Speeches

Mr President! For decades, the EU has acted as Iran's useful idiots. For decades, we have watched as Iran has come closer to developing nuclear weapons day by day. For decades, Iran has been allowed to dictate an Islamist movement without putting its foot down. In this house, it took years before one would even recognize that Hamas is a terrorist organization. Even today, it can be debated in the European Union whether the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, with all its weaponry from Syria to Yemen, to Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine, is a terrorist movement. Imagine that here in the European Union there is a so-called High Representative for Foreign Affairs. A man who believes himself to be the EU's foreign minister, who cares more about criticizing the only democratic country in the region, Israel, than he cares about limiting the influence of Islamic Iran. Iran is not just in the Middle East. We have examples in France, in Denmark, in lots of European countries that Iran has tried to hit us with terror. Sometimes it has even succeeded. We know that Iran works here on the continent through movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood and Hizb ut-Tahrir by spreading the disease of Islamism in Europe. And yet we do nothing. We are useful idiots of Islamism.

Madam President! The idiocy of the EU strikes again. Once again, here in Europe, we manage to make legislation that is so bureaucratic, so cumbersome, so impossible that we scare European growth, European jobs out of the continent. There's a reason Tesla isn't in Europe. There's a reason Facebook isn't in Europe. There is a reason why there are no major IA or chip manufacturers located in Europe, and the reason is you. The reason is too much bureaucracy and too much bad regulation. Especially when we look at the pharmaceutical sector, at the pharmaceutical sector, there is reason to defend what we have in Europe. But one of Europe's largest companies, Danish Novo Nordisk, has now announced that it will move a large part of its future development from Denmark to the US precisely because of poor European legislation, poor European patent protection and too much difficulty in getting its investments back after a long development period. Can we be familiar with that? No, no, no. Will it cost prosperity? Yes, yes. Unfortunately, however, this is the consequence of leaving the responsibility to the Commission and to the European Parliament.

Madam President! Now we are seeing the consequences of the hopeless migration policy to Europe. Because no one has wanted to take responsibility, and that is why the answer here from the House, from the Commission and from the Council has been: Let's try to outsource it. Let us make agreements with Islamic despots in North Africa, in Turkey, and let us let them hold back migration flows. It may sound enthralling. It may sound tempting that you do not have to deal with your problems yourself, but the truth is that you have made yourself completely vulnerable to blackmail, that more wants more, and that these are often regimes such as Tunisia, where you cannot talk about stable cooperative relations. We in Europe have to take responsibility for our own fate, and it is not that you can just negotiate with a dictator in the Middle East or in North Africa and believe they will solve our migration challenge for us if they get a bag of money in their back pocket.

Madam President! The money keeps pouring out of the EU's coffers. Every time you fail to make progress in southern Europe, in eastern Europe, the answer is the same: Send more money! This time it is the EU's so-called cohesion funds that are at stake. But the prospect is that it will get much, much worse. 8-10 new countries are being invited into the EU, and when you look at the Council's calculations, this will lead to an extra bill in the form of money for agricultural subsidies, cohesion funds of DKK 35 billion in Denmark alone. It is insane that this House should continue to demand and demand and demand money without taking responsibility for creating the growth needed to underpin Europe's future. Therefore, one must say that the cash box must be closed in! No more money should be spent on cohesion policy, on agricultural subsidies. We need to put an end to these crazy programmes, which only mean that the Member States do not take responsibility for economic development.

Madam President! The EU's money is not in control. For the 29th year in a row, the European Court of Auditors, our own auditors, have chosen to tell us that the EU budget could not be approved. The latest report shows that 4.2% of the funds simply cannot be accounted for. It is therefore a problem, indeed scandalous, that, year after year in this House, budgetary procedures are adopted without taking into account the fact that the budget has never been approved in the first place. It is time for us to take the spoon in the other hand, to take it seriously that these are taxpayer-funded funds, and to make sure that we have the commitment that we have first and foremost, namely that our accounts can be approved. It should be a simple logic that this is the first task that a Parliament has to carry out. Unfortunately, we have once again adopted a report which does not ensure that we have the budget approved by the Court of Auditors for the 30th or 31st year.

Mr President! Every day, hour, minute, millions of animals in the EU suffer and they suffer because the EU allows it. We have just heard from the Commission that it is defending its inactivity by the fact that there are different rules in the Member States. Perhaps the Commission should concentrate a little more on raising the disastrously low level of animal welfare protection, rather than shooting at those Member States that are actually trying to address the problem and taking the lead. However, it seems that the Commission is more concerned with achieving total harmonisation in this area than with defending the conditions and rights of animals. And there's plenty to do. We have production animals suffering from totally unacceptable forms of production, which should not be applicable at all in Europe in 2024. We have culturally religious cruelty to animals, such as bullfighting or halal slaughter, against which the Commission has never taken any action whatsoever. And we have a pet industry that seems to be getting further and further out of control of puppy and kitten factories with miserable conditions for these animals that are supposed to be man's best friend, but with that kind of friends, I think they'd rather ask themselves exempt. Then get started. Get out of the chair. We should not wait another five years to see action from the Commission while the animals suffer.

The Danish People's Party's proposal is the one that the Danish Social Democrats have copied. This is the Australian model, and I am glad that we have inspired the social democrats in Denmark. Now, unfortunately, the Social Democrats here in the S&D Group belong to a very, very small minority who want to do something about illegal immigration. But I think there is good reason to praise the Danish Social Democrats, and that is also why my colleagues in the AFD, in the Rassemblement National and elsewhere point to Denmark, where the Danish People's Party has had influence on immigration policy, as a model example of how good it could be in the EU if you gave the right wing influence. So thank you to Niels Fuglsang for demonstrating the importance of this point. I am happy with the cooperation with the Danish Social Democrats, even though you are sometimes a little too soft for my taste.

Madam President! Prime Minister! Illegal immigration is used as a weapon against European borders. We have seen it in Finland, where Russia, with their aggression, has pushed illegal migrants against your country. We've seen it in the Mediterranean. We have seen it in Turkey against Greece and Bulgaria, and this is something we need to take seriously from Europe. Because, of course, we cannot rely on our neighbours always having the best intentions in mind when they use such instruments against us. It is therefore necessary for the European Union to take matters into its own hands and address the challenge of illegal migration once and for all here on our continent, and not to assume that we always have friendly neighbours. Because history shows – like the situation in Russia, in Turkey and elsewhere – that we cannot rely on it. Let us therefore take it seriously now, and let us do something about it, both in Finland and in the rest of the European Union. (The speaker agreed to answer a blue card entry)

Mr President! There is simply too much climate nonsense in the EU, and it must be stopped now. The EU's so-called green transition is characterised by massive bureaucracy, huge taxation and ill-considered bans. Typically, it comes from the best of intentions. You want all the good. Indeed, green has almost been abolished as a pseudo-religion here in the Union. No one is against better consumer rights. But we just have experience that when such things are implemented and dictated from Brussels, it often ends up with no clearer rules for the individual consumer. At least not something we have a greater understanding of, but we end up with a bureaucracy that will only harm the European consumer through expensive products and harm European industry through unbearable bureaucracy. Let's face the truth: The truth is that the EU is lagging behind the global growth train. Germany is in recession. The truth is that we are losing hundreds of thousands of so-called green jobs to Asia, to the United States, where a fundamentally different strategy has been pursued in relation to the green transition. Let us now wake up and acknowledge that we are not helping Europe or Europeans by taxing ourselves to death while jobs disappear. We only help ourselves by being innovative, by creating development here on the continent and not just dismantling and bureaucracy.

Mr. President. This is EU enlargement at speed. It is to allow Turkey, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia and a number of other countries into the Union without them being ready for it in any way. We know the consequences. This is going to be a huge financial burden for taxpayers. For Denmark alone, DKK 36 billion in each EU budget period. This will lead to social dumping. It will lead to welfare tourism, and it will lead to greater crime. But it will also mean something in the matter we are dealing with at the moment. For you are using enlargement to create the United States of Europe. You want to abolish the veto. You want to have control over the tax policies of the Member States. You want to complete the dream of a United States of Europe under cover of wanting to help countries like Ukraine against the Russian aggressor. It is unacceptable, it is disingenuous, and it will be above my body to allow Turkey into the European Union just to satisfy your federal ambitions.

Mr. President! Ukraine is disappointed, Ukrainians are disappointed and they are disappointed in you. I was there a few days ago, and all the promises that have been made about military aid, about a million grenades, they are like evaporated into the sun. We see that little Denmark has given twice as much in military aid as France as Spain as Italy put together. If we really want the Ukrainians to have the chance of victory over Russia, then we have to be serious about letting the fine toasts here in Brussels be followed by actual action, by grenades, by military equipment, by the things you need if you are to win a war and not just empty words and promises from Brussels.

Mr President! I think today, most people can see what a tyrannical regime Vladimir Putin's Russia is. Unfortunately, it is a realization that has come too late for many in this house. I still remember debates in the European Parliament defending Macron's right to sell aircraft carriers to Putin. Debates defending Germany's economic interests in Russian gas and pressured Denmark, among other things, to accept the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which has made us even more dependent on the despotic regime in Russia. So all we have to say is that when we talk about the political prisoners in the Russian system today, we in Europe have a shared responsibility! Co-responsibility for our naivety, for our inactivity and for our excessive belief that as long as we deal with despots like Putin or China, everything will be fine. The truth is that resistance must be given from day one.

Mr President! Today, you are ashamed of being Danish, of having a government and a prime minister who try to silence and confuse the Danes when it comes to the real intentions behind the EU's defence policy. But here you are liberatingly honest. It is openly said here that this is about the creation of a real European army. That it is about an attack on countries' veto rights in foreign and defence policy. That it is about creating a real EU foreign policy. All of this is misguided nonsense. It will only create more disagreement, more instability in Europe, on the continent. But at least you're honest that that's the ambition. In Denmark, we are having a bogus debate, trying to distinguish between what is the ambition here, namely that the European Union should become a real superstate, a United States of Europe with its own foreign policy, with its own security policy, with its own defence, while claiming that it still pays tribute to the ideal of the nation state in my home country. So at least I can thank you for being honest, even though the policy is consistently miserable.

Mr President! How dare you not be embarrassed just a little! To sit here and teach the whole world about democracy and human rights, while at no time dare to look inward. Towards an EU that bit by bit eats up national democracy, national self-determination, with a Commission that no European has voted for, that conspires with you to take fundamental rights – not to Europeans – but from Europeans. When you talk to international tech giants about restricting Europeans' freedom of expression, about banning speech you don't like, you're not much better than the autocracies you condemn here today. When one openly talks about wanting to ban parties that stand up to one in five votes in the Member States, then one is out of sync with reality. And when we fight every day, every hour, every minute to keep out the voices – outside parliamentary influence – with which you disagree, you cannot talk about a true democracy. Then you can only talk about a bunch of frightened bureaucrats in Brussels who dare not face the verdict of the people. But I can reassure you that when Election Day comes on June 9, voters will probably do it for you and correct your lack of understanding of what democracy and what human rights really are.

After all, thousands of millions do not live in Palestine, Margrethe. But the evidence against UNRWA is neither new nor isolated. We have individuals who have participated in terrorist attacks. We have terror tunnels under UNRWA headquarters and we have a long tradition of inciting hatred, violence and Islamism, including in school books. It is not an organization that I think is worthy of the UN. Even though the United Nations is now a criminal assembly, where dictatorial states vote down the Western democratic world order. It is not something I like, but UNRWA is, after all, something worse than what we see from the UN General Assembly in New York.

Mr President! Your tax dollars should not be used to finance Islamic terrorism. It should be that simple. Unfortunately, it is not that simple here in the EU. In 2023 alone, UNRWA, the UN-funded refugee organisation in Palestine, received more than 600 million tax dollars. An organisation we know today had employees who not only paid tribute to Hamas' terrorist attacks on Israel, but even participated in it. In a broader sense, all the support we have given to Palestinian society has only led to more radicalism, more support for terrorist organisations such as Hamas and an opportunity to free up funds to prepare, to plan, to train the terrorist attack we saw on 7 October, and a number of other activities that have only contributed to peace and instability in the region. So it's time to say stop. Stop Danish and European tax dollars going to finance the terror mill that has created fire and fire in the Middle East for more than two human ages. We have to say: Enough is enough! Tax dollars should not be used for this purpose. Therefore, any support that can go in any way to finance terrorism must be stopped and stopped, not just temporarily, but forever. (The speaker agreed to answer a blue card question)

Mr. President! You have a nice rhetoric here that if you are afraid of the state of democracy, then you should look to the right wing. But the truth is someone else. If you want to see who is taking money from the Islamic regime in Qatar, you need to look at the Social Democrats and Socialists. If you look at who is helping Russian intelligence, you have to look at the Green Group. So your perception of reality must actually crumble when you are confronted with reality. But of course denial lives here in the House and with denial lives your fight against freedom of speech. Freedom of expression, which is the very foundation of democracy, suffers from the delusion that voters must be protected from certain expressions, that certain attitudes are dangerous. You want to use exactly the same methods as the despots. You want to push the big social media, Facebook, X and so on, to limit views. Being a Eurosceptic is simply misinformation. It is misinformation to be critical of mass immigration. This is the policy you are pursuing. You do not want a democratic debate because you are afraid of it. You'll hit it with a ban. You want to hit it with obligations to limit certain political positions, and so you put yourself in the same box as Putin, like China, like the despots in the Middle East. If one does not believe that democracy is strong enough for opinions to be broken, then it disappears. And if you're so afraid of losing the debate, you don't belong in politics. That's the doctrine here: You are anti-democrats when you fight freedom of speech.

Mr President! Look it in the eyes. Your climate fuss has gone overboard. On the streets from Paris to Berlin, from Rome to Warsaw, farmers, workers and pensioners protest against the grotesque climate policy being pursued in this House, in the Commission and in the Council. A costly policy which means that large sections of the European middle class today have lost all hope that their economic future looks better to their children than the one they have experienced themselves. In this House we have a large majority against the left, which wants to completely ban nuclear power in the European energy mix. Two steps back towards greater dependence on Putin's gas and oil. This is what has been done in Germany. And what has been the consequence? It wasn't green. It hasn't been cheap. It would have been stupid and expensive. And in the same way, we see time and time again in this house that you think you should sit and choose what kind of small technology your lobbyists have just given you money for you to promote, instead of making a market-based green transition. Instead of making a green transition, we in Europe are developing the technologies to make the world green, and not just taxing our industry and our business out of the continent. Will you not be happy until the day we are left impoverished and poor, while a coal-fired power plant is still being built a week in China? Yes, you believe it when you hear the speeches in this House.

Mr. President! The mixing of economic aid for Ukraine’s war effort and Ukrainian membership of the EU is deeply damaging. The truth is that we do not want to discuss the consequences of Ukrainian EU membership, but I do not want to participate in the silence and denial. If Ukraine joins the EU, it will mean more Eastern crime, more social dumping, more welfare tourism. For Denmark alone, the economic cost will be 26 billion in each budget period, which corresponds to 5-6 of the so-called super hospitals. And therefore, dear friends, Ukrainian membership of the European Union is a cultural and economic disaster for our cooperation. If we want to help the Ukrainians, it must be with weapons help now and here! Arms aid, which Denmark has provided to a far greater extent than most of the Member States represented in this House, and arms aid, which suffers a decisive demographic breakdown when it is confused with Ukrainian membership of the Union.

Madam President! China is our generation's greatest threat to Europe, to freedom, to democracy. It is a terrible dictatorship that, in addition to mistreating its own citizens, also poses a threat to its neighbours. But beyond that, many rogue states from Russia to North Korea and Iran are keeping alive, structurally challenging both our security and our democracy. Yet it is as if we in Europe are sleeping a thorn rose sleep when it comes to the challenges from China. Just as five or six years ago you could see the vast majority of members of this house talking about Russia as a potential ally and trading partner - yes, the Danish Prime Minister even invited President Putin on draft beer in Tivoli - today you see China with too much optimism and too little understanding of the threat it poses. If we really were to have preventive diplomacy, we would have to have a strong, uniform voice against the Chinese dictatorship and the influence they exert in our world.

Mr President! We're under attack. The terrible anti-human ideology, Islamism, has attacked us in the West, in Israel and here in Europe. The truth is that this is not an Israeli problem. We have seen terrorist attacks against Denmark, against Belgium, against Germany, against Sweden - all prompted by Hamas and their allies. We have seen that this cannot be isolated into a geopolitical conflict, but is the struggle of Islamism against freedom. Islamism is a terrible ideology. It hates different thinkers and believers. It hates women. They hate sexual minorities. It contradicts everything that defines Europe. Our love for democracy, our love for freedom. Therefore, the truth is that we only get peace for this ideology the day the Islamists love their own children more than they hate us, and unfortunately that day is not in sight. Therefore, the fight must continue.

Mr President! Taxation of fires and bureaucracy. That is obviously the answer, if you ask this House, the European Parliament, how we solve the challenge of the green transition. But you forget that every time the EU comes up with a new bureaucratic system and wants it rolled out on businesses in all EU countries, there is only one place where the bill can end, and that is with consumers. And you would have thought that you would have learned this after the inflationary crisis in Europe has taken over completely. You have not been able to manage your economy in the same way as other Western countries in the world. The answer is again from here: Let's put more burdens on business. Let us propose new taxes on ordinary European consumers. Consumers, because it is obviously the only way to see when you are European in relation to the green transition. The truth is that you are going so far ahead of the world community that all you are doing is regulating and taxing jobs, prosperity and growth out of Europe to the rest of the world. It is incredible how little thoughtful the green policy is in the EU. If you really want to save the world, if you really believe that green transition is a necessity, then the only way we can really change anything is through innovation, through market forces and through the fact that we stop thinking that we can 'pick the winner' here in the European Parliament. The truth is that things are not going very well.

Mr. President! $26 billion. This is what Denmark alone has contributed to military assistance to Ukraine. In other words, it is three times as much as France, Italy and Spain have supplied together. Dear colleagues, you are a joke. The EU is a joke. The truth is, if it weren't for U.S. military aid, Ukraine would have been out of this war a long, long time ago. The truth is that what you can find out, it's toasts, it's bragging, it's in other words; fine platitudes, great promises you make in this Chamber, but when it comes to action, you become tame. You jump up like a lion and fall down like a lamb. The truth is that if Ukraine is to have any chance in this war, it will not be with your help. Because when you can't even match little Denmark and the 6 million taxpayers who live there, you will never match Russia. Look it in the eye.

Madam President! Here we are again. Once again, more money has been demanded for emergency aid, for humanitarian work. Despite the fact that Danish taxpayers and European taxpayers have paid for generations without seeing an improvement. The worst thing is that a large part of this money must be channelled through so-called NGOs, associations which claim that they have nothing to do with countries, but for the most part get the most of their financial opportunities and their budgets from precisely the nation states, while they often have a radicalized and left-wing ideology that they are trying to squeeze down on the conflicts. We see this at the moment in the conflict in Gaza, where a number of NGOs from Médecins Sans Frontières to International Cooperation and the Red Cross are trying to shove an ideological interpretation of the war down the throats of the very same taxpayers who are forced to fund their work. Whether you agree with them or not. If you want to be an NGO, say no to the state's money, try to fundraise them yourself, and see how many people agree with your messages.

Madam President! When we look at this legal cooperation, it is regrettable that it is so hassle-free to get third-party countries in. With our opt-out, Denmark has a special status as a third country, and sometimes in the EU it seems as if people would rather be kept out instead of fighting organised crime together. To fight what happens when international gangs, international criminal organizations, the mafia try to destroy, corrupt our countries. That is why we would just like to call on the European Parliament, the Commission and the Council to make these programmes much more open, not only to European countries, but also to police authorities in other countries. We must recognise that, unfortunately, crime has become an international phenomenon. But it doesn't stop at the national border. Nor does it stop at an EU border. It only stops if there is cooperation between well-functioning countries, and that is what we are asking for.