Speeches

Madam President, the European Union wants to take money from its development funds and use it for war. Yes, my friends, it's true: the European Union intends to take money from its cohesion policy, which accounts for 30 % of its total budget. This budget is meant for the development of Europe's poorest regions, but they will use part of it for defence, which essentially means war. In fact, the reason why we are here today in the European Parliament debating it is because of an initiative signed by more than 1.2 million European citizens who have got together to give a clear message to us, the European politicians: they want our cohesion policy to focus on the development of our regions and the preservation of their culture. But here comes the European Commission and, instead of listening to its citizens, it proposes to use its cohesion funds for re-armament and war. I will be very clear with my message: forget about using our money for warmongering, be more creative. Thank you, I love you all.

Mr President, energy is the backbone of our economy. From driving our cars to taking a shower and even powering the AI factories of tomorrow, everything depends on reliable energy. We need to reduce the cost of energy. To achieve this we must invest heavily in nuclear power. I know people have concerns, but nuclear is safer than you might think. We need to focus also on renewables – especially solar energy – and, just as importantly, on batteries to store the energy so we always have the power, day and night. We must also recognise that not all countries start from the same place. Current green regulations and timelines are often too aggressive, leaving little room for regions still heavily dependent on fossil fuels to catch up – like my country, Cyprus. If we get energy right, we will make Europeans richer and improve everyone's quality of life. I love you all.

Mr President, High Representative/Vice-President, the speech I will make right now will not help any Palestinian in Gaza. This is because in the European Union, we love to speak about Gaza, but we don't take actions to actually help the genocide that is taking place right now. Instead, the only actions that we take are to help Netanyahu on his mission to kill more and more Palestinians. Germany is the second-biggest provider of weapons for Israel after our biggest ally, the United States. Yes, my friends, about 30% of the weapons bought by Israel come from Germany, weapons that are being used for the killing of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza. We cannot allow this any longer. The EU must stop the trade in weapons with Israel right now. Whatever we say in our speeches is useless if our actions will continue to provide the genocidal state of Israel with weapons. Please, friends, Europe, history is watching us.

Madam President, I will try to convince you in less than a minute why freedom of speech is under attack in Europe. Freedom of speech is only relevant when someone that you don't like says something that you don't like, right? In Europe, the person – the country – that we don't like now is Russia, and we ban their media. So this is a sign that freedom of speech in Europe is under attack. It is all under this word: 'misinformation'. Misinformation in the past was labelled in an incorrect way. So 'misinformation' is a tricky word. This is my first time that I'm trying to do a speech without a text, and I missed it. But I will improve and I will learn, and I will come back the next time. I run out of time. I love you all.

Thank you for your feedback. I've been to Ukraine and I'm going in a few days to Russia as well. The goal of going to Russia is to show that we need to talk and solve this problem. Ukrainians are dying. We need to start diplomacy. This is what we need to do. It doesn't cost a lot. We are trying to rearm Europe with EUR 800 billion, and talking is free. This is what we should do, I think. Thank you, I love you all.

Mr President, the moral compass of the EU is completely broken. Since 2022, the EU has sent EUR 138 billion to Ukraine in military and humanitarian aid. We have cut diplomatic ties with Russia and imposed the biggest amount of sanctions in history, a quite clear and powerful response. On the other hand, when it comes to Palestine, our stance is completely different. The Israeli Government is conducting a brutal genocide, and people are even starving to death due to the blockade the last two months. Despite all of this, the EU maintains normal relations with Israel – no big sanctions, no cutting of diplomatic ties. Many EU leaders met with Netanyahu, like the President of my country, Cyprus, recently did. But none of you will even consider meeting and just talking with Putin. Just let me ask you, where is our moral consistency?

Mr President, Kaja Kallas is basically the foreign minister of the EU, and I think she can help my country Cyprus. Cyprus has been divided since the Turkish invasion in 1974 and, as a result, the two communities – Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots – are living now separately. This problem remains to this day, unsolved. So I believe it's the job of Kaja Kallas to go to Türkiye and speak with President Erdoğan in order to defend the interest of Cypriots as citizens of the Union that she serves. I believe Kaja Kallas spends a lot of her time and effort towards Ukraine, which is not even a member of the EU. But what message does that send to EU citizens like us in Cyprus, still in a divided land? Kaja Kallas must make Cyprus a priority so we can show the world that the EU stands by its people.

Madam President, colleagues, today many people in this Chamber want strict rules for artificial intelligence. They talk about risks – like losing jobs, fake news or AI getting out of control – but I ask you: since when has being scared helped us move forward? AI can help us cure diseases, teach millions and fight climate change. If we block it too early, we will stop something great before it even begins. That's like banning electricity just because someone got shocked. We need to guide AI, yes, but not trap it in fear. And if you are still unsure about what AI can do, here is something to think about. This is not me speaking: this whole speech was written by AI.

Madam President, I'm from Cyprus. Cyprus had an invasion 50 years ago from Türkiye. I'm a bit sad here in the European Parliament because I feel that there is not enough support for Cyprus to solve our problem that we have had for so many years. We talk every week, every day here about Ukraine, and Ukraine is not even a Member State of the EU. So now it's a pivotal point because negotiations started again in Cyprus to solve the Cyprus problem. So now is the time for the EU to put a lot of pressure in Türkiye, because it's the key player here to solve the problem in Cyprus. And a lot of people in Cyprus are not very happy with Europe, because we don't have the support that we want for so many years to solve the problem. Thank you and I love you all.

Mr President, we have a big problem here in Europe. A 'democratic' and 'independent' media outlet, Radio Free Europe, might close because the US might stop funding it. And here in Europe we are panicking and we are even thinking to use taxpayers' money to save it. But let's be honest, how 'independent' and 'democratic' can a media be if it's funded by a foreign government? But I'm afraid that the real question is this: are we scared of losing the truth or losing control over it? I believe democracy is not about controlling the narrative. It's about trusting people to choose their own. I love you all.

Madam President, hello friends, I'm quite proud to say that the European Parliament is very transparent. And you can all, all the people, the European citizens and everyone in the world, they can go in the website and they can find our salaries, they can find how much budget we are allowed to use, how much money we can spend, and this is very good. It builds trust and it's transparent. And it also builds expectations for the citizens. But I'm unhappy because the European Commission doesn't have the same procedure. When you go to the Commissioners, you cannot see the salaries of the staff, how much budget they have and all this stuff. So this is not as transparent the European Commission. So I encourage the European Commission to be like the European Parliament, a lot more transparent, because this will build a lot of trust. I love you all.

Madam President, it's time for Palestinians to have their own state. Most countries around the world support a two‑state solution for the Israel-Palestine conflict, but the biggest obstacle for this to really happen is the United States. The United States has used its veto power in the United Nations Security Council dozens of time to block resolutions to recognise a Palestinian state. Alongside the United States, only eight other countries have refused to recognise Palestine. On the other hand, 143 countries around the world recognise Palestine, many of them represented here in the European Parliament. I believe the EU should push for a two‑state solution and challenge its biggest ally. Now, more than ever, we should act independently from the United States in order to stop the genocide of Palestinians and finally achieve a two‑state solution.

Madam President, AI will replace most jobs and we are not ready for it. Self-driving cars are replacing drivers. AI models are replacing software developers. Robots are replacing factory workers. Jobs will be disappearing, and the hard part is that we cannot really predict which ones will disappear and when. Europe needs to prepare for these big changes, and the way to do it is to fundamentally transform education. Our current education systems were created long ago, mainly to turn children into obedient factory workers. But now times are changing. Soon factories will not need human workers anymore. Even though we refuse to acknowledge it, today children mostly learn online by themselves. Perhaps the solution to fix education is to listen to them carefully and embrace their ways. Let me finish with a quote from Isaac Asimov: 'Self-education is the only kind of education there is.'

Mr President, my uncle has been missing since the Turkish invasion of my country, Cyprus, in 1974. This had a huge impact on my family. My father was seven years old when he witnessed a suicide attempt by my grandmother because she couldn't handle it. My uncle is one of the 2 000 Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots who had disappeared, mainly during the Turkish invasion in 1974 and the intercommunal fighting of 1964. The remains of these communities' people are being searched for by communal committee, and by today half of them have been identified and returned to their relatives, who, unlike my grandmother, were lucky enough to live until that day of relief. I want to thank the European Union because it is the biggest funder of this committee, giving so far EUR 35 million. Please continue to fund this project, which not only brings peace to families like mine, but also encourages cooperation between the two communities of the island, increasing the chance of a potential solution to the Cyprus problem.

I will keep saying the same thing here. Please answer me not with a personal attack this time, but with an answer. Where do you draw the line on misinformation and truth? And who is judging? Thank you. I love you all!

I'm not saying that everything is being censored. I'm just saying there are things that have been censored in the past, and it's proven in the U.S. that the government was interfering to censor stuff. So we need to have a proper discussion and understand what is censored in Europe, because this accusation from these people that own these platforms, that we institutionalise censorship, are very important.

Madam President, Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, recently accused the European Union of institutionalising censorship. Similar comments have also been made in the past by the owner of platform X, Elon Musk. Dear friends, if these accusations are true, then we will have a problem, as millions of posts being censored across Europe under the label of misinformation might be systemically unfair. Many times in the past, posts that were labelled as misinformation finally have turned out to be factually correct. We cannot have a proper democracy if we censor only one side of the story. According to Mark Zuckerberg, this happened with the US Government during the COVID pandemic, as they forced Meta to censor things that were factually correct. The accusations of Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk are very serious, and I believe we should take them into consideration. That's why I propose to invite them here to come in the European Parliament for a deep discussion on how we should moderate content.

Madam President, our education system sucks. International studies, like the famous Pisa Test, show that Europe is – and our students are – struggling more than ever. In this education system, the kids and teenagers in most EU countries, including my country Cyprus, hate school and, as a consequence, they hate learning. Studies show that when you don't like something and you are forced to do it, you can't do it well. My dear friends, let's stop ruining stupidly the happiness and the childhood of our children. Instead of kids falling in love with learning, the way the education system works makes them hate it. Is that what we really want? For a start, let's find the cooler school systems in Europe, like the one in Finland, and try to bridge the gap between the outdated ones like the one in my country, Cyprus. I believe we are really committing a crime against our children.

I think you are making a mistake because X has a part of the algorithm as open source. So you can see what is actually happening. And I think this is what social media needs to look like, because we need to understand how the algorithm is working. They need to be transparent on how the algorithm is working so we, the citizens and everyone, or the coders would tell us if something was misused. So we will know. Having transparency over the coding I think is very important and I agree with you. But some of the platforms are doing that already and we need to encourage them to do more. I love you all again.

We agree on this, first of all, but also, Mr Ștefănuță said before that in the polls it was not showing the president of Romania. The polls one week before my elections were also showing me 2 % and I received 20 % of the votes. So the new methods that we have doing polls and all this stuff is kind of in the old-fashioned way and it doesn't represent the current state of all social media. So I think democracy needs to evolve to the new state of this online social media. I love you all again, it's very exciting to have two blue cards.

By the way, thank you – it's my first blue card, I'm very excited to answer it. Social media, I think like every evolution, it takes some adaption. So we need to adapt to the new current system. This is what I'm doing, adapting to the new system. But I think yes there are some problems, we need to find different tools. Labelling everything as disinformation - where do you draw the line on disinformation and truth? Because a lot of the times in the past, we assumed something was disinformation, it was wrong. But maybe some new techniques of AI advancements and all this stuff to use on social media to, in a way, explore all the content and label something as wrong, but not to be able not to say something. But thank you, I love you all.

Madam President, perhaps I'm one of the most qualified Members of the European Parliament to talk about the use of social media platforms in elections, as they were the only tool I used to get elected and be here today. Throughout the history of representative democracy, the people that were running for office were usually the ones that had access to the traditional media of their time. Now, for the first time in history, everybody has the power to convince the people about their ideas and become a politician only by using their phone. And of course, if anyone can use social media, there will be some voices we will not like, but freedom of speech is about allowing all voices to be heard. And sometimes here in Europe, we censor voices we don't like just by labelling them disinformation. Freedom of speech is the bedrock of the integrity of elections and of democracy itself, and we need to fight to preserve it. Let's return to Voltaire's idea: I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

Mr President, my country, Cyprus, has two communities: Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots. Both communities made mistakes in the past that led us where we are now in a completely divided country. It's been 41 years since the illegal declaration of independence by the Turkish Cypriots in Northern Cyprus. I condemn this act and any attempts to legalise it, to legitimise it. After years of negotiation between Turkish Cypriots, Greek Cypriots, Turkey, Greece and the UK, today, 95 % of the solution to the problem has already been agreed, but the negotiations have stagnated. I ask the European Union to strengthen its efforts to encourage Turkey to join the negotiations and put an end to this long-lasting problem.