Speeches

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, how can you be bold enough to claim to be the white knights of animal welfare, when in this very Chamber you have been supporting the opening of the European market to Ukrainian chickens and eggs for two years? Do you have to remember that, in Ukraine, 40 million hens are raised in narrow sheds in the Vinnytsia region, in the center of the country, where the multinational MHP holds more than 20 hens per square meter? We are far from respecting animal welfare. In addition, you are imposing new unfair competition on French and European breeders in favour of breeders who do not respect anything and who guarantee even less. Your agribashing, as you turn a blind eye to abuse elsewhere, beyond a blatant injustice, shows your contempt for our farmers, who are among the most virtuous in the world. No one is fooled by your proposed text, which is above all a pretext for imposing new restrictions on farms here, while encouraging imports from elsewhere. A double standard – I would even say hypocrisy – that actually gives us goosebumps.

Mr President, I am here to remind you of your reason. At the very moment when farmers are expressing their just and legitimate anger all over France and Europe, you want to continue to enslave them. While the price of our producers’ wheat has collapsed since you opened the European Union to Ukrainian wheat on 25 May 2002, you decide to increase the unfair competition you have imposed for decades, preventing our farmers from living off their trade. In France, a farmer commits suicide every two days. With this update of the EU-Chile Free Trade Agreement, you will aggravate this absolutely dramatic situation. This agreement will result in the import of 18 000 tonnes more poultry, 9 000 tonnes more pigmeat, 4 000 tonnes of sheepmeat, 2 000 tonnes of beef, not including olive oil and eggs. In the midst of the agricultural crisis, updating this free trade agreement represents a real betrayal for our farmers and producers. I ask you here in this Chamber to listen to their cry from the heart, to stop your destructive madness and to immediately remove agriculture from the free trade treaties.

Mr President, in the report on the rule of law in the European Union, the Commission and the rapporteur are competing to distribute good and bad points around them and are shooting at anyone who dares to depart from the federalist diktat of Brussels. But the same people who compete to point out the failings of others turn a deaf ear when it comes to pointing out their own. Of the 43 pages contained in the report, only a few lines evoke the very worrying and the very great scandal and very important scandal of Qatargate. This scandal that shook the European Parliament on 9 December 2022 and has since seen many twists and turns. The appointed corrupter, Qatar, the alleged corrupts, the MEPs, starting, let us recall, with Eva Kaïlí, then Socialist Vice-President of the Parliament. But who can now certify that the extent of Qatar's influence and corruption of our institutions is limited to bags filled with cash found at Mrs. Kaïlí's home? More than a year later, many questions remain unanswered. Worse, other questions have been added. But why does OLAF, the European Union's supervisory body, not react? Is there a link, even indirect, between Qatar and subsidies to associations close to the Muslim Brotherhood, such as Femyso? Could there be a link between Qatar and the immigrationist policies of the European Union that contribute to aggravating Islamist communitarianism on our continent? And why, finally, did the majority of the Members of this European Parliament refuse an internal committee of inquiry? It is high time to shed light on the influence of Qatar and their relays here, within the European Union and perhaps even beyond. There's an emergency. Yesterday, the Emir of Qatar was received by Emmanuel Macron at the Elysee and we continue to close our eyes here.

Mr President, pursuant to Sharia law, Mohammad Ghobadlou was executed in Iran on 23 January 2024. A barbaric execution, pronounced by judges of Islamic courts, because he had participated in demonstrations following another murder, that of a young girl by the Iranian morality police. A girl who had dared to go out without a veil. In a country where Islamists are in power, refusing to cover up for women can lead you to death. Supporting women’s freedom can lead you to execution. But it is not only in Muslim countries that this rigorous vision of Islam advances. It is also in the West that the relays of Islamists manage to impose the precepts of ‘pudeur’, that is to say, the invisibilisation of women in public space. This is happening even in the most prestigious European institutions, right here in the European Parliament, for example by receiving the association Femyso, close to the Muslim Brotherhood, or by funding the campaign to promote the veil ironically entitled ‘My veil, my freedom’. But what an ignominy to trivialize the fight of Iranian or European women against Islamists. Perhaps the investigations carried out by the Belgian judiciary into allegations of influence, or even corruption, within the European institutions will provide us with answers and, once and for all, will unravel everything.

Mr President, criminals and terrorists are intelligent and, it must be said, Commissioner, these networks are set up here at home. They understood that uncontrolled movement within the Schengen area increases their capacity to be harmful. Two thirds of criminal networks are located in at least three Member States and take advantage of this to thwart the surveillance of the authorities and play hide-and-seek with them. You are setting up a new centralised data sharing facility, and we fully agree. But the ban on internal border controls prevents any improvement in the effectiveness of your new device for arresting criminals and terrorists. Your technocrat speech, Commissioner, is powder in the eyes, for the citizens, who are more and more likely to understand that, in reality, you are not defending their interests or their security.

Madam President, your relentless fight against hate speech is actually a disguised Wokist offensive. You want to protect ultra-minority ideological activists from any challenge, and even worse, from any public debate or discussion. When I say, for example, that I do not want to touch minors with hormonal treatments and other medical interventions, it is not hate speech against transgender people, but a declaration of love for children. When I fight against the migratory flooding of my country, of our continent, when I denounce the consequences of your disastrous immigration pact, it is not hatred that inspires me, but a deep attachment and love for my country and for our old continent. In reality, you are no longer in democratic discussion, but in theocratic censorship. You are no longer in political debates, but in the Inquisition. You are no longer in reason but in imprecations of a quasi-religious nature. You are bringing us into a new obscurantism. Let us open debates, ladies and gentlemen, rather than stifling freedom of expression.

Mr President, "There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come," said Victor Hugo. Today, this idea is embodied by the agricultural and popular revolt that is shaking Europe. Already in 2023, in Holland, farmers overthrew the government of your friend Mark Rutte, exposing his betrayal. In Germany, after months of unceasing protests, farmers have pushed back Olaf Scholz, also a spokesman for your sinister agricultural policy. In France, the revolt growls and is organized throughout the national territory. This revolt, born in our countryside, is the reaction to your supposedly green policy which, under the guise of ecology, destroys our agriculture, undermines our sovereignty and threatens the quality of the food on our plates. Farmers, the pillars of our nations, are now at the forefront of defending our vital interests. Their fight is ours. The time for the rural revolution has come and you know it. She's unstoppable. Our support for farmers is total.

Mr President, ‘to misname an object is to add to the misfortune of this world’, wrote the famous French writer Albert Camus. The European Union is clearly customary because: As soon as a scandal arises, you try to create a distraction by invoking the alleged need for transparency and accountability within our institutions. Behind these slogans, you are really trying to hide reality. The reality is that the European Union has allowed immigration to overwhelm Europe and has allowed rigorist Islam to enter its hushed offices. The "Qatargate" is a new testimony: behind this case of alleged corruption, revealed just a year ago, is the unforgivable compromise of many senior leaders. In the light of the ‘Qatargate’, the decision-making process on certain recent files raises questions, such as the opening of EU airspace in Qatar, such as the proposed visa waiver for Qataris, such as the arrangements for awarding the Football World Cup to Qatar. But we are also thinking of the decision to carry out European campaigns in favour of wearing the hijab, a retrograde Islamic garment that has no place in Europe. And we are even thinking of the conditions for drawing up the disastrous immigration pact. You cannot continue to embody the camp of good and not look the problem in the face, i.e. in the light of foreign influence. Nothing is worse than being useful idiots of Islamists.

Madam President, Commissioner, you use every crisis to advance your integration project. The migration crisis? The European Union presents its Immigration Pact to directly attack the sovereignty of the Member States by imposing and organising mass immigration into Europe. The war in Ukraine? The European Union proposes to establish a European ammunition reserve. First step, of course, towards the creation of a European army, which will have control over the military arsenal of France, the only country with nuclear weapons in the European Union. What about the COVID-19 health crisis? Regardless of the numerous scandals, studies and opaque vaccine contracts, the European Union is taking the opportunity to start the process that will give it the health competence, now vested in the Member States, and is proposing the European Health Area as a first step. It is not the general interest that guides their projects, but reasons of power and money. Behind the beautiful phrases and deceptive intentions lies the diabolical project of subjugating the peoples and nations of Europe to their ideological and commercial vision of man and life.

Madam President, on 9 December 2022, the scandal of alleged corruption within even the most prestigious European institutions, with Qatar as its alleged corruptor, came out in the press. Few people today remember, however, that it was also in Qatar that the Strategy for Islamic Cultural Action outside the Islamic World, a strategy for influencing Islamism in European countries, was signed in 2000. This Islamist pact, adopted by more than 50 Muslim countries, identifies the European Union as an armed arm for the construction of Islamic sharia-controlled societies in Europe, what Eva Kaïli calls mere ‘lobbying’, and which many observers treat as a sordid case of corruption, could well be treason on the part of our leaders, i.e. they would have agreed to become agents of foreign influence, either out of ideology or financial greed. It is frightening to see that it is the Belgian public prosecutor’s office, not the European Union, that is putting things in order and seeking the truth.

Mr President, last Saturday I was one of more than one million Spaniards demonstrating in the streets of Madrid. The reason is the refusal by the Spanish people of a legal coup d’état by the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, who, in defiance of the law and national unity, granted amnesty to Catalan pro-independence prisoners in exchange for their support for his coalition government. It has been three weeks since the Spanish people protested against the low political maneuvers of the socialists. The European Union, which has been very reactive in condemning countries such as Hungary and Poland on decisions that respect the law and the will of their voters, remains curiously silent. Perhaps because the EU sees Sánchez as a political ally, a partner who lets illegal immigrants from Africa flood our European continent through. Interference in the internal affairs of States is inadmissible. But when the national unity of a country is threatened and the law is flouted, it is our duty, on all political sides, to support those who are fighting to preserve national unity and the future of their country.

Madam President, your reasoning is ecologically absurd and socially unfair. How can you demand ever more climate efforts from French and European citizens, as gigantic hyper-polluting container ships continue to cross the oceans and maritime traffic continues to increase? Why import from the other side of the world when these products can be produced here? Why do climate conferences ignore the harmful consequences of free trade treaties that facilitate and encourage these polluting practices? The first measure for the environment would be a coordinated effort for localism, i.e. to act on the principle of producing as close as possible to consumers in order to reduce avoidable journeys and transport. COP28 must change course and recognise free trade as a polluting and now obsolete model, and place localism at the heart of Europe’s environmental policy.

Madam President, in politics, nothing happens by chance. I would like to recall those words of former U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt on the occasion of this debate on media freedom. As this legislature nears its end and you have already used pressure, threats, and even financial sanctions against countries that refuse your diktat, you are taking advantage of this last stretch to try to arrogate control of the media to yourself. Behind the backs of the people, by imposing your rules on the European nations, your project aims to monitor the media and impose a legal framework by circumventing the national parliaments, the legitimate elected representatives to ensure that Europeans are informed, without discordant voice and as the Commission would like, and that they of course vote wisely accordingly on 9 June. Ladies and gentlemen, the defence of freedom of the press requires defence and, above all, respect for the plurality of opinions. The instrumentalisation of this particularly serious subject, which is freedom of the media, as you do in order to curb it and to curb any diverging opinions, has at least had the merit of underlining your contempt for the historical democratic values of our continent.

I will not allow myself to tell you that you are schizophrenic, I will just say that you are incoherent. How can you restrict farming in Europe, including with coercive measures like you do in the Netherlands, and at the same time sign agreements that will allow the massive import of absolutely uncontrolled meat from Latin America? To tell you everything, I would like to understand, as your logic is so confusing. How can you continue to support and promote this frantic global trade that is made possible only by the circulation of hyper-polluting cargo ships? I would have liked you to explain. Above all, I would not like to believe that the only explanation that can be found would be the objective of enslaving Europe to world markets by abolishing our own livestock farming and extending our own agriculture.

Mr President, dear friends and fellow hunters, since the public authorities are overwhelmed by the explosion of the use of weapons of war in criminal circles, they want to tighten the rules on the ownership, sale and transport of weapons. But you cannot imagine for a second that this will prevent traffickers and scoundrels, who operate in the greatest illegality, from obtaining Kalashnikovs and automatic weapons. No, the eco-bobos rub their hands, because in reality, this text will mainly impact hunters and sports shooters. I am the rapporteur for this text for our ID group, and I have tabled amendments to exclude hunters and sport shooters from these new constraints. But I'm lonely. Where are those responsible for hunting in France? Why are they not calling on political parties to oppose this text? In reality, these hunting officials are complacent in this system that keeps them in power. The problems of hunters are actually their business. In the next elections, they will tell you that they will be there to solve them. Shame on them and the schemes of these arsonist firefighters of the hunt. I am a hunter and I share this passion with you, and it is out of conviction that I am committed to defending our passion.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, transparency is the watchdog, the active and democratic verifier of public action. Therefore, access to documents must be the principle and not the exception. Indeed, the public is demanding access to billions of euros in pharmaceutical contracts that remain inaccessible. Citizens are shocked that there are secret negotiations or wonder how you can refuse to answer questions from your own parliamentarians here in this European Parliament. What about the pschitt that Qatargate has done and all the questions whose answers remain buried in the drawers? And even more recently, in Malta on 20 June, during my official mission, I learn that the new European Asylum Agency will collect data and prepare to monitor and evaluate the Member States, but only for the Commission, without making this data public. Who are these white knights who have laid down these texts in favour of transparency, when this house does not practice it with regard to its own Members? So, if we support any initiative in favour of access, we will continue to call everywhere and everywhere for noble intentions to be translated above all into action. Because yes, transparency is the active verifier of public action and the only guarantor against dictatorship. And I would say: A good listener.

Madam President, we are faced with a proven system of corruption within the European institutions and you dare to talk to us about transparency? You rightly denounce the influences of the alleged corruptor which is Qatar. But why not go to the end of your approach? Set up this commission of inquiry that we are calling for. You should also ask for investigations, for example into the European funds allocated by the regions. Who are the beneficiaries? Who are the people employed by these associations? Another example I would like to cite, when you talk about transparency, is your European Asylum Agency in Malta, which I visited three weeks ago, which admits that it produces reports that will never be made public and collects data that it does not even share with MEPs. In addition, it uses its secret-agency reports to make its recommendations, which must be implemented by Member States under penalty of sanctions. No, but let’s go, the hypocrisy in your approach is seen as the nose in the middle of the figure. In a vulgar play, that would be laughable. But here in the European Parliament, the reality it hides is truly dramatic.

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I lived in Sudan for several years in the 1980s. Since then, the lives of the Sudanese have been punctuated by conflicts, wars and the terrifying human misery that results and that mainly affects children. The Sudanese, direct victims of the fighting or indirect victims of the famines that aggravate these armed conflicts, tried, yesterday and today, to flee in order to shelter themselves and their children from the whistling bullets and the famine that awaits. Food aid from international bodies is regularly found on the black market and is sold at gold prices by mafia networks or for the benefit of corrupt local officials. How can we talk about the rule of law in a country that has seen so many military coups since its independence, that has never known lasting peace or democratic functioning, and that is plagued by endemic corruption? How can we talk about fundamental rights to a people who are hungry and see their children die? The fundamental rights for them are to be able to survive war and famine, and to see the end of a tunnel of long suffering. As I have repeatedly proposed, there is an urgent need to establish humanitarian corridors to cities of asylum, cities under international protection, close to humanitarian crisis centres, which are intended to offer protection, care, education and food to populations at risk. No Sudanese will be reassured by words from a European Parliament and promises of greater respect for their fundamental rights. No speech, no statement, no description of the horrors or incantations here in Parliament will give him the security he seeks and will not seriously dissuade him from going on the dangerous paths of emigration. On the other hand, he could find a quick and concrete response to the threats he and his family face in a city of asylum. Having lived in Sudan, I can say that the desert that migrants will cross is a stretch of sand with suffocating temperatures. The desert is a monster that kills. The European Union’s humanism is to act quickly on the ground, to lend a hand to stabilise, of course, the country and its people in disarray, and to set Sudan on the path of reconstruction. It is about preparing the future of Sudanese people, who are not here in Europe, but at home, in the land of their ancestors.

Madam President, in order to facilitate the arrival of 70 million migrants in Europe, the European Commission last week adopted, in hushed offices in Luxembourg, the principles of its disastrous immigration pact. Since the 2015 migration crisis, the Commission has sought to replace sovereign states, citing the need for migration management at European level, but in reality to impose its ideological project on them, which includes facilitating and accelerating immigration to our continent. The response of the Member States differs. Some, such as Macron’s France or Scholz’s Germany, openly support the immigration pact or even think it does not go far enough yet, and others, such as Poland and Hungary, strongly oppose it. But many others are bending over backwards because the thinly veiled budget blackmail, which involves billions of euros in European aid, is working. While 70% of French people want less immigration, the EU, with the support of Macron’s France, is preparing more immigration, because, for them, immigration is not a problem, it is their project.

Mr President, Commissioner, why are you not telling the truth? Today, there can be no real European digital protection because you have totally missed the digital transition. Europe, or rather the European Union, has left Google and Microsoft with the immense power, with millions of servers, to establish themselves as the guardians of Europeans' digital data. And the Cloud Act, the U.S. extraterritoriality law, allows U.S. authorities to access that data. Our delay in this matter is gigantic. 7.8 million servers in Google and Microsoft data centers, while OVH, the European leader, has only 400,000. Faced with this deficiency, which is, I say, criminal for our States, there are two solutions. Either, as you do, you limit yourself to a normative response and leave Europe hostage to the Americans. Either, as we advocate, you are launching a major European digital infrastructure and research plan that guarantees our states the protection of their data and their sovereignty.

Madam President, the European Union is betraying the spirit of Frontex. Initially, this agency intervened to help Member States protect their external borders. But with the new migration pact, Commissioner Johansson unveils her disastrous plan to overwhelm Europe with migration and transform Frontex. The EU had announced its intention to reduce illegal immigration when, in reality, the migration pact is the legalisation of illegal immigration. The Pact broadens the concept of family reunification. The pact sanctified NGOs. The Pact simplifies asylum applications. And the pact makes it mandatory for migrants to be relocated to the Member States. Frontex, too, has started its transformation. With the Migration Pact, Brussels immigrationists put it under guardianship, making it a control agency of the Member States and a travel agency for migrants. A sad end for this agency that, tomorrow, we will revive from its ashes.

Mr President, let us be clear: When we talk about Afghanistan, we are talking about an obscurantist regime. It is well known that Afghanistan is an Islamist emirate under the yoke of the Taliban, which imposes Sharia law – Islamic law. The Taliban are medieval Islamists, who support religious dogmas from other times. This archaic and retrograde Islam is incompatible with freedom of education and training because it denies more than 50% of the population – namely women – the right to live. If our Parliament sincerely wants to discuss rights in this country, it must note in the preamble that the Afghan political and religious regime cannot and does not want to guarantee women’s access to education and knowledge in the country. Only 30% of Afghan adults could read in 2022, half as much as men. Worse: Islamic courts impose corporal punishment and can even ston women accused of adultery. Prepubescent girls are forcibly married there. Why does Parliament focus on the situation of human rights defenders in this country, which is only the tip of a gigantic iceberg, that of a barbaric ideology, unlike any humanism? For my part, I refuse to deplore the inequalities in access to education or other in this country without having previously denounced Islamist ideology.

Mr President, a new wave of migrants is threatening Europe. Italy has just declared a state of migration emergency in the face of an unprecedented influx of illegal immigrants. More than 3,000 people in three days and more than 31,000 migrants have arrived illegally on the Italian coast since the beginning of the year. Four times more than last year. Finland has started to build a 200-kilometre wall and the Netherlands is sounding the alarm as their reception systems are on the verge of saturation and flows continue to arrive. In this particularly worrying context, there is no longer time for technocrat and ideological discourse. We must act quickly and firmly. Member States must be helped to protect their borders. All financial aid from the European Union to states that refuse to take back their nationals who are clandestinely here must be abolished. And arrangements must be put in place to manage humanitarian crises outside Europe. Other countries have done so with excellent results. Let's follow their example.

Mr President, immigration is an absolutely central issue. You are so aware of this that in 2020 you prepared a new Pact on Immigration and Asylum. What is striking, while you are deciding the demographic future of Europe, is that you are doing it quietly and secretly. Why don't you want a big debate on immigration? Why don’t you encourage referendums in the Member States? Why are you ignoring the polls? And why do you act in this occult way? You know very well that since 2020, despite your colloquiums, despite the launch of complicit associations, the recruitment of self-proclaimed experts, promotional trips and, let’s say, political and financial pressures, you have met with fierce resistance, because this disastrous pact goes against the will of the people. During our official missions to Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Greece, everywhere, we were able to see the discrepancy between your ideological policy and the reality on the ground. More and more Member States are openly hostile to your policy of submersion of our European continent. It is time to listen to them and to listen to the people.

Madam President, last Thursday, France’s Minister of Culture, Rima Abdul-Malak, who should be the guarantor of freedom of expression, threatened to shut down television channels in France. It was understood that she blamed them for a lack of pluralism and for not dealing with court cases with measure. Is it necessary to recall that the drafting of each news channel sorts the information? Is it necessary to recall that CNews treats various facts differently than, for example, BFM-TV? It is true that CNews leaves room in particular to deal with issues relating to growing insecurity in France, which is often ignored by other channels. Does this mean a lack of pluralism, or would it rather embarrass the French government? In any event, the Minister has, it seems to me, broken with her duty of neutrality. Its serious attack on news channels is perceived by many commentators as a direct attack on fundamental freedoms. Before standing here as white knights in defence of fundamental rights, some of you, ladies and gentlemen, should start sweeping in front of your own door. What would not have been said if this had happened, for example, in Hungary?