What Dirk spoke about.

6 Oct

2026

EN Speech

Affordable Housing Act (debate)

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Mr President, Commissioner, I'm happy that I was after your first clarification because we can go a bit deeper now – because I think everyone does agree: we are in a massive housing crisis. Now, what I don't want to do, Mr Commissioner, is to create an alibi for failing national governments on housing policies. I fear that if we take this road that you are proposing now, this is very much a possib…

14 Sep

2026

EN Speech

Establishing the Union Customs Code and the European Union Customs Authority (debate)

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Madam President, I said I was going to use this to thank my colleagues, which is what I will do. My gratitude, of course, to Commissioner Šefčovič, Charlotte, Sofia and the team, the Danish and Cypriot presidencies, DG TAXUD and the many customs experts who helped make this very important and urgent reform possible. Also to President Metsola, because we created a new procedure to appoint an author…

14 Sep

2026

EN Speech

Establishing the Union Customs Code and the European Union Customs Authority (debate)

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Madam President, during the COVID-19 lockdowns, Europeans massively turned to the internet and started buying online. Since then, e-commerce has been supercharged. And if you go to the big hubs in Schiphol or Liège or Charles de Gaulle, you will see piles of thousands of individual packages – but also speed and efficiency, because Europe has the biggest but also the easiest market in the world to …

16 Jun

2026

NL Question

Achieving digital sovereignty and resilience for Europe, in light of recent developments affecting access to advanced AI technologies (debate)

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19 May

2026

EN Answer

EU cybersecurity and preparedness in view of advanced AI systems (debate)

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Well, if anything, AI is confronting us with human imperfection – with how absolutely wrong we have been for centuries. So, who tells us that the next Nobel Prize for medicine will not go to an AI model? And maybe even the next peace prize. That is, I think, the crucial task we have as legislators, but we also need to be clear: we will not simply take up this challenge by updating an AI Act or by …

19 May

2026

EN Speech

EU cybersecurity and preparedness in view of advanced AI systems (debate)

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Madam President, Madam Commissioner, I think everyone agrees here that AI's transformation and disruption potential is absolutely total. It is changing the way we wage war, and it will be decisive on how we actually live in peace in the coming, let's say, 50 years. The Commission, therefore, has this generational task to lay the foundations of what is our European life, but in this digital world o…

28 Apr

2026

EN Speech

Enforcement of the Digital Markets Act (debate)

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Madam President, well, in the EPP, we are very happy that Mr Šefčovič is travelling also to the US to protect our economy from the very negative consequences of trade chaos. And we're also very happy that Commissioner Ribera is here today to speak about the DMA. I would like to introduce a company to you, a Chinese company, and I will say now: they will be a gatekeeper – but over a couple of years…

27 Apr

2026

EN Speech

Control of the financial activities of the European Investment Bank Group – annual report 2024 (debate)

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Madam President, let me start by saying that on King's Day, it is quite interesting that the Dutch Vice-President of the EIB is sent to Strasbourg to do this debate, but your presence is very much appreciated. I see you sitting on the side of the Council – maybe that's logical because the Council is actually putting most of the money into your budget. The European budget is actually quite small wh…

10 Mar

2026

EN Answer

Housing crisis in the European Union with the aim of proposing solutions for decent, sustainable and affordable housing (debate)

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Madam President, yes, it's good. I think the vacancies that you have of especially office space in inner cities is an issue. But this is also something that has to be dealt with on a local level. I think the challenge here is every time, and I have the same feeling around short-term rentals that are we trying to create a European solution for a very local problem that is very specific for a city l…

10 Mar

2026

NL Speech

Housing crisis in the European Union with the aim of proposing solutions for decent, sustainable and affordable housing (debate)

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11 Feb

2026

NL Speech

Urgent actions to revive EU competitiveness, deepen the EU Single Market and reduce the cost of living - from the Draghi report to reality (debate)

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Mr Van Lanschot, I think we have enormous expertise in the different regions of Europe. And we can strengthen it. In one part of Europe it is trade, in another part cyber and somewhere else green technology. We should not think that we should all do the same thing in 27 countries. We don't all need everything. What we need, for example, is that our investors, the start-ups and the scale-ups, have …

11 Feb

2026

NL Answer

Urgent actions to revive EU competitiveness, deepen the EU Single Market and reduce the cost of living - from the Draghi report to reality (debate)

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Mr. Van Lanschot, I think I just indicated that. I think that, as long as we stick to the idea that all the good of Europe must be fairly distributed among the 27 Member States, we will not take any steps in the economic field. Because the financial markets in some countries are just not the same as they are in other countries. I would see a much more flexible form of collaboration in front of me.…

11 Feb

2026

EN Answer

Urgent actions to revive EU competitiveness, deepen the EU Single Market and reduce the cost of living - from the Draghi report to reality (debate)

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There was a call for my resignation, Madam President, which is obviously not up to you, first of all. If you ask me, of course bureaucracy is an issue, but the Omnibuses are not the formula to get our growth machine back on. The Omnibuses are vertical corrections, which we need, but the real stuff we need are horizontal integration ideas about the economy and about creating our wealth. So, yes, we…

11 Feb

2026

EN Speech

Urgent actions to revive EU competitiveness, deepen the EU Single Market and reduce the cost of living - from the Draghi report to reality (debate)

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Madam President, the Draghi Report is already two years old, and we are here for I don't know how many debates already on the same report – it might have been the fifth or sixth or seventh. I think the key question is that what we do in this House is very much redistribution of a budget and of things that Member States can get back from Europe. But defence and economy don't work like that. The mon…

9 Feb

2026

NL Speech

European Central Bank – annual report 2025 (debate)

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17 Dec

2025

EN Speech

Implementation of the rule of law conditionality regime (debate)

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Madam President, thank you for your efforts to create a bit of a debate here, because in the meantime we have learned that behind the very patriotic language of defending Mr Orbán lies also the readiness to throw their own businesses – French businesses, Dutch businesses, everyone that is actually trying to do something in the internal market – they are ready to throw them under the bus, because t…

17 Dec

2025

EN Question

Implementation of the rule of law conditionality regime (debate)

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Mr Sanchez, that was a very fast presentation. You said you liked walking around in Budapest. I think many of us do, but ask business people from outside of Hungary – to do business in Hungary, they need envelopes to get contracts, envelopes with money inside. The services are breaking down for normal citizens. The internal market rules are not respected. So I don't really understand, French busin…

16 Dec

2025

NL Speech

Presentation of the European Affordable Housing Plan (debate)

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25 Nov

2025

NL Speech

Protection of minors online (debate)

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Mr President, we live in the midst of the greatest social experiment in modern history and the subjects, those are our children. I'm talking about the influence that algorithms and social media have on their development. Neuroscientists, psychiatrists and developmental psychologists have been ringing the bell for a long time. The mental health of our children is very much under pressure. Many pare…

12 Nov

2025

NL Speech

Protecting EU consumers against the practices of certain e-commerce platforms: the case of child-like sex dolls, weapons and other illegal products and material (debate)

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Mr President, Vice-President of the Commission, Shein is cheating. Child pornography is completely unacceptable, but unfortunately only the tip of the iceberg. Every day our market is flooded with illegal and downright dangerous products, toxic vapes, make-up and jewelry or combustible batteries and electronics. Consumer associations have recently concluded that 70% of Shein and Temu's products do…

22 Oct

2025

NL Speech

Allegations of espionage by the Hungarian government within the EU institutions (debate)

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Mr President, if Hungary wanted to join the European Union today, it would not be possible. As Orban builds palaces, hospitals, schools and public facilities for ordinary Hungarians are getting worse by the day. That is the dubious honor of the thoroughly corrupt governments of Viktor Orbán. Just when we thought it couldn't get any worse, it turns out that the Hungarian government has deployed a n…

22 Oct

2025

EN Speech

Allegations of espionage by the Hungarian government within the EU institutions (debate)

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Madam President, the colleague just called us all 'traitors'. Yes. And under certain laws, traitors are dealt with in a certain way.

7 Oct

2025

NL Answer

Time to complete a fully integrated Single Market: Europe’s key to growth and future prosperity (debate)

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Mr van den Berg, I find it very special that you attribute to me the power and the strength to be the brake to stopping this entire continent. When it comes to economic integration, there is no brake, not even in the NSC election programme. We go through with it, too, and certainly, when it comes to protecting the livelihood of Dutch people on the Dutch market, of Europeans on the European market.…

7 Oct

2025

EN Speech

Time to complete a fully integrated Single Market: Europe’s key to growth and future prosperity (debate)

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Madam President, what are we talking about? Completing the Single Market as if we are almost finished. It's like saying we have a Customs Union, but in fact we only have an external tariff and the rest is all national. Colleagues, words matter and we should stop fooling ourselves. And I think many others have also mentioned the same point. On the Customs Union, it means giving customs officials th…

11 Sep

2025

EN Speech

Implementation and streamlining of EU internal market rules to strengthen the single market (debate)

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Madam President, colleagues, the internal market is a key driver of financing all around Europe. If we do not have a well-functioning internal market, we can forget about financing, demographic change, energy transition and everything that has to do with defence and also defending Ukraine. It is as simple as that. How difficult it is to defend the internal market we will prove today at 12 o'clock …