Debate contributions by Milan UHRÍK

Mr President, truly European consumers need to be better protected. But let us be clear, they must also be protected from the senseless bureaucracy of Brussels, because together let us remember the greatest achievements that the European Union has brought to European consumers. I'm talking about the banana curvature standard, for example. I mean, sorry, about the fruit sorting regulation, as it was officially called. Let's remember the flour with ground worms or dishes from locusts. Let's think about limiting the power of vacuum cleaners or limiting the volume of flushing units. Let us now remember what we are dealing with here: a ban on internal combustion engines or the upcoming ETS 2 standard on emissions permits for households where people have to pay for air, currying or driving a petrol-powered car. Throughout history, you know, the European Union has so far adopted 143 800 regulations, which is enough. And I don't know if anyone knows about it and if anyone has ever read them all. And in such circumstances, there can be no question of better consumer protection in Europe or of speaking up. And the best thing the European Commission can do now for consumers, for entrepreneurs, for the European market in general, is to give them peace of mind, to stop inventing more regulations, more restrictions and more bans and, conversely, to start abolishing these regulations so that people can do business freely, live and earn better. This is the path to success in the future.

Mr Vice-President, I am dismayed at how some of you are acting here as owners of European money, as if you were giving Member States and governments of yours, giving some governments money because they are your governments, but you are blocking other European funds because they do not want to obey you. I'll just remind you that none of the money you decide on is your money. That's not your money. The European Union has no money of its own. All this is the money of hard-working taxpayers who pay high taxes to their governments so that governments can then put this money into the European budget. The money that you now want to block and blackmail Member States just because they do not agree with your Brussels agenda. This is not about any rule of law or respect for European values, which you define as you please. You take money from states with one hand and then give it generously to governments with the other hand, but only to those who obey and only to projects that you approve of in your own Member State. For example, you are blocking money from Hungary, but you are sending hundreds of billions of euros to Ukraine, which is not even a member state of the European Union, which is drowning in corruption scandals, without hesitation and without control, without control. What you are showing colleagues here is one great hypocrisy that has nothing to do with any rule of law or European values. Shame on you!

Mr President. Mrs Leyen. Mr Ševčovič, when you are here today so together, I have to tell you that your last decisions are really scary for Slovakia. You have forbidden us to freely buy gas. You have banned us from buying oil freely. And now you are forcing us to obligatorily buy Ukrainian grain, which we do not want in Slovakia. Please, what are these ways? When did someone from Slovakia here in Brussels force you to buy something or when did we forbid you something? That just didn't happen. Please put an end to these injunctions and bans and focus instead on restoring real freedom and kick-starting economic growth, because it is really going downhill with Europe. Virtually everything in Europe is the most expensive in the world, and in the West, factories are no longer being built, but just closing down. And this is the result of the pseudo-green policy that Brussels is pursuing. Please put an end to this pseudo-green policy, because everything will go bankrupt because of you.

Madam President, we are commemorating the 10th anniversary of this tragedy, but dear progressive and liberal colleagues, let's be honest: it is you who are politically responsible for all those Islamist attacks in Europe, including those brutal attacks which took place in Paris 10 years ago, because it was you who opened our borders. It was you who let in all those Muslim terrorists from Islamic states into Europe because they were refugees running away from war. Yes, I remember that. I remember many of you shouting 'refugees will come' at that time. Now, we are ten years from this accident and what has changed? Absolutely nothing. More than 10 million illegal migrants have crossed European borders since then. In Europe, we have experienced 10 years of mass immigration, 10 years of criminality, violence, raping and murdering of innocent people. Even right now, they are building concrete walls around Christmas markets because they are expecting another wave of terrorist attacks against visitors on these markets. This is your responsibility. This is your fault. This is why we have to stop you and we will stop you, dear colleagues, and we will stop your agenda, because Europe must be saved and Europe must be safe.

It was once said in Slovakia that only thanks to EU funds we have money for investments, reconstructions and repairs. Unfortunately, looking at the next European budget, it seems that we will have money just for nonsense. Because again, billions more for green experiments, for fabricated projects, and for thousands of unnecessary officials. And I ask myself, where is the money for ordinary Europeans? For the housing of young people, for families, for people who can not pay expensive rent, energy, food. In this new budget, you are proposing to increase military spending on arming Ukraine, to increase support for creative artists, NGOs, independent media, fact checkers, while introducing mandatory green gender quotas and giving less money to farmers, regions, rural areas, less money to European students, but to increase the Erasmus budget so that 105,000 students from Africa can be brought to Europe every year. In Brussels, you may have forgotten who the European taxpayers are, and this budget makes a mockery of those taxpayers.

on behalf of the PPE-DE Group. - (DE) Madam President, colleagues, I may be hearing a little bit poorly. I ask you, what else do you want to strengthen and accelerate on sending money to Ukraine? We have already sent 50 billion euros to Ukraine from the current budget. A further 100 billion are planned to be sent to Ukraine from the next budget. Tens of billions went to Ukraine under various emergency assistance and hundreds of billions of euros went to Ukraine under military assistance. What else do you want to accelerate and increase? I'm sorry, but it's still Ukraine here, Ukraine there, slowly in these plenaries, we're not dealing with anything else but how to send even more money to Ukraine. There you are blocking EU funds to a Member State – Hungary, which pays into the Union, but sending hundreds of billions of euros to Ukraine, which is not a Member State of the Union. You do not give money to families to help with housing or to young people to have a future in Europe, but you continue to send it to Zelensky. This is not a Ukrainian Union, with all due respect, this is not a Ukrainian Union. This is the European Union that has to deal with European problems. Ukraine is still not a member of the European Union and will not be for a long time. I think that we should give much greater priority to the problems of Europeans and the people of the European Union, rather than constantly solving the problems of the whole world. So, Commissioners, I beg you, that's enough. Start to finally solve the problems of Europe, and not the whole world.

Mr President, crime in Europe is rising in an unbelievable way, but it is you, the Progressives, who are politically responsible for all the rapes, thefts and murders committed by illegal immigrants and their gangs throughout Europe. Because you've made the police just toothless fashion organizations that practically can't even intervene against these criminals anymore. Across Europe, we can see how you envision the role of the police: digging doors for people and putting them in jail for opinions on social media, or shooting water cannons at protesters against mandatory mask-wearing or people protesting for peace. Alternatively, make the police a security guard for rainbow marches or some immigrants again. The task, the real task of the police, is to fight crime, to fight real crime, illegal immigrants, their smugglers, drug dealers, but also corrupt politicians at the top of the European Union. Donald Trump did it right in America. He released all the transvestites from the army and sent policemen to the streets to chase and expel illegal immigrants. This is exactly the kind of cleansing that Europe needs.

Mr President, a few years ago, our car industry was the world leader. We set the technology, we set the direction, we were the leaders in innovation that everyone in the world followed. But then came the Green activists, who today fanatically heil the ideology of the Green Deal and by their bans and regulations destroyed practically everything. European automakers have started to go bankrupt, people have started to lay off their jobs, cars are becoming more expensive, energy too. The Chinese are ahead of us in technology. The European Green Electric Vision has simply become an economic suicide. And here we have to stop together, friends. Removing the ban on internal combustion engines is the right thing to bring people cheaper cars, but above all the freedom to choose the car they want. Please work constructively. Let us help people, let us also help European industry, and let us lift the ban on internal combustion engines together.

Again, we have another discussion about war, about fear, about weapons, and about military spending. Mrs Leyen, do you realize, however, how difficult it is for people to secure housing today, to pay all those bills? How difficult is it for young people to get a mortgage in order to secure four walls, which then have to pay off for a lifetime? And the European Union practically does not solve these problems at all. And if so, only for marginalized groups. Instead, we are constantly hearing about the need to allocate hundreds of billions of euros to military spending on arms. We are listening here to the debates about fear, which, like Covid, are supposed to defend the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on the Brussels business. Mrs Leyen, I will tell you, perhaps a novelty for you, but Europeans do not expect and do not want missiles and bullets from Brussels, but peace, prosperity and economic cooperation.

Mr President, I am pleased that, following our pressure and that of the farmers, the European Commission is finally starting to listen to the concerns of the farmers. But I would like it to continue to be listened to, because, according to the new draft budget for the future, it looks like Europeans will get bullets from Brussels instead of bread. I ask you, where are the words that the European Union is supposed to protect citizens and protect our farmers when food is becoming more and more expensive? It's getting harder to live. There are fewer and fewer young farmers. Our markets continue to be flooded with low-quality and inferior dangerous grain from Ukraine, and the European Union wants to open its food market to Mercosur, countries from South America. These are things that we cannot agree to, and we cannot agree to take 100 billion euros from the next budget to farmers and transfer it to NGOs that will spread European Brussels propaganda, and also to weapons programmes. Commissioner, I call on you to return the money to the farmers of the future and not to put it on arms, because people certainly do not want that.

Madam President, dear progressives, do you want to come back to Slovakia in the European Parliament and talk about breaches of the rule of law? Okay, let's take a look. First of all, there is no one to talk to, because no one is sitting here and no one in the European Parliament is really interested in these fabricated topics of yours. It's empty here. Secondly, tell me, where were you when human rights were violated in Slovakia during the previous government, when people with rubber bullets were shot at? Tell me, where were you when the media was banned? No one cares. Of course, nobody's sitting here because it's stupid and nonsense. When the media was banned and when the websites were shut down, then you were silent. At that time, you didn't mind stealing EU funds or Šimečka tunnelling with the whole family of subsidies. You were silent then. You suddenly wake up and say that the rule of law is being violated in Slovakia just because you are not in power in Slovakia. I only want two things: if you would finally stop inking at Slovakia in Europe and if people like Mr. Zdechovský would stop caring about Slovak affairs.

I admit that I did not understand because this interpretation did not work. But what I understand from how I understand Polish, so: You know, I believe that the European Union should not be transformed into a military union. The European Union is supposed to be a peaceful economic project. The project of economic cooperation, fair cooperation between nations. And it should not buy weapons, it should not divert money from agriculture and regions to purchase missiles or tanks. It is not to be turned into a military project, into a military union. It is a peace project and an economic project. That's all we want.

Madam President, Mrs Leyen, for how you are destroying Europe, you should have been sitting in court a long time ago, not here in the European Parliament. Calling for a two-billion-dollar budget and presenting another, even more devastating greendeal measures. Europe is burning, and here you are deluding about some completely unrealistic visions. At the same time, because of your war and sanctions policies, people are suffering and paying record energy prices. Because of your the Green Deal European companies and factories are fleeing Europe. Because of your immigration policy, it is already being shot every week in Europe, and in Brussels they even have to deploy an army against immigrants. You have destroyed Europe and we are just such a small piece of the total collapse. And yet you do not want to admit the mistake, and the only thing you will come here with is that you are asking for even tougher enforcement of those policies that have destroyed Europe and have not worked so far. That you demand even harsher punishment and censorship of all opponents and critics. Mrs Leyen, please do one service to Europe. Get out of here! You're not the boss of Europe. Europe belongs to the people, not to you.

Madam President, wake up. When will you finally understand that half-naked men marching in dog masks are really a threat to moral development for children. I absolutely support the decision of the Hungarian government and it will not change the fact that this progressive colleague Esztergom was there with her friends Yar, Jourová or even Greek Thunberg, waving rainbow flags to make it look like that march in Budapest is supported by anyone at all. It will not change the wrongness of that rainbow ideology, nor will it change the fact that Commissioner Lahbib decides to push literally 1.5 billion into LGBT NGOs and projects to spark the appearance of public support for this rainbow ideology. We support the decision of Hungary, but also Bulgaria, to protect children in schools from the rainbow agenda, and the only thing I regret is that we do not yet have such a law in Slovakia.

Madam President, Mrs Leyen, you will destroy the European Union. And I am convinced that the European Union will collapse soon because you are doing everything you can to make it happen. Please be aware of what you are asking of Slovakia and Hungary. You will come and tell us to approve the eighteenth package of anti-Russian sanctions and finally cut off the bad Russian oil and the bad Russian gas. But these hydrocarbons are absolutely important, vital for Slovak industry and economy. Without it, our industry would either not work or not be competitive. Mr. Šefčovič, and you are sitting here and you know it, and I urge you to stand up a little bit more for Slovakia in this matter. Then the allies from the west will come and tell us that we need to put 5% of GDP on weapons and on road construction, on which tanks will go from west to east, as Mr Zdechovský said. No, no! Thank you, that's enough. We just don't want this. And I wonder why the Slovak prime minister did not block those anti-Russian sanctions definitively, because we would have done it a long time ago. And I am not surprised by the Slovaks who are starting to call for neutrality, because they certainly did not imagine such a future in the European Union.

Most mainstream journalists don't write objectively. That's not what I say, that's what citizens say, people who don't trust these media because they see a clear contradiction between what they read in the media and what they see on the street. And it concerns whether it is war policy, green policy, rainbow policy, immigration policy of the European Union. People see that the reality is completely different from what journalists write and therefore they do not believe them and the Digital Services Act will not help either. It is the fault of journalists who have simply misappropriated their mission.

Mr President, unfortunately most of those so-called mainstream media outlets are now an absolute cesspool, and unfortunately most of those so-called journalists today cannot even pronounce the word objectivity. Normally, I think the blue screen will pop up, like when Windows collapses. Let's look at the facts, my friends. In Slovakia, three-quarters of citizens do not trust mainstream media, according to surveys. Three-quarters of people simply don't believe them, not because journalists aren't free or don't have enough protection. This is because they are arrogant and lie. They lied about Iraq, they lied about COVID, they lied about war, they lied about immigrants, they lied about patriots, they lied about everything. That's why people don't believe them. Many of these mainstream media outlets literally act as the press bodies of the progressives or the press bodies of Brussels, and they no longer even try to look objective. And that's why no one trusts the mainstream media anymore, and people are looking for the truth on the internet, which is free anyway.

Madam President, Commissioner Kallas. We all know that you are known for your fanatical anti-Russian hatred. But I am still surprised that you have the courage to come here and ask citizens to practically double their spending on defence, on weapons, on missiles, on submachine guns. At a time when the European Union is ahead of the BRICS in economic growth practically everywhere in the world. At a time when European citizens have to face record consolidation and increased costs, you come up with a brilliant idea to put twice as much money on guns and squeeze out what else you can. But of course we can't agree with this, and I'd be interested, and say out loud, who are all these weapons supposed to be targeting? That needs to be said out loud to people. Tell me out loud who's going to fight all those guns. Because your sons, my friends, will not. You'd be the first to make exceptions for them. And tell me out loud, who's going to pay for all that gun spending? So for these reasons, of course, we cannot support an increase in arms spending. This is at the expense of the standard of living.

Mr President, the men in Slovakia have asked me to tell you to Brussels that they are already fed up with Greek Thunberg and her childish ideas, that they are fed up with the European Green Deal and your orders and prohibitions. And yes, I'll admit that I'm also a normal guy who likes normal cars, who likes the smell of gasoline, the sound of powerful engines, tractors, sports cars, and the symbol of the freedom they represent. Do you know what bothers me the most? The hypocrisy you often show here. When you talk about the need for public transport or the need to ban people from choosing the car that suits them best, President Leyen herself takes a private plane 40 kilometres away. Do you think that's okay? We also support public transport. We are not opposed to electromobility, but the freedom of individual transport and the freedom to choose the car that suits you best must be preserved. Therefore, when we are in power, we will definitely lift the ban on internal combustion engines that the European Commission is still pushing for.

Madam President, after the insults and arrogance shown in Slovakia by MEP Zdechovský in his so-called monitoring mission, the European Union has lost any moral right to teach someone how to live. The same applies to the rule of law and transparency. Because how the European Commission can teach someone about some kind of transparency, when European Commission President Leyen herself bought vaccines for 30 billion euros in text messages, and no one cares, no one cares. Nothing has happened to her so far. Please. The same is true of the current case, where the European Commission is preparing to declare Slovakia and Hungary on the issue of Russian gas supplies. And simply, if Slovakia and Hungary do not want to cut off vital for our Russian gas supply industry, then the European Commission has said that it will let us vote by qualified majority. The question is, is this democracy? Is this the European Union that you promised us and that we entered into? I think definitely not. And the first place to start cleaning up and supervising and upholding the rule of law should be Brussels and the European Commission.

I'm sorry, but have you really gone crazy here in Brussels? While you are sending such incredible billions to a corrupt Ukraine, European citizens have to pay two to three times the price of energy. Commissioners, you are restricting people's freedom, you are restricting the import and export of technology. You are imposing sanctions on uranium, on oil, on gas, sanctions that harm Europe more than any Russia. You are imposing meaningless economic regulations that are destroying our industry and forcing us to import more and more things from abroad. Stop lying to us and tell us who really drives you. Who are you really serving? Because Europe is not. Because if you serve Europe, you are trying to make sure that citizens, people, industry have the cheapest energy possible so that they can live as well as possible. Just as we plan to do in a Europe of sovereign nations.

Mr President, do you really think people can do this? Consolidation, increase in price, inflation. And now you are also asking for new European taxes from them. You live at least a little bit, Mr Hojsík, for example, in contact with reality, when you have the audacity to ask citizens for new taxes for Brussels. And tell me, why do we need more weapons, for immigrants, for high salaries for European Commissioners? Things that have failed so far? I don't think these are priorities. And you even have the audacity in that draft budget to demand the creation of a new European Union public administration with more staff and a higher budget, that is, even more officials with even higher salaries. Where are the apartments for young people? Where is the support of the traditional family, where is the leveling of the standard of living between our countries and the West? Nowhere. For the Slovaks, I say that we do not want to pay new and higher taxes for Ursula von der Leyen. We want to balance the standard of living of our countries with the West, because we already have Western prices.

I have no problem with the fact that the rainbow march was banned in Hungary. I think it's the right thing to do to protect society. I absolutely fully support this, because at events where there is an explicit sexualization of their orientation, simply, such things in public have no space. Dot.