Speeches

(IT) Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the EU-China summit was a flop, following the failures of the strategy of recent years towards Beijing. We have allowed it to invade our markets, destroy our local economies and shop for our strategic assets. We have allowed it to colonize Africa and Ukraine itself, thus gaining possession of some of the most important deposits of natural resources in the world. Not happy, to follow the fables of Greta Thunberg, we decided to make Europe dependent on those resources on which China now has almost a monopoly. China that now licks its moustache in the face of the Ukrainian crisis, an opportunity to put Moscow in its pocket, to tighten India and thus prepare for a clash with the West of which we do not know the winner, but which will certainly have a defeat: Europe. To think, therefore, that the EU today has the strength to align Beijing with its wishes is pure illusion; As long as we do not reindustrialize and protect our economies, as long as we do not regain influence in the Mediterranean, as long as we do not know how to be protagonists of the processes of peace and stabilization of neighboring foreign countries, well, then we will have to resign ourselves to having a role in the world, not as a geopolitical power with which to negotiate, but as a continent to be conquered.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, at the gates of Europe, millions of women and children fleeing war are asking us for shelter while waiting to embrace their men who have remained at the front, a drama that shows us who really is a refugee, a concept too often exploited to promote the business of illegal immigration. We have a duty to help these people, but we have a reception system that collapses because of the exorbitant illegal immigration, which brought 200 000 illegal immigrants to Europe in 2021 alone, half of whom arrived in Italy. It is urgent to stop these indiscriminate flows immediately, protect our borders and return those who have arrived illegally to focus our reception system on real humanitarian crises such as those underway. It is urgent to structure this reception according to a logic of proximity, to allow the fleeing Ukrainians to be as close as possible to their loved ones left to fight and not to be uprooted from the land they love. Above all, it is urgent to commit ourselves diplomatically to the end of this war as soon as possible, otherwise we will have done nothing but transform the Ukrainian people into a new mass of desperate people to be added to the millions of hopeless poor, immigrants and not, already piled up in the peripheries of Europe.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, two years ago, during the debate on the recovery fund, I was among the first to denounce the European Commission's intention to use citizens' money as a tool to blackmail states into aligning themselves with its ideological agenda. An abuse of power of which Poland and Hungary are victims today, put on the wall with the threat of stopping European funds under the excuse of violating the principle of the rule of law. A principle that, however, the EU is careful not to defend, for example in Italy, where for ten years governments have been imposed without popular consent, which decide the fate of the country regularly bypassing Parliament and reducing much of the media system to its own propaganda organ, and where a slice of the judiciary operates to neutralize, with clockwork surveys, those who try to oppose the political projects of their system of power, as the Palamara scandal teaches. But Europe remains silent on all this, demonstrating what I had denounced from the beginning, namely that the rule of law, introduced as a value to safeguard democracy, has been subtly transformed into a weapon to target anyone who dares to preserve the peoples of Europe from the work of economic, social and cultural destruction carried out by Brussels.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the European Commission wants to step up its humanitarian action, considering that already today, with 36% of global assistance, it is the largest donor of humanitarian aid in the world. But what has happened to these tens of billions of euros on which the EU has always sent back any request for greater transparency? What we do know is that we are diverting money, for example, into the pockets of countries like Turkey, which are using it to increase their blackmailing power towards us, or into the pockets of NGOs, which are using it to promote human trafficking to Europe, without any concrete results being seen in this either in terms of the development of third countries or of geopolitical benefits for Europe. Now the EU wants to step up its humanitarian action without worrying about doing anything about it. mea culpa on a totally failed strategy, worrying instead about finding new ways to promote immigration, for example using climate change as yet another excuse to trigger the reception mechanism. Do you call this European humanitarian action? I would rather call it Europe's humanitarian suicide, financed, moreover, with European money.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, High Representative Borrell, the only problem you have faced with regard to the Tunisian crisis is that of respect for the rule of law. It is obvious, but this cannot be limited to Europe's geopolitical interest in a Tunisia that is a key partner in controlling, for example, migratory flows – which in recent months have brought only 50,000 illegal immigrants to Italy – or the Strait of Sicily, through which much of the world's maritime trade passes. It is precisely this disengagement of the EU in foreign policy that has allowed foreign powers to steal our role as privileged partners with the Mediterranean countries, to get their hands on energy resources, trade and migration routes, to blackmail us. So it happened in Libya, so it risks happening in Tunisia if the EU continues to sit in a corner and act as a voyeur impotent. We cannot allow Tunisia like Libya to come under the influence of powers hostile to us today and the only way to do this is to prioritise the involvement of these countries in a shared geopolitical agenda, otherwise our southern border will be overwhelmed by chaos and the Mediterranean, the cradle of European civilization, will turn into our grave.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, the need to establish a new European Health Strategy Agency attests to the resounding failure of the EU to manage COVID. On the other hand, the inability of the ECDC to deal with the pandemic, the shameful censorship of vaccine contracts, the unjustified increase in their prices and the continuous changes of EMA's mind on their authorisation are clear evidence of the total inadequacy and opacity of the policies adopted. Be clear: Finally, defining a European health strategy to end dependence on the USA and Asia and to make us sovereign in the protection of the health of our peoples is absolutely necessary, but it is disturbing that, despite the scandals just mentioned, the Commission has decided once again to deny this Parliament control over the funds that will be allocated to public and private companies. A choice that smells so much like yet another favor to the lobbies that, thanks to the secret agreements signed with the EU, have already earned tens and tens of billions of euros from COVID with huge profit margins at the expense of citizens' wallets. The question is whether your goal is to put the Big Pharma at the service of the health of peoples, or rather the health of peoples at the service of Big Pharma.