Debate contributions by Laurence TROCHU

You asked the question: Is a woman’s life worth as much as a man’s? So, I ask you another question: Is the life of a child worth as much as the life of a man or a woman?

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, equality, freedom of choice and self-determination: this is the usual creed of mental socialism, which the West is still struggling to get rid of, and this 2025 Strategy for equality between women and men is its archetype, with its usual litany of pious and utopian vows. This report, which praises the convergence of struggles, is far removed from the real concerns of those who would be eternal victims: women. To read you, Europe would still be a hostile land for women. We quickly forget that our civilisation is the first, since the Middle Ages, to have given it a unique place in society. But this equality is nothing but a decoy, which requires women to be men like any other, this freedom of choice a lie, which pushes women to abandon motherhood in order to become producers, this self-determination a chimera, which ignores biological reality. If we really want to defend women, let's start by recognizing, admiring and valuing their specificity: This wonderful motherhood. This is what makes it irreplaceable, this is what needs to be defended, this is what makes us women!

Mr. member, you accused the Conservatives of being prisoners of the patriarchal system. I'm a woman. I am a member of the Conservative Group. I'm a politician. I am not dependent on the opinion that my husband might have on me, to ban me or allow me to be engaged in politics. I wanted to make this first remark and then ask you a question. You failed to talk about women's addiction, women's slavery regarding surrogacy. I would like to hear your views on that.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, it is gratifying that this debate on the exploitation of maternity and therefore, let us not be mistaken, surrogacy is finally taking place in this Chamber. Because, after the UN report condemning surrogacy in all its forms, after its condemnation as a universal crime by Italy, after the inclusion in the Slovak constitution of its prohibition, it is up to the European Union to decide and our condemnation must be unequivocal. We must remember that surrogacy contravenes the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. We must point out that surrogacy contravenes the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which prohibits the sale of surrogacy. We must also affirm that, by using the reproductive functions of one woman for the benefit of another, surrogacy contravenes the Convention on the Abolition of Slavery. For surrogacy is nothing more than that, a modern, appalling slavery, in the name of individual rights and technical progress, which ends with the tearing of a child from the arms of its mother. We must therefore immediately and definitively call for its abolition. Slavery is not framed, it is abolished.

Madam President, Commissioner, on a matter as serious as the environment and the economy of our territories, I deplore the fact that ideology is involved. The resolution tabled on the future COP30 only scratches the surface of nuclear power without presenting it for what it is, the only solution for low-cost, stable and decarbonised energy. At the same time, gender equality occupies a prominent place, thus demonstrating the ideological intention of a text without credibility. The disastrous Green Deal, which has shattered Europe's competitiveness and caused it to lag far behind China and the United States, permeates the intentions of this resolution. No, climate change cannot be used as a pretext to leave history! Encouraging innovation rather than prohibition, smart ecology rather than punitive ecology, technical progress rather than degrowth, these are the principles that should inspire us. Blindness serves the cause of the environment, which deserves to be taken more seriously. The ecology of the left is abyssing, the ecology of the right is preserving.

Madam President, 12-year-old Lola Daviet, cut into pieces by Dahbia Benkired, an Algerian woman under an obligation to leave French territory (OQTF). Philippine Lenoir, 19, killed in the Bois de Boulogne by Taha Oualidat, Moroccan under OQTF. Johanna Blanes, 24, raped and killed in Mont-de-Marsan by Syrian refugee Hussein Ahmed. Nadine Devillers, 60, and Simone Barreto Silva, 44, slaughtered and stabbed in the Basilica of Nice by a Tunisian who arrived in Europe thanks to an NGO. Ladies and gentlemen, these examples represent only a tiny fraction of the victims of immigration, and the denial of reality kills our women and children just as much. This evidence of the direct link between immigration and insecurity no longer denies it. After the rapes in Cologne, after the "grooming gangs" in the United Kingdom, after the Paris attacks, there are still irresponsible politicians, in this assembly in particular, to close their eyes and accuse those who ring the tocsin of racism. To all these women, to all these mothers, to all these families shattered by cowardice, it will be necessary to be accountable. We will have to tell our children what we have done or not done to meet the main challenge of the 21st century.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, on 22 June in Damascus, 25 people lost their lives and 63 others were injured because they were Christians. A few hundred meters from their church, Saint-Élie, the Rue Droite was borrowed by Saint Paul two thousand years ago. Yes, Syria was one of the cradles of Christianity, and therefore of our civilization. Today, Islamism is at the head of this fragile state, and it is getting the good graces of the international community. For the European Union, the line has always been the same: Everything will be better than Bashar al-Assad, including the worst of Islamists. Emmanuel Macron even rolled out the red carpet, in Paris, to Ahmed al-Charaa. This guilty naivety claimed the lives of hundreds of Alawis and Christians last March. The Druze, the Ismailis and the Yazidis are the targets of similar abuses perpetrated by militias more or less linked to the ruling regime, of which Christians are a prime target. So the naivety of the European Union must stop in favour of demands and pressures commensurate with the situation. The Syrian people and their minorities, especially Christians, cannot be sacrificed on the altar of passivity.

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the Commission proposes that we continue today the gradual unravelling of the disastrous Green Deal with the simplification of the carbon border adjustment mechanism. The regulatory and bureaucratic madness of the European Union shows its limits and we welcome this return to reality. But that's not enough. Applied as it stands, the carbon border tax, established to protect our businesses, will only accelerate the deindustrialization of the continent. With the current system, for an aluminum door made in China, no carbon tax at the borders, unlike a door produced in Europe. Under the current system, the products we export outside Europe will gradually be subject to the European carbon tax, unlike those of their international competitors. The EU succeeds in this feat of penalising its own production! If we want to restore our industrial power while limiting emissions, let's start by developing stable and controllable energies, such as nuclear, geothermal, hydraulic, and put an end to the race for intermittent energies that are responsible for an energy cost three to four times that of China or the United States.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, EUR 30 billion a year is the most relentless reality that the text on the European Union's long-term budget shows us: 30 billion euros that will have to be paid each year to repay the insanity of the Next Generation EU loan. The guidelines of this budget appear to be a leak forward: creation of own resources, enlargement, reinforced egalitarian utopia. These guidelines want more and more European Union, more and more defence at the expense of sovereignty and freedom, and enshrine this mental socialism from which our Europe no longer manages to disintegrate. Yet there are savings to be made, especially in totally ideological cultural research programs, which cost taxpayers millions. One could, for example, abolish the Transgender Europe programme, which has already cost more than €3 million since 2019 to support a European transgender network. This is just one example among dozens and dozens. Here are some savings to be made that would ultimately only be missed by a few politicized associations. More freedom, less spending, less ideology. Let us give the Union a budget that is finally coherent.

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, we were promised that the European Union will ensure our competitiveness, well-being and resilience. Yet today we have to deal with the central issue of medicines, starting with the most critical ones. Would we have become a Third World continent? Since this problem needs to be addressed, let us do so by trying, for once, not to respond to the mistakes of the past with a forward leak. We need to reduce our dependence on Asian countries and develop our own pharmaceutical industry on a European scale, but not at the cost of the sovereignty of nations – sacrificed by the Critical Medicines Act, which clarifies that the stocks of one Member State must not be able to harm another – nor at the cost of transparency – that was so lacking during the COVID-19 outbreak, which caused widespread mistrust among Europeans vis-à-vis their leaders on these issues. Nothing in the Critical Medicines Act seeks to address this in a concrete way. Protecting the health of Europeans must also get rid of ideologies, accept the existence of divergent interests within the EU and leave European nations with a monopoly on their own competences. (The speaker refused to answer a blue card question from Sieper.)

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the roadmap for women's rights presented last Friday oscillates between self-satisfaction and a declaration of principle, which is more useful in hushed chambers than against the real difficulties faced by women in real life in the 21st century. Do you really want to protect women? So, start by closing the borders and stop importing into our land millions of people who regard women as possessions, who veil them and forbid them from free will. Do you really want to protect women? Well, stop importing sexual predators that are over-represented in the attacks and because of which we cry Lola and Philippine in France. Do you really want to protect women? Pursue by condemning those who commodify their bodies, banning surrogacy, and controlling pornography. Do you really want to protect women? Well, give them the opportunity to be mothers, by restoring the family figure, whose destruction creates for them ever more precariousness and heavy responsibilities to bear. Then, and only then, will the action of the European Union be more than a wishful thinking.

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, EUR 22.6 million is the amount of development aid granted to China by the European Union in 2024. It is our money that allows the world's second largest economy to destroy our industry. For the 2024-2025 financial year, EUR 1 000 600 000 will go from the pockets of European taxpayers to countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Does this stop migratory flooding? Absolutely not. It is we, the peoples of Europe, who continually finance this aid from which we derive no benefit. Therefore, the suspension of US development aid is an opportunity for the European Union to ask itself the question of the relevance of the programmes it finances. The same goes for the WHO, which, plagued by ideology, is responsible for setting standards on the emotional, relational and sexual education of our young people, far from the real health issues. The same goes for the Pandemic Treaty, which threatens sovereignty and individual freedoms. So, American decisions remind us of our duty, too long forgotten: to face up to our responsibilities as Europeans before we take care of the whole earth.

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, in the face of climate change, it is sad to see that ideological solutions too often take precedence over common sense. The issue of desertification is no exception and the answers to this problem, which no one denies, are often illusory. As such, the fierce and sometimes even violent opposition of French ecologists to common-sense solutions such as megabasins, which store winter surplus water for reuse in the summer, is an eloquent example. So, rather than seeing in man only a predator-polluter, man must be the solution, through innovation, technical progress and research. Desertification cannot be combated by an excessively punitive and prescriptive ecology, which is ruinous for our competitiveness, as the Draghi report pointed out. Our farmers, who have shaped our landscapes, are tired of being singled out as the main culprits and being crushed by standards. The latest ideological artifact, climate change is also used as a pretext to justify mass immigration from the South that no one wants anymore. So, ladies and gentlemen, to meet the climate challenge, let us finally get out of ideology.

How consistent is yours, since we also know that your group is the one that considers that man is an enemy of nature, a group that fantasises a nature empty of all humanity, man being the polluter par excellence? I therefore return the question to you.

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, 'demography is destiny', Auguste Comte said to us, and that of Europe, as such, seems sealed. The comparison with the vitality of the South marks the twilight of our civilization: in 2026, the EU’s population will start to decline to 3.5% of the world’s population by 2070. So this decline cannot be stopped by mass immigration, unless one thinks that all individuals are interchangeable – an illusion that denies the peoples of Europe their uniqueness and their own destiny. European nations, like the Commission, should consider birth-related expenditure as investment rather than mere social costs when drawing up their budgets. In France, this issue is even more important, with a social model that is based precisely on solidarity between generations. It is therefore by giving back to Europeans the pride of being who they are that the future will be built more securely. The family, constantly attacked by progressivism, must be revalued. Motherhood and fatherhood are the pillars on which the future of our continent is built.

Mr President, Commissioner, a calm debate on the status of women in the world would require several conditions, which, unfortunately, are not met. It would first be necessary to be able to define precisely what a woman is. But the lubies woke whose text is full do not allow it. It would then be necessary to get rid of a caricatured ideological vision. But this report makes the choice to carry an already outdated feminism, which I cannot claim. Because I defend women for what they are, not for what you think they should be, I am not a feminist. Because I fight surrogacy, forced abortion, the degradation of the image of women through pornography, I am not a feminist. Because I want to celebrate motherhood as the privilege of women, with the support of men and as the future of humanity, I am not a feminist. So women have nothing to do with these wishful thinking and your ideological agenda. Europe should have better things to offer the world than these cartoons, and I will keep reminding you of that.

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, ‘The European Union and support for people with disabilities: Few concrete effects”: This is the title of the latest report of the European Court of Auditors, which has been established without appeal. So, more than the concrete solutions, which belong to the Member States, it is a vision of civilisation that Europe must set itself the task of recalling. Recall and support the efforts of caregivers and these families, who sacrifice a large part of their lives, with very little support from the public authorities. Recall that it is illusory to be obsessed with accessibility if we forget the specific issues related to mental disability, a blind spot in EU policies. Recall that, if the only solution proposed to deal with disability is abortion, this adds unhappiness to the drama and promotes eugenics. Finally, remembering that the family, which some people strive to destroy, is the first material and moral support to cope with disability.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, the quality of a civilisation is measured by its respect for the weakest of its members, said Professor Jérôme Lejeune, a great French researcher who discovered Down syndrome. Our children, the future of our continent, today face new threats, sometimes imported, sometimes denied, but present. Threats of physical violence first, with an immigration that, in France, has already killed Lola, Thomas, Mathis, Philippine and so many others. Threats of sexual violence, then, with the worrying development of online sexual exploitation of minors. The journey of sexual predators begins very often with the consumption of pornography and it is a subject that we must dare to face. Threats also to education, with school programs on emotional and sexual life that replace parents, families and sexualize children. Threats finally of militant transgenderism supported by the European Commission in its LGBT program. The practices of sex reassignment operations for minors, which are real mutilations, must be banned from the European Union. And for the future of our nations, we will be intractable...

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, as is often the case in this Parliament, good intentions can lead to bad consequences. No one today questions the dangers of tobacco on the health of Europeans, but the legitimate desire for prevention must be able to be done without harming several economic sectors that must be taken into account. Let's take care of our tobacconists, especially provincial ones, whose shops, where they work hard every day, are sometimes the last place of social life in some villages. Let us also think of our restaurant owners and coffee shop owners, who would suffer directly from a ban on all smoke on their terraces, which this resolution calls for. Furthermore, an impact study on the health effects of e-cigarettes and their contribution or not to smoking cessation would be essential before putting them on an equal footing with tobacco. Finally, I regret that the increasingly important subject of cannabis consumption, which has exploded in France with a 72% increase between 2010 and 2017, is not mentioned in this text. Its health consequences are obviously much more harmful than those of tobacco.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, the election of Donald Trump, far from being the cataclysm portrayed by the Western media, must sign an end to naivety for the European nations and for the Union. The end of commercial naivety first, and the dream of sweet commerce as the regulator of the world's march. American protectionism will have to respond to European and national measures to finally liberate our economy and protect our businesses. End of military naivety then, America finally turning away from its role as gendarme of the world and thus the opportunity for the European nations, and especially the French nuclear power, to take back in hand their destiny, their autonomy and their sovereignty in terms of defense. End of ideological naivety, finally, with a rout of the candidate of wokism, mass immigration, LGBT ideology and transgenderism. The European Union should learn this lesson rather than go further and further in the direction of false and destructive progress. The left can cry, it is used to it, it will then have to, like all of us, finally face the real.

You have not understood the meaning of my intervention, Mrs Aubry. My intervention was aimed at recalling that Poland is a sovereign state and that, as such, it is up to the Polish people to decide which laws they consider good for them. We do not have to interfere with the decisions of the Member States. You claim, with your good feelings, to know better than everyone else what is allowed, what is good, what is bad, but we should remember here that a democratic functioning requires, in these times troubled by your interventions, that sovereign peoples always have the last word.