Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D)
185
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Written Statements
PL
The Hungarian government's drift to Russia-style repression: legislative threats to freedom of expression and democratic participation (debate)
I am surprised that the European Parliament is dealing with Hungary in the context of a democratic threat. In France, Marine Le Pen was deprived of her right to vote on the basis of an illegitimate verdict. In Romania, the elections were annulled for so long, candidates were excluded from the elections until the right one won. We have reports of the former US administration and the European Union allocating money to left-wing propaganda. We have a verdict in Germany allowing surveillance of the German party, which is the leader of the polls. We have advertisements before the elections in Poland, which attacked the opposition with money from abroad. Take care of that, not Hungary!
European Citizens’ Initiative ‘Stop destroying videogames’ (debate)
Madam President, I'm sorry. Stop destroying video games – I wholeheartedly support this initiative. I'm a player myself. Unfortunately, due to my professional duties, I have less and less time. My kids now have more time to play, too. Good, because in moderation, of course. Games teach creativity, teach you how to taste success or failure on a small scale, and also help you relax after real-world experiences. What's all this about? Imagine that the car manufacturer, after a few years, remotely blocks the engine of the car for which we paid, and turns it into a useless piece of metal. We can't drive it. We can get on it, but we're not going anywhere. Replacement of the engine is prohibited. And in the video game industry, the exact same thing happens when publishers kill products that we've already bought. This is a violation of the rights of free consumers and we should change that, because it is cutting off access to titles for which people have previously paid a huge amount of money. We do not demand that the servers be permanently funded, but only that the games be left in a private state. I wholeheartedly support this initiative.
Reviewing the ETS system to support European competitiveness (topical debate)
Madam President, I'm sorry. Ladies and Gentlemen, As we debate the Green Deal today, thousands of people took to the streets of Warsaw to say one thing: Away, away from the Green Deal, away from the expensive energy, away from all the climate madness that ordinary people pay for. The miners went out, the metallurgists went out, the farmers went out, the workers of the industrial plants went out. But ordinary people also came out in defense of their jobs, in defense of their wallets, in defense of their normal lives, which you want to take away from them. The ETS was supposed to reduce emissions. Look at the charts. Emissions are not decreasing at all – they are increasing. It's just ineffective. In practice, you have created a machine to make money by speculators who steal from ordinary people, making energy more and more expensive. And now you want to go even further. ETS-2 will cover construction and transport. It will be a tax on normal life. Who should we pay this life tax to? Who did we attack? The whole world is laughing at you. They laugh at you in Asia and the United States, launching more mines and coal-fired power plants. You have made Europe an open-air museum and are ruining it further.
Cali fund – follow up from the COP16 UN Convention on Biodiversity (debate)
But that's not the problem with us. There is no deforestation in Europe. Deforestation is taking place in other parts of the world. We have all the indicators better than the rest of the world, but we are not surrounded by a glass dome. Europe's share in emissions, in other things, is really minimal. Whether or not we do something will not change anything. We're not going to drag the world with us because it doesn't work. Because this system simply doesn't work. We need to focus on economic development, and then the transformation will happen on its own.
Cali fund – follow up from the COP16 UN Convention on Biodiversity (debate)
At the moment, we have a situation in which only Europe is engaged in some activities that are supposed to save the climate. The whole world doesn't do anything like that. More and more coal is being used in the world. We're the only ones fighting this coal. We are the only ones with climate regulations. The whole world doesn't care and the economy is growing all the time, and Europe is collapsing. We're losing everything. In Europe, almost nothing is produced anymore. I think that if we always want to be the first, it will not do anything, because the whole world will go in a completely different direction. And the second thing is that the mechanism of taking money from the rich and giving it to the poor does not cause any development. This is socialism, communism. In such systems, nature always dies. Nature develops, as people have money and can spend it on their free time, on nature conservation, on other hobbies, and then it will work. Then we can protect biodiversity. And now we need to save the European economy.
Cali fund – follow up from the COP16 UN Convention on Biodiversity (debate)
Madam President, I'm sorry. Protecting nature is extremely important. The protection of biodiversity is also an important issue and should really be at everyone's heart. But today we are discussing a situation that boils down to the fact that a fund was created. The fund is voluntary, almost no one has paid money for it and it hurts you terribly, and you would most like to find money in the pockets of entrepreneurs who use information and would pay for it. It's just that we've been through all this before. What you are proposing is to change the nature of the voluntary fund into a mandatory one and create again a tribute, a tax that all industry, all business, will have to pay and pay again. We already see this in many fields. Today, European companies are barely breathing. We are losing industry, we are losing the opportunity to develop and we still want to burden these few companies with another tribute. This is the way to nowhere. This is the creation of another redistribution mechanism, another central planning. And where there is central planning, there, unfortunately, nature does not develop.
Situation of fundamental rights in the European Union in 2024 and 2025 (debate)
Mr President, thank you very much. Ladies and Gentlemen, Poland managed to break out of communism. Our fathers and grandfathers fought for us to live in a free country. And today the European Commission wants to restore to us those institutions that we know from this criminal, totalitarian regime. This is really the construction of a censorship and word control apparatus, because you speak beautifully about the fight against disinformation, about the protection of children, you put forward a number of other arguments, and you really want to create such an apparatus to break freedom of speech. This is a fundamental right that has always existed in Europe. The right to express one's own views, the right to protest, in which there are no sacred cows. Whether it is Israel, the European Commission, the Green Deal or gender ideology. Everyone should have the right to freedom of expression and limiting it is censorship, it is something that goes against what we have always had in Europe. You cannot colonise European countries, you cannot create a catalogue of fundamental rights and sanction non-compliance with them.
Activities of the European Ombudsman – annual report 2024 (debate)
Madam President, I'm sorry. Oh, Mrs. Spokesperson! It is a pity that even when discussing such a report, the left side always tries to push its ideology into every document and instead of showing that black is black and white is white, it would like it to be green everywhere, and in fact, if you look closely, it is red. And I regret that we cannot really discuss here what the ombudsman did, and we have to argue about some obvious things. As a Member of Parliament, I like to talk to people both in Poland and abroad, as I am on a delegation or during a mission. And few people praise the European Union, and many complain – first of all, that the law is complicated and silently introduced, and that no one listens to the voice of ordinary people, whether employees or pensioners, small entrepreneurs. But people point out that big corporations always have their doors open to the European Commission and it's somehow easy for them to lobby for changes to the rules. And this report also shows that, in fact, many citizens have sought help from the Ombudsman. And if so many interventions are needed, it means that this EU administration is extensive and too often slips out of control. He's going somewhere in his own country. It detaches itself from reality, from human affairs. We are looking at the issue of vaccine negotiations, at the famous Pfizergate, which was really a test of the credibility of the European Union. The European Court annulled the Commission’s refusal to disclose information relating to those negotiations. Citizens have the right to know how billions of euros are decided and whether there were adequate safeguards against conflicts of interest. The biggest concern today is not just the lack of paperwork, but the lack of access to the right information. We get hundreds of reports, analyses, websites, and then we get obscured by procedures when we ask for documents that are vital to the public interest. Mrs. Spokesperson, not every hero wears a cape. Your work doesn't happen in the light of cameras, but it's a tedious fight against bureaucracy. And on behalf of the citizens, I ask you to step on the heels of every authority, every institution. Do your own thing, and dishonest people will start to be afraid of you, and thanks to that maybe something will change for the better. Good luck to you!
Mr President, thank you very much. Enough of this madness – not for Ukraine in the European Union. You are talking more and more loudly about the admission to the EU of a country in which the head of the president's office flies for corruption, the minister of justice flees by train from the prosecutor's office, and the former prime minister pays MPs for votes. And these are not incidents, this is the whole system. After all, they even made the supply of eggs for the army a corruption scandal. It's like paragraph 22. Ukraine is the 104th most corrupt country in the world - between The Gambia and Sri Lanka. Are these our European standards? One state-owned energy company was bailed out of $100 million during the war, and the economy is dominated by oligarchs. Agriculture is an international holding company with thousands of hectares of land. This is not a fair competition for ours, for Polish farmers and also for European farmers. To this day, this country has not accounted for its history. Fortunately, today in Europe we do not see Nazi symbols anywhere on the streets, and in Ukraine we still worship Stefan Bandera, responsible for the Volhynian slaughter of Poles. Do you want to accept into the EU a state that tolerates the cult of chauvinist, Nazi collaborator and genocide organizer? At the same time, what are we seeing today? President Zelensky threatens the prime minister of a member state because he has a different opinion. Let's also tell the truth - if it weren't for Poland, Ukraine would no longer exist. We are responsible for helping Ukraine. But that does not mean accepting Ukraine into the European Union. Not for Ukraine in the European Union.
Mr President, thank you very much. In fact, in 1990, one-third of Europe's electricity was produced from nuclear, today only 15%. But will we wait another few decades for the European Commission to admit that it was a mistake to focus on renewable energy sources and gas? It's a bit late, because the changes will no longer be undone. The energy market remains incoherent and inefficient. The Green Deal does not work at all and putting everything on renewable energy sources is crazy. We see the effects of this policy: expensive energy, energy poverty is increasing, factories are closing and we are losing the industry that is moving out of Europe. In addition, there was also talk of energy security. What kind of security is that? Are we to depend on the gas that flows to us from distant, dangerous seas? After all, we can see how it affects the price, which flies like a roller coaster. Or, on the other hand, we focus on renewable energy sources, for which we need raw materials, masses of critical raw materials that we do not extract on the scale that we should extract, and even if we extract, we are not able to process. We need cheap, stable energy, strong nuclear power and access to our own raw materials.
One-minute speeches on matters of political importance
Mr President, thank you very much. Ladies and Gentlemen, Gas prices have soared due to the conflict in the Middle East. But this did not sober anyone, because in Poland, as in the whole of Europe, multi-billion investments in the construction of gas power plants are planned. This gas is supposed to give stability with all the green, unstable energy on which the European Union plans to base energy. But gas prices have always been like a rollercoaster. After all, one conflict or exporter's decision is enough for gas prices and also energy prices across Europe to immediately go up. Safety built on such an unstable raw material is a serious risk. Let's take a look: Qatar accounts for 20% of global exports. And tensions in the Middle East or the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz immediately affect gas prices and energy prices in Europe. This shows how dependent we are on imports, which should not be the case. At the same time, the EU still treats gas only as a transitional fuel. It is normally covered by the ETS and will become more expensive over time due to climate policy. As a result, we are building too many billions of power plants, which we will be decommissioning in a few years' time, just as we are decommissioning coal-fired power plants today. This is sick. It doesn't make any sense at all. This is not a bridge. It is a very expensive and unstable bridge.
Joint action addressing the increased use of death penalty (debate)
Madam President, I'm sorry. We have heard many arguments against the death penalty. We have also heard arguments that criminals can be rehabilitated. On the other hand, how are we to punish and prevent such serious crimes as premeditated murders, with particular cruelty, murders of children? And here it is not enough even the death penalty itself, but the reconstruction of the entire system. Because at some point in Europe, I have the impression that we have trusted that we can actually raise criminals, and yet all the statistics confirm that this is completely impossible. The law should be strict, not focused on rehabilitation. It is the European Union itself that has led to the fact that crime in Western Europe is on the rise today. Mass, uncontrolled migration is associated with an increase in crime, especially very violent crime, rape and murder, with the use of firearms, with the use of sharp tools. We need to stop this so that Europe is safe and we don't have to think about what to do to make life safer in Europe.
Presentation of the programme of activities of the Cyprus Presidency (continuation of debate)
Madam President, I'm sorry. Mr. President, I'm sorry. I am listening to this debate and I have the impression that we are a little detached from reality here, because this Presidency started with a big scandal, pushed to the knee the signing of the agreement with Mercosur against the position of some Member States, against the citizens, without the consent of Parliament. Parliament was completely omitted from this procedure. And this is a big scandal. And today, the real Europe is really there, in front of the European Parliament, where farmers, once again in despair of losing their jobs, are protesting and we are debating here as if nothing had happened. This is a mockery. This is Europe above the heads of the people. This is a Europe that does not serve its citizens and I very much do not want the European Union to change in this direction. And I hope that Cyprus will also do everything to reverse this, so that Parliament has a chance to speak out on this agreement, to withdraw it. And from a completely different barrel I have one request to the President, Poland has recently built a vessel. Unfortunately, there is one problem. This ship is flying the Cypriot flag and I would be very grateful if our government could get some guidance on how to make it profitable to register ships in Poland too, and not to make it cheaper everywhere, but not with us in the country.
Implementation of the rule of law conditionality regime (debate)
Madam President, I'm sorry. (beginning of speech outside the microphone) It's not even a debate about money. Because you are talking about power – the power to judge which state is obedient and which is not, and which can get some money and which is not. Why didn't you invite former Commissioner Reynders to this debate? He is an outstanding expert on the rule of law. He was the rule of law commissioner. For years he taught the Polish government what is law-abiding and what is not. Do you know what he was doing in the breaks? He was an incredibly happy man. He was just lucky. He's been buying lottery scratch cards for years, and that's how he won. He bought them for cash and got the winnings on the account. Of course, it is an absolute coincidence that he was also the president of the Belgian lottery, where he bought these tickets. And it is also an absolute coincidence that, at the time when he was commissioner, anti-money laundering laws were enacted, which incidentally did not cover this lottery. Do you want to teach? Do you want to study the rule of law? After all, behind the Commissioner sit entire orders of ghosts of former Commissioners, who are suspected of various corrupt elements. You really don't want to judge the rule of law. Take care of yourself first and leave you alone.
One-minute speeches on matters of political importance
Mr President, thank you very much. Europe is getting ready to celebrate Christmas and, at the same time, is increasingly ashamed of being Christian. Even in this building passing, you can trip over Hanukkah candles, but you can already see the nursery impossible, and somewhere in the corner there is a Christmas tree. What's that supposed to be? Christianity is the foundation of Europe. Without it, there would be no law, no culture, no freedom and no human rights, even the EU flag is the Marian flag. In fact, today you are ashamed of all this. Today, in fact, you promote worldview neutrality, and in fact, it is the promotion of atheism. Christmas disappears from the calendar, we hear a wish Happy Holidays Everything is allowed except a public confession of the Christian faith. At the same time, the European Union is silent and is only making some sham movements against the persecution of Christians around the world. Finally, I wish you all a blessed Christmas, peace, courage and fidelity to what Europe is built on.
Fur farming and the placing of farmed fur products on the market (debate)
Madam President, I'm sorry. All of you who want to ban fur farming are big hypocrites. You are talking about the need to regain competitiveness in Europe, and you are debating the killing of an industry in which my country, in which Poland is at the forefront of the world and employs tens of thousands of employees, paying many, many hundreds of millions of taxes to the Polish budget. You say that fur farming is inhumane and barbaric, but for you, abortion, euthanasia and surrogacy are a fundamental human right. At the same time as we are debating a ban on fur farming here, an initiative calling for safe and legal abortion across Europe will be discussed. Does the life of a chinchilla mean more to you than the life of a very old or very small man? Well, that's not fair. I do not believe that Europe wants to go this way. We must defend human life, not deal with the lives of other creatures. You challenge me and my colleagues very often from Russian agents. And don't you see that banning this industry, the fur industry, in Europe will make these plants where they will move? They will move to Russia and Belarus and they will pay taxes there, there they will contribute to the fact that these countries will benefit from it, they will employ workers there and strengthen the local economy. No one's health, freedom or property is safe when Parliament is sitting. With a single hand gesture, you can plough up any industry that you do not like at the moment. What's next? The deforestation regulation, the woodworking industry, agriculture, all those industries related to products from the tree - in the name of its stupid ideology, which will reward only large corporations at the expense of small producers - has already been ploughed up since its entry into force. What's next? You're going to ban hunting, you're going to ban meat? Is that your way? I remind you that you have just loudly boasted about the restrictions on the sale of cars with an internal combustion engine, and then quietly withdraw from it. You don't learn from mistakes at all. We will not build European economic power with this approach. And there was already a system that fulfilled all dreams, that promised to set everyone free, that it would lift everyone off their knees, that everyone would be fine – and we remember well how it ended. And you're trying to squeeze everyone in again. It is not possible to build a community on ideology, it is not possible to build a healthy economy.
