Debate contributions by Luis-Vicențiu LAZARUS

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, we are always told that Europe is like a family. Indeed, Europe is a family and was founded on Christian principles, but for some time things seem to have gone awry. Or is it just us? Let's look at the following fresco that a storyteller would give us: a family - man, woman, father, mother, children, girls, boys. They are guided by goals, by goals, they are beautifully educated, according to the Good Samaritan principle ‘Love thy neighbour as thyself’. One day, walking down the street, I see a young man standing on the side of the road begging. Then it seems absolutely normal for them to take him away, to take him home, to give him food, to give him a new chance. But the storyteller now leaves and thinks that, behold, everything is wonderful. But his curiosity tells him to come back after a year. And when she comes a year later, she sees, in a corner, an apathetic little girl - she had just been raped. The little boy runs around the house in a dress and says that he still wants to be a girl, that he was born in the wrong body, and the mother is depressed, the father has suicidal thoughts. Is that what Europe is? Europe has forgotten the words of the great John Stuart Mill, that your freedom stops there.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, is peace a constant preparation for war? Or, as the Latin said, if you want peace, do you have to prepare for war? I'm asking this for my country, for Romania, because for some time now, we've been buying weapons. We give the money, but instead we receive either a receipt drawer, or we receive Patriot systems that we give to Ukraine, or, of course, we take tanks that are not suitable for our territory, for our area. In these circumstances, I would like to ask a direct, precise and precise question to the European Commission: Are you planning to send the citizens of Romania who served 18, 25 years ago in wars in Ukraine, in Moldova, on the front line with the Russian Federation? Because in Romania there is a state of things, a rather precarious psychological state. The people are scared, the people are poor, the people are taxed, they are taxed, because we have the biggest deficit, inflation, because we give the money on arms and we take the people to mobilizations by an incompetent minister that you put there and that has nothing to do with any army, with any mobilization, with any defense of Romania. After all, is Russia at war with anyone? We have seen that the European Union has become a military actor. I thought the European Union was just a political actor.

Mr President, dear colleagues, a bunch of unelected bureaucrats are doing everything to preserve their power and then, first and foremost, they are destroying freedom of expression. This could translate into the title of the discussion we have here today. But we are actually talking about a fine that Google is taking from the European Commission, of 3 billion, for advertising. Well, if he's wrong, fine him. The question is why it appears in the title that you are trying to defend freedom of speech or the press, because it seems to me that this is exactly what you are not doing. And I'd give you three examples here. Example number one: Pavel Durov made it clear that the French secret services came to his home, where he was in custody, in France, and forced him to censor the sovereignist voices. Second example: We remember what happened to TikTok. During the elections in Romania, TikTok was called here, he was heard by several committees, I was personally there, in these committees, and I noticed that he was forced to change his algorithms and censor the sovereignist voices. Again, you have something to do with...

Madam President, dear colleagues, Europe's sovereignty - there is no such sovereignty of Europe, there is only one sovereignty of each state that makes up the European Union, which is a little different from Europe. In this context, I would like to ask you the following question: if the sovereignty of a single state is affected, is not the sovereignty of Europe also affected by your logic? Furthermore, is it not noticed that the European Commission acts all the time in violation of the sovereignty of many states that make up the European Union? For example, when it came to the pandemic, you forced us to buy millions, hundreds of millions and billions of vaccines. Economically, you control everything we do, deficit limits and, of course, all aspects of production, export-import. You also require us to pay taxes, taxes, VAT and so on. Then, now with SAFE, you impose on us how much to borrow and what to do with the money. In our elections you got involved and imposed on us who to put there. You've got yourself a governor. I'm telling you that you haven't turned into the United States of Europe yet, and we don't need a governor. I am announcing that Romania needs a president who must be democratically elected, and on digital, that it was about digital, I think that's what you want to control.

Mr President, if we have blocked exports, as happened in Romania, if, instead of treating diseases, we have slaughtered hundreds of thousands of animals, if we have seen diseases where they have not even been, if we have let unapproved products invade our markets, the European Union, which have not complied with the same rules as our farmers and have led to dumping prices, if we have abused farmers with controls and bureaucracy, if we have left them to the discretion and disposition of retail chains, hypermarkets, if we do not compensate them in the drought and floods, then how can we appreciate that we are helping farmers? But there's one more thing I want to tell you: Insects have been accepted for consumption in the European Union – yellow flour larvae, migratory locusts, house crickets or dung beetles. Do we want to take all agriculture to insect protein?

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, today I will talk to you about the presumption of innocence. Suppose there is a country where prosecutors, not having enough evidence when they prepare the files, leak them into the press so that the press will first judge the defendants, and not the courts. And if there were a president in that country, who, in turn, would take these files and go out with them in the press and speak unfavorably against the defendants, as if he had condemned them on the spot. I mean, I repeat, the president! Do you think such a country does not exist? Such a country is, folks, Romania! Finally, I would like to ask the Commission and the European Parliament a question: Is the European Parliament going to do something about this situation, about the fact that the President of the country goes to court and comments on criminal cases that are not even on the merits of the courts?

I take the opportunity that it was about autocracy and I would like to ask Mr. Siegfried Muresan if he does not draw a parallel between the autocracies in the East and the way Mrs. Ursula, here, governs Europe through the Commission. Because I understand from Politico and the other European newspapers that you, Mrs Metsola, have sued the Commission for relying on Article 122 to pass the SAFE package and pass it outside Parliament, and I do not know at what stage this process is. Or it's a sham between you that I see your friends like this and it's not clear to me. It's a trial, isn't it a trial? We're going to vote here in Parliament on the package...

Mr President, I have heard very carefully the speech of President Maia Sandu, President of the pseudo-Republic of Moldova. "Pseudo" because, as Mr Tomac said, yes, indeed, according to all international treaties, in fact, Moldova belongs to Romania, right? But in 1940, two crazy dictators executed a territorial kidnapping and took it. The irony is that after the fall of the Eastern Bloc, although the Germans reunited, Moldova did not reunite with Romania. Now I sit and think that Mrs. Maia Sandu is worried about the elections. I say not to worry, because, as in Romania you managed to put the president, canceling the elections and banning candidates, if, in case she loses the elections, the elections are canceled there and in the end she is, because, isn't she, she is the man of Brussels. But I want to ask you something that I think is important: Was it not the European Union in which we came into the idea of being stronger, and then all the strong states together, to constitute a strong union? Because at this moment I find that Romania is bankrupt following the establishment of this leadership, of this president, who is mostly absent and who does not deal with the country's affairs and tourist in Moldova, in order to possibly deal with how to (...)

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, maybe we have a wrong approach problem and maybe, I know, the European Commission is confusing the negotiations with the United States and President Trump with the negotiations it usually has with some country in the European Union. And what do I mean? President Trump came to the leadership of the United States and found the United States with a debt of 37 trillion and did not think for a second to put new taxes on the American population, while, for example, in Romania, the country where I come from, although the president who took over the leadership of Romania promised not to increase, for example, the VAT, now he does exactly that. So we have to pay a little attention to the nuances. If the European Commission imagines that negotiating with Trump and talking about reprisals and packages of countermeasures will make Trump more malleable, they are bitterly mistaken. This is not the pattern of negotiation. Agree on important issues and try to reach a common agreement. Otherwise, I'm sorry.

Mr President, I understand that this regulation, 1083, is a regulation aimed at the freedom and protection of the press and journalists. We want journalists to be protected. Yes, we agree to be free, but what do we do that actually doesn't happen? Look what happened in our country, in Romania. Candidates were banned and the election was cancelled. Was that about democracy? You say that freedom of the press and democracy are at the heart of the European Union. Look at what happened yesterday here, at the debate on the motion against the European Commission. The initiator of the motion had three minutes, Mrs Ursula von der Leyen had 15 minutes, and I, as the signatory of the motion, did not have a minute. You have also made a council, which is to be the ‘truth police’. We've been discussing this possible truth police for a long time. Now you have it, paid for by public money, by European Union money. Way to go! All that's good for the protection of the press and...

Mr President, Commissioner, dear colleagues, yesterday priests were beaten in Chernivtsi, Ukraine, Orthodox priests of the Romanian community. Last year, Metropolitan Longhin Jar was beaten and dragged through fictitious trials for years. The Romanian minority has always been oppressed in Ukraine. I don't understand now, do these states that are going to join the European Union have to respect the rights of minorities? We are always talking about LGBT minorities, but we are not talking about such an important minority, like the Romanian one, of over half a million people in Ukraine. They even invented a Moldavian language. There is no Moldovan language, just as there is no Moldovan republic. Moldova is a region of Romania. The fact that there is a Republic of Moldova, this happens only because a Bolshevik and a Nazi made a Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and a Vienna Dictatorship 85 years ago and for Romania this pact is not yet denounced. So, not to be misunderstood, I agree that Moldova should join and I voted in this respect to the European Union, but still, wasn't it easier to unite with Romania? It was much simpler, I think.

Mr. President, dear colleagues, as you know, Romania has finally elected its President. After a series of violations of the Constitution that involved both the liquidation of some candidates and the effective annulment of the elections, we finally have a president who for about a month has been unable to find a prime minister. Since half of the Romanian people feel that you, Brussels and Strasbourg, have put the President in Romania, I respectfully ask you to also put us in charge of a Prime Minister. Put us in a prime minister so that Romania knows where it is going, what its economic and social life will be. No, we leave aside sovereignty, that I understand that sovereignty is no longer important and that you dislike that sovereignty which is the creator of the modern state and which is the keeper of traditions and customs. That sovereignty that ultimately opposes the involvement of global governance institutions that come upon us and impose on us what to eat, how to eat, what to do, how long to stay at home, how much to spend, what money to spend, and ultimately impose on us all our lifestyles. While globalism seems to be more fashionable, that globalism which represents nothing more than a society in decline, a society that evens out...

Madam President, I would start this speech by asking something that seems extremely fundamental to me. Do we here in this House, whenever we speak, really shape the realities? Because I have the feeling, as a member of the two committees, for transport and tourism and for agriculture and rural development, that for a year or so since I've been speaking in these committees, I haven't solved anything. And I feel powerless and I don't like it. Because Romania, folks, if you know it, is the country with the biggest deficit in the European Union and, as such, those who have led it so far and who still lead it, although the people did not necessarily vote for it, want to solve this deficit by increasing VAT, by increasing excise duties on fuel, which will liquidate rural tourism. At the same time, for 17 years we have not been able to make highways. I wonder why? Maybe we can do it now with military mobility. And these things are perpetuated and we get nowhere. Basically, what cohesion policy are we talking about? How will this cohesion policy work in a country that is in deficit and failing to solve its problems? Will this money really reach the people at home, there, in the countryside, where even the roads are not or where they have so many problems?

Mr President, Commissioner Apostolos Tzitzikostas, it is good to see you again. I would ask you a few questions, but I'm afraid you won't answer me that this is what we always do at the Commission. Now, though, I want to tell you a few things. It is interesting that we have always reminded that Romania has not been developed in all these years, for 17 years since it has been in the European Union, at the level of railway and land infrastructure. But still, here we have seen Mr Draghi and his report, that he wants 800 billion to restore competitive Europe. Ursula von der Leyen came and explained that she also wanted 800 billion to arm herself. Now we have seen you too that you want 850 billion to invest in the TEN-T network and that everything is fine, here is finally the interconnectivity between our capitals in Europe. However, here comes the European Commission, which also wants to suggest that 450 million people must prepare for war and stockpile for three days – billions more. The question is whether you consider normal so many investments that in principle would overlap? What would be the priority, after all? What to do first: buy supplies, arm ourselves, build land and rail networks? Or what to do concretely? I'd just love for you to do the railroad network...

Madam President, Commissioner, I have retained two important ideas from your speech, namely that representative democracy is based only on free elections and that citizens must be informed - indeed it is their right - from a plurality of sources. What if I told you that exactly in Romania, the country where I come from, these two fundamental principles are not respected at all!? Because, as you probably know, Romania is the country that has achieved something spectacular: In 1989, he was able to pay off all his debts. Today, after 35 years - and it was a dictatorship - of democracy we have 210 billion debts. How did this situation come about? Because of corrupt, lying politicians who, of course, did not respect anything, not even democracy. So what democracy was this? It was not a democracy, it was a dictatorship with gloves on. It was a dictatorship that, when it saw that it was losing the elections, cancelled the elections, banned the candidates, took off its gloves, smashed the Constitution and punched the people in the face, in the sense that it sent the coercive organs in the morning to arrest people and search them, because they had the nerve to choose someone who had actually won the elections.

Madam President, Commissioner Roxana Mînzatu, I was very happy when I saw that, behold, a Romanian woman, a compatriot of mine, is coming up with a programme aimed at bringing back talent. I thought then that it was about bringing talent back to my country, but I saw that you have a motto here, which is called, if I understood correctly, ‘Europe, we choose Europe’. I would propose a motto: ‘choose our own country’. Because, if in 1998, when I was the leader of the Romanian students, I made a symposium with hundreds of students and I noticed that, bringing the president who had been until 1996, Ion Iliescu, who was part of your party today, I noticed that our talents are leaving, that we are leaving the gray matter. And that's what happened. And in all these years we have lost millions of people to corruption, politicians and poverty. Perhaps we should also think, as a colleague from Hungary said, of a project of this level for each country, because if each country is strong, Europe is strong.

Madam President, dear colleagues, the cruel reality is that we have no strategy, no leaders, no diplomacy. Why am I saying that? Because in reality, if we had, this war would either not have happened or, now, three years later, we would have sat with Trump at the table and engineered not only peace in Ukraine, but peace across the planet. Trump is not looking at us. We have to understand that Trump's America today is no longer Biden's America yesterday. Trump wants peace and prosperity, Biden wants war. Maybe we shouldn't want war either, maybe we shouldn't spend 800 billion on arms, and maybe we should look for solutions. What solutions are they? If the President of the European Parliament, Mrs Roberta Metsola, was in Washington, I understand she went to Arlington Cemetery, but she didn't get to meet Vance or Trump. Then why did he go there to visit a cemetery? Maybe they should resign, put other important leaders in the positions that matter, and sit at the table with Trump to find peace solutions, or we'll go to... (A few words I can't hear)

Mr President, dear colleagues, I understand that this is a discussion aimed at a possible collaboration between conservative forces and forces considered, labelled by you, as extremists. But these extremist forces, in fact, do nothing but represent their citizens, represent the national interest and act in this sense. For example, I, who come from Romania, entered the European Union with all my dearness, because you waved before us a principle, namely the principle of unity in diversity. Where is this principle today? Because when we came here, we had energy security, security in education, food security, security in justice. Today I find with astonishment that we no longer have security in justice or sovereignty in justice, because in Romania candidates are banned and elections are canceled without any arguments. We don't have food security either, because we're led into the idea that we have to replace meat, because, don't we, we have so many diseases over and all these things... (The President interrupted the speaker). God bless President Trump. God bless the people of Romania. God bless the people of Europe.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, Romania was the scene of absolutely tragic financial operations for the Romanian people in the 1990s. Ponzi schemes implemented by guys who were manipulated by secret services and politicians managed to rob the pockets of the Romanian people. Afterwards, of course, society evolved. In 2001 appeared the planes that tore down the twin blocks and, of course, began the war against terrorism. In 2008 Bitcoin appeared against the backdrop of the crisis in America, a crisis that was also transferred to Europe, of course, and then cryptocurrencies took off. Have you thought, perhaps, that this impetus of states against the citizen to block the possession of cash has favored this boom of cryptocurrencies? And now, we want to regulate. There is this MiCA regulation that regulates certain things, but it fails to differentiate between people who have bad will from the beginning and people who really want to do serious projects in cryptocurrencies.

I wanted to make a point about emigration. You know that Romania was kept for 13 years at the door of Schengen, noting the fact by Austria, through a veto, that the migrant routes would pass through Romania, although there was no evidence in this regard, because Frontex explained as clearly as possible that the migrant routes did not pass through Romania. Because of this, Romania was punished. Now, I want to ask the MP whether Romania will be able to recover the over 100 billion losses in the transport area because of this.

Dear colleagues, Madam President, I wanted to start this discussion differently, but I was amazed that I was asked to take off the sweater, that it would have the flag of the United States on it. It's not the flag of the United States, it's just a sweater made by Ralph Lauren. But maybe it bothers you Ralph Lauren, that he ever dressed Mélanie? I don't know. Anyway, what I was going to tell you is something else entirely. I understand from the Commission and the Council that there are concerns about energy security and the war in Ukraine. Well, the war in Ukraine will be resolved immediately by Trump. That's what he said, isn't it? And we really trust that it will work out. So some of you will be out of work here, in Brussels or Strasbourg. Energy security in the European Union should also be the energy security of every state in the European Union. Or, in Romania, a country on the edge of the ‘Empire’, where I come from, after closing the mines and intervening with all sorts of NGOs to show us that we need to protect the environment, which has blocked the operation of some hydropower plants, we have lost energy security. Moreover, as the main exporter of gas, I see that we are fluttering gas all over Europe and, finally, when they come back to us, our citizens have to pay very high prices. How can we establish energy security in Romania and in the European Union if we behave this way? I think Trump would not behave like that with the United States, because the European Union is like the United States of America: There are several states, right? Let's treat all states the same.

Dear colleague, so let me understand that it was not the Americans who voted for Trump knowingly, but Elon Musk who influenced the Americans to vote for Trump. If it wasn't for Elon Musk, it wouldn't be Trump. But doesn't that mean that you think Americans are stupid and manipulative? (The Chair interrupted the speaker)... Dear colleague, I understand that you appreciate the fact that the Americans did not vote for Trump because they thought that Trump was better than Kamala Harris. But you're saying that's only because Elon Musk knew how to manipulate Americans. Do you think Americans are so easily manipulated that they don't know which president to elect?

Madam Member, the situation is as follows: I didn't say that he put the CMF, that code of financial trustee, on his materials or not, I said that there was no evidence that he had anything to do with Russia. You moved the center of interest from the thing that interests us, namely, it was financed by Russia or not, to this area that he said he did not use any lions in the campaign, but they helped the influencers. Influencers, whether they were paid or whether they did it for his sake because they liked the way he spoke, that's their problem. Our problem is to find out if there are foreign interferences in the electoral process in Romania and, so far, all the bodies that investigated this issue have not been able to give us a single proof.