Debate contributions by Claudiu-Richard TÂRZIU

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the European Union is today dependent on foreign markets for the provision of essential medicines, which is a major systemic vulnerability. Europe's health security is exposed to geopolitical risks, as active pharmaceutical ingredients are largely sourced from China and India. This reality makes European patients passive actors in the face of disruptions in global supply chains. In response to this situation, the European Commission launched the European pharmaceutical package. While formally acknowledging the problem of shortages, the document does not address and resolve the underlying causes, excessive costs and increasingly harsh administrative regulations that have forced drug manufacturers to move to less restrictive areas. Until it stimulates the strategic return of production facilities to European territory, the package will generate neither benefits nor medical security. If progressive doctrine could cure medical conditions, the European Union would have the healthiest citizens in the world. But in the real world, we have to give priority to life, not to ideological utopias.

Madam President, I am speaking under Rule 202. This month marks 105 years since the first terrorist attack on Romanian territory. On December 8, 1920, in the sitting room of the Romanian Senate, a group of communists detonated a bomb that killed three politicians and injured others. The attackers, Max Goldstein, Saul Osias and Leon Lichtblau, aimed to overthrow the constitutional order and install a Bolshevik regime in Romania. For today's generation, the event is completely unknown, the Senate attack being one of the censored pages in Romania's history, because of the identity of those who staged the attack. The attack on the Senate is a tragedy that we must not forget or ignore, so as not to repeat it, because it is an important example for future generations.

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the European Democracy Shield strategy and the fact-checking mechanism are not a defensive weapon, but an instrument of ideological control and political censorship. The so-called protection against disinformation is a pretext to establish a network of publicly funded delators with a privileged status, to stigmatize and undo any critical discourse on the official line. In Romania, this role is already given to organizations and institutions that become de facto prosecutors of public discourse, with the power to quickly remove uncomfortable content from any online platform. The system you are building today blatantly violates the right to free speech. Democracy is defended by debate, not enforced silence. For the naive, I just want to say this: Study the history of communism and you will find there the true face of ideological fanaticism, of a utopia that promised perfect society, but which transformed half a continent into a concentration camp for millions of people.

Mr. President, on November 21st we celebrate 19 years since the death of a Romanian hero and saint, Father Gheorghe Calciu-Dumitreasa. I want to evoke it here today, because Europe must honor its heroes and saints, so that Europe remains, and because Europe must not forget the communist nightmare that its East has lived for 45 years. Orthodox priest Gheorghe Calciu-Dumitreasa suffered 21 years in prison in communist prisons for his faith in God and in the Romanian people. He was the only one who opposed the political police in the '50s, in the process of re-education by torture from Pitesti prison, he was the only one who opposed the demolition of the churches in Bucharest in the '70s. He was received into the White House by two U.S. Presidents, Regan and Bush Senior, and held the honorary citizenship of the United States. He continued to fight against communism, being one of the leaders of the Romanian exile. After the fall of communism in Romania, he did so much good that he acquired an aura of holiness and is revered as such by many Romanians. Father Calciu remains a universal model of servant of truth, goodness and beauty. A hero.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, we are promised a simpler and fairer common agricultural policy. In reality, we will have more bureaucracy, more controls and less freedom for those who work the land. For 2028, the Commission is preparing a reform with a frozen budget and a single fund, which dilutes direct payments and weakens solidarity between states. Countries with small budgets, such as Romania, will lose. While European farmers are suffocated by the rules, the market remains open to products from outside the Union without complying with the same standards, which is economic self-sabotage. Under the pretext of encouraging young people, the Commission wants to exclude retired farmers from the payment per hectare, but in Romania they work alongside their families. Their exclusion does not bring young people into agriculture, but bankrupts family farms. Farmers have endured long enough. It is time for the European Union to listen to them, not punish them, to give them confidence, not papers to fill out, freedom, not obstacles.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, in this House we hear a sacrosanct concept over and over again: the rule of law. We are being judged and punished on his behalf. But it seems that this principle has a variable geometry, depending on the ideological sympathies in Brussels. Let's take a concrete case: Hungary. There, a democratically elected Parliament passed a law, a law that forbids a certain public manifestation, which it considers offensive and harmful to society. Whether or not we like this law, it is the expression of the sovereign will of a Member State and part of its legal order. I have seen European officials, diplomats and even MEPs applauding and participating in an action that deliberately programmatically defied the law of the host country. So, I ask you: Does the rule of law mean respecting laws only when they suit us? Or does it mean that certain ideologies have a special permit to place themselves above the law? With this dual attitude, we do not defend rights, but encourage disorder and undermine trust between European states.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the enlargement of the European Union is a project with profound strategic and historical implications. We have the duty to support the European aspirations of a state such as the Republic of Moldova, which shares with Romania the same language and culture, and historical destiny. From our point of view, the aid granted to Moldova in the integration process is more than a foreign policy objective, it is a duty to the identity and historical right of the Romanian nation. But just because we care so much, we have to tell the truth: Today, the European Union is not institutionally ready for a massive enlargement. Without real reform of the decision-making mechanisms, of the budget allocation, without real democratic control, we risk turning enlargement into a new threat to the stability of the Union. We therefore support enlargement, but we call for serious reform and consolidation of decision-making processes in the structures of the Union, respect for the sovereignty of the Member States and a clear vision of the European future.

Mr President, dear colleagues, I come from Romania, a country that has won its freedom with huge sacrifices. That is why I am looking with concern at the direction proposed today by the European Union ‐ accelerated digitalisation, digital identity, electronic single currency. In theory, it's progress, in practice, it's a risk. Who controls these tools and for whose benefit? I am not against technology, but I am against the decisions imposed from above, without clear guarantees for the citizen. Freedom can be erased with a click, and trust is not obtained by algorithm. Romanians know what total control means, which is why they prefer to keep their money in the house, not in servers. We cannot build a digital society without building trust first. We demand a digital future in which man is put at the center, not the processor. We want to be sure that the digital euro does not mean a centralised control button and to be convinced that the digital identity belongs to us, not to the system. Sovereignty is not a fad, it is the guarantee that the future belongs to us.

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, in the context of the climate crisis, Europe can no longer afford a uniform approach to water. Eastern and southeastern European regions such as Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary, the Danube basin, are experiencing drought, flooding, desertification and the northward expansion of semi-arid conditions. In these areas, entire communities do not even have access to drinking water, which is why we need targeted support, modernised infrastructure, early warning systems and robust investments in agriculture. Moreover, future water pricing policies must not deepen inequalities in access to clean water across the Union. The future water resilience strategy will have to reduce disparities between regions and turn access to water from a privilege into a guaranteed right for all European citizens. Europe's water future depends on our ability to act in solidarity, in real-life conditions, adapted where needs are greatest.

Mr President, dear colleagues, for Eastern Europe, Radio Free Europe was the voice of freedom in the years of communist totalitarianism. I listened to it with my parents with almost religious piety. Later, I was a correspondent for Radio Free Europe for seven years. There have been years of freedom and discovery of democracy for Romania. I met people who made history at Radio Free Europe, the Romanian section, such as the director of this section, Mr. Nicolae Stroescu-Stînișoara. They were my guides to true freedom. Radio Free Europe is still needed today as much as it was before 1989, because freedom is once again under threat in Europe and even in the European Union. Those who have the obligation to guarantee this freedom and to defend it, do not do so. Unfortunately, in the absence of funding from the US government, I fear that Radio Free Europe will no longer be able to fulfil its former role, because the European Commission is more inclined to censorship.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, today we are discussing defence and security in the European Union. Very good, because the feeling of insecurity and the fear of possible aggression are devastating social phenomena for any community. But what is today the biggest threat to the European Union? There were times when a military or hybrid threat to the European Union was unthinkable. I am talking about the time when the citizens' faith in the values and in the future of this political construction was unshakeable. Today we are talking about external threats and the need to strengthen the armed force. It is essential to be prepared for everything, but as responsible politicians, we must first be realistic. The biggest threat to the European Union today comes from within, from the decisions that people understand less and less from the gaps between the states of the European Union and from the increasingly concentrated decision-making system at the top of the Union. It is again the time of the manufacturers of weapons and ammunition. If we find the wisdom and courage to remember the great lessons, we will [...]

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I am promoting in Romania a political strategy which I have called ‘decontaminating public discourse from ideological interference’. Romania is today a country where the truth value of an idea must be certified by the authorities or can be canceled by the decision of a force institution. By comparison, I tell you that the most harmful parasite that endangers EU agriculture is the same neo-Marxist or, in particular, eco-Marxist ideology. Agriculture is an ecosystem with precise mechanisms of self-regulation and adaptation. Every intermediate stage, from production to sale, is today politically influenced and regulated for the benefit of a political-economic interest group. The differentiated amount of state-to-state subsidies in the European Union, as well as the control of 75% of the commercial flow in Romania by large multinational retail chains, seriously disadvantages Romanian farmers. Do you want agriculture to flourish again? Fight the ideology that has infested this strategic area.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, I raise a very strong alarm about democracy in Romania, which is in mortal danger. On December 6 last year, an unprecedented event took place in the European Union, namely the annulment of the presidential elections in Romania. On March 9 this year, the candidate who had the best chance of winning the presidential election and who won last year's first round was banned from running again. Tomorrow-the day after tomorrow will probably be banned parties that do not correspond to Romania's new policy, which has taken a path of dictatorship. What is the EU doing in this situation? The European Commission has no reaction. There are officials covering this abuse, and the reactions of the United States of America are simply ignored by the Romanian authorities. I draw your attention to the fact that today it happens in Romania, and tomorrow it can happen in any country of the European Union.

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the Republic of Moldova has two historic chances in its journey towards the European Union: - firstly, a complete legislative and administrative bibliography for the reforms they need to implement, translated into Romanian and tested in practice by the Bucharest authorities; - secondly, a solid partnership with Romania, which has solved operatively almost all the economic crises and incidents that our brothers went through beyond the Prut. Romania has crossed a complicated and challenging path in the EU accession process, and some of the mistakes and failures made then produce devastating effects for the national economy even today, almost 20 years later. It would be all the more painful to see such errors repeated in the years to come. The reform and growth mechanism is obviously a major opportunity for the Republic of Moldova, especially in these troubled times. Although we still believe that the natural path to the European Union for the Republic of Moldova would have been reunification with Romania, we will continue to be the first to unconditionally support the modernization and democratization processes sincerely assumed by the Chisinau administration.

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, today we are being hit by the effects of a profound crisis on the labour market in general, but especially in strategic areas, as is the medical system. If at the level of the European Union the subject is worrying, in Romania and in the less developed states of the European Union the phenomenon becomes downright dangerous. For decades, developed Western countries have absorbed as a professional elite sponge of medical staff in the East, under the mirage of vastly higher wages and much better working conditions. This migratory flow has generated devastating effects over time, rich countries have come to the conclusion that there is no need to develop education and professional training, as long as they can secure the necessary personnel through import. The other states have been unable to witness the depopulation of the system. From this truth we must start in the titanic effort to restore the labor market in the European Union. Development gaps between states produce catastrophic effects over time, both for the poor and the rich. These gaps need to be reduced.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, the inevitable has happened! The world's largest democracy has installed a president who has already begun to demolish the ideological edifice built by the radical American left and exported to the world with all its might. As a guarantor of European security and an essential trading partner for the European Union, the United States cascadingly abandons progressive policies and claims its sovereign right to produce the well-being of this generation with all available technological means and resources. For the European Union, it is time for a historic choice. We can stop the destruction of the traditional industrial system, the only one that has proven its viability so far, or we can choose to become captive customers of the world, freed from the constraints of a utopian ideology. For the radical left in this House, it seems that the choice between freedom and dependency is very difficult.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, corruption is not foreign to any state of the European Union and it is also present, as we know, at the top of the European Union. Public sector fraud is the most attractive type of crime and the most lucrative for cross-party and transnational mafias. The more and more diversified the state invests, the more opportunities for fraud in local or national budgets. The authorities often invoke the lack of resources to fight corruption effectively, but this is only an excuse for incompetence, when it is not actually a maneuver to camouflage complicities. The states are damaged by tens of billions of euros per year, so the financing of the fight against corruption could be made by recovering to the state budget a few percent of the stolen sums. Excessive bureaucracy created by thick legislation favours corruption. In conclusion, in order to eliminate corruption, we need simple and easily applicable legislation, little bureaucracy and a smart state administration.

Mr President, colleagues, Romanians are directly interested in the solutions we will identify together, because two counties in Romania, Vaslui and Neamt, have the highest employment rate in the European Union in agriculture, forestry and fisheries, according to Eurostat data. National statistics show that, out of a total of 7 697 000 employed persons in Romania in 2023, 11.9% worked in agriculture, but only 8% were also qualified persons. I want to point out that the problems in agriculture affect both employers and employees. On the one hand, employers are facing a severe shortage of skilled labour. On the other hand, agricultural workers are affected by seasonal employment. Many of the workers are not employed with legal documents, do not have medical and social insurance. Advanced solutions for Romania can also be valid at the level of other European states. There is a need for vocational training in agricultural schools and better regulation of the employment status of farmers to ensure that their work is paid fairly and that they receive social protection if needed.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, freedom of expression is not negotiable. Whatever the risks, we must take them in the name of the freedom for which many of our fellow men have given their blood. The fear of disinformation and manipulation in no way justifies the censorship that always leads to dictatorship. Censorship goes hand in hand with propaganda. Therefore, by instituting censorship, we not only fight against propaganda, but we stimulate the propaganda of those who have the power to censor. For 28 years I was a journalist and all my work was motivated by the freedom to tell the truth. In the 35 years since the last dictatorship in Romania fell, we have seen how freedom of speech is increasingly restricted through political pressure, corruption and, finally, censorship. Because of the restriction of freedom of expression, the written press in Romania is almost extinct, and televisions have become, for the most part, hosts of teleshopping shows paid for with public money, which seriously distort reality. The only free speech space we have left is the internet, but here too the screw tightens more and more. We want to put the internet under complete censorship, we want dictatorship. The solution to disinformation is not censorship, but telling the truth. Manipulation cannot be combated by censorship, but by cultivating discernment. And for people to have discernment, there is a need for education and culture that bear fruit in an environment of freedom. All this tells you a man born during the communist dictatorship in Romania, who felt on his skin what the lack of freedom means, including the lack of freedom of expression.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, the most effective weapon against external threats has been, is and always will be development. The effort to protect the territory, the population and the common values starts from the spirit of cohesion of communities and nations and is supported by the development of society. Both solidarity and development depend significantly on leaders. Unfortunately, we have an unwelcome experience from an extremely strange pandemic, and a war at the EU border, which has cost us and is costing us enormously in human lives, material goods and money. Both in one case and in the other, a political elite has made decisions in contempt of the essential principles underpinning the community edifice – transparency, equality and fundamental human rights. This elite acted under ideological imperatives, defying reality and thus causing even greater damage. Let us not fall into the temptation to continue in this way, because Ursula von der Leyen's intentions regarding the new European strategy for civilian and military training indicate this to us. Before we prepare for the turbulent times that are on the horizon, it is imperative to urgently eliminate the inequities at the heart of this political construction and to close the development gaps between states...

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, in a social-political order inspired by Thomas Morus, the pact of the future would be an ideal programmatic document, an exposition of delightful objectives and which, according to the authors, will be carried out rigorously and without hesitation, and humanity will continue its triumphal march towards a bright future, towards perfection. But is this an objective reality or is it just a beautiful dream? This is not the first time in history that certain elites, temporarily in positions of power, claim to hold the truth and behave as such. I don't think there is a person in this room who doesn't want peace, equal rights and natural freedoms, development and prosperity. But this is an ideology, and we all know how the actions stemming from the ideologies that claimed to build the perfect society ended. So I ask you for realism and discernment.