Speeches

Madam President, Commissioner, colleagues, I have to say I'm still a bit under the impression of the rambling of Donald Trump that I was just listening to from Davos, and it just reminded me once more that every initiative that we take now has to look for resilience – military resilience, democratic resilience and of course also economic resilience. And so I think the Digital Networks Act comes in time to strengthen resilience. The world order has changed and I really think we need to look at this initiative from that perspective as well. In addition, I think it's interesting that your predecessor, who very much cared about this file, is not able to actually enter the United States anymore because he actually tried to create resilience. We are not maybe the biggest fans of Mr Breton, but on this I think we stand united. When I look at the dossier itself, of course we will do our testing and probing of your proposal. There are three elements that are important for us. The first one is the question of connectivity itself, and I think there are still too many white spots on the map, especially at our borders in Europe. And we need to ensure that there is fibre connectivity, and we will test your proposal in this direction. The second one is maybe a minor thing, but we still often use American providers to call across borders, and we need to do the next step in terms of roaming. So we did roaming, it was a huge success. Now can we have a European phone number or something like that to enable phone calls across the continent? The third aspect is innovation. Small companies also, when it comes to networks, can have huge innovative effects and we see that actually there are statistics where we have a more diverse market, there's more innovation and that's what we need.

Madam President, dear Mr Costa, this is the House of European citizens, and the European citizens I talked to are pissed. They're very, very angry. They're angry at Trump for attacking Europe. They're proud of Europe. They like our culture. They like our values. But they're also very, very disappointed with the 27 national leaders. So, the one message that I have from European citizens to your club of 27 national leaders is: do the right thing and abolish yourself. Understand that there is no one with the format and the leadership to bring Europe forward in these difficult times in this new world order. There's one task that you have on Thursday, which is: abolish yourself and make sure we have a united European foreign policy – a United States of Europe – that is able to act and lead in these times.

Madam President, colleagues, there's only one and only one priority at the moment, and that is to establish European independence. Every action we take now, every law we adopt, has to establish this independence: military independence, democratic independence and, yes, economic independence. Commissioner, it is therefore a major failure of your Commission that we do not see a fundamental harmonisation of the single market right now. What we see is little bits and pieces, but we really miss a proposal that makes it super easy for companies to scale across the continent, to hire people across the continent and to sell their goods and services. And of course we are in favour of the EU Inc., but it establishes a 28th Regime, it does not abolish the national regimes that we currently have. One thing I want to echo from the roadshow on the 28th Regime on the EU Inc. that we did over the past months in Helsinki, in Paris, in Berlin and in Amsterdam. And that is that European innovators want a solution fast. They are not thinking about years. They are thinking about weeks. And so maybe we should consider having a fast speedboat regulation that is limited but really delivers now, and then we can discuss labour law, tax law and insolvency law in a bigger package.

Mr President, dear Commissioner or – as it should be – dear Minister of the United States of Europe, please thank your boss for her unwavering support for Ukraine. It's absolutely clear we need to make Russia pay for the mass murdering that they're doing in Ukraine. The fact that Trump does not support this is another sign that the transatlantic relationship is really drowning in the trans-Atlantic. But for Europe and for Ukraine to be able to defend itself in the next wave of Russian aggression and to deal with the next MAGA president, we need to do more fundamental changes. We are still playing chess on a chess board that others put the flamethrower to. We need to make more fundamental changes. Commissioner, it's time to really change the rules. And that means we need to imagine a new European Union – a United States of Europe – where we have a real government that can defend our interests, where we are not just transferring some funds to national ministries of defence, but where we open the Treaties. And it's up to the European Council to take Parliament's position and open the Treaties. You just need 14 countries. You can vote this weekend or tomorrow and make it a reality. We need a new European Union now.

Mr President, colleagues, Commissioner, all we want for Christmas is for Europe to be able to defend itself. I am happy we are making some baby steps towards a common and multiannual procurement, and I am happy that we are improving military mobility. But we are working with the assumption that the world is the world of yesterday. I think the US security strategy, as well as the negotiations for peace in Ukraine, have shown that we lack hard power. We lack real hard power and the responses on the table are not enough – we are currently too weak. We are too weak because we have 27 national defence ministries trying to procure, we are too weak because we have 17 different Leopard tank systems. We are too weak because we do not dare to speak with one voice for this Union's foreign policy. As long as we don't fix these issues, we will not be able to have a real voice that will be heard. Therefore, I really ask you to take the next step. Let's make sure that we unite, let's make sure that we move towards the United States of Europe so that Europe is able to defend itself.

Madam President, colleagues, I think we all like simplification. When life is simple, it's nice. I have to say that the current proposal here – and what we voted on and what we will vote on – is not really a simplification, sadly. I think there's a lot of money coming back and we are using it, and I think that's very good because InvestEU is a great programme. But to change the definition of SMEs and take the ownership criteria out is, for me, not simplification. It just means that companies that previously weren't SMEs can suddenly be classified as SMEs. I don't think that's a great idea. We should have a simple SME definition that is the same across all our legislation, and we shouldn't be changing the definition in every file just because we think it's a good idea. I think now it's done. We all agree with it, we will vote for it. But, I think, for the next MFF, it is really important that we have one SME definition across all files and that we make sure that InvestEU – and its future, which is the European Competitiveness Fund – can actually be used for investing also in innovation. That means maybe we need an SME and a start-up quota also in the European Competitiveness Fund to make sure that the window doesn't just vanish.

Mr President, Executive Vice-President, I have to say, I'm really annoyed because the Data Act is a new law. It came into force only two months ago and you're opening a core provision of what this is about. If we want to make it very simple, what the Data Act was about is that if you own a device, you have access to the data that leaves that device and you can sell it. We clarified this so that there would be a data market, a data economy. Based on these provisions, I've talked to numerous startups and founders who are building the first data marketplaces. Now what you do is you weaken that provision that I as the owner of a device – be it a car or a factory machine, whatever it is – have access to the data that leaves that device. You suddenly say that the manufacturer who produces that device can withhold that data from my own property because you say there's a fear that this data might be shared with third parties, third countries. That is really the opposite of simplification. If you want to make it very simple, you just say: 'my device, my data if it leaves that device'. It was simple. We got there and now you're opening it up. I think it's a huge mistake.

I will later share my opinion on the whole package, but I just have a very clear question: which rule in any of these laws is currently hindering innovation, concretely?

Mr President, Commissioner, I might not look it – or I might look it – but I spent hundreds, if not thousands of hours on the corona funds, the first performance-based instrument that we had. And so, when the title 'architecture and governance' came up, of course, this is when a budget nerd gets super excited and that's why I definitely wanted to talk to you. I think the one thing I learned – and I really love the corona funds, I think it was a great invention, it saved us from a really deep financial crisis, I think – but the one thing that we have to learn from it is that it was not good to keep Parliament out. And now you propose to basically keep Parliament out of two thirds of the EU budget for the next seven years, once the co-regulation is there. With Siegfried and others, we have fought for Parliament's involvement, and I would just make sure that we really have some hard power. And that doesn't mean that we vote on each plan, but that maybe we can vote on it en bloc, that maybe we have a chance to delay the plan approval and also the amendment approval so that we can have some power. In the end, it's in your interest to have the public on your side, to have us as parliamentarians on your side, and to make sure that you are not bullied by single Member States, like Germany under the corona funds, which made a shitty homepage pass as a pension reform.

I'm very, very happy to hear that you really want to put a focus on European interests in the European budget, and my question is, we have currently one third of the funds that goes to cohesion, one third that goes to agriculture and one third to what I call the useful rest. So where would you put the emphasis? How would the percentages go if you could decide?

Madam President, colleagues, we could see it today again: the one sole issue that makes the far right big is migration, and I, therefore, applaud the idea of building a European migration system and to bring order to our situation. The problem is, and I said this already one and two years ago, that the European system needs to be built on relocation. We have a geographic situation where some countries are at our borders and some are not. And what we see today – and I really pity you, Commissioner, for having to deal with this – we see a situation where Italy already says: 'If I don't see solidarity, I will not do asylum applications anymore'. We see a situation where France on the other side says: 'No, we have to go ahead'. So we did not solve the issue. And the reason is not the European Commission, colleagues. It is the Member States that fail to come up with a real European system. There will not be a functioning European asylum system unless it is really European. We will see border controls and we will see no real solution. So let's go ahead and try to fix the system and build a real European system so that it works.

Madam President, Commissioner, Minister, colleagues, I'm very happy that the Chair of the Defence Committee actually reminded us of the fact that Trump is currently using public funds to extend the White House with a ballroom. I think it shows us that we have to maybe use this Defence Committee that we have to also defend ourselves against extravagance. I've been asked by the ECON Committee to step in for a colleague to talk about ECON's priorities. It is very clear that we believe, also in our current situation, that fiscal stability is of primary importance, and therefore it is good that we have a large European budget and we should also consider this for the future, and that, of course, competitiveness is of a core importance. If you actually look at how Canada is reacting to the US trade tariffs at the moment, you can see that they're really trying to strengthen the internal market, and I think that's something we can also get much better at – deepening the internal market in general, and especially with the 28th regime. As a last point, looking forward to the next MFF, I think it's important that we maintain the importance of the annual budgetary procedure and that we ensure the rights of this House as a budgetary authority.

I didn't expect such a formal 'yes'. Dear Mr Chahim, you talked about battery infrastructure and, I was just wondering, it seems that we are ten years behind in our technology when it comes to batteries and previous industrial policy cases, for example with Northvolt, didn't seem to work so well. So what is your idea of how to make Europe competitive when it comes to batteries? Thank you.

Mr President, colleagues, imagine a little boy, Omar, who was born to Palestinian parents in Jordan. When Omar turned 15, he emigrated to the US, where he arrived with a very basic level of English. Now, for some in this room, this triggers an almost instinctive negative reaction. In your minds, Omar doesn't just arrive as Omar, but is a dangerous threat to our primarily white, Christian culture. Just last week, actually, German Chancellor Merz dangerously connected deportations with the idea of improvement of the image of our cities. Omar, it is implied, doesn't belong next to our cathedrals and half-timbered houses. Of course, if you go further to the right, the AfD openly flirts with the idea of remigration – the unconstitutional idea of explicitly kicking 25 % of Germans out of our country. President, in your plans, your work programme, we can sadly see how much of this negative discourse has also made it here on the European level. We don't see a single positive, comprehensive proposal for labour migration. And we really need it – our businesses need it on all skill levels. So, President, we need your loud voice to speak the truth about migration. There is no competitiveness without international talent. Fifteen-year-old immigrant Omar turned into 60-year-old Professor Omar Yaghi, one of the six Nobel Prize laureates from the US this year – half of whom, by the way, were immigrants. Will you, President, finally stand up for the real stories of the millions of immigrants in Europe, and for those who still need to join us every year to make us competitive? Will you ensure that the motto 'United in Diversity' is true for the Philips but also for the Omars in this country, and in this Union?

I have a very, very simple question: Can you explain why the same people who said today that Veggieburger is fake news – that they should be banned as fake news – why exactly the same people say that we cannot control content online?

There seems to be unhappiness about the debate. I just wanted to ask you the same question that I asked Mr Benifei. What do you think about these new AI tools that are basically a mix of image-generating AI and social media, like Vibes – and there are others – where basically your whole feed is generated by AI? There's no more, let's say, actual video content. Do you see that there are increased risks for fake news?

Mr Benifei, you are an expert in AI, and so I wanted to ask you, what do you think about the recent developments of social media that is fully powered by AI, by allowing customers to completely generate, if you want, fake content? What do you think about it? And second, as a trans-Atlanticist – that you are also, I think, a big fan of, how can we react to the current situation that there's anti‑democratic pressure also from the US?

So the access to reach is always a position of power. And it's true, in the past we had the situation where journalistic boards had some power about what goes out there, and there was a separation, at least in Germany, between these boards and their ownership. At least we want to have that separation. In the digital world, the owner of a platform, like Elon Musk, also holds the power key to the boost. He decides what the content is and he can spread it wherever he wants. The idea – that especially far‑right people have, actually – that if we all shout, there's some form of fairness of information, is not true. The one who defines the rules defines what the reach is.

Mr President, colleagues, if I wanted to go viral today, it would be very easy. I would just fabricate a little fake scandal with the people here in the first row. I would throw in some Soros, some Trump, some Elon Musk children, and suddenly, maybe, I'd make it very aggressive or make it very vengeful, hateful. Suddenly, we would go viral. Then you would say, 'Yeah, but people don't believe it. You know, they wouldn't believe that kind of stuff that Damian is making up.' But then it doesn't really matter, does it? Because the damage is already done. The truth is destroyed. People start to distrust what they see online. Now, we could say we have the Digital Services Act, and that's true. But in its core, the Digital Services Act is a consumer protection instrument. It is not a democracy protection instrument. That's why I would ask you, Executive Vice-President, to think about a digital democracy act. An act that takes our rules that we have – around elections, for example, with posters – and transfers them into the digital age; that checks for political bias; that looks at these algorithms and makes sure that AfD content is not randomly accelerated.

Ms Maydell, it sounded very nice that you said we need to build strategic autonomy, but I didn't really understand what you meant. Do you think that if Trump forces us to potentially open some of our regulation that we should go ahead and do it because we are dependent when it comes to security? Or how would you go about it? Because it seems that we are currently in a situation where we are not resilient, we are not sovereign, and where our social media is completely biased.

Madam President, It is interesting when a colleague of the AfD stands here and says that under an AfD government everything would be better if she had colleagues in the party at the same time who say that the Holocaust was a fly-shot, or call herself the friendly face of National Socialism. These are all quotes from your party. So please, think about it again. Madam President, antisemitism is intolerable. The Holocaust must never be relativised. Today, as we commemorate 7 October, a horrific terror attack claiming the most Jewish lives since the Second World War, we remember the victims. Since then, we have seen a disturbing rise in antisemitism. Hate has grown across Europe: in Manchester and Berlin, online and offline. Our Jewish friends and disciples united hide their kippahs on their way home. Houses of worship have been defaced with hateful messages meant to frighten and threaten. The situation is intolerable, and to me, this is what we have to learn from Germany's guiltFrom our historical responsibility to fight it. We must therefore confront it in all its forms, be it in our security systems, in education or in regulating content online. However, it is also important that in our fight against antisemitism in Europe we need to differentiate between legitimate, albeit diverging, positions on the conflict in the Middle East on the one side, and the hatred of Jews on the other. We need to be able to talk about both, because in the end, debating positions is a sign of a healthy democracy, but antisemitism is a sign of a democracy falling apart.

Madam President, Prime Minister, let me ask you quite plainly, will you support the United States of Europe? You said it yourself, this table here, this House only exists because before us people thought about a better future. They understood that they don't want to stay in the horrors of the Second World War and build something that brings Europe together. But now you were there last week in Copenhagen, and I wonder, where is the spirit of European unity and dreaming-big gone? You had the chance to decide on sanctions against Russia, to take the Russian assets and give them to Ukraine. You had the chance to build the drone wall that Mr Weber was talking about, and you had the chance to do what Marc Angel said, which is opening the Treaties to actually improve this union. So I'm wondering, where are we headed if our leaders, the 27 Heads of State, don't have the courage anymore to think about a better future? So let me ask you again, will you support a United States of Europe? What will you do to bring Treaty change to the 27 leaders? What will you do to make sure that our children have a better European Union, that we have a defence army, that we have a government that is elected by this House, by the European Parliament. What will you do to bring the United States of Europe into reality?

Dear Commissioner, you should not have caved to Trump's bullying. You should not have stripped the digital tax just because of the looming US-UK trade deal. Let's be clear: a fair tax on big tech should not be a negotiation chip in any trade negotiation. Nobody likes to pay taxes, but employees pay them and small business owners pay their fair share as well. Why? Because they understand that we need them to afford our pensions, subsidise trains and for high-quality health care systems. But tech giants don't pay their fair share. In general, they pay around 9 % of taxes in Europe, while traditional businesses pay 23 %. So, since they are creative, we should be creative as well. First, how about we introduce an Amazon tax, a tax that is basically put on every product sold on large online platforms to equal the competition with local shops? Second, how about a social media tax? We could make Meta, YouTube and TikTok pay for every user that they have in Europe, for example EUR 1 per user. Third, how about a network usage tax, so that big tech actually pay for the networks and the infrastructure that they use? Commissioner, every company that profits from Europe should also profit Europe.

So, I think in Poland your party was governing for some time. It doesn't happen often, but for Germany, I do agree with you. We even had a liberal finance minister, a liberal party, which is supposedly helping the economy, who did not really advance on the savings and investment union and the capital markets union. So, I think it's really high time that the new German Government stands up for a better European perspective on a capital markets union because we really need to tear down these fences between the different countries in order to have the innovation boost that we really need.

Madam President, Commissioner, let me put this report in a bit of a broader perspective: Russia's war of aggression has driven up the energy prices for European producers, a bully in the White House has cut US demand for European products, and China is outpacing us in many sectors and becoming more of a serious competitor. Our economy is at risk and the funny side effect of this is that the more we stagnate, the more people run to the false promises of the far‑right populists who say that we can just go back to the past. So, urgent action is really needed. You promised here that we would have a capital markets union, more investment to somehow drive innovation, that we need to shoulder the pension costs for an ageing society. But we didn't see much happening, as the colleagues have said, over the last year. So, Commissioner, I think we really need to step up our game if we look at this broader picture. We need to scale national successes like the investment and savings account from Sweden, we need to allow for more investment into venture capital funds from pension schemes, and we need in the MFF a horizontal target for start-ups and SMEs.