Speeches

Mr President, Commissioner Simson, thank you for being here tonight. We asked you to come and have this discussion because the prices of electricity and natural gas in the European Union, in Romania, have reached an unbearable level. I told you and I repeat: it is hard to accept, impossible to accept that there are cumulative electricity and gas bills in Romania that are higher than the minimum wage, that the gas and electricity bill is higher than the average pension in Romania, that we risk transforming a country such as Romania, where now probably more than 50% of households fall into the category of vulnerable consumers. Something is profoundly wrong. It is not permissible to have electricity producers, for example, in Romania, who sell electricity 10 times the cost price. This is not a functioning economy, it is not an energy market. This leads to chain bankruptcies. Tens of thousands of people lose their jobs because no company can operate as energy prices fluctuate within limits that no one can suspect or predict. All of this has led to an unbearable situation. We have asked you to intervene and regulate this market. The [unintelligible] director says that he does not regulate the energy market in the sense of seeing whether there is behaviour of significant or dominant market position. But who, Commissioner? Competitors who are also in charge of potato regulation and clothing regulation? This is an issue that has led to a situation of no exit for many countries in the European Union. I believe that the situation is general, and in Romania the situation has become absolutely impossible. And I asked for one more thing: because of this state-of-the-art situation in Ukraine and the bombings that Russia has undertaken in this country, decouple the joint purchase of gas from the regulation for the gas market so that you can come and we all come with an urgent measure, because otherwise and now, and next winter we will have problems with these huge prices and only in two years will it be predicted that something might happen. No one can resist, Commissioner, and we have promised something: that no one will be forced either in Romania or in the European Union to choose between paying their electricity bill and buying medicines or clothes.

Millions of women in Ukraine did not imagine that they would spend and celebrate as they should have celebrated Women’s Day in 2022 under such tragic conditions. Commissioner Johansson said she had been to Romania to see the Siret border crossing. And he was telling you what he saw there. But I'll tell you one thing I saw: the sadness in the eyes of women, of many tens of thousands of Ukrainian women, those who are with their children, hold them by the hand, carry them in their arms, try to save them by crossing, after days and days of being in the cold, the border with Romania, because that sadness is for their children. Those women don't know what the future of these children will be. Many have lost their fathers killed by bombs or simply because they gave their lives to defend Ukraine. Their houses have been torn down. What is the future of these children? And Mrs. Johansson said of this great concern. I want to give you another rough example: a woman died because after three days of sitting in the cold in Ukraine - and, by the way, from tomorrow it was announced -20 degrees in Ukraine for the next few days - she had to stay at the border between Romania and Hungary for almost another day. He died of exhaustion. This is an injustice that is due to the fact that Romania is not in Schengen, and someone should bear this responsibility, be it moral.

Madam President, we have all seen how an unjustified and unprovoked aggression by the Russian Federation in Ukraine has produced a major humanitarian catastrophe. Today, when I speak to you, thousands and tens of thousands of women, children, elderly people are trying to save themselves, and the border crossings are crowded with these people, these people who have the right to a life, to a civilized life and have the right to survive. Romanians have mobilized: Government, local authorities and thousands and thousands of individual citizens who come to give them what they can: Food, shelter. The situation is tragic. It was Commissioner Johansson yesterday and she saw what an absolutely deplorable condition these people who had to leave their homes had to endure, and I want to give you one example: a woman who was asked at the border crossing what her fortune is. He had a small child in his hand, an unborn child and a small backpack in his back. The husband stayed to defend his country. This is our lesson and that is why we must all fight to give the status of candidate country to Ukraine, to Moldova, because these people deserve respect and deserve our support.

Madam President, Commissioner, I would like to thank you for your presence in this debate. Today we are here because the way in which the lives of millions of Romanian citizens - European citizens - will unfold in the next period depends on what decisions and what measures we will take in these days and next week. At this moment, for millions of Romanian citizens, it has become a matter of choice, of choosing between eating and paying their gas bill, of choosing between buying medicines and paying their electricity bill. All these things, unfortunately, happen because we have all found that we are facing a failure, a failure of an unregulated market policy, in which we have a monopoly in Central and Eastern Europe. Only Gazprom sells gas, Commissioner Simson, and there is no possibility to negotiate this price. Who's going to negotiate? The millions of Romanians who have the minimum wage or the millions of pensioners do not have this possibility. And there's something else bothering us, Commissioner: that no action is taken against those who grossly and blatantly speculate on this whole situation; because when millions of Romanians, millions of Europeans pay huge bills, and some, few, earn huge profits, something is obviously wrong. It is obviously wrong to have a profit five times higher than the production price, whether we are talking about gas or electricity; And all this happens because the measures that need to be taken are not taken, and immediately. Last night, Commissioner, you know there were sub-zero temperatures in Romania. Bills have increased and are expected to double. These people will not be able to pay their bills and need immediate, urgent action. Next week you announced a package of measures. If this package of measures does not include price freezes and effective, concrete measures to stop the speculation that we currently have on the gas market, on the electricity market, the situation will be only a very complicated one for all of us and people risk losing confidence in us, in the European institutions and in democratic institutions.