Debate contributions by Julien LEONARDELLI

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, it is not without emotion that I take the floor to evoke the memory of the Righteous, those men and women who, at the risk of their lives, saved countless innocent people from Nazi barbarism. During his recent visit to Israel, our group president, Jordan Bardella, was able to honour their memory, including at the Yad Vashem Memorial, and reaffirm the importance of preserving their memory as a pillar of our identity. It is more important than ever to honour the thousands of French and Europeans who saved Jews and resistance fighters from certain death that awaited them. If I had to mention a figure among the Righteous, beyond the commune of Moissac, in France, who is personally close to my heart, I would pay tribute to Rolande Birgy, nicknamed ‘Béret bleu’, a historical activist with the Front National in France. Finally, I deplore the fact that this Parliament is meeting in plenary in Strasbourg on 8 May 2025, disregarding the memory of those who gave their lives to make Europe and France free. For my part, I will not be sitting here on May 8. I will be at the foot of our memorials to the dead honouring the memory of those who fought for our freedom in the face of Nazi Germany. What they have done obliges us. Let's honor the righteous. Yes, in France, we do, on July 21st. But let’s stop ignoring and trampling on our own history.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, once again the Commission and the Council are rediscovering the importance of infrastructure, but always as a matter of urgency. For years, you sacrificed them in the name of free trade and ecological ideology. Result: a vulnerable, deindustrialised Europe, unable to secure its supply chains. While our roads are deteriorating and our lines are closing, you are financing billions of corridors above ground, dictated by Brussels and its technocrats. Let's take a concrete example: the Toulouse-Auch line in Occitania should be modernised as a matter of urgency, but Brussels is unaware of this, preferring to invest in transbaltic links that are disconnected from the realities on the ground. With the Patriots for Europe and Jordan Bardella, we demand action: priority to national strategic infrastructures, support for forgotten territories, relocation of the real economy. Europe must stop despising people and become again a tool at the service of nations. And since we are talking about democracy, I give all my support to Marine Le Pen, unfairly targeted in France.

Madam President, the European Commission is today presenting its first omnibus proposals to cut red tape and make life easier for businesses. However, French business leaders expect much more than just regulatory grooming. In France, our artisans, farmers and industrialists are overwhelmed by an avalanche of standards and bureaucratic constraints. In five years, 850 new European obligations have been imposed, representing nearly 5,000 additional pages of regulation. Result: endless delays in obtaining a simple building permit, absurd steps to access public aid and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) penalised in the face of large companies, which have an army of lawyers to navigate this administrative labyrinth. A striking example: our farmers crumble under the demands of the CAP, while their non-European competitors benefit from more flexible rules. Our industrial SMEs, especially in the automotive sector, see their competitiveness weakened by absurd over-transpositions. We propose an administrative revolution, through a regulatory pause, the abolition of national over-transpositions and a right of derogation for the Member States. It is time to free our businesses from this bureaucratic asphyxiation and to empower our economies to grow and innovate.

Mr President, COP16 was, without a doubt, the largest meeting of States to date on the subject of desertification. It was held in Riyadh, which allowed participants to see how this problem is disrupting regional powers that once relied on agriculture, such as Ethiopia or Egypt. This real scourge is now at our doorstep. It is already observed in Greece, Italy, but also in my region in the south of France, in Occitania, where the running water of the inhabitants is now rationed in summer, during heat waves, where farmers can not always water their crops and where forest fires are more and more frequent. Today, time is no longer for good intentions and false promises, but for change. Europeans affected by land take and drought deserve better than the sufficient ramblings of those standing in glass and concrete towers. To meet this challenge, we must focus on short supply chains, reduce the unbridled free trade that pollutes our air and oceans and turn to innovation and research, like the Gulf countries. Let us not remain spectators, let us be the actors of our salvation before it is too late.

Mr President, in Venezuela, the communist regime has once again been guilty of confiscating power at the expense of the people. A gagged opposition, thousands of people locked up in the same brutality that has torn Eastern Europe apart for almost a century. This situation requires a clear finding: There are those in Europe today who welcome dictatorships, who excuse political violence and who welcome pogroms. And there are, on the contrary, those who stand up to the new totalitarianisms, those who believe in the merits of democracy and the republic, those who defend referendums and citizen consultations rather than repression. It is we, the Patriots, who do not falter in spite of adversity. If our conviction leads us to support the Venezuelan opposition and our hearts make us pray for the victims of Marxism, our reason must lead us to condemn those in Europe who, by their cowardice or extremism, allow this type of regime to continue.

Mr President, having ravaged European agriculture with its Farm to Fork Strategy, which encourages unbridled free trade – with Mercosur in particular – the European Commission is now drawing up a strategy for tourism on the continent. Tourism, however, falls within the competence of States, whose sovereignty is once again violated. In this vision, it is not surprising that we find the same forgotten ones again and again. Metropolises, with their hubs and similar business districts, from Bombay to Manhattan, are naturally in the spotlight. So, not a word about rural territories, not a word about these natural places that combine tourism, environment and history. European tourists do not travel to find the same concrete blocks that cover the globe, but to reconnect with the roots of a thousand-year-old land. Similarly, foreign tourists are looking for more than just a brand: They want this Europe of nations rooted in its heritage, which we propose. The Europe of Puy du Fou, the Cathar fortresses, the Tabernas desert and the Carpathians, which remains the most visited continent in the world. This land has survived wars, diseases, foreign invasions, and, dear Commission, it will, I hope, survive your calamitous management.

Madam President, at the end of the G20 summit in Brazil, we can only deplore the cowardice of the various European representatives regarding the signing of a free trade agreement between the European Union and the Mercosur countries. Once again, rather than agreeing to look at the reality of the problems facing Europe, they agreed to put the dust under the carpet. On this subject as on so many others, what about the lamentable attitude of the European centrists who, not without cynicism, call today to oppose this agreement, which they have always supported? Like your mentor Emmanuel Macron, you were born before shame, especially when we know that you are already negotiating with Uruguay in order to anticipate a rejection of the agreement with Mercosur. We say it with gravity: If this trade agreement is ratified, then French and European agriculture will not survive the unfair competition represented by such an influx of chickens doped with antibiotics, maize treated with atrazine, beef from deforestation. The legitimate revolt of the agricultural world shows that no one is fooled anymore about the real intentions of the European Union with regard to agriculture. Faced with competition from South American products that do not respect the nature or ethics of workers, faced with the hypocrisy of so-called ecologists who think they can offset the carbon footprint of a container ship by buying a bicycle, we, elected representatives of the National Rally in France, will always be alongside French farmers.

Madam President, we defy any project that leans towards federalism, especially when it is under the aegis of the European Commission. This does not prevent us from being pragmatic and responsible. We are told that the Single European Sky project aims to facilitate air travel within the European Union and save airlines €5 billion a year in kerosene. The European Commission could only shine on this technical subject, which enjoys a true European consensus. This initiative, supported by a large majority, should only be a formality. But the Commission, too busy exceeding its powers, forgets its primary objectives. This text will not see the establishment of a single European sky, despite years of negotiations. The mountain gave birth to a mouse. This is in any case apparent from the positions of the air transport professionals, who do not hide their disappointment with this text. No one likes maintaining a millefeuille that is both administrative and technocratic. While Europe is stirring and looking at a ridiculous text, which does not change anything as these changes are insignificant, the United States is already producing a large part of the new generation of fuels through massive subsidies in research and industry. When it comes to industry and energy, European countries are lagging behind, and the European Commission has something to do with it. Mrs von der Leyen, on sovereignty show more restraint, and on the Single Sky show more ambition.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, even though my country, France, is in a good position in almost all international rankings on sustainable development, I express my indignation at a real forfeiture. A European Commissioner for Housing has just been appointed. In the name of which provision or treaty? None, because housing is a prerogative that is fundamentally a matter for States. We do not recognise you, Mrs von der Leyen, as having the right to dispose of us, in an approach which can only lead to the imposition of ever more drastic standards. This is the best you can do, through the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive, which increases the cost of construction and renovation and hopes to achieve unrealistic goals, such as completely eliminating fossil fuel boilers by 2040. Your rigid measures infringe the right to property. This is why we consider that in France, it is up to us, French, to decide on housing, by establishing the national priority in access to social housing and by developing a common sense ecology, based on scientific realities.

Madam President, I would like to pay tribute here to the courage and dedication of the men and women volunteer firefighters who, in our French territories, devote time and energy to the service of others, often in addition to their main professional activity. Your European directive on working time directly endangers the status of volunteer firefighters, even though volunteering represents nearly 80% of the workforce in France. To want to count attendance and standby time as working time in its own right is to threaten the balance of our French model of civil security, which is nevertheless one of the most effective in Europe, with a capacity to intervene every seven seconds. This directive demonstrates once again the most complete disconnection of technocrats locked up in their glass offices in Brussels. How could such an aberration be imposed on the peoples of Europe? All these people had better come down to earth from time to time.

Mr President, Mr Vice-President, ladies and gentlemen, anti-Semitism is a deadly poison whose resurgence affects many European countries, particularly my own, France. With 887 anti-Semitic acts recorded in the first half of 2024 by the French government, almost three times more than last year, France and its European neighbours are facing a rising tide of anti-Semitism. The toxic development of Islamist fundamentalism in the neighborhoods of many French cities is no more than a mere vector of anti-Semitism, henceforth it comes to hit the foundations of our Judeo-Christian civilization and reigns a climate of terror for our compatriots of Jewish faith. Since the massacre perpetrated on October 7 by the Hamas terrorist organization, it is also the irresponsible speeches of the extreme left and its political arsonists that legitimately feed anti-Semitism in France. How can we conceive that nearly 15,000 Jews in France have already chosen to make their aliyah in Israel, a country yet at war? No, anti-Semitism is not an opinion, much less an electoral lever, but a crime and a call to crime. So let's wake up our European nations and their political leaders. Indignation has no effect if it does not extend into action. So let us fight anti-Semitism in France and in Europe, spread abjectly by the conjunction of Islamists and the extreme left, which enjoys a lot of support within this Parliament.