Speeches

Mr President, what Israel's government is doing in Gaza is a genocide. Since the start of the war in Gaza, 43 000 Palestinians have died, from which 16 000 were children. Not only lives have been lost, but also more than 80 % of the infrastructure, like houses and schools, have been damaged, making the Palestinians of Gaza live in really terrible conditions. Of course, we should not forget the terrorist attack of Hamas on 7 October and the 1 200 Israelis that were killed. We should also condemn this attack and accept Israel's right to defend itself. But the response they actually did was completely disproportionate. We need a ceasefire right now and start immediately a conversation on the basis of a two-state solution, where Palestinians and Israelis can finally live in peace.

Mr President, my country Cyprus is mentioned in your 2024 Annual Rule of law report. From your assessment, Cyprus's justice system is lacking behind the European Union standard and I agree. In your assessment, you specifically refer to the case of the Auditor-General who was eventually fired by the Supreme Constitutional Court. I am here to express the anger of most Cypriots at this particular situation. A large majority of Cypriots believed that his firing was due to his effort to expose corruption, because those involved in corruption influenced the decision of firing. The fight against corruption always comes with a great vulnerability. Therefore, I call on the Commission to closely monitor the situation in Cyprus and help my country to overcome these vulnerabilities.

Mr President, perhaps I'm one of the most qualified members of the European Parliament to talk about social media platforms as I myself am a social media influencer by profession. I believe that the Digital Services Act is a positive step forwards, but I want to focus more on an important aspect of it. I strongly believe the way to fight hate speech and disinformation is definitely not censorship. Instead, I will propose that we encourage the platforms to create organic fact-checking systems to inform their users about the validity of the information they receive. A good example of this is Twitter's Community Node, which allows its users to highlight information when they believe that it is factually incorrect. Now, in an era of artificial intelligence, more than ever, we need to focus on what is actually true – not by censoring but by letting people know the facts and freely deciding.