Court of Justice the arbitrator of infringements – the Court of Justice, the champion of EU power par excellence. Such demands are not intended to promote democracy, but to make punishing states easy. Colleagues, the EU is already overstretched and suffers from the debilitating consequences of this overstretching. Stop making accession negotiations a pretext for undermining state sovereignty. Master your expansion drive and return to the original idea of a purpose community in which no member can be overruled against their basic interests.

Here I can refer – I reply in German – to what Mrs Boßdorf has already said. These are issues to be decided by the peoples in their national legislation and not at the level of the European Union, as Slovakia has done. If a people decides to criminalize abortion, that is a decision that that people are allowed to make.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen. Equal rights for women are fully realized in European societies. And that's a good thing. If you want to talk about equality, you should not consult the left-green education emergency, but the evolutionary psychology. A man with 100 women can have a hundred times more children than a man with only one. A woman who has 100 men, on the other hand, cannot have a single child more than a woman with only one man. Anyone who believes that this fundamental inequality has passed the psyche of men and women without a trace has not even begun to understand the human condition. Colleagues, in the principles of the Commission's proposal, the word 'woman' can be replaced by 'man' everywhere, without any change in the correctness. For dignity applies to all – men as well as women, boys as well as girls. So let's close the chapter and put the paper where it belongs: Forgetting.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen. The most dangerous drones do not circle in the sky above Poland, Frankfurt or Copenhagen, but in our heads. The call of the black-green religious warriors presented here for a common reaction, for a holy struggle against Russia, is the most frightening example of this. What you expect us to do is a hodgepodge of unproven claims and wild speculation. The drones shot down over Poland were of unknown origin. Russia offered consultations, Belarus the exchange of radar data – Poland ignored both. There seems to be no interest in enlightenment here – and that would be the imperative of the moment. Colleagues, the French Air Force took an average of six drones a day from the sky in the Paris area at last year's Olympic Games. Why not bring down the drones in Frankfurt and Munich? Are you afraid of the results of the investigation? Is it really a question of frightening the populations of the EU countries? Is it a question of overcoming the notorious disunity of the EU states through a carefully cultivated image of the enemy? Is it a question of organising approval for the EU's massive rearmament plans, Mr Kubilius? Ladies and gentlemen, there are established international standards and procedures for airspace violations. Of course, drones of unknown origin must be shot down via critical infrastructure. Above all, however, the drones in the minds of the insane EU elites must be shot down. At the end of the day, we must be grateful that this Parliament cannot give operational orders, otherwise we would have been in World War III long ago.

Madam President, The only effective security guarantee for Ukraine would be its return to neutrality. The EU claims to be seeking a ceasefire. But by requiring EU and NATO states to monitor it, it only gives Russia the incentive to occupy even more Ukrainian territory. Why this nonsensical action? Firstly: Any compromise with Russia is considered a geopolitical loss of face – morality beats realism. Secondly: The EU commanders want to stage themselves as designers, even though they are actually driven. Thirdly: They are all stuck in the psychology of escalating self-commitment. Too much invested to quit. Colleagues, Madam President, wake up before you have lost everything!

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen. The European Parliament likes to present itself as a moral institution, as a judge of good and evil in politics. For months, Parliament has been outraged that Georgians did not elect the government that the EU had planned in October 2024. For months, committees and bodies have been pondering how Georgians should be punished for doing so. The Georgian government also had the insolence to suspend the accession negotiations to the EU on its own initiative until 2028, which they would have liked to have done themselves. The EPP report on Georgia should now consider it harmless. He presents himself as a single catalogue of sins and, in doing so, he becomes embroiled in demands that clearly contradict EU law itself. Personal sanctions without trial or collective punishment are just two examples. Not a word of acknowledgment that the Georgian government has kept its country out of the conflict between the power blocs, into which it would have liked to be driven as much as Ukraine. This report exceeds the EU's institutional mandate and disregards the principle of sovereign equality. The ESN Group will therefore reject the report in its entirety.

Madam President, The EU is about to become a victim of its own propaganda. It is propaganda when it is spread that Russia wants to attack an EU and NATO state after Ukraine. The truth is, Russia has neither the human resources nor a reason to take such a step. According to its own intelligence chief, NATO has no evidence that the Russian leadership has such intentions. The EU's common security policy was established in 1993 by the Maastricht Treaty. Nevertheless, the EU today is not a security actor that would be taken seriously by the major powers. The belief that this can only be compensated by hectic activity is illusory. It is not foreseeable that the EU will be self-sufficient in security policy until further notice. We are therefore well advised to secure NATO structures, even if the US withdraws from them. Europe is now reinventing itself as an armament-industrial phantasialand, rather than addressing real-world threats: migration pressure, demographic change, the energy crisis and Islamist terror. It's not strategic, it's irresponsible. What is needed is a realistic threat scenario and a return to diplomacy. Then, and only then, will Europe be able to contribute to the balance of forces and ensure peace in international relations.

Madam President, colleagues, Donald Trump is a prudent statesman: he upholds the time-honoured principle of audiatur et altera pars – let the other side be heard as well. Trump speaks with Putin. The European Union, by contrast, wants to end the bloodshed in Ukraine and bring the war to a close, but in doing so, it listens only to itself and to the Ukrainian side. No one has seriously attempted to consider the Russian perspective. No effort has been made to understand why Russian leaders perceive NATO's eastward expansion – reaching as far as the Donbas – as an existential threat. The deliberate ignorance, I predict, is precisely why the EU is doomed to fail in the matter. Trump is a realist; the EU acts blindly. George F. Kennan, the architect of the containment strategy, once called NATO's expansion to Russia's border a fateful error. Yet we continue to repeat it. History will judge us with utter harshness.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, In accordance with Rule 206(4) of the Rules of Procedure, I request that the vote on this item on the agenda be postponed. Let me just say a few words: Solidarity with third countries must not become Europe's self-sacrifice. Our companies, from industrial SMEs to agriculture and large industrial employers, are feeling the consequences of a trade policy that is unilaterally oriented towards Ukraine. Dumping imports do not only endanger individual sectors such as steel tube manufacturers. They cover the entire European value chain, from the raw materials industries to the processing sectors and suppliers. This policy threatens jobs and livelihoods across Europe, including in agriculture, including manufacturing. Those who vote today for the further suspension of the protective measures decide not only against fair conditions of competition, but also against people in our regions who support prosperity and prosperity.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen! They all like to talk about a value-driven foreign policy. Today, the EU is facing the heap of illusion-driven foreign policy. It was an illusion to believe that economic power alone was sufficient to have geopolitical influence. And it was an illusion to think you could extend NATO and the EU to the Donbass, and Russia would accept that. The system of international relations is not subject to Western values, Rule of lawNo rule of law. It is subject to only one law, and that is balance of power – Balance of forces. It is therefore right that the European states should finally take responsibility for their security into their own hands and form their own pole in the multipolar world order. Because that's how they achieve balance of power. But it was wrong to encourage Ukraine to give up its long-standing neutrality. It was wrong to send them into the field as proxies of US interests against Russia, an ultimately overpowering neighbor. Ukraine is now in a war of attrition. Russia is waging this war with open borders, Ukraine with closed borders, so that the men cannot leave the country. This fact alone should make everyone think. That Ukraine could recapture the territories held by Russia is another illusion. And it is your illusion today that there can be a just peace in the Ukraine war. Pope Francis – rest in peace – was right. The best thing the Ukrainian leadership could do to save their country and its people from even greater damage would be to raise the white flag and return to diplomacy.

Madam President, The Union's foreign and security policy is a mess of distorted perception and moral obsolescence. Islamism is not worth a syllable to the EPP rapporteurs. In Germany, Christmas markets, carnival parades, railway stations must be protected from Islamist perpetrators of violence, not from Russian infantry. What does the EU do? It finances a Taliban emirate in Syria. Russia is not the enemy of Europe. Russia is a defensive empire that sees itself as existentially threatened by the expansion of NATO to the Donbass and the South Caucasus. Anyone who does not understand this and prepares for the Holy War against Russia will lead us to ruin. Ceterum censeo: The ESN Group rejects Ukraine's membership of NATO and the EU. The future of Ukraine can only be its return to neutrality.

Mr President! Colleagues! The dark side of globalization is the entanglement of states in networks of global dependencies. We therefore expressly support the objective of strategic autonomy for Europe. Strategic autonomy has three dimensions: political, military-operational and industrial autonomy. Own technological platforms are the basic prerequisite for every ability to act. The decision to set up the IRIS system was therefore correct. However, it is not enough to provide only the government departments with secure communication systems. First, the provision of infrastructure must also benefit businesses – no strong state without a strong economy. Secondly, one must have sufficient own capacities for the safety-relevant basic goods, for example in semiconductor production. Whoever becomes dependent on it will perish in it.

Mr President! Colleagues! The years of Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine are also the years of the EU's final geopolitical failure. Ultimately, this failure is because it represents the endpoint of a development that begins with the US decision to bring Ukraine into NATO. For a quarter of a century now, Europeans have been guided by the US on the nose ring through the geopolitical arena. Please note, Ms Strack-Zimmermann, that the negotiations to end the war in Ukraine will be conducted without you, without Ms von der Leyen, without the European Heads of State and Government – yes, possibly without Ukraine itself. At the end of the day, Europeans can only pay one thing: the bill. Ladies and gentlemen, if there had been any need to prove that this war was a geostrategic confrontation between two major powers, if there had been any need to prove that the EU is not a relevant geopolitical actor, then it has been produced here.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen. "We have to deal with realities, not fiction," Otto von Bismarck once said. Their first fiction is the belief that international relations would be subject to a binding legal order. The reality is that the system of international relations is anarchic. It is subject to the principle of power. A second fiction is that Russia, a major military power, will accept NATO entering its strategic apron. The reality is that Russia will see Ukraine's accession to NATO as an existential threat and will frustrate it militarily. We can condemn it – we cannot change it. The consequential fiction is that the EU sees Russia as an enemy that will soon attack a member state. The truth is – and I can refer here to the head of NATO’s intelligence service – that there is no indication of such intentions on the part of the Russian leadership and, moreover, no motive for such a kamikaze action. Ladies and gentlemen, the world order is in a state of upheaval. The old order has sunk, the new order is not yet there. Such a state gives birth to monsters. But instead of falling into hysteria, we should turn on the mind. And what we need then is a comprehensive and realistic risk analysis. We of the Sovereignists strongly support the development of an independent European defence capability. Independently, however, it must mean: independent; independent of non-European powers, including the United States. Secretary-General Rutte's proposal to buy the favor of the U.S. by throwing our two-percent plus funds into the throats of the U.S. defense industry is hard to beat in folly. The French position of investing this money solely in European development and production, on the other hand, is correct. We have to deal with reality, not fiction.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen! Your own propaganda is like your own body odor: You don't notice them because you're always used to them. Russia is misinforming and distorting, the EU is telling the truth – the world is as simple as that. Ladies and gentlemen, if this Parliament declares that it wants to support Ukraine until its victory, it is misleading the European public. The truth is: Ukraine stands militarily with its back to the wall and will lose this war! The Oreshnik missile is not disinformation, but a hard-hitting impact of truth on the illusion world of this House as well, including yours, Mr Gahler. The cause of the Ukraine conflict is not, as the High Representative explains to us, a new Russian imperialism that does not exist. The cause of the conflict is NATO's eastward expansion to the Russian-Ukrainian border. Those who deny it falsify history.

Dear Mr President, Wenn im georgischen Parlament wie im Deutschen Bundestag der Opposition alle Parlamentsämter verweigert würden, wenn Oppositionspolitiker tätlich angegriffen, ihre Wohnhäuser beschmiert und ihre Autos beschädigt würden, wenn es in Georgien wie in Deutschland ein staatliches Programm mit dem Namen „Kampf gegen das Böse″ gäbe, das Freiwilligenverbände zur Bekämpfung der Opposition finanziert, wenn Staatsmedien die Opposition diskreditieren würden, wenn die Opposition von der Teilnahme an der politischen Debatte ferngehalten würde, wenn Wirte bedroht und ihre Lokale beschädigt würden, sobald sie diese an die Opposition vermieten, wenn es in Georgien wie in Deutschland einen Inlandsgeheimdienst mit dem Namen „Verfassungsschutz″ gäbe, der die Opposition ausspioniert und sie zur Gefahr für den Staat erklärt – dann, meine Damen und Herren, würde dieses Parlament hier zu Recht zu der Auffassung gelangen, dass Georgien nicht Mitglied der EU sein kann.

Madam President, dear special adviser Niinistö, thank you very much for your detailed report on the preparation and readiness of Europe in the civil and defence field. We strongly support its objectives. Our main point of criticism: We lack the ability to perform qualified risk analysis. Example: The war in Ukraine. The Russian attack on Ukraine was not a sudden attack. Qualified analysts such as John Mearsheimer predicted not only the war, but also the character of the war. How was that possible? Because Mearsheimer has a powerful theory of international relations and is not guided by wishful thinking like the EU. And so there is now a threat that we will soon again succumb to the transatlantic illusion – including your report. Because there are well-founded concerns that under the new leadership, the US will focus entirely on its geostrategic rival China and pay less attention to Europe and NATO. Colleagues, what is needed is a comprehensive and qualified risk analysis.

We had a tense but fairly well-run election day. A few incidents were reported, but none to impact the overall integrity of the elections.' Ladies and gentlemen! The Georgians are a smart people. They know that the geographical location of their country matters, and they don't want to be drawn into a conflict between power blocs. Georgians are also a proud people. They are open to Europe, but they do not want to submit to the Brussels rainbow agenda. Respect Georgia's democratic decision, respect the country's sovereignty, and learn from Georgians not to overestimate their own opportunities in the new world order.

Mr President! Commissioner Schinas, even if you do not want to admit it, the parliamentary elections in Georgia were a properly conducted democratic election with a clear winner. I myself was a member of the parliamentary delegation to observe the elections on the ground – there could be no question of an atmosphere of repression at all. The opposition was able to present itself in unrestricted freedom and openly articulate its criticism of the government. The OSCE's morning briefing was accordingly, I quote: ‘We had a tense, but fairly well-run election day. A few incidents were reported but none to impact the overall integrity of the elections“.