Debate contributions by Ioan-Rareş BOGDAN

Mr President, your excellency, if he does not wake up, the European Union will not survive. What is more precious than family? Oh, my friends! Can anyone quickly say who the true friends of the European Union are today? No, no, no. I was convinced. We're all alone. There is no country without protests against the decisions taken in Brussels. They're ordered by the Russians. That would mean we're screwed. It would mean that the eurosystem is a mess. Let's face it, Brussels is also supplying them with plenty of ammunition. They do not communicate sufficiently and appropriately. Manfred Weber once said that if a fake news story has a million views and its denial has only 10,000, then democracy has a structural problem in the European Union. The Russians have a saying: Stupidity and domination are paid for. The price is high. What is the fault of farmers for not knowing about the clauses imposing the EU food safety standard for Mercosur products? What is their fault for not having been explained the safeguard clauses, the maximum import quotas, the standardisation quotas and the impact of the duty-free import of agricultural commodities into the European Union? The world jumps on farmers, but keeps them in the dark and without basic information, but only pinned down by reproaches. Those who directly benefit, the machinery and subassembly industry, remain majestic, even though it is the direct beneficiary of the Mercosur agreement. Commissioners are silent and the whole Commission prefers defiance to information. I don't think there are any bad farmers in the EU. I honestly believe, however, that there are a lot of farmers who are not sufficiently informed because of the European Commission's team. Are farmers being manipulated? Then go public, Mrs von der Leyen, and tell the truth. You and the commissioners. Let the citizens know how much it costs you to dismantle the lies of extremists. I'll tell you what it might cost you: the function and public image of the Union. If we don't wake up and learn to communicate effectively, the extremists will tear down the eurosystem and make it everyone's rug.

Mr President, Your Excellency, we are trying to repair the damage done by ignorant politicians, as if the security of 450 million European citizens were a fad. This Parliament stated in 2011 that our dependence on critical materials is putting us at risk. The story started a long time ago, but there was no vision. In 1992, China's leader, Deng Xiaoping, said: ‘The Middle East has oil, China has rare earths.’ It was the start of turning a monopoly into a means of pressure. In 2000, U.S. reports showed that dependence on China increases the security risk - a warning Clinton ignored. In 2010, China halved its exports to Japan. Prices have exploded. Obama was scared, but it was late. China controlled 95% of production and had a geopolitical weapon. What did we do? Green Deal, with measures that would bring the industry dependent on Chinese critical materials to its knees anyway. Too often we ignore that the EU, the US are fighting a perverse binomial: China + Russia. Democracy and freedom versus dictatorship and slavery. My Romania has lands containing rare metals, but, ironically, it has been refusing to exploit them for years. Why? Fear or lack of vision. Or maybe it's because it's not left.

Madam President, your excellency, if a first-year student reads the conclusions of the October Council on competitiveness, he is struck by the fact that the heads of state have called for a radical change in the matter, that is, a revolution at the foundation of the functioning of the single market. Then he will wonder what the European Commission was doing while the EPP was calling for simplification, debureaucratisation, flexibility, deregulation, transparency. Now the Commission is awake, but we are in the traditional situation where we react after the catastrophe, we do not prevent it. Crisis in the automotive industry, crisis in agriculture, crisis in energy, crisis in semiconductors, crisis in medicines, crisis in real estate, crisis in jobs and, worst of all, crisis in confidence. The student would like to read the verbatim report of the discussion, but the sessions are not public. It should be. Leaders placed by citizens should not negotiate over the heads of citizens. They should know how to reach compromises that often disadvantage Eastern European states. We also wonder that right-wing or left-wing extremism is growing like an incurable disease in Europe. Do you know what the cure is? Transparency, competence, collaboration, respect for the European citizen and ongoing communication, not between the Eurosystem and friendly consultancies, but between the Eurosystem and the best specialists, i.e. specialists who anticipate, specialists who warned in 2018 that a crisis was coming in the automotive industry, who warned in 2010 that a chronic shortage was coming on essential and critical medicines. Both areas have been affected, with supply chain problems. Why? Producers migrated, and the Chinese built huge production capacities. Why did they migrate? They didn't have the same conditions as in China. What competitiveness are we talking about? If the radical measures requested by the Council are taken in five years' time, the President of the Commission can be a Chinese or a hijab-wearing one. The Commission must wake up and understand that too often its concerns are not on the agenda and especially the needs of the European citizen. Come down from the ivory tower, distinguished Mrs von der Leyen, among the people of Brussels and on the European streets. Also, distinguished commissioners, come down from there, from where you climbed, among the people.

Madam President, Europe's economic resilience is also on the agenda of tomorrow's Council. What resilience are we talking about, when the backbone of the Union, farmers, are victims of a Commission that does not seem to understand that the new budget provides ammunition to extremists? Europe is in a psychological war inspired by the art of war. Sun Tzu said this: It is not necessary to physically destroy your enemy, it is enough to destroy his will to fight. In translation, absence from voting, a phenomenon that only extremists take advantage of. If agriculture plans send farmers out of work, the next Parliament and, implicitly, the Commission will look very different. So far, the EPP Group has managed to avoid disaster. Without us, the most powerful political group in Parliament, European farmers today grew only chamomile, mint, basil and organic earthworms. But earthworms loosen the soil, some would say. Yes, but it is useless if you do not cultivate that soil and you will not cultivate it if you lose the subsidy because you have not complied with the new aberrant environmental standards imposed by the Commission. Some will say it's okay, we have meat from Argentina, corn from Brazil, garlic from China, tomatoes from Turkey and wine from Chile and New Zealand. The European Commission, led by Ursula von der Leyen, must understand that they are not God's messengers on earth and that they are obliged to work with us, with Parliament, because they have an employment contract with us. We invested her, and we saved her three times. I know the argument that agriculture brings only 2% of GDP, but with this logic we may find that democracy is also expensive and the press too expensive. Don't play with fire, Mrs Von der Leyen, don't touch European farmers' money! Wipe their tears, restore their trust in the eurosystem and, above all, respect their work, because they are at the forefront of the defence against the attack on our safety, on the safety of Europeans.

Mr President, Your Excellencies, in August 1963, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Martin Luther King delivered the famous "I Have a Dream" speech, one hundred years after Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the end of slavery. We are now living in another form of slavery. We are slaves to ignorance and disengagement, to passivity. The consequence of this intellectual form of laziness is that one in five children in the European Union is at risk of poverty. According to Eurostat, the most common form of death among 15- to 29-year-olds is suicide. There are, especially in Eastern Europe, pockets of poverty, gray like tombstones. There, people buy the cheapest cans produced in countries that do not meet any standards and eat injected and genetically modified tomatoes, tasteless, only cheap, and health is expensive. And energy is expensive, although the parts for its maintenance are cheap, Chinese. If we buy primarily European and hire the same, not because someone decides, but because we can rise again, we would change things radically, here, at home, in Europe. The European Union has the resources to regain its former place. As a Romanian ruler, Petru Rares, said, we will be again what we were and more than that. I also have a dream: we are taking European farmers out of the depression that we have caused to a large extent, we are postponing the ban on combustion cars until we know for sure that the green transition does not mean millions of unemployed people, we are using European resources to produce food, medicines, toys, especially toys, because we should build this world where we want to eradicate poverty, here, at home, in our Europe, for Europeans.

Madam President, Your Excellencies, the EPP President has best summarized the sleep of the European Union: “Putin needs to test us to react.” In other words, come on! Of course Manfred is not from Transylvania, from there is Avram Iancu, hero of the struggle for the emancipation of the Romanians, who gave the shortest speech of all time: ‘No, ready, no, come on!’. In English: ‘So done, so come on!’. Do you know what the paradox is? Although last century we learned what the mind of a dictator looks like, we Europeans seem to have retained nothing. What else does Putin have to do? To bring the tank to Grande Place or Place de la Concorde, to buy a gauffre or a croissant and ask him if he wants a glass of champagne? If the rich can get away from drones at Saint Moritz, Marbella or Porto Cervo, farmers in Romania, Poland, Denmark and the Baltic countries can't, nor can their children. I also say something to those who criticize defence investments: like sitting in the sun, tired after a day in the field, with your belly full, listening to Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, and the next second a rocket picks up all your corn? But what do I say to all the corn? The whole village with the church and the school with everything. Europe needs to wake up and invest quickly in its defence capacity. Europe must have courage and not give hope to autocrats and dictators. It's like we're living in 1936-38 Europe, but we miss Churchill.

Mr. President, Your Excellencies, the Kremlin is waging a war on both the Ukrainian and Moldovan fronts. In Ukraine, he kidnaps and kills children, destroys cities, in Moldova, he wants to assassinate hope. Disinformation campaigns in Moldova sow hatred against the European Union, frighten citizens and spread lies, all with unprecedented investments. Moldova, with one step in the Eurosystem, is a nightmare for the Kremlin. He wants to use Moldova against the Union, not to consolidate it. Why? A Union with a strong foundation, including bigger and more prosperous Moldova, is a solid partner of America, that is, a nut that it will never be able to crack. Moscow wants allies to destroy Europe and the United States, which believe in democracy, freedom, free press and dignity, not war, hunger and tyranny - the Kremlin's tools. We are here and we will defend our home, because Europe is not mine or yours, but the descendants of our children. We are 500 million Europeans together with Moldova and Ukraine and we do not succumb to the Kremlin's blackmail. My brothers from historical Bessarabia, today the Republic of Moldova, have vital parliamentary elections in three weeks. They must be supported to remain pro-Europe and together with Europe and soon fully integrated into Europe, alongside Romania.

Madam President, Your Excellencies, ideally it would be to put more bread on the table, not to defend with gun in hand and sophisticated systems of defence Our daily bread. But Europe's wise children and elders cannot defend themselves. Anyone who says there is no need to invest in defence is cut off from reality or makes the games of the Kremlin, Iran and those who want an easy prey to Europe. Churchill, Winston Churchill, always demanded investments in defense, because Hitler allocated astronomical sums in the 1930s to the preparations for war. He was told by some, like many in this room, that it would be too great a burden on the economy of the European countries of that time. In 1936, Churchill said: "How petty these arguments will seem to us if, in a year or two, the enemy catches us in the snare, full, prosperous, happy to exercise our freedom of expression, but defenceless". What happened next you know very well. Let's learn from history! We do not accept concessions regarding Ukraine and the process of arming the Old Lady, our Europe. We must not forget what the West did in 1938 in Munich, giving Hitler a free hand to annex the Sudetenland. A disaster followed. Let's not abandon Eastern Europe! It must be supported and armed. If Ukraine falls, Moldova, Poland, the Baltic countries and Romania will follow in the Kremlin menu. And then comes the disaster for Western Europe and years of terror!

Madam President, Your Excellencies, people from the regions of the European Union bordering Russia, Belarus and Ukraine have drawn targets on their chests. This is because the interest of all dictators with expansionist tendencies is to disturb the minds of the citizens in the immediate vicinity. If you do not invest in defense, on the one hand, and combating manipulation, on the other, you find yourself with the enemy in the house, as has happened many times in history. Plato invented the concept of chora. To the topic we are debating would mean a multicultural space with good neighbourliness, a bazaar of ideas that, used in good faith, produces value. Without good faith, it produces corruption and chaos. The Kremlin is interested precisely in destabilizing these regions, from the Baltic Sea to the mouths of the Danube. And once an outbreak of misinformation and manipulation occurs, it rolls like a snowball. What we have to do is to invest, to invest a lot in the safety of these regions, because citizens who are afraid of what tomorrow brings them can be more easily manipulated. Not only the border police and well-equipped armies bring security, but also massive investments in education, technology, industry and agriculture, but especially smart policies that create an impossible-to-penetrate strategic corridor, a digitalized information axis, investments in coherent information campaigns and the media. Let's not fool ourselves with the idea that the Russians are tired. So tired, of many wars, they terrorized almost half of Europe. Let's not allow history to repeat itself! Mario Draghi says that 800 billion euros must be invested annually if Europe is to remain competitive. More than a third of this money must go to the countries on Europe's eastern flank, precisely in order for them to become motivating for their citizens, as a way of life and future. In Romania, Poland, Moldova, Georgia, Bulgaria, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Slovakia and Hungary.

Your Excellencies, Madam President, the future of Europe is being decided these days. European citizens call for: Wake up! But our administrative, political and economic Europe does not seem to understand. She looks like a distinguished old lady in a wheelchair. Citizens are radicalising, asking us to adapt, and our Europe - from Brussels, Paris, Berlin, Madrid or Strasbourg, we sleep on our own breathtaking culture - has become conceited and deaf. We walk with a wonderful concept: freedom. But Winston Churchill said that after I praised her, she had to be defended. And what do we do? We look arrogantly at Americans for not having enough culture. We curse the Chinese, but they didn't force us to become their market. We have developed technologies and exported them to the United States and China, and now we are complaining that we are losing the competitiveness wars. Socrates, Mozart, Dante Alighieri and Balzac were not Texians, but they could now learn from them that when the house burns down, you extinguish it. And I don't think that's what we're doing. Mrs von der Leyen, Mr Šefčovič, the 2025 programme is sublime, but the competitiveness you are talking about depends on people and ignores the fact that Europe's economy has fallen to a shameful third place globally. Citizens want to be protected in Europe, and they don't want us to stop curtailing industrial and technological development at European level by imposing absurd rules in Europe. Green Hill our dear. We are told that we are free to speak. But if we say that a Commissioner's post should be filled on the basis of competence, not gender, we are fined. If we defend traditional agriculture, we are catalogued anti-Green Deal. If we say that women are women and men are men, God forbid, we are repudiated. Freedom of conscience is inviolable, but let us not anger God! Isn't it a pity about the European Union, the noblest building? Isn't it a shame about our millenary history if we don't correct our mistakes and especially if we don't wake up?

Madam President, the conclusion of each council must be this: Let's not go crazy. Otherwise, we will wonder, with Juliet’s tenderness in Verona’s balcony scene, why farmers block the capital – out of desperation; we open our borders to cheap workers, we import customs at 180 degrees of European civilization, we fill the market with bad non-EU food, we break records of indecency in the name of political correctness, we make farmers produce only chamomile and the car industry only tricycles. We ask ourselves, why are citizens being radicalised who can no longer find work as they did 20 years ago? We wonder, why are political movements gaining ground that until yesterday seemed like a joke? Because for every decision that did not take into account the well-being of Europeans in the first place, but made others happy, Europeans felt their chests torn. We're picking on Trump for wanting to bring the U.S. the glamour it once was. What prevents us from thinking the same? Let us negotiate in the name of our common roots, let us raise again the great European civilization and old Europe where it belongs: the main civilising and advancing factor of the free world, with an economy that works at full capacity to produce well-being, only well-being for European citizens.

Your Excellency, we have entered a new era. Anyone who doesn't understand disappears. Trump has directly announced that he primarily supports the U.S. economy and cares about military spending, and that the issue of migration, climate or gender policies remains his concern. We Europeans have forgotten too much about jobs and farmers' problems in favour of an absurd Green Deal and a politically correctness It led to unimaginable things. We have opened our borders and are providing social benefits without looking at competitiveness, performance and, above all, European needs. I would have liked to hear parts of yesterday's speech from the Capitol in Brussels and Strasbourg, where farmers are protesting under the specter of bankruptcy and where the auto industry fears that dependence on Russian gas is becoming dependence on Chinese lithium. Let us discuss a plan with the new administration and let us not leave the negotiating table until the EU and the US understand that only united can face the Russians and the Chinese. The China-Russia binomial works on all levels: economic, military, hybrid warfare. What does the EU-US binomial have in addition? Bigger budget, human resources, technology and, last but not least, European culture and education. And one more thing: a country that can play strategically: Deeply Christian Romania, with enormous natural reserves and a lot of mind. God bless the USA, Europe and Romania.

Madam President, Your Excellencies, I am tired of phrases in which some list threats to the European Union, but in the second I propose smaller budgets for the institutions that defend it. Luckily, there is the European Parliament, which repairs budgets year after year in the fight against organised crime and terrorism. Organised crime networks did not emerge overnight and were not set up by migrants or those migrants that Socialist Chancellor Olaf Scholz wants to catch, blocking the entire European economy and suspending the Schengen Agreement. Drug, arms, human and terrorist traffickers exist because of authorities incapable of protecting their citizens, such as socialist Mr Scholz, and because of soft laws or electoral interest. If one wants cheap labour, one must be able to protect one's citizens. If one wants to block the rise of populists and extremists, one must convince them of the danger of extremism, not imprison citizens in homes or countries. If someone wants to control borders, do well to do it smartly, not delay trucks carrying food, medicine and equipment. Protecting citizens is done with investments in institutions and specialists. So, if you see some depressed guys with bags full of documents and sandwiches at bus stops at the train station, know that there are cops and prosecutors on the trail of organized crime. God forbid they have to cross Germany. I announce that they will stand in line for many hours, waiting for Olaf Scholz to control everything that moves, hoping that his party will overcome the fall in image and trust in which he finds himself. The suspension of the Schengen Agreement will not stop the fall of the SPD.