Debate contributions by Gerolf ANNEMANS

(NL) Mr President, what this Commission is proposing to the Council and to this Parliament, and what this Commission is imposing on a European population that, exhausted, is increasingly turning away from it, without taking that signal into account, is more European Union, more powers and more money in a multi-annual budget that takes on hallucinatory proportions. To this end, we are increasingly interfering with our social and industrial policies, with the digital and economic freedom of citizens, with their right to property, with more and more centralised control over our citizens by a European Commission that, on top of that, is militarising more and more in order to be able to drag us into an increasingly hopeless conflict. This Commission also always wants more migration and even abuses the Erasmus project for this purpose. What the European population is asking for is less: less European Union and less of everything that this Commission wants more of. This continent wants less Ursula and, more specifically, preferably no more Ursula at all.

Mr President, there can be no doubt about it: Beyond the protected bubble of this European Parliament and beyond the elite club of people interested in its political survival, von der Leyen would have long been evicted. Its Commission is the great conglomerate of self-interest and the trade deal With Trump is undoubtedly an icing on the cake of incompetence that has been baked by her over the past five years. Leaving our international trade policy to a multilateral institution like the EU has not brought us any benefits. It does not take into account the different interests. The stability given as a reason for the unheard-of concessions is a fallacy. Trump has, as it should be, thought of his country's self-interests. Not von der Leyen. That's the problem, Europe's problem.

Mr President! Could George Orwell's Big Brother have been a Big Sister? We now know the answer: Yes, of course! Emily O’Reilly, the former Ombudsman of the European Union, described the phenomenon. A supreme, unelected and untransparent corporate culture at the top of the European Commission is making opacity worse and worse. I was always, she says, at my inconvenience with the ‘mighty consiglieri’ from the cabinet of the President of the Commission (a word used to describe mafia advisers). Everything comes from above, top down. Information is withheld by order from above. This is the culture: That withholding and the reluctance to hand over information is, I still quote, disturbing. So we know that there is a Big Sister, surrounded by ‘powerful consiglieri’, at the head of a Europe that has long ceased to be a cooperation, but an empire, a Big Sister empire modelled on Orwell. Today we add yet another horrific chapter: Regulation 1083. The creation of a so-called European Council for Media Services. The centralization of power over the media is Orwell copy paste. This will 100% certainly be the future Ministry of Truth. With unclear definitions and powers aimed at neutralising the opposition. At the top is really a sublime version of the typical Orwellian lie. The aim of the regulation is, I quote, the protection of media freedom and pluralism. I conclude that this European Union is becoming a totalitarian regime. May our grandchildren forgive us for letting it get so out of hand.

Mr President, where at this moment a rain of ballistic missiles seems to be the reality of the day, the fate of one man may seem futile. But the fate of Djalali is well known. He has been innocently sentenced to death and has now been imprisoned for more than nine years, in an increasingly worrying medical condition. His fate can go two ways. A regime on the knees can be fierce. The weakest are the first victims: the civilian population, but also the people in the hands of the regime, dissidents, political prisoners and hostages. For example, the day before yesterday in the confusion, ten prisoners were shot. It can also go in a different direction. The Iranian regime has different intentions than holding one person. If nuclear and other deals are concluded, when the weapon clashes, the international community must not lose sight of the fate of these and other Western hostages. So here and now my call: It's time to let Djalali go home.

Mr President, are we not going to be holding debates here every month and wailing for hours about every action now being taken in the United States to start the new era? We should put our energy into accepting this new time. For the times of multilateralism, the times of the moral superiority of international organisations and the times of foreign interference by unlimited subsidies and manipulations from the Soros web are over. Leftist and globalist times are over, and the trampling of national identities and nation states is over. Identity and freedom will once again become the engines of industrial and technological development. The times of the current majority in the European Parliament should be over and make way for the new era quickly. We must prevent the current shaky majority here in this European Parliament from plunging Europe into backwardness and into a migration pact and a Green Deal religion that will only impoverish us.

Mr President, I wish I could somewhat comfort the many panicking left-wing and left-liberal and the many globalist and multilateralist colleagues here in the hemisphere. With Donald Trump taking office in Washington, there will be no end to democracy. On the contrary: It is a celebration, a celebration, of democracy. What is a problem, however, is the reputation of the European Union in today's Washington. In my view, the European Union is rightly regarded among those in power in the United States as a centrally managed planned economy with far too many rules, far too much rigidity, too little margin for manoeuvre. dealmaking and negotiating. And on top of all that, a huge compulsive left-wing tendency to restrict freedom of expression. Today's European Union is at odds with the new era that started yesterday on the other side of the Atlantic. A new era in which the multilateralist European Union will be to a large extent a handicap for the high-performing Member States in Europe. We Patriots for Europe want to join this new era. A new patriotic time, which we hope will soon arrive here in Europe, Member State after Member State, election after election, in the coming years. Yesterday is a day of hope.

Mr President, the Group of the European Liberal, Democrat and Reform Party believes that the progress and advancement of new technologies are a danger, because they can be used to – I quote – ‘manipulate and radicalise young people through hate speech and anti-democratic language’ – end of quotation. This Mickey-Mouse language of political correctness sets the tone and immediately rules out serious debate. The regime that is still in power here in the European Union draws an old look woolly here. newspeak open, to demand, on the basis of vague concepts, measures against the free flow of information through the media outlets of modern society. Commissioner Breton, who made a failed attempt to intimidate Elon Musk from Europe when he started interviewing Donald Trump, has already disappeared. With Commissioner Jourová we seem to end up in the fairy tale of the bad wolf or in an episode of Harry Potter. A quasi-religious form of fanaticism it seems, if we hear her speak seriously about Elon Musk as a "promoter of evil with monstrous powers in his hands" And when she says that "she is really scared by digital platforms in bad hands". With such a European Commission, of course, we no longer need communism. There is little point in commemorating yesterday's revolt of the Hungarian people against the Russian tanks in 1956 if we now give freedom into the hands of a European Union that is no better than the Soviet Union in terms of freedom.