Speeches

Mr President, the Qatari scandal, which we are naturally discussing all these days, but if we go back to Brexit, and above all the Russian aggression in Ukraine, I hope, we have been taught a very simple and obvious lesson, and it is that any foreign interference in a single European country affects the entire Union, that any breach of security is a threat to any society, to any citizen of Europe. That every political party funded by the Kremlin, every propaganda medium, every troll factory on the Internet, every lobbying energy project that develops on a separate European territory affects us all. We saw that Nord Stream and Turkish Stream made war in Ukraine possible, but who suffered? Corrupt politicians in Germany, Bulgaria and Italy? No, all Ukrainian citizens, but economically and every citizen of the European Union, every European business from Portugal to Finland. But I think it's time to talk about the solutions to these very serious problems. And I am afraid that decisions are not as simple as we imagine them in this debate, and they are not limited to building different bodies to investigate the ethics of individual MPs. What we need is to expand and consolidate the mandate of the European Public Prosecutor's Office and build European investigative bodies, let alone European security services. Nothing less than that.

Madam President, REPower is turning, I would say at last, our climate policy in the right direction, facilitating the natural market incentives of our citizens and businesses, and providing administrative stability for the family and corporate investments. But more needs to be done: first, establish and regulate new financial models and schemes allowing for vulnerable households and businesses to reach the private financial market; and second, include new renewable energy sources, such as the oxidation of hydrogen sulfide in the Black Sea waters, benefiting not only our present members, Bulgaria and Romania, but also our crucial partners in Ukraine and Georgia.

Madam President, it is clear to us, all those involved in this debate, that the state of integration of people with disabilities in different European countries is very different. Like their participation in the labour market, the unemployment rate, the income they receive, even their ability to grow in society, and if you want even their representation in the national parliaments or here with us in the European Parliament. But it is too simplistic, I would say wrongly, to explain these differences with the different financial situations of our countries. The big problem is how the funds, both European and national, are spent on the integration of people with disabilities, and the most important part of this report, the most important emphasis that we must put, is precisely the complete prohibition of the possibility for national governments to spend money aimed at the integration of people with disabilities on their de facto further isolation.

Mr President, dear Commissioner, Minister, colleagues, let me be, as usual, very straightforward. I am deeply concerned by the ease and speed with which the Council, including my own government, approved the windfall tax. I am concerned because a windfall tax does not necessarily reduce bills, which is the theme of our debate, but rather subsidises the most unsustainable of all forms of electric generation – those from natural gas, it distorts natural market incentives and eventually jeopardises the business plans and investments of more sustainable and viable alternatives. And I am extremely concerned by the populist zeal with which this House discusses extension of the windfall tax to other businesses. It is market—based innovation and competition that could lead us out of this crisis, and not breaking the free market.

Mr President, Commissioner, colleagues, first of all, I would like to welcome the report that has been proposed to us and to congratulate the rapporteur and the shadow rapporteurs on what they have achieved, I know from experience as the EPP shadow rapporteur in the Committee on the Environment, a very, very difficult compromise. Secondly, however, I am obliged to warn about the risks that I have seen in the work in the committee, and I see in today's debate. Above all, the risk arising from the fact that the proposed text offers too little freedom to the market to determine the technologies by which we will achieve clean and sustainable mobility. We must be aware that we owe all the technological breakthroughs that we enjoy today and which for the most part lead to a cleaner and more sustainable living environment, namely to the market of private initiative, to the creativity of discoverers and entrepreneurs, and last but not least to market competition.

Mr President, Commissioner, Minister, our position in this House has long been clear on the issue of the accession of Bulgaria and Romania to Schengen. The position of the European Commission has also been clear for a long time. Even clearer is the interest of Bulgarian and Romanian citizens, businesses in both countries, but also of the entire European Union that the principles of free movement apply throughout the territory of the Union. And here's the problem: What exactly is the obstacle? Why didn't it happen? The governments blocking the accession of Bulgaria and Romania to Schengen owe a fair and clear answer. I want to emphasize that they do not give it. And this no longer meets our standards as a Union, the principles on which the institutions work. Often, though informally, corruption is mentioned, and here I raise the question: How does the isolation of Bulgaria and Romania help to fight corruption? How does closing our business in tight frames help to free it from the corruption grip? On the contrary, the principle here is exactly the opposite. Citizens and businesses cannot be punished for the corruption of their rulers. Citizens and businesses need to be helped. Bulgaria and Romania should enter Schengen immediately and should receive more help in reforming their services and justice system, rather than being isolated.

Madam President, it is important that we support this agreement between the institutions on a common European health policy, on a common policy against communicable diseases. It is the only opportunity to protect our most important assets – freedom of movement and the single market – at the same time, but also to protect Union citizens from further similar health crises. Above all, the solutions approved by the institutions make it possible to draw scientific conclusions in medicine on the basis of half a billion people in our countries, combined with one of the most advanced medical sciences in the world. The processing of this data, shared between all our countries, will enable the European Union to be a leader in medical science, which automatically means that the European population will also be the best protected population in the world from health threats – as it should be. It is of particular importance - and I am coming to an end - to vigilantly monitor, perhaps, Parliament's greatest achievement in these interinstitutional negotiations with the European Council. And this was the opportunity to work on the link between communicable and chronic diseases, to study precisely on the basis of this vast scientific data the interconnections that exist between severe chronic diseases and infectious diseases, and thus to make a historic medical breakthrough.

Madam President, dear colleagues, the measures that have been proposed by the Commission today and will be elaborated tomorrow, especially decoupling of gas and electricity prices and putting a cap on Russian energy imports, sound more than reasonable, at least in the short run. But these should be regarded simply as emergency interventions and considered far from sustainable solutions of the strategic problems that we have. We face a crisis with huge long-term implications, which could be compared only to the so—called great inflation back in the 70s, the years when I was born. And, as back then, we need a long-term and market—based economic strategy towards more efficiency, less energy consumption, more savings, more new technologies. And we must acknowledge we as policymakers do not hold the answers, but hopefully the market does.

Mr President, honourable Members, at the beginning of this year the Bulgarian Parliament, on the proposal of Democratic Bulgaria and with almost complete unanimity, accepted the raising of the threshold for value added tax and thus helped tens of thousands of Bulgarian entrepreneurs to go through the crisis times. However, this measure needs to be coordinated with the European Commission, which has been duly and timely informed, but has not been doing the necessary coordination for almost half a year now. Since the change in the tax legislation that is in service, I say again, to tens of thousands of very small and medium-sized Bulgarian companies, given that Bulgaria has the lowest threshold for VAT registration, which covers almost every trader about 25 thousand euros. This measure is due to enter into force on 1 January 2023 and it is extremely urgent for proper coordination to take place, which I call for.

Mr President, honourable Members, of course, as practically all those who have spoken in today's debate, I strongly support the high level of ambition in the field of energy efficiency. It has this peculiarity that it simultaneously achieves our environmental goals, our economic, energy, geopolitical goals with the same measures. I don't think we have such a universal policy. Above all, it has a huge impact on our social goals, both as a Union and as a country, because there is no doubt that low-income people are the ones who suffer the most from high energy bills. However, I cannot spare one key criticism of the Commission project that has been proposed to us and on which we are working, prepared before the inflationary crisis. And it is that it does not take into account the huge natural market motivation that every business and every household has at the moment to switch to more efficient consumption or production. We don't really need additional bureaucratic obligations and regulations. What we need are wise and applied financial instruments, nothing more.

Mr President, to save time. I will not discuss nuclear. Furthermore, I think nuclear has a place in the future of our energy, but definitely has no place in this package with gas. So what about gas? There are certainly some gas projects that we could consider sustainable, namely those who are leading to less dependence on foreign suppliers. But we do not see those in this delegated act. What we see in the delegated act is the very technology which led us to today’s prices of electricity and which led us, especially through TurkStream and Nord Stream 1 and 2, to the dramatic dependence on the Russian supply that we have now. So, at the end of the day, I am not against nuclear and I am not against sustainable gas projects. But I see, frankly, no reason to support the delegated act as it is.

Mr President, colleague Tóth, you referred to electricity prices, which is really the most pressing issue at the moment. But the delegated act, in its part about gas, is all about gas-generation electricity. And isn’t it exactly electricity produced from gas that led us where we are with electricity prices? I think it’s the main driver of the peak of electricity prices at the end of the previous year and during this year now.

Mr President, Mr Vice-President, Mrs Minister, tomorrow is going to be our most difficult vote and perhaps not just on the Green Deal. Why is it the hardest? We have a consensus on reducing our dependence on fossil fuel imports. We have a consensus to reduce emissions, we have a consensus to step up investment in new technologies, but at the same time we have neither a consensus nor, I would say, a political mandate to accelerate inflation and increase the bills of the citizens of the European Union. The question is, is balance possible? Is it possible to balance our climate ambition with common market sense? Is a balance possible between our climate ambition and our anti-inflation policy? And the answer is yes. Balance is possible. It is in the detail of the amendments we are going to vote on tomorrow and in our personal responsibility to check that detail very carefully. And that's why it's so hard.

Mr President, Commissioner, colleagues, I am afraid that I must start by saying that it was a wrong decision to link the debate on Repower EU to the debate on stopping gas for Bulgaria and Poland. Repower EU is a bold and good initiative, but it is medium-term, it does not provide immediate solutions. Conversely, the suspension of gas for Bulgaria and Poland is an aggressive, crude measure by the Kremlin regime, which requires an immediate and political response, because it is a political measure. The governments of Bulgaria and Poland have dealt with the immediate crisis perfectly. They have largely dealt with the support of neighbouring countries in the framework of European solidarity. However, there was no political reaction at European Commission level, beyond words. And today we had to hold a debate mainly on this topic, because Finland is already under threat, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and other European countries are under threat.

My additional question would be on the countermeasures. I do not, Madam Commissioner, really agree that when you have Gazprom on the table, it is a purely commercial dispute. When you have Gazprom acting, especially acting by cutting off the contract-based gas supply of two NATO and European Union countries, it’s obviously purely political. And therefore, my question was mainly what political countermeasures would the Commission take?

Madam President, dear Commissioners, I refer to today’s topic with regard to the crisis that we have in Bulgaria and Poland due to the cutting off of Russian gas. So, most naturally in this situation, my question is oriented twofold. One is the direction of concrete measures of European solidarity towards our two countries in this crisis period. Since there is already certain initiatives on behalf of the Commission – and we are thankful for that – I have another, and I would say rather more important, question: what are the precise countermeasures against Gazprom and the Russian Federation that the Commission is preparing? We are not yet aware of these.

Madam President, colleagues, the link between Vladimir Putin's regime and radical populist movements, I would not even call them left-wing or right-wing, does not deserve it, but within the European Union it has long been indisputable, let alone clearly proven, only in the current debate. But the question is for us. The question is what do we do about who we are – are we analysts, are we journalists? How can we, as European institutions, break this link and ensure the security of our citizens? My answer is that, first of all, we need to look very closely at what is happening on social networks, because what is happening there is not freedom of speech, but a hybrid military operation of the Russian regime on many levels. Because if we look closely at the Bulgarian Facebook, we will see that exactly the same profiles and algorithms that created anti-vaccine sentiment among two-thirds of the Bulgarian population are currently creating grounds for defending Putin's aggression among at least one-third of the Bulgarian population. Thank goodness for less success than before. But what is more, serious journalistic investigations and serious public data show that the very moderation of the Bulgarian Facebook has been broken, that within the framework of this operation, democratic opinions are actually filtered, profiles that fight for the humanistic purposes for which the people of Ukraine are currently dying are filtered, filtered and blocked, and those who intentionally, maliciously spread Putin's propaganda are encouraged, disseminated and strengthened. This is a problem that we can only solve together with the European Commission and the European institutions.

Madam President, I think we need a certain degree of moderation and common sense in this debate. And I am listening to the debate for a full hour now. And I’m afraid I heard too many reasonable, clever, but far too extreme opinions. Of course we need more renewables, of course we need smarter grids, and of course we need it as fast as we can. But cutting off the Kremlin butcher’s gas supply, we need to do now – today, not in five years, not in three years, not even in six months. And this we cannot do without providing interconnections of our gas supply, without providing alternative sources. And when we say alternative sources, it cannot be a new dependency, because when you have alternatives, it means you don’t have dependencies. And in my country, we have 100% gas dependency on the butcher there in Kremlin.

Madam President, Mr Vice-President, colleagues. I am afraid that I will not agree with the general opinion in this debate and I believe that this report is in the wrong direction. And he's also very old. The text itself takes into account pre-energy crisis phenomena from the autumn of 2021 and well before Putin's aggression in Ukraine. The purpose of the market reserve is to make it possible both to prevent over-saturation of the quota market, over-supply, and to counteract a sharp rise in prices by increasing supply in the face of increased demand, as we have seen throughout the end of 2021. The proposed decision will limit this possibility for the European Commission. It will tie the hands of the otherwise good idea of the market reserve. This will prevent the Commission from intervening and limiting the burden on consumers and businesses in the event of further price shocks. Let us not forget the main meaning of emissions trading – it is to give a sufficiently high price and thus to motivate entrepreneurs to invest. At today's prices, such an artificial, politically motivated policy is not necessary. Prices are high enough, and if we continue to raise them, we will take away the opportunity for businesses to invest in new technologies, and we will achieve the opposite effect of the one we all want.

Madam President, REpowerEU would have been an outstanding plan back in 2014, when war was predictable, but we failed to act. Now it is too little, too late. Now we need a plan by the hour and not by the decades. What we need is to impose a full energy embargo on Russian oil and gas in order to stop financing Putin’s aggression. But we need also to be ready for Putin’s regime to cut off our supply. The Council and Commission offer a long-term plan based on renewables and energy storage, and we all like it. But we don’t see the emergency measures like immediate activation of the European Union. Finishing work on interconnections is a matter of real emergency, starting as of now, of joint procedures, of gas from no Russian sources, regulating co-generation as an emergency source of energy, but also radically putting an end to red tape and corruption that are suffocating our renewable production.

Madam President, Commissioner, colleagues, you know, I was 10 years old when the carelessness of the communist dictatorship in the Kremlin blew up the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and resulted in thousands of casualties across Europe. In the following years, the protests against the communist dictatorship in Bulgaria were mainly with environmental and environmental causes. In this sense, freedom, peace and the preservation of nature have always been deeply, intimately linked and have always been the basis of both European democracy and, more generally, European humanism. Why am I saying all this? Because today, some are trying to contrast the need to strengthen security policy with the need to preserve our active conservation policy. This is an unreasonable approach. These are not different values. Man is not separate from nature, man is a part, and a small, modest part, of nature. Yet I cannot miss the fact that there is too much wishful thinking in the report we are discussing. A wishful thinking that stimulates this confrontation between security, which today is our top priority, and the long-term security that only preserved nature can give to us and, above all, to the generations after us. Colleagues, on this day, when the Chernobyl nuclear power plant is again in the hands of a Moscow dictatorship, and again under nuclear alert because of aggression and carelessness, we must realize that unfortunately and for the umpteenth time paradise is postponed. Our priorities are first and foremost the security of our families, our countries and our planet.

Member of the Commission. - Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, our main, if not the only, priority right now is the energy independence of the European Union. And this is not a priority for the coming weeks or months, and after 20 years of wrong policy in this regard, we should be aware of it as a priority for at least the next 20. And if, in the short term, ensuring our energy independence is to be achieved by whatever means – we have little choice, in the long term we also have a policy that we are already pursuing and a policy that we must evaluate unconditionally as the right one. And it is to focus all our efforts on ensuring the energy independence and energy security of the continent, our countries and our citizens through renewable energy sources, using the energy that nature gives us – inexhaustible and independent of foreign factors. Accordingly, the primary task is to have the means to store and use this energy, which we generally call batteries. And here comes the moment that dozens of colleagues have already set before me. And is it independent resource when we develop our battery industry, when we develop our energy storage systems? And the answer so far is clearly no. And just as we are dependent on Russia's fossil resources, we are now dependent on the necessary resources to develop our battery production. The question is ‘Do we have the resources to be independent?’. And here we have to give a very clear answer: Yes, we have the most important resource, the resource of people, the resource of knowledge. This is the key resource that Europe has and that Europe needs to develop – technology, innovation, knowledge – in order to be a strong leader in global battery production and development.

Madam President, honourable Members, a week ago in this House, we rallied around a resolution on maximum severe sanctions, including the suspension of imports of oil and natural gas, to appease the aggressor, to help with whatever we can stop the war and the suffering of the Ukrainian people. This is not a utopia, this is a possible solution, but if we carefully rethink the philosophy of the green deal and even the meaning we have given to the concept of sustainability. In this situation, any solution that leads to our energy independence and our ability to economically isolate Putin and the Kremlin is sustainable. The most sustainable, of course, are renewable energy sources, because they are inexhaustible and independent of imports. But they are not the only solution. Also, all technological alternatives to Russian imports – coal, gas and nuclear, independent from foreign influence – must be considered sustainable.

Mr President, Commissioner, millions of European Union citizens are constantly travelling, changing jobs and conditions to support themselves and feed their families. Very often they work simultaneously in different countries, with different employers, for different working hours. Very often they combine work as self-employed or as owners of micro-companies with work as employees in commercial companies - employers. Very often, in tens of thousands of cases a year, because of the chaos of different laws and regulations in the different countries of our Union, these people lose their pension and social rights, or at least the rights related to part of their working life. The draft European Common Social Security Number largely answered these questions. I am afraid that the project presented to us now is perhaps a good start, but a very, very small step in the right direction, far from the good start that was set with the draft general social security number years ago.

Mr President, what we see today is the true face of the Putin dictatorship and the true face of his friendship with Mr Erdoğan, whose puppet in this situation – only a puppet – is Mr Lukashenko. And I hope that the self-proclaimed European patriots and the guardians of Christian values see the true face of their idol Mr Putin today, because I see the name of Lukashenko mentioned, I hear the name of Erdoğan, but I hear a big silence from the far right when Mr Putin has to be mentioned too. Of course we see a human tragedy today, but we see a human tragedy deliberately and cold-bloodedly provoked by two tyrants: a tragedy we need to face together with compassion to the Baltic States and Poland, and with compassion to the victims on the frontier, of course.