What Julien spoke about.

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, today you are proposing a debate on the devastating fires in Europe this summer, particularly in my region of Aude. I could just think of the victims and salute the relief work, and then leave. But that's not why I'm here. I'm here to get things done, and these fires pose several problems that I'm going to address. First, they show once again that the best bulwark in the face of fires is the vine. However, by your criminal policies, anti-agriculture, anti-viticulture, by all these tearings that you encourage, you also participate in increasing the scale of these devastating fires. If you really want to improve the situation, help our winemakers, support the maintenance and development of agriculture and viticulture on these beautiful lands. Secondly, I would like to denounce the responsibility of Emmanuel Macron and his governments, who had promised the renewal and even the extension of the Canadairs fleet. Promise alas not kept. How can we understand that these governments are talking about global warming, increasingly pervasive risks and, at the same time, do not foresee the means of struggle commensurate with the stakes? Are our rural, our landscapes for them an adjustment variable? Finally, I cannot end without saluting the action of the firefighters: more than 2,000 mobilized in a few hours. What courage, what dedication! Here too, Europe wants to kill what works, since your European directive on working time directly endangers the status of volunteer firefighter, even though volunteering represents almost 80% of the workforce in France. How can you impose such an aberration on the peoples of Europe? In this area, the pyromaniacs, it is also you and it must stop now. The victims are watching you.

Madam President, once again, you are putting on the agenda here a debate targeting one Member State, still the same, Hungary. How weird! What do you want? Do you want to exclude Hungary from the European Union, or do you just want to govern Hungary instead of the democratically elected government? I'm asking you how many democracy catch-up courses we're going to have to give you. For months now, we have been hearing here about the need to combat foreign interference. That’s good. Especially since the groups that are the loudest on this subject are arguably the groups most corrupted by foreign states. Some of their elected representatives were bought by Qatar or other countries. I will not make a long list of scandals here, including ‘Qatargate’, we will have until tomorrow. You are constantly teaching about foreign interference, but that is precisely what you are doing. Indeed, many non-Hungarian MEPs, instead of dealing with the disorders that exist in their own country, went to Budapest to engage in foreign-interference tourism. It would also be interesting to know whether their air tickets were paid for by the Parliament to finance that foreign interference or whether they increased their carbon footprint at their own expense. Can we get an answer? How much did this small cinema cost taxpayers? The issue of defending gay rights and human rights is an important issue. Homosexuals have happily had rights in Hungary for a long time. On the other hand, homosexuals do not have one with your friends in Qatar, for example. To the French Members who were present in Budapest, I ask whether they would be able to organise prides in areas of mass immigration in France or at the homes of their friends in Qatar, Nigeria or Algeria. Do you think you would come back healthy and safe, as you came back very healthy from your sunny little weekend in Budapest? Finally, to Mrs Keller, elected member of the Renew Group, I would like to ask whether she is not ashamed to go and give lessons to Mr Orbán, who, while she was mayor of Strasbourg, where we are today, opposed, as the press has pointed out, a Pride March in her own city in January 2002.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I do not share your ideas, but I will fight to ensure that you can always express them. As an elected representative, I am deeply democratic, respectful of everyone's free expression, and here I would like to express my deep emotion at the tragedy that has affected Colombia. To see a candidate being the victim of an assassination attempt almost at close range is extremely shocking and these images remain engraved in our memories. These violent attacks, these attempts at murder, as Donald Trump may have known before his election, or Jair Bolsonaro who had been stabbed, we must not get used to it. They are sometimes the result of a climate of violence, first verbal, then physical, some movements of which are customary. Here, it is the violence of the cordon sanitaire and discrimination. In France, far-left movements that prevent opposing political meetings from taking place in certain regions or attack them, attack law enforcement or ransack businesses during demonstrations, embodying violence. Here I express our most sincere solidarity with Miguel Uribe, senator and presidential candidate of the Republic of Colombia, who was seriously injured in an abject attack that upset an entire country and is currently fighting for his life. Our thoughts are with him, his family and all those in Colombia who still believe in the strength of political commitment to violence. The attack on Mr. Uribe is not an isolated fact, nor are the 64 attacks perpetrated by the FARC over the past two months. I also extend my condolences to the families of Colombians murdered by the FARC. Because yes, this tragedy comes in a particularly worrying context, a brutal rise in insecurity and repeated attacks against police and military and now against political opponents. Last Sunday, thousands of citizens gathered in more than twenty cities during the march of silence to say no to terror, no to intimidation, and to demand a national start. They did so with dignity, with courage, in the name of peace and democracy. Today, Colombia is going through very dark hours. You're not alone. Your struggle is also that of millions of Colombians who refuse to give in to fear. We welcome your commitment and wholeheartedly hope for your recovery.

It is a charade, quite simply, because the only control we have is to ask the states which are the top 100 final beneficiaries. But I don't just want the top 100 final recipients per state, I want all recipients per state and I want it to be public. I want us to see all this; Today they're hiding it from us. And when I ask the Latvian Court of Auditors, for example, where I went, very specific questions about the use of these funds and I am told: "I have no answer to give you, I have no answer to give you," I note and conclude that absolutely nothing is controlled. I don't want this for the future of Europe, I want controlled funds.

Madam President, in 2020, the European Commission decided on large loans of 800 billion called NextGenerationEU, supposedly to revive the economy, we saw the result. Most of these loans went to the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) funds, which your report now claims to have a positive track record. I don't know if it's a deliberate lie, blindness, or a little bit of both; So let me recall the facts, which thwart your crude propaganda. First of all, we deplore the fact that there is no real and proper parliamentary control over these funds of a historic amount of almost 800 billion, which have been improvised with a great lack of professionalism in their structure and financial management – this is extremely serious from our point of view. But this is not surprising, because from the beginning the RRF bypassed the traditional budgetary procedure. Its financing is based on a common debt contracted urgently, without democratic debate, which will weigh on European taxpayers until 2058, amounting to 15 to 20% of the European budget each year, leading you today - because you think about revenue after spending - to consider new own resources, European tax, new tax or increase in contributions from states that we categorically refuse. As for the results, I said, they are generally zero: as of 3 June 2025, only 31 % of milestones have been fulfilled, but EUR 316 billion have already been disbursed without any guarantee on their correct use. The EPPO has already opened 307 fraud investigations, representing €2.8 billion of potential harm. Faced with this reality, our Patriots for Europe Group tabled 80% of the amendments tabled in plenary on this dossier. We invite everyone to pay attention to these public votes on our amendments, because history will judge your behavior. This is about budgetary control and turning a blind eye is not the solution. We call for full transparency on the use of funds.

Mr President, in 2025, more than EUR 100 million is earmarked in the European Parliament for expenditure on cleaning the premises, maintenance and security of the buildings. Worse, these already indecent amounts will increase even sharply in the 2026 budget, according to the negotiations in which I was able to participate. Apart from the structural causes caused by the existence of three European Parliament sites, your decision to develop Liaison Offices and create Europa Experiences in each European capital is at stake. These Europa Experiences centres, which are only used for Parliament's communication, are costly, unnecessary and unfair. Unfair because they are only aimed at urban people. In the digital age, who would take three or five hours by train to go to a capital and be told how the European Parliament works? Are you serious? Costly in rent, energy, security, wages and maintenance. It is useless, because we have gone so far, at a time when our fellow citizens are facing constant budgetary efforts. They deserve better than this irresponsible waste. Close these Europa Experience centres, get inspired by business leaders, streamline, work to bring together all Parliament’s activities in Strasbourg. We will thus avoid spending, as you expect, half a billion euros to renovate a wing of this Parliament in Brussels.

Mr President, I am very shocked by the title of our debate. You therefore believe it is normal to stigmatise and target a Member State, Hungary, which is also on trial of intent. This is disloyal and unacceptable behaviour towards a Member State. This is extremely shocking. What image do you think we are sending back internationally today? The United States and China must laugh. You just don't respect those who don't think like you. You are giving lessons in democracy to Hungary: What right, with what legitimacy? In which country was a regular election cancelled and the winner prevented from running? Is it in Hungary? No, in Romania. We have not seen Mme Wilmès to go and ask questions about this in this country; She doesn't mind. In which country does a candidate for the presidential election, given at the top of the polls and winner, see her pronounced a sentence almost never applied, ineligibility with provisional execution? Is it in Hungary? No, it's in France, it doesn't bother anyone there either. Because Mr. Orban is a free man, who defends the family, the identity of his people and fights against interference and immigration, because he pushes back some of your decisions and stands up, you want to destroy him. It is his independence that annoys you, it is his insubordination that annoys you. You have no principle, no honor. Stop this charade and shame.

Mr President, as an elected member of the Patriotes for Europe Group, I will refuse tomorrow to vote in favour of the various discharges that are supposed to give discharge on management, in particular the many European agencies and joint undertakings. This choice is not a rejection of these entities as such. We support the action of some agencies – although in our view others should be abolished – but this is a position of responsibility. To grant discharge is to give discharge to a management. However, in the absence of real transparency, we do not have access to all the elements on management and we are not associated with them. It is therefore our duty to anticipate budget scandals and not to cover them with a vote that is either complacent, unconscious or naive. When scandals break out, and there will be, those who voted in favour of these managements will have to answer politically. That won't be our case. The discharges of agencies and joint undertakings are now the subject of a joint resolution. We deplore this, because it makes serious individualized examination impossible. This seriously undermines the transparency and credibility of parliamentary scrutiny. Moreover, the content of resolutions is too often limited to a copy-paste of the findings of the European Court of Auditors, without any real parliamentary work being added. It's not serious. We ask that we return to the system that was in place until last year. Finally, we welcome the Court of Auditors, whose discharge we will vote for, as it remains one of the few truly rigorous and lucid bodies here. Thanks to its in-depth contributions, it reveals major dysfunctions, often concealed by the European Commission and the opacity that prevails here. It is unacceptable for the Commission, like other institutions, to wait for the observations of the Court of Auditors in order to act. Good management of public funds must be proactive and not reactive. The lack of control is structural, profound and worrisome. I will mention in particular the error rates in expenditure, for which it would be necessary to finally impose a harmonised calculation methodology. Our group is honoured to present at this meeting almost 43% of the amendments to all discharge texts. I thank my colleagues Virginie Joron and Tamás Deutsch for their serious work with me.

Mr President, today we are debating the political guidelines for the next multiannual financial framework (MFF) for the years 2028 to 2035. This MFF cannot be reduced to a repetition of the mistakes of the past. What we are seeing today is a Union budget that has become illegible, fragmented by exceptional instruments and weakened by a glaring lack of control. I would mention Next Generation EU, which, although endowed with EUR 800 billion, is out of Parliament's control. This budget model has been severely criticised by the European Court of Auditors for its shortcomings in terms of transparency, management and concrete results. The RRF mechanism is a cruel example of this. Falsely presented as a success, it turned out to be an aberration. Conceived without serious evaluation, exposed to massive risks of fraud and implemented with a parliamentary control reduced to the strict minimum, it illustrates the excesses of a budget built outside the fundamental democratic rules. However, the Commission is now proposing to generalise it. This is unacceptable. Everyone must oppose it here. Your report itself acknowledges this: the current budget is structurally inadequate to meet the major challenges of our time. Let us remember that, if we are in this situation, it is because of the majority of this Parliament. It is time to put the real priorities of European citizens back at the heart of the budget. This is what we will defend with, first of all, support for agriculture, which guarantees our independence, our food sovereignty, but also our public health. Another major priority is to support the competitiveness of our companies. This starts with the suspension of the Green Deal requested by our President Jordan Bardella. ECR and ESN have signed our call to suspend the Green Deal: What is the EPP waiting for? The Green Deal is a dogma that suffocates our businesses, puts our farmers in trouble and increases the cost of living. Another priority is supporting the security of our borders and the fight against mass immigration-invasion that is disrupting lifestyles and creating a conflictual society we don't want. Ask Europeans by referendum on this topic: you will see the result. They want a European Europe. They also want a Europe that reaffirms its Christian roots, while Islamic fundamentalism is gaining ground here because of your migration policies. Our priorities are urgent and deeply rooted in everyday reality. We could also talk about the necessary catching up on artificial intelligence and new technologies. The MFF must also respect the Member States, support their democratic choices, stop blackmailing conditionality. Finally, we will oppose any new own resources in the MFF. Indeed, very many savings should rather be made, not to mention the error rate in expenditure of 5.6%. The current budget is not managed. Instead of wanting to create new own resources that will still be taxes for our fellow citizens, create a European DOOGE instead. We'll be happy to take care of it.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I disagree with what you say, but I will defend your right to say it to the death. No normally constituted person can call freedom of expression into question, because it is through the confrontation of ideas and exchanges that one rises and progresses. The Patriots for Europe Group is arguably the group most committed to freedom of expression. So you are asking us to debate today on "Protecting access to democratic media, such as Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty", which is unfortunately a huge joke, as much as it is a great hypocrisy. First, because you are interfering once again in US decisions, which do not concern us. The United States is sovereign, it does what it wants with its budget, and here it is the United States that finances. We could at best hear your wishes for interference and your great lessons if the European Union and its Member States were all exemplary in this regard. But imagine the United States hearing our big lessons today and seeing, at the same time, that in Europe, in France, two TV channels are being shut down, in particular channel C8, for issues such as freedom of expression. Worse, in Europe, at the moment, we are attacking democracy itself: rigging elections, preventing candidates, including the preferred candidate, from standing in Romania, and cancelling elections without good reason. And yesterday, in France, the courts also decided to prevent Marine Le Pen, the top candidate in the polls with 37%, from running. This has reacted to Elon Musk and many leaders, but it has not reacted here. You even refused to organise a debate. So, before we take an interest in the United States, let’s guarantee freedom of expression and democracy here in Europe!

Mr President, I would first like to express my condolences to France. Yes, after Romania, the rule of law has died in France today, after a judge decided to make ineligible, following a socialist cabal fomented here, the leader of the opposition, credited yesterday with 37% of the votes in the first round of the presidential election. Any Democrat can only be shocked to see that the ineligibility of the only credible opposition candidate declared... (The President interrupted the speaker) ... the French are shocked and have joined our party in large numbers since this decision. Our ideas are rising, and you won't be able to change anything. Let us return to this Parliament. We are the first delegation in all countries. I have a few seconds to talk to you about the guidelines for the 2026 budget. As a force for proposal, the Patriots for Europe Group has made a large number of amendments on this subject, which will be put to the vote this week. What you need to remember from your orientation is sectarian ideological blindness. You are only interested in the climate emergency. Nothing about the economy, security or the migration crisis. While irregular flows are exploding, borders remain sieves, but your guidelines are locked in the comfort of existing instruments, which are notoriously ineffective. You also want to further enlarge the European Union to countries that will not be net contributors. Finally, you want to create new own resources – taxes or levies. We will oppose all these follies.

Mr President, the Commission dares today to launch a debate on consumer protection. Some truths must therefore be recalled. First, without your European energy market, the French could have nuclear, EDF and the cheapest electricity, and be an eldorado for companies in Europe. Instead, you are robbing the French, with Macron's complicity. Secondly, is it not the European Union that, through its agreement with Mercosur, wants to import meat fed on growth hormones and antibiotics? You dare make us believe that there will be controls? I would be curious to go and do some surprise checks myself in Brazil, with independent bodies. By wanting to put this on our plates, what legitimacy do you have to talk about consumer protection? We will continue to stand firmly against it, for our food sovereignty, our public health and our farmers. Isn't it also you who want to ban the acquisition of new cars emitting CO?2 from 2035, damaging the European automotive industry, making a great gift to our competitors and sacrificing our consumers in the name of ideologies? I do not forget the Green Deal or the Pfizer contracts negotiated by SMS. So please stop wasting our time here with cynical debates on consumer protection. Instead, talk about what you know best: opacity, taxes, delusional bans, and uber-constraints. It is you who are the first spoliators of consumers; But the peoples of Europe are waking up.

Mr President, you propose that we discuss the first hundred days of the new European Commission. Having voted against your appointment, we can only be confirmed in our vote by your balance sheet. Indeed, what have you done in 100 days? You have done so little that we have been voting almost nothing here since the beginning of this mandate. Yes, you are in control of the agenda and have absolutely nothing to vote on. Maybe it's because you emptied the crates, because the crates are empty. That is why you imagine introducing new own resources, either by creating a tax, by creating new taxes, or by increasing the participation of Member States, by increasing their contribution on the basis of their gross national income. The Patriots for Europe Group opposes this. Instead, we invite you to spend better, stop the waste and stop irresponsibly distributing our money, as yesterday again with €1.88 billion distributed to Moldova, including €520 million non-refundable – a folly! The money here is badly spent, and Europe is lagging behind in all areas. It allows Islamists, veritable human bombs, to enter unchecked; it deindustrialises; It is plundering our agriculture. It is time for the right-wing elected representatives of this Parliament to stop being the doormats of the left and environmentalists to change course, for more security, more budgetary control and to improve our competitiveness and people’s lives, by simplifying rather than always creating new standards, which make the real economy grow and benefit our competitors.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, in December 2023, the Bureau of the European Parliament decided catiminially to renovate a European Parliament building in Brussels, the SPAAK building, for EUR 455 million to EUR 490 million, from 2025 to 2030, despite Strasbourg being the official seat – EUR 455 million to EUR 490 million! So you want to start this year, when the EU’s financial situation is already catastrophic and very often your building projects lead to scandalous slippages. I would mention the Commission’s Berlaymont project, which cost more than five times the price initially estimated, the Europa project, or those of the Court of Justice and the EMA. What guarantees will avoid a fiasco this time? Where is the detailed breakdown of this budget? Shouldn't an audit by the Court of Auditors on this failure be a prerequisite? While the official seat of our Parliament is here in Strasbourg, your duplicate seats, a logistical aberration, cost €114 million per year. Are they compatible with the objectives of the Green Deal, which you defend? What quantified environmental criteria do you impose to justify this work? Doesn't maintaining two sites, with their incessant movements, ridicule our ecological exemplarity? Instead of spending 455 million, why don't you sell Brussels? Now is the time: this would allow you to redirect these funds to SMEs, agriculture and other topics useful to citizens.

Madam President, while the financial situation of the European Union is worrying and the right and left groups are already preparing us for the creation of new own resources, which will further rackete citizens to be able to repay the crazy loans of NextGenerationEU, i.e. 800 billion subscribed by the Commission, one could have imagined that you would now pay attention to the relevance of the expenditure voted here. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Ninth Proof: Today, we are debating huge financial support for Moldova, revalued at €1.88 billion for the period 2025-2027, of which €520 million is non-repayable. If these choices were made by referendum, European taxpayers would say no to your delusions. Why plunder European citizens through non-repayable grants and loans to a country whose GDP per capita remains at 29% of the EU average? Do you really believe that Moldova will be able to repay the loan component? This is a real waste of European resources. We will oppose it and we will also oppose Moldova’s candidacy for the European Union, as well as enlargement to the Balkans and Ukraine, which would also not be net contributors to the EU budget. In addition to the financial disaster, there would also be an agricultural disaster.

Madam President, at the age of 78, Donald Trump manages in a few days to cheer up the European Commission, but also the leaders of many states, including France. Whatever one thinks of his ideas, one can only note his dynamism, his voluntarism, which contrasts with the immobility surrounding here. Because Donald Trump and his entourage behave like business leaders, action-reaction, in less than a month, there are dozens of decrees that have already been signed and concretely change the lives of Americans and strengthen the competitiveness of the United States. Every dollar spent is analyzed and spending and agreements harmful to the country are simply stopped without taboo and without delay. And here, what are we doing? We are offended, we debate not to say anything. We take pious vows on human rights that never have any impact. We are adding new standards to our fellow citizens. We do not control how European funds are spent, we do not tackle bad spending, we go into debt, and above all we do not question any dogma. But you're serious? Is that the European Parliament? A Parliament of the loose? By proclaiming "America First!Donald Trump defends American interests and, as an American, he is right. What bothers me is not that he is defending American interests, but that the leaders of the European Union have long been unable to defend European interests. Jordan Bardella reached out to all right-wing groups and proposed to end the Green Deal together, which is undermining our growth, competitiveness and penalising our industries, farmers and the purchasing power of our citizens. The ECR and ESN groups kindly welcomed our outstretched hand and we thank them for that. What is the European People's Party doing? Are you no longer on the side of business and the real economy? Would you rather be on the side of the keffieh-wearing left, socialists and punitive ecology? Wake up! Grab our outstretched hand. Ask us about the end of the Green Deal. Be on the side of the people, on the side of history, let's write history and not be like the cows who, on the edge of the tracks, watch trains pass, whether Chinese or American.

Mr President, in this report you are concerned about demography in Europe. Not out of a spirit of identity or a desire to transmit, but only for low commercial reasons. For you, Europe is not carnal, it is a market. Your only concern, it has been understood, is to have a workforce. Then your solution is, as often, only in the short term: it is the use of immigration, forgetting in passing the horrible consequences of mass immigration for our peoples, from whom you never ask their opinion on this reception. The reasons for the demographic crisis are simple, they are socio-economic. Many young European couples want to start a family, but do not do so because they are already unable to make a living from the fruits of their work. They do not live, they survive and they do not want to take the risk of taking in a child in poor conditions, whether it is economic, social or even physical security, because your record is crisis and mistrust in all areas. Try to hear what I am saying, because here I am relaying the despair and distress of these young Europeans, more and more of whom are giving up having children out of spite. You are responsible for the face you leave of Europe. For you, all births are equal. Personally, I prefer European births in Europe. If the face of Europe is to remain European, there is an urgent need to promote birth policies and restore the confidence of our young people, rather than resorting to immigration that no one wants, except big business, to reduce wages.

Mr President, sometimes in this Parliament you would like us to believe that you are fighting for freedoms. So, like earlier with the Sakharov Prize, you bring people here to the public. You make them applaud – and rightly so – for their actions in favour of freedoms around the world, knowing that you would often be unable to do what they do, because it is fear that guides most European policies today. Then you realise that freedom of expression also allows your opponents to express themselves. And then freedom becomes a crime, and you try to regain control over the people. So, right now in Romania, you would like us to believe that TikTok would have ordered voters to go and vote for a candidate. You even support the cancellation of democratic elections for this reason alone. Amazing! As if the citizens were stupid enough to go and vote for TikTok... Do you realize the absolutely delusional infantilization that you and your friends commit? We, the Patriots for Europe, believe in the exercise of everyone’s critical sense. It is up to citizens to receive the information, sort it and choose it. It is not up to you to moderate TikTok today or the press tomorrow. Otherwise, it is called either censorship, dictatorship or sect. And we don't want to have a guru.

Madam President, during COVID-19, Europe was the laughing stock of the world because it did not have masks and had to import them. Do you remember that? This obviously did not serve as a lesson for you, because, with the EU-Mercosur agreement, it is our sovereignty and our food independence that you will destroy. When you have ransacked French agriculture – one of our wealth, strengths, specificities and national carnal prides – how will you do in the event of a food crisis? Will you do as with the masks? Will you import? You'll sign multi-billion-dollar SMS contracts, too? And what will you import? Animals fed growth hormones, stuffed with antibiotics? Have you forgotten about public health in all this? What lobbies, what interests are you defending here? You pretend to be ecologists everywhere. Is it not the first ecology to produce and consume locally, where possible? So why do you want to impose the opposite on us by importing products that are vectors of unfair competition, which do not meet our health quality standards or our environmental standards? What will become of our landscapes, our peasants? What are they to you? Do you rejoice to see them commit suicide one by one? We have asked for a real debate on Mercosur to be held here this week. The groups of traitors from the right, center and socialists refused. Know that, if Mr. Macron and his allies do not defend the interests of France, we, at the Rassemblement national, are and will always remain on the side of farmers. The people of France have not said their last word.

Madam President, this debate on the right to drinking water in Europe is an important opportunity to tell you, as my colleagues Tolassy and Rougé have done, my disgust and shame. At a time when this Parliament and national parliaments are spending billions for the entire Earth, whether it is the Emergency Trust Fund for Africa – whose slippages and anomalies the European Court of Auditors has pointed out – billions from the Ukraine Facility – which you are throwing up in the air indefinitely without seeking any peaceful solution to this war – or billions for the countries you want to see enter the European Union – and which would, once entered, only be burdens, not being net contributors to the EU budget – our own citizens, at the same time, do not yet have access to drinking water in 2024. I am talking about our fellow citizens in the French overseas territories, who look at us and rightly feel that they are considered as sub-citizens. Yes, access to drinking water should be a right for every European. The government of a major power such as France should make this a priority. It is just a matter of human dignity. Where are human rights here? Doesn't that shock you? On this subject, I would like to refer here to a second scandal. You talk about ecology all day long while paying billions to trash our landscapes – including the wind lobby – while you murder nuclear power and promote the European electricity market – which is ruining our purchasing power – at the same time, according to the French Biodiversity Office, 1 billion cubic metres of water is wasted every year in France. This is only because there is no strategic management of water resources and the State leaves the local authorities managing them powerless, because their only solution to invest would be to increase taxes on water – which they obviously do not do, because their fellow citizens already have lamentable purchasing power. When it comes to the right to drinking water, citizens want a strategy, but above all actions, not sterile debates. When will drinking water reach the French overseas every day?

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, I would first like to express my friendship, solidarity and condolences to the Spanish people. I was mayor for ten years of a commune in the south of France in a flood zone and regularly flooded. So I was deeply moved by what I saw in Spain, which was terrible. And I saw an emotion, a natural solidarity for all the Spaniards who found themselves trapped and imprisoned. Real scenes of horror for the Spanish people, aggravated by the authorities who were slow to react. This shows that action against natural disasters must first be preventive. There is a lot of talk about European integration. I believe that natural disasters and flood risk prevention are indeed an area where we must be present and united and where we must anticipate – to govern is to foresee – upstream of infrastructure and not just repair the damage after the fact. In my department of Gard, the floods in 2003 cost 700 million euros, so I know the subject well. Infrastructure spending is therefore essential to avoid these sufferings, deaths and repair costs that come too late and do not solve the fundamental and infrastructural problems for the future. Unfortunately, in France, the authorities are also failing. The government currently plans to return to the security of the Petit-Rhône, works yet planned and financed by the Rhône plan. I warn here that a disaster will soon occur under our mandate if the French State does not respect its word on the security of Petit-Rhône in the Gard and Bouches-du-Rhône. I would like the government to pull itself together and hear from all the local elected representatives of all the political parties that are mobilizing on this subject.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the 2023 annual report of the European Court of Auditors blatantly exposes the serious malfunctioning of the Commission in the management of European funds. The level of error in budgetary expenditure reached an impressive 5,6 %. This error rate, which even amounts to 9.3% in some sectors, shows a complete lack of rigour on the part of the Commission. This waste of resources is simply unacceptable, especially when the Court's recommendations are deliberately ignored. As regards the Recovery and Resilience Facility, the picture is equally overwhelming. The management of the $141.6 billion allocated for this facility lacks traceability, and errors in payments are ubiquitous. The Commission does not take any effective measures to ensure that these funds are used in accordance with the rules, yet it continues to distribute them. This is a real scandal, a shameless waste of European taxpayers’ money. Finally, the Court rightly points to the explosion in the Union’s borrowing debt, which reached EUR 458.5 billion at the end of 2023. How can the Commission justify the accumulation of such liabilities when the current control mechanisms are flawed and the management of funds is ineffective? It is clear that the architecture of EU funding needs to be completely rethought before further jeopardising future multiannual financial frameworks. Is the Commission aware that many Europeans are close to the euro and are looking at all this with disgust and revolt? Mr President of the European Court of Auditors, while thanking you for your work, I ask you: Isn’t it frustrating to see irresponsible people managing public money?