Speeches

Madam President, I would like to thank you for your speech. I think that at the moment Europe needs vision, but it also needs security and stability until it can emerge from the various crises it is in. Crises, as you said, have always been our strongest allies, because they make us evolve, they also give us the painful signal of where we are wrong and what we need to change. This is how I think we have created many of our institutions that today make our Union stronger. But I wonder if Europe has learned the lesson from the 2015 refugee crisis? Have we forgotten what it did to our Union? Have we forgotten the fears she instilled in our societies? Have we forgotten that this was the crisis that gave the engine fuel to the extreme populists? As if after the reduced pressure on our borders we forgot all this. After what happened in Afghanistan, our unlearned lessons could prove a huge failure for Europe. At our threshold this time are people who are even more alien to our culture, but have an even greater need for protection. So I wonder what we've changed so that we can better assess which we can accept and which we can't. Our borders could soon be at great risk. But what have we changed about their security? Have we made Frontex a real border guard? I think that countries like Bulgaria, Greece, Malta will again have to take over the main flow of asylum seekers. Have we therefore changed the Dublin Regulation in order to share the burden equally? Do we want to turn countries like Bulgaria, Greece, Cyprus back into Europe's open wounds? Do we have a plan? I think that Europe would certainly look frivolous if it did not learn from its own experience, and I hope that we can all work together in the different institutions in this direction.