Speeches

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, this House has adopted numerous resolutions on Cuba, last July, on the occasion of the two years since the great anti-Castro demonstration of 11 July 2021 and the heavy repression that followed. A river of words of condemnation which, however, has not been followed by any concrete action of our diplomacy, let alone by Vice-President Borrell. Indeed, the weak and embarrassed position of our High Representative, concerned - as always - not to annoy the left side of this House, which still exchanges a brutal dictatorship for the exotic revolutionary dream of their youth, allows the communist regime to continue with arbitrary arrests, torture, repression of dissent in Cuba and abroad. Meanwhile, the Castro and Bolivarian virus, in favor of Russia and China, continues to successfully infiltrate other Latin American countries. But the June elections are approaching and in those days European citizens will finally have the opportunity to choose a new Europe, capable of defending freedom and democracy with their heads held high and without hesitation.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner, hundreds of Christians were killed by Fulani militants in Plateau State during and immediately after the Christmas massacres and, once again, no arrests. Between April and June 2023 alone, attacks against Christian communities in that region killed more than 340 people and displaced 80 000. A genocide that continues in general indifference, often reduced, even in this House, to conflicts between shepherds and farmers, when instead the religious element is certainly the basis of these terrorist acts, to which are added those never ceased by Boko Haram. The threat of Islamist militias in sub-Saharan Africa has intensified. In some areas other forced exodus of Christian communities is expected. Local institutions remain inactive, while the European Union continues to remain silent and allocate resources, such as the hundreds of millions for Nigeria linked to the Global Gateway. No more European money to countries that do not defend religious freedom.

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, European farmers have been the preferred target of the green Taliban in the Timmermans cabinet. Continuing to reduce production will put our food security at risk, just today that international crises would impose the opposite on us; will affect the competitiveness and profitability of our companies; will force us to increasingly import from third countries that are much less sustainable than we are; penalize our quality products, already threatened by Nutri-Score and counterfeiting; It will pave the way for synthetic food and insect meal. A great favor to the lobby of standardized food and to those who pursue the cancellation of every specificity and every identity, even at the table. Today farmers take to the streets in half of Europe to say enough about this drift. Despite the belated repentances of a certain policy, farmers know perfectly well who attacked them, who betrayed them, who defended them from day one and who will continue to do so from June 10 onwards.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, today in Italy threats to public security come mainly from the extreme left and Islamic radicalism. There is no risk of the return of fascism. Democracy is safe and firmly defended by Giorgia Meloni, who has already repeatedly expressed words of clear condemnation of every totalitarian ideology and of every nostalgia. That of Franco Bigonzetti, Francesco Ciavatta and Stefano Recchioni, killed on January 7, 1978 in front of a section of the Italian Social Movement in Rome, is the story of many other boys killed having the only fault of doing politics on the right in those terrible years. The action was claimed by an armed communist group but the perpetrators were never found, as were the murderers of Miki Mantakas, Mario Zicchieri, Francesco Cecchin, Paolo di Nella. Victims without justice of a season of hatred in which also young leftists lost their lives, also their victims and collaterals, forgotten by those who prefer to use memory as a political club. Yes, because, however you think, there is an undeniable truth: that commemoration of a few minutes in which – for the avoidance of doubt – our party does not participate, takes place in the same way, every year, for decades, with governments of all colors. Even last year, with the Meloni government already in office, but the elections had just been celebrated and the following ones were still too far away. Today, however, elections are approaching and a desperate and unsubstantiated left finds nothing better than crying out to the evergreen "black danger". Let me give you a prediction, ladies and gentlemen: This time it won't work either.

Madam President, Prime Minister, ladies and gentlemen, Belgium takes over the presidency at a very delicate time at international level. We expect a stronger commitment on immigration: the protection of external borders, the fight against human smugglers, cooperation with third countries and common return policies must be stepped up rapidly. We must abandon the ultra-environmentalist ideology and put competitiveness and industrial policies back at the centre; This is why we need common sense and not ideology in the conclusion of negotiations on very important regulations, such as those on packaging, on emissions from heavy transport and on air quality. I also read that you would like to re-propose the infamous Nutri-Score, a labelling system that discriminates against quality products and the Mediterranean diet, a favor to the multinationals of standardized food and large-scale distribution that we do not need.

Madam President, Commissioners, Mr Sánchez, the history of this six-month presidency has been intertwined from the outset with the fate of your governments; You chose him, who gambled first with the early elections and then, more seriously, with the Spanish Constitution, with the rule of law, with the unity of your nation but also with the European institutions. To satisfy the secessionists and keep his seat, he even tried to have Catalan and Basque recognised as official languages of the European Union, risking creating another disturbing precedent. Unsatisfied, he traded an ambitious reform of the Stability and Growth Pact to overcome past austerity in exchange for the EIB presidency for his trusted minister Nadia Calviño. Not only that, it has also forced its hand on some Green Deal measures, even managing to make them worse, as is happening in these hours with the packaging regulation. In short, a semester with many more shadows than lights. The same shadows that we fear await millions of Spaniards, increasingly concerned about the future of their great nation.

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, it seems that we all agree in this House that we want a more effective European Union in responding to the many challenges we face. But, as often happens here, behind shared motivations, hides the usual old federalist project: strip the Member States of their sovereignty, centralise more and more powers in Brussels, make the Commission and the Court of Justice the vanguard of a progressive agenda to be imposed on rebel governments by means of rules and rulings. A design that wants to make the EU less democratic and more centralist. A superstate in which a few large countries would decide for everyone else, in which the Commission would be appointed on a political basis, preventing smaller or non-politically aligned countries from being represented. A superstate with dozens of new competences to be able to impose rules from Brussels that in individual countries do not have the strength to approve. In the face of this design, I would like to make an appeal to the friends of the EPP: Don't be fooled! None of these sorcerer apprentices want a stronger Europe. They only want weaker nation states and center-right governments with their hands tied. This was not the great dream of the founding fathers, those of the motto "united in diversity", those who engraved the principle of subsidiarity in the Treaties. Let us start from those values and from that project and set aside once and for all the anti-national, and therefore anti-European, utopias of the left.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner, it was an honour to welcome today to the European Parliament Ahmad Massoud, leader of the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan and son of the legendary commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, the 'Lion of Panjshir', who led the struggle of the Afghan people against the Soviet invader and then against Islamic fundamentalism, finding death at the hands of Al Qaeda just two days before 11 September 2001. The Taliban, after the Western withdrawal and the return to power, have not changed. A totalitarian regime that has nullified human rights, women's rights and those of religious minorities, now persecutes former officials of previous governments and rules with terror of Islamic law. In more than twenty years the West, Europe and Italy have paid a tribute of the highest blood to eradicate the sanctuaries of international terrorism and restore a hope of freedom to the Afghan people. That tribute must be honored today, by supporting more strongly the anti-Taliban resistance to contribute to the construction of a finally decentralized and democratic Afghanistan.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, if Europe has so far failed on migration policies, it is precisely because of the responsibility of those who, even today, have lashed out against the supposed security, authoritarian and inhumane policies of the right. Hypocrites, hypocrites because we have seen left-wing or liberal governments in Europe shooting at migrants, rejecting pregnant women and children, proposing to file migrants in Rwanda and reintroducing internal border controls while funding NGOs that transport illegal immigrants to our shores. European citizens are fed up with this false morality. We have few tools, let's use them. We have an agreement with Tunisia to stop this trade and you are boycotting it. We have a ten-point plan of action and pretend it doesn't exist. Insist on failed redistribution policies and the absurd idea of a European Mare Nostrum. And instead, the only way to end this inhumane business and ensure a regulated and compatible immigration is to stop the departures.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, I am quite frankly based on the arguments that I have heard from my colleague, which make me think that the debate that we want to organise in this House is entirely instrumental. I have heard of things that do not exist in Italy, of which no Italian is aware. There has not been a single act, since the beginning of the government led by Giorgia Meloni, that has somehow worsened the situation of homosexuals in Italy. There hasn't been a single law passed by the centre-right government in Italy that could have somehow affected homosexuals. What you are telling is false propaganda, and if you think you are having a debate on the basis of falsehoods and lies like this, you will vote for it yourself, because we do not agree.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, President von der Leyen, we have listened to a sort of electoral manifesto, which is partly acceptable, partly not, partly extremely late. Here are our priorities for the coming months: economic governance needs to be reformed by putting growth and investment at the centre, stopping the ECB's continuous senseless rate hikes, which do not bring down inflation but cause recession. We need an ecological transition based on realism and not on ideological objectives that kill manufacturing and agriculture, handing us hands and feet to China. We need to reduce the proliferation of legislation that kills our companies with constraints and bureaucracy and bring strategic production back to Europe. Finally, the decisions taken yesterday by the French and German governments – by the way, the left of the open doors on this has had nothing to say – make a concrete solution against human trafficking and illegal immigration that makes our cities insecure all the more urgent. From words to deeds.

Madam President, Madam Vice-President, ladies and gentlemen, sustainability and decarbonisation are the mantra that led to the presentation of the package. Also in this session we will vote on a number of measures which are part of it and which all suffer from the same defect of origin: They are asking us to make a very expensive green industrial revolution to contribute a "zero-point" to the reduction of global emissions, while the most polluting countries will get rich, selling us what we need for our transition, made thanks to new coal plants and perhaps thanks to child labor. Transitions, history teaches us, offer opportunities but present the bill: whole industrial sectors that risk jumping, unemployed workers, families in difficulty. And who pays this bill? The companies, the citizens or, at best, the Member States, which are always us, who are not even allowed to separate those compulsory investments from the debt parameters. A centralist approach, sometimes totalitarian, based on questionable impact analyses, on the constant violation of the principle of technological neutrality, on the lack of trust in companies - always the best driver for innovation - on the unbridled race for electricity all at once, which will give us dependence on China just as we laboriously free ourselves from that of Russia. You don't pay to want to bring theautomotive, transport, mechanics, chemistry, pharmaceuticals and many other manufacturing sectors, Commissioner Timmermans and his ultra-environmentalist collective, backed by the green and red lefts, are also trying to strike a blow to the agri-food sector. They've been doing it for a long time, actually. Today they relaunch with the law on nature restoration and try the coup de grace with the directive on industrial emissions, which would in fact equate cattle farms with polluting factories, with disastrous results for the sector, for our own food safety and, ultimately, also for the environment because we would be forced to increase imports from third countries much less sustainable than us. But now the king is naked, and young Greta will not suffice for you here in a few hours. The bill will be presented to you by European citizens in a year's time.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Mr High Representative, we have long denounced the deterioration of human rights and the growing repression of every free voice by the Ortega-Murillo communist regime. The latest news is from a few days ago. The regime, in its criminal crusade against the Catholic Church, blocked the bank accounts of the dioceses. A few days before, nuns who worked in a nursing home for the elderly had been expelled and three other priests arrested. Processions are forbidden, Catholic-inspired schools, universities and radio stations are closed. The Church in Nicaragua is for millions of citizens the only hope of freedom in a country torn by poverty and dictatorship. Europe needs to make itself felt more strongly. We call for sanctions against the Ortega regime to be tightened and for Cuba to be held accountable for the Castro regime's continued support for Ortega and many other dictators in Latin America and around the world.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, Madam Commissioner, some say that perhaps the European Union has gone too far and too soon with regard to the evolution of artificial intelligence that we will still know in the coming months and years. Perhaps yes, but today, in addition to discussing the regulatory detail, it is important to state a principle: any technological evolution, all the more so that it can also have dehumanizing impacts, must be put at the service of man. That is why it is important to have a regulatory instrument that defines that not all infrastructures have the same danger and that fundamental rights, such as intellectual property, privacy and consumer protection, or values such as democracy, freedom of expression, human dignity and security cannot be undermined. It is also essential to balance the demands of innovation and competitiveness of our production system with employment and social resilience. But it is also essential to keep the window open to govern future advances and avoid finding ourselves, in the short term, in the paradoxical condition of having to chase the other global giants that in the meantime will have gone ahead faster than us.

Mr President, Madam Minister, Commissioner, I would like to thank President Weber for having wanted to promote a debate on the emergency situation in Italy, which the left then wanted to dilute in the title, also adding a strong reference to the rescue of lives, with particular regard to Italy. A reference that, allow me, I found hairy. And I want to start from here, thanking the extraordinary work of the Italian Coast Guard, unjustly muddied only a few weeks ago, after the shipwreck off the coast of Calabria. That Coast Guard that every day saves hundreds of lives, which allows us to say that Italy does not accept lessons of humanity from anyone. For months, the Meloni government has been calling for European solutions to the migration phenomenon, greater attention to the protection of external borders, a common policy for the return of irregulars, safe routes for those entitled to asylum and regulation of the activity of NGOs, and calls for increased external action towards the countries of origin and transit of migrants to reduce departures, the only real antidote to deaths at sea. This, with regard to the Central Mediterranean, calls into question Tunisia with its economic crisis and its political instability, on which the international community must intervene soon with adequate financial instruments, and on the other hand calls into question Libya, which in its eastern part is increasingly being used as a platform for new flows, used as a weapon of geopolitical destabilization, as has already happened in recent months, for example by Belarus against Poland. Some steps are being taken in the right direction, I want to acknowledge this to the Commission, but it is not enough and, above all, it is not proceeding fast enough. Those who think that today the solution is a European rescue mission at sea are wrong, this would end up turning into a new one. pull factor, as was already the case with the Mare Nostrum mission launched a few years ago by Italy. A greater presence of the Union at sea is certainly desirable, but it must be aimed at protecting the external borders and combating smugglers, certainly not at encouraging their trafficking. And it is also wrong for those who think of continuing to propose the false opposition between primary and secondary movements, or to propose those more or less compulsory redistribution mechanisms that have never worked so far because no one, not only the countries of Visegrád, loves to welcome illegal migrants into their homes. No mechanism can ever be effective if we do not reduce the numbers leaving and if we do not separate legal migration from illegal migration, the paths protected for those who have the right to asylum from those who leave with the legitimate hope, but unfortunately not always and not for everyone achievable, to be able to find fortune in Europe. This is the line of realism and solidarity that we are asking of Europe. The time has now largely expired.

Mr President, Mr High Representative, Mr Vice-President, there is a line in Beijing to meet President Xi Jinping. After Chancellor Scholz, Prime Minister Sánchez, our Presidents Michel and von der Leyen, after the Saudi, Iranian and even Taliban ministers, in recent days it has been the turn of two idols of the European left: that of the radical left, Brazilian President Lula, who has made it clear where he stands in this new bipolarism between Western democracies and autocracies, and that of the liberal and pro-European left, President Macron. The latter, to regain a bit of consensus at home playing the part of the new De Gaulle, thought well of dividing the West, dividing Europe that today has its eastern flank so exposed to Russian expansionism, abandoning Taiwan just as China becomes more aggressive and finally preaching strategic autonomy, forgetting that it is precisely the crazy ultra-environmentalist policies of the EU that Macron enthusiastically supports to condemn us to an ever greater dependence on communist China. And this is certainly not a coherent strategy.

(IT) Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner, the Italian Ministry of the Interior has ordered the prefectures to instruct the municipalities to stop transcription of the children of homogeneous couples. It did so pursuant to a ruling by the Supreme Court of Cassation, the supreme appellate body of the Italian judicial system, which clarified, once again, that these registers violate Italian national law. Una legge che è in vigore da ben prima che Giorgia Meloni diventasse premier e che la sinistra italiana, nei suoi lunghi anni al governo senza mai vincere un'elezione, non ha mai, mai ritenuto di cambiare, e se ci vuole provare ora è pregata di farlo nel Parlamento italiano e non nel Parlamento europeo. With all due respect to Mayor Sala and his runway today, this is an all-ideological battle. Those who hide behind the alleged rights denied to children hide that the few children affected by this situation assume all, all, all the rights at the time of recognition by a biological parent and there is no discrimination. The problem of transcriptions arises above all because homosexual couples who have had children abroad, almost always resorting to the rented uterus, would like two parents to be registered in the register. If Italy did this, it would legitimize surrogacy, an aberrant practice that commodifies women and children, in the face of denied rights, a practice repeatedly condemned in this Parliament, prohibited by Italian law and which we want to make a universal crime. That is also why, Commissioner, we do not agree with the regulation proposed by the Commission, because this is a matter that falls within the strict competence of the national states and the European treaties on which we are based make this clear. So, for once, do an examination of your conscience and stop this mad drift.

Mr President, Commissioner, Minister, ladies and gentlemen, these days we have witnessed a shameful smear campaign against the Italian Government and against Giorgia Meloni, accused even of having her hands stained with blood and portrayed indifferently, while behind her a person is drowning. How do you sleep at night? asked the leftists. And that is what we are now asking of you, colleagues. You who speculate on the deaths of so many desperate people, including too many children: How do you sleep at night? You who condemn the Italian government and do not spend a word against the smugglers or against the Wagner group that uses immigrants to divide Europe: How do you sleep at night? You who today accuse the Italian right-wing government and yesterday kept silent about the Spanish left-wing government: How do you sleep at night? You who, with your weak policies and your NGOs, have been playing the game of human traffickers for years: How do you sleep at night? You who no longer know the truth but only hate, lies and hypocrisy: How do you sleep at night?

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, for the avoidance of doubt, we all share the objective of energy efficiency in buildings. But this text is yet another example of how the ecological transition should not be conducted. Firstly, because it does not sufficiently take into account the differences and specificities of the different Member States. Particularly significant is the case of Italy, which boasts a unique building heritage for its historical and cultural value. Secondly, because it is a measure that obliges rather than incentivises, charging the cost of burdensome interventions on households and Member States. The consequences for our real estate market are likely to be very heavy: general devaluation of buildings, risks to the banking system, increase in prices for construction works, blockage of seismic interventions, disfigurement of attractive places for tourism. We hope that the time for ideological measures will end and that we can talk about the green transition with a bit of healthy realism.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to thank the rapporteur for his work. Transparency and countering foreign interference in European democracy are our top priority. Unfortunately, however, the text being voted on risks severely restricting freedom of expression on the web. By imposing stringent obligations and heavy penalties on service providers, which are also in partial conflict with the digital services legislation that has just entered into force, there is a risk of widespread censorship by the providers themselves. Similarly, the boundary between political advertising and political communication has become too thin and providing the same rules for what is paid service and what is not will also end up feeding preventive censorship. This is not the case, we believe that on such an important issue a pause for reflection is needed to arrive at a more coherent and more orderly regulation, which defends our democracy from foreign interference and affects true illegal practices, while guaranteeing freedom of expression to the fullest.

Mr President, Madam Minister, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, we have important expectations of the next extraordinary Council which, thanks also to the determination of the Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, will address the issue of immigration. We hope that the many statements of these days, which seem to be going in the right direction, will finally follow the facts. We must get out of the failed logic of the indistinct redistribution of refugees and economic migrants and the false contrast between primary and secondary movements. We need to place the identification centres as close as possible to the countries of departure and transit, launch a new policy towards Africa to prevent irregular flows, thus strengthen the external borders, coordinate an effective return policy, limit the number of migrants arriving at the border. pull factor determined by NGOs, also recalling the flag States to their responsibility, and guaranteeing asylum and true integration to those who really have the right to it. Now is the time for concreteness, let's do it.

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, we have been stressing for a long time how much the European Union should focus on certain policies of strategic interest that can really represent added value for its Member States, for its citizens and how much it should overshadow the bureaucracy and hyper-regulation that have all too often characterised its evolution. This is what finally happened a little over a year ago, albeit with culpable delay, when the Global Gateway initiative was launched, an ambitious project to develop infrastructure and connectivity in the digital, energy and mobility sectors. But it can above all be an initiative that is finally ambitious on the geopolitical level, as it is conceived as a concrete alternative to the Chinese New Silk Road to be offered to third countries in order to remove them from the sphere of influence of Beijing, which has come close to and even within the borders of the European Union. Yet, to cope with such an aggressive penetration plan as the Belt and Road Initiative, which today involves more than 65 nations, more than half of the world's population and three-quarters of energy reserves and one-third of global gross domestic product, we need clarity of purpose, speed of execution, adequate budgets and effective financial levers. This mobilisation of common resources must lead to tangible results, defend our strategic infrastructure, grow our economies, ensure security of supply, promote our interests in the world, ensuring stability in crisis areas and affirming a new mode of cooperation that offers third countries development in exchange for concrete commitments, starting from the prevention of any illegal flow and illegal migration flows.

Madam President, Prime Minister, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the new Swedish centre-right government is called upon to lead the Council at a stage still marked by the dramatic consequences of the war in Ukraine. Together we need to increase our ability to defend ourselves against external threats. We need to find concrete solutions to tackle illegal immigration, starting with the next Extraordinary Council on 9 and 10 February, focusing on the external dimension, safe borders and returns. Faced with US anti-inflation measures, we must support the competitiveness of our companies with innovative tools and not with old recipes that are harmful to the internal market. We need to secure energy and raw material supplies, prioritise domestic production and supplies from friendly countries, and make the green transition more economically and socially sustainable. With concreteness and pragmatism it can be done. Best wishes for a good job.

Mr President, Madam Minister, welcome, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the single market is and remains an achievement to be defended. But now we need to put the real economy and small and medium-sized enterprises back at the centre, not speculative finance and large multinationals. After Brexit, COVID and Ukraine, the need to shorten value chains is becoming increasingly clear; bringing strategic productions back to Europe; protect the quality of our goods; to demand from third countries, starting with China, the same standards as we do; standardise customs procedures; reduce taxes; bureaucracy and hyper-regulation and investing in skills. And in the face of anti-inflation plans like the American one, we must imagine common tools and not responses that benefit only a few, destroying the internal market. Only in this way can it still be an added value and not a bearer of new inequalities and unfair competition.

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, 30 years after the UN declaration, religious minorities are still being persecuted. There are still seven countries in the world where a person can be sentenced to death by criminal blasphemy laws, in clear violation of international law: Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, Brunei, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria. And from Nigeria comes a unique opportunity for the world: Musician Yahaya Sharif-Aminu, found guilty of blasphemy and sentenced to death by hanging in August 2020, appealed to Nigeria's Supreme Court, challenging the constitutionality of the law. We call on President Buhari to break down these Sharia-inspired laws that are contrary to the human rights of religious minorities, international law and Nigeria's commitments to respect its treaties. It would be an important signal on the domestic level, against the Islamist militias that bloody the country, and on the international level, towards all the states that use anti-blasphemy laws to target religious minorities.