Debate contributions by Rada LAYKOVA

Mr President, the European Court of Auditors' 2024 report reveals deep and recurrent abuses in European financial programmes. I must stress here that this is, in fact, one of the few still reliable institutions of the European Union. What does her report show? It shows systematic problems, failed competitiveness strategies, including in artificial intelligence, opaque, ineffective, inadequate evaluation criteria, combined with huge data gaps, especially in Brussels' favourite programmes such as Invest in EU and most of all the infamous recovery and resilience plan. Yes, for the RRP – the so-called green transformation – the assessment is devastating. Poorly designed scheme, subjective judgements, assumptions instead of facts and the risk of massive misuse of over €275 billion. The auditors refer explicitly to the breached eligibility criteria, lack of traceability of funds to the final recipient, risk of double funding and lack of fraud detection mechanisms. The conclusion is clear. The distribution of money through the European Union is inefficient and often leads to abuse.

Madam President, today's discussion has shown nothing less than a huge fraud against European taxpayers. Under the guise of mobilising Russian assets, a scheme is proposed in which bonds worth 140 billion euros are issued and funds are sent to Ukraine. But there is one basic fact: You can't secure debt with assets you don't own. And even experts admitted that the ownership of these assets will not be changed. Russian money doesn't guarantee anything. And who's the guarantor? European taxpayers. The members of the European Union and their citizens are the sole and real guarantors of this debt. And Ukraine must return it only if it ever receives reparations from Russia, in other words, never. This is not a mobilisation of Russian assets, but an attempt to introduce a prohibited common European debt. Eurobonds in masked form, not for the needs of Europe, but for an external country.

Madam President, the Free Market, it was created to help trade, but now Brussels is using it to force Bulgaria to adopt the euro. With your economic policy, you have brought France to bankruptcy, Germany to recession, and Italy to stagnation. You have never been able to understand that Europe is not a single country, but a continent made up of sovereign nations with different financial and economic models. This is precisely the strength of Europe, its diversity, not the unification that the European Commission aims for. Our differences are not weakness, but a source of energy, competition and creativity. But when you try to do everything the same, you destroy the engine of sovereign nations. Instead of a free market, you create a system in which every new crisis leads to even more centralization, new regulations, and even less freedom. Europe must not become a copy of the United States or China. It should be an area of free, independent states cooperating through trade, not obedience. We joined you in 2007 not to replace the command-administrative system of the Soviet Union with the command-administrative system of the European Union. Bulgaria will not accept a new level of control hidden behind slogans of integration and stability, and we will continue to defend not only our currency, the Bulgarian lev, but also the right of every people in Europe to decide their own destiny.

Mr President, today we are discussing the taxation of large digital platforms. But actually, no one in this Chamber addressed the elephant in the room: why does the EU so desperately need new fiscal resources? The answer is very simple: the common NextGenerationEU debt. Yes, this is in fact forbidden by the Treaties, and Brussels assumed that low interest rates would go on forever, which was wrong. Now, 15 % and up to 20 % of the annual EU budget will be consumed just to pay interest. Not to pay back the debt but, every single year, only to refinance it again and again. This means the EU is building a second household that exists only to serve big investors. Here we are not discussing fairness or innovation, but addressing this trap, this debt trap, imposed on today's and tomorrow's Europeans. NextGeneration EU is in fact in the debt of the next generation.

Mr President, we move to adjourn the vote on the Maydell report until the Advisory Committee has made its ruling based on Rule 206(4). There is an active investigation into a serious conflict of interest because the rapporteur is from the same party that governs Bulgaria, the very government she is expected to evaluate impartially. This report asks one thing: have the convergence criteria been met? These exist to protect the citizens and not the interests of governments, and here the governing party is evaluating itself. The Commission and the Bulgarian Government have already had their exchange, and now it's Parliament's job to scrutinise and not to rubber stamp. This conflict goes to the heart of institutional integrity – we filed a complaint weeks ago and there has been no ruling yet. If it comes after the vote, this could seriously undermine this Parliament's credibility. We still have the chance to act responsibly. This is not just a technical matter – it's about trust and democratic scrutiny and our role as guardians of public interest.

Mr President, dear colleagues, today we are discussing the very nature of money. The proposal to introduce the digital euro is framed as the inevitable next step in our digital evolution. But we must ask: at what cost does this come? Whether technology becomes a blessing or a curse depends both on those in power and on the rationality of the population. Because any rational citizen recognises the immense danger of the combination of the digital euro and the digital ID, and naturally rejects them. These two developments – digital currency and digital identity – are advanced separately, but when you combine them, it's like putting a match to gasoline. The programmability and limitability of the digital euro, combined with the reduction of your financial life to a single account tied to a unified, all-purpose digital identity, is the dystopian dream of control-obsessed technocrats. The possibilities for authoritarian control are staggering, and what limited personal freedom still exists in our current system is due to anonymity and cash. And you must know that the digital euro is not just a fancy gadget; it is a completely new monetary system. When combined with the digital ID, it exponentially increases the possibility to control individuals: programmability and usage limits would allow authorities to reward or punish the behaviour of citizens – and just imagine what this could mean when tied to systems like social credit scores or smart, 15-minute cities! If you reduce to one identity and one account, you have no way to opt out. And speaking of coercion, for us Bulgarians, this entire situation is a double insult. We're being forced into the sinking ship of the 'Euro-Titanic' without our consent: our legitimate referendum was suppressed and the accession process has been a farce, with falsified fiscal reports, a blind Commission, inconsistent conclusions in the convergence report, and the EU Parliament's supervisory role conveniently delegated back to Bulgaria's ruling party, GERB. This version of democracy is a complete joke, because checks and balances have been turned into a closed loop, without any citizen involvement. We Bulgarians are being dragged into this dangerously dystopian project of a digital euro and a digital identity without our consent. The EU and our so-called leadership elites prefer to govern by force, rather than allow for democratic citizen participation in a referendum on the euro-accession of Bulgaria. With the programmability of the digital euro, central banks will be able to precisely manage the money supply. This is a dream for them, because they can expand the money supply and they can extract value from the population through forced payments and taxes under various key EU priority policy areas such as climate, sun, gender – you name it. Even universal basic income will no longer be unconditional. And yes, money can now also come with an expiry date. This allows wealth to be redistributed even faster without causing excessive inflation. And to those who say that my digital dystopia is just a paranoid fantasy because it's not officially written down anywhere, I say: of course it's not written down, but the technical capabilities have already been put in place, and so have the incentives for the key actors to use them.

Madam President, dear colleagues and dear European taxpayers, the Recovery and Resilience Fund is nothing more than a covert budget bailout of some Member States on the basis of massive EU-level debt under the NextGenerationEU programme. This absurd financing model is devoid of any cost analysis and the allocation of the funds is non-transparent and inconsistent. We have complex procedures to obtain the funds that only serve to obscure this reality, and in some countries national budget items have been largely replaced by their RRF. But what is even more scandalous is that the RRF is used as a political tool to impose EU plans to save the world's climate. In my country, Bulgaria, shutting down essential coal-fired power plants was a condition to receive the funds from their RRF. Yet the most serious concern here is the transformation of the EU into a debt and fiscal union. Under the pretext of a crisis, the rules that prohibit common debt are bypassed. As a result, starting in 2028, interest payments alone will consume 15-20 % of the EU's annual budget. If more debt is added, for example, due to the so-called Russian pandemic, this burden will only grow, especially since there is no cap in place. The EU is not pursuing repayment plans and is not using leftover RRF funds to reduce the debt. Instead, there is a new EU credit card invented, more borrowing or worse, new EU-level taxes just to service the interest. This is not only unsustainable, but it is legally questionable. The current path benefits financial institutions and shifts the costs to EU citizens and future generations. This is not resilient recovery; this is a debt trap for Europe.

Madam President, I want to raise awareness with the issues I have with this report. First, the EU itself is among the prime reasons for the defects of competitiveness in the EU, and its regulation and energy policy are a complete mess. That's what's intentionally ignored by the Draghi report, in order to demand even more EU for problems which were created by too much EU. Second, the report on the competition policy addresses market concentration problems. If you think market giants were powerful before, look at what they can do now, and still no one is watching, neither DG Competition nor the national competition authorities. In the 90s, the EU aggressively targeted Microsoft. Today, Microsoft practically runs our work lives and controls not only operating systems, but also productivity software and AI tools we use in everyday tasks. Why do you think AI is so good at writing standard letters? If AI knows how we speak, write and act, and no one intervenes, maybe it is intended that way. Where is the scrutiny here?

Mr President, the right to property is a fundamental pillar of Western civilization. Even just discussing confiscation of Russian assets undermines this principle and sends an extremely dangerous signal, and it is your property in the European Union is not protected, we can take it away at any time. We are talking about improving capital markets, while at the same time testing mechanisms for grabbing foreign assets. How to attract investments if we threaten to confiscate? If billions of foreign capital leave Europe, who will we punish more Russia or ourselves? This is not just a sanction, it is an expropriation of expropriators in a new form. Proletarians from all sides, unite and take what you think is yours. Today it is Russia, and tomorrow it may be another country or any of us. Thus, the European Union opens the Pandora's Box and destroys Europe's reputation as a reliable place for investment.

Madam President, this House very often talks about European democracy and European values. But let me tell you what European values and European democracy are in my country Bulgaria. For 16 days now, political prisoners have been held in Bulgaria - young people, students with no criminal past, no files and no conviction. Why? Because they have expressed their civic position, their most democratic right to vote, the right to be asked, the right to a referendum for the preservation of the Bulgarian lev. On February 22, my party "Vazrazhdane" organized a large-scale protest in Sofia because of the illegal violation of the civil rights of Bulgarians and our denied right to a referendum. How did the state respond? The state responded by arresting five students. The European public and the European Parliament should be aware of the criminal regime of the government in Bulgaria.

Mr President, the term inflation originates from price inflation or monetary inflation, the latter referring to an increase in the money supply. Price inflation inevitably follows monetary inflation. Yet, this report does not mention monetary inflation, not even once. Instead, it falsely attributes price increases solely to external factors, such as energy markets and the war in Ukraine. But inflation in the Eurozone is fundamentally driven by monetary policy, and the only institution controlling the money supply is the ECB. In the ECON Committee, we have observed continued support from some political groups for expansionist monetary policies, primarily to finance deficit spending. Instead of ensuring price stability, the ECB is now expected to counterbalance consequences of unsustainable EU economic policies by printing more money. This approach not only contradicts the ECB statute but also risks worsening the economic situation. The ECB was created with a single mandate: price stability. Yet today, it has expanded its role to include climate change, economic redistribution and even global peace efforts. Can an institution struggling to fulfil its core responsibility effectively take on such additional tasks? Rather than relying on continuously monetary expansion, the EU should focus on addressing its economic policy failures, excessive regulations and the unintended consequences of self‑sanctioning. Europeans are increasingly aware of these issues, and they're questioning the policies that have led to economic uncertainty and the declining value of the euro. They understand exactly where the responsibility lies – within the ECB and this very institution.

There is often talk of a demographic crisis, but it is actually an ethnodemographic one. In addition to birth problems in Europe, the ethnic composition of the population is changing, with the continent becoming increasingly Muslim. This is not only a demographic but also a religious problem, because the roots of Europe are in Christianity and Christian civilization. Migration is often presented as a panacea, but in fact it exacerbates the crisis. It is important to understand that the problem is not financial. Even the richest countries in Europe have been affected, and the demographic crisis cannot be solved with mechanical tools such as the 2023 demographic toolbox. It requires a change in values and the way this union thinks. To tackle this problem, it is necessary to restore the fundamental values that have been destroyed by neoliberal ideological policies. If there is no courage and desire for life, there will be no demographic turnaround. Europe must restore its fundamental values, because in a healthy society the greatest value is children.

Mr President, not a week goes by in the European Parliament without a discussion about the pitiful state of competitiveness in the European Union. Bankruptcies are growing alarmingly, and some industries can no longer survive without subsidies. The main reason for this collapse is known and that is the Green Deal. Last week's energy crisis exposed the vulnerability of the system. Energy prices in Germany and neighboring countries jumped to record levels and spare capacity was lacking. Despite these facts, the European Union is blackmailing Bulgaria into shutting down its coal-fired power plants by withholding the agreed funds from the Recovery and Resilience Fund. The forced shutdown of coal plants puts at risk not only the country's energy security, but also the stability of the entire economy. The Green Deal is a complete failure and must be stopped immediately. Otherwise, it will continue to destroy the foundations of the European and Bulgarian economy. Bulgaria needs a renaissance and the European Union needs a Europe of sovereign nations.

Dear EU citizens, the European Commission's arguments for classifying Russia as a high-risk country are highly inconclusive. The new rules on anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing measures appear to be an EU tool to control and disrupt all financial flows between the EU and third countries when these countries do not follow the policy of the collective West. In this case, this country is Russia. In many ways, the European Union is now transforming into a self-closing Western bloc. The main objective is to disrupt trade and capital movements between the European Union and Russia. Such restrictions on financial flows have existed in the past in the Eastern Bloc, where measures have also been implemented to prevent capital movements to the West. Today, we call these rules differently, and the next step is likely to be the inclusion of China in the list of high-risk countries along with other BRICS countries. Therefore, we categorically cannot support such a flawed and ideological policy.

Mr President, honourable EU citizens, the only thing more irrational than Mario Draghi's report is the strategy set out in that report. As we expected, this supposedly external report is now quoted for every EU plan, with the mandatory addition of words, awakened words or ‘woke’ words such as green, sustainable, digitally inclusive, climate-neutral, etc. By striving for uniformity, the European Union itself created the crisis in education, because universities became factories for people with diplomas without real knowledge. They learn to repeat, not think. And this is not the goal of critical thinking and education. I find it hard to believe that the EU wants to improve education because there is no interest in informed citizens here, otherwise laws would not be introduced under the pretext of protecting against disinformation. Informed citizens are not treated like children. Remember Ursula von der Leyen's hand-washing videos. The European Union needs submissive, digitally marked taxpayers who do not ask questions, which is why it pursues such a policy in the field of education. But in the last 15 years, enough damage has already been done in this area, and this period should soon come to an end.

Madam President, the UN Summit for the Future proposes global governance, using sustainability as the main argument. We often hear that there is a demand for growth, but it is rarely explained why this growth is needed. The American economist Kenneth Bowling said: “Anyone who believes that exponential growth can go on forever with limited resources is either a madman or an economist.” To stimulate growth, artificial demand is often created through laws and subsidies that promote short-lived products. The European Union and the United Nations are using these approaches to expand their power without actually achieving the intended goals. A global government will therefore either be ineffective or act with completely different intentions, or – in my opinion – the best solution is that such a global government simply does not exist.

Mr President, the whole spectacle of Mario Draghi's report serves a simple purpose - it must provide the basis for the EU's next five-year plan. The problems described in the economy are nothing new. However, the conclusions are completely wrong. Instead of pointing out that the European Union itself, with its systemic planned economy, is the main cause of inefficiency in Europe, we want more of the same, more power for Brussels, more climate folly and more encouragement for war. That won't and shouldn't work. They just want to create the United States of Europe. We, the Bulgarians, have enough experience with centralized planned economy, inefficiency and unification. And Europe does not need a European Union that deliberately undermines its greatest asset, namely the diversity of sovereign nations with their unique culture and history. As such, the European Union is the biggest threat to the future of Europe.