Speeches

Mr President, they say Tatjana Ždanoka is an agent. Yes, I am an agent – an agent for peace, an agent for Europe without fascism, an agent for minority rights, an agent for a united Europe from Lisbon to the Urals. I want to apologise here and now, before the people, for not being a successful agent. In 2004, the European Union regarded Russia as a strategic partner. People responsible for the eastern direction in EU policy willingly came to the EU-Russia forums I held and thanked me for organising them. Ten years on, an official change of wording in relation to Russia from ‘partnership and cooperation’ to ‘critical engagement’ took place. Still, we insisted it will be impossible to solve the conflict around Ukraine if the EU works against Russia. Now, two decades on, the world is losing its chance for peace. In Russian, the concepts of the world and peace are denoted by one word: mir. I am an agent for ... (The President cut off the speaker)

Madam President, I have to say that I was ready to vote against this report on EU citizenship since, during the last at least ten years, the only approach is that citizenship of the European Union is a direct derivative from Member State citizenship, and it gives no additional value to European citizenship. Even Brexit did not teach us – when losing British citizenship after leaving the European Union, people lost also European citizenship. But a very good sign we had today, at least in this report, with 327 votes in favour and 252 against, was that the special citizens card was voted.

Madam President, I fully agree with the rapporteur that I am citing that, in recent years there was some decline of the respect of fundamental rights across the European Union, and that the consensus on the common European values is at risk of crumbling. However, the report itself, to my regret, does not contribute to improve the situation, although it should have. It uses selectivity and double standards, which in my opinion is the main reason of that percent decline. I’ll mention just one example. The report speaks about following persistent forms of hatred and discrimination: anti-Semitism, anti-gypsyism, Islamophobia and racism. But how long will it take to recognise the embeddedness in the EU of such a phenomena as ‘Russophobia’ as well as less voluminous but gaining ground form of hatred like ‘Hungarian-phobia’? One of the main chapters of the report is devoted to the rule of law. But, Commissioner, your methodology when preparing this report needs to be changed. Your recommendations are too general to fulfil.

Mr President, we are discussing the resurgence of neo—fascism in Europe today, but it is not the first time it was discussed in this Chamber. Our Parliament was elected in 2019, but there was a resolution in October 2018 on the rise of neo—fascist violence in Europe, mentioning Norway, Italy, London, different countries, also my country Latvia. It was mentioned that every year on 16 March, thousands of people gather in Riga for Latvian Legion Day to honour Latvians who served in the Waffen—SS. So there was a big exhaustive resolution, and what happened? Nothing. In my capital, Riga, Latvian Legion Day is celebrated up to now. Moreover, the film ‘Heroizing legionnaires’ mentions in a positive sense Friedrich Jeckeln, who was commander here in Latvia and an executor... (The President cut off the speaker)

Madam President, colleagues, Ombudsman, Commissioner, being a longstanding member of the Petitions Committee, I of course have to say that these last two years we have had an excellent work and watched the excellent work of the Ombudsman. I am speaking is the last of the round of all political groups, and it is very rare in our house that all are united in very, very high appreciation of your work. You are the best Ombudsman of all times – and I’m not speaking very often such words. Of course, the report by Mr Jahr is very, very implicit, as always, and we can understand just from this report how much was done by the Ombudsman and which problems are the more essential ones. I think they are mentioned just in paragraph 20 and 21 and concern, as many of us have told already, transparency and the qualification of documents, because we know that the problem was how to compare messages. There it is written in black and white, the position of the Committee. I hope we will vote in plenary the same statement that Regulation 1049 of 2001 covers all work-related texts, including messages, and they must be transparent.

Madam President, colleagues, Commissioner, as a member of the EPP delegation, which recently had a very successful mission to Delhi and Mumbai, I would like to underline the need for mutually respectful, equal dialogue with India. To my regret, the report – and especially its chapter on human rights and democracy – violates this principle. The report calls for shared action and leadership in the global arena on many issues such as climate, the environment, transport, energy, digitalisation, health. But it ‘expresses its concern for the deterioration of the human rights situation and the shrinking civic space in India’ – citation ends – and just in India, not in the EU. I pose the following question to my colleagues: do we have the moral right to teach India on democracy and the rule of law, human rights and fundamental freedoms while we ourselves behave badly in the very same area? I also consider as inappropriate an attempt to give India recommendations on its foreign policy and relations with other countries, especially China and Russia.

Mr President, I didn’t vote on the draft legislative resolution, although I was present in the vote. Why? I am convinced that the legislation concerning cross-border situations deemed to fill legal gaps and create legal certainty for EU residents must resolve, first of all, the notion of EU citizenship. How can we speak about a European certificate of parenthood if we are not able to issue the European Union passport to EU natives being not the citizens of any state? These people are about 250 000 in Latvia and Estonia. One recent case I dealt with, one Latvian family – two parents and child – had to move urgently to Spain due to sickness of the child, the child being a citizen when there is non-citizen parents, and they are deprived of the right to work, to provide situation to live in Spain, since they don’t have EU-level passports and are not eligible to work. It’s a shame.

Mr President, Commissioner, colleagues, as a Member who has dedicated many years to the Petitions Committee I am aware of a significant issue eroding the foundations of the European Union from within. When a petitioner alleges a breach of EU law, the Commission often declines to act. According to the recent study requested by the Petitions Committee, in 96 % of petitions, further action was declined because the violations could be better addressed by national authorities. By this way, is the primary responsibility lying on the Commission on guarding EU law is put on the shoulders of ordinary citizens, who often lack the time, money and legal expertise required to such texts. As a result, we have a dwindling number of petitions, and this decline does not signal an improvement. Rather, it reflects a diminishing face to our liability to address their concerns. And I can see the example of this on petitions concerning national minorities in my country, Latvia.

Madam President, in September and November, the European Court of Human Rights issued decisions on Latvia concerning Russian schools. The Court found that the measures taken by the Latvian government to increase the use of the national language in schools had been proportionate and necessary to, in particular, unity in the education system. But as we know, the EU slogan is not just ‘unity’ but ‘unity in diversity’. By taking away the word ‘diversity’, we justify the policy of forceful assimilation and transition to total uniformity. The virus of Russophobia that seems to have infected a lot of judges of the European Court of Human Rights, is as dangerous as the viruses of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. The next target of these viruses will be the entire system of the international legal order, since the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights are precedent and will concern all minorities.

Madam President, honourable Prime Minister Denkov and Ms Gabriel, yes, I want to start with also acknowledging what Philippe told. I was a little bit surprised when you spoke about conservatism and liberal values, not mentioning social values while President Metsola spoke about. But nevertheless, I have to remind that the Bulgarian Presidency, when it took place in the beginning of 2018, supported our proposed guidelines for employment policies in the Member States. I was a reporter at that time and thanks to that, the directive on minimum wage appeared. But our proposal was more ambitious. And what do you think about the proposal of minimum income for the EU? And I have to remind you that Bulgaria is the State at the bottom of the list of minimum wage. Smaller minimum wages than my country as well. Another question is about rights and about rights of minorities. You spoke about Vasil Levski mentioning Bulgarians, Jews and Turks as equals. But what happens now? What do you think about the rights of minorities, especially the rights to participate in election campaigns in their own language? We know the decision of the European Court where Bulgaria lost, and the same problem exists in my country, Latvia, as well. Abolishing education, abolishing rights to speak in pre-election campaigns in minority languages – it is not the Europe you mentioned as a Europe uniting. ‘United in diversity’ means not only unity of 27 Member States, but also of all languages of all cultures within European Union.

Madam President, the Government of Latvia has decided to use a historic window of opportunities in order to eliminate Russian language and culture in my country. A country where the first Russian secondary school was created more than 200 years ago. The latest school reform is uprooting the mother tongue from the lessons in national minority primary schools. The native language can only be studied at will in additional lessons. Preschool children are punished for greeting each other in their own minority language. The policy of double standards, allowing to close their eyes to deprivation of minority rights, has flourished after 2004, when the East European states have joined the EU, bearing on board the essential percentage of traditional, national and linguistic minorities. But this policy has resulted in a sharp decline in minority rights standards for the old Europe. So, we have to erase three viruses – anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and Russophobia – here in the European Union … (The President cut off the speaker)

Madam Chair, Madam Commissioner, I would like to congratulate the rapporteur for this AFET report for creating very nice formulas of good behaviour. I just want to ask Mr Sánchez Amor: are you ready to offer your know-how to Mr López Aguilar for the similar LIBE report? The formulas you proposed to non-EU countries do not need to be changed and are more than relevant for a number of EU Member States. For example, Latvia, Estonia and Bulgaria need a recommendation not to restrict the enjoyment of the right to participate of minorities, including ethnic and religious minorities. This concerns problems with electoral rights for non-citizens and the use of languages other than the state language in election campaigning. A call to monitor hate speech by public authorities and elected officials and to advance towards a zero-tolerance approach to racism and discrimination is extremely important for Latvia as well. In particular, regarding the discrimination of my pro-minority party in receiving state financing and in standing for elections, I call for a zero tolerance approach. So we have to give up the habit to notice the speck in one eye, but to ignore the log in our own.

Mr President, where exactly is the border between freedom of speech and disinformation? Unfortunately, the DSA doesn’t give a clear answer to this question. Therefore, its implementation might lead to total control, instead of protecting users from harmful content or hate speech. I give an example from my country: just yesterday, it was publicly announced that the Latvian Ministry of Education will submit to the law enforcement bodies the complaint against one local councillor since, and I cite: ‘his actions raised suspicions of anti-nationalistic views that can potentially be judged as inciting national hatred.’ So anti-nationalistic views inciting national hatred: we are here already. So, Commissioner Breton, we see that the request for information under the DSA was first sent to the platform allowing, by my view, the widest variety of political views. So is this not contrary to your assertion that, and I quote: ‘digital space you must remain a space of liberty’?

Mr President, a lot could have already been done since the adoption in June of European Parliament recommendations based on the proposals of the Committee of Inquiry to investigate the use of Pegasus and equivalent surveillance spyware (PEGA), but this was not the case. For example, there is a call on national parliaments to set up meaningful oversight bodies of intelligence services and foster better cooperation among them to increase accountability and control, but there are no signals of any intention to implement them. For example, in my country, Latvia, a small country with two different intelligence services, nothing has been done. Another example is the proposals to integrate the spyware use monitoring in the Commission’s Rule of Law Report. I have already expressed my critical remarks on the Rule of Law Reports for previous years. For this year, 2023, the same thing. It is too general, nothing concrete. My question, Commissioner, is: do you think that the implementation of spyware use monitoring in Rule of Law Reports can have an effect?

Mr President, I have supported via roll-call vote some statements of this resolution, in particular the following one: ‘The Parliament calls on the Commission to quickly reconsider the strategic partnership with Azerbaijan in the field of energy in the light of Azerbaijan’s aggression against Armenia in September 2022 and its unjustified use of force against and forced displacement of the population of Nagorno-Karabakh in September 2023. Developing such a strategic partnership is incompatible with the objectives of EU foreign policy.’ But I could not vote for this resolution as a whole since it ‘commends Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan for his commitment to peace.’ I consider this man a traitor and the main culprit in the tragedy of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Mr President, when discussing the new asylum and migration package, people by default are going to regulate the issue of immigration, the case where someone is coming from a third country to the EU. But take your time. My country is very fond of turning coats inside out. Latvian lawmakers have figured out a way to force large groups of permanent residents to leave the country. First group are locals who were not recognised as Latvian citizens 30 years ago and later acquired citizenship of Russian Federation. Recently, 3 760 people have received orders to leave the country by failure to apply for exam on Latvian language mastery. But our new old governing party has just outlined another category. They want to take away Latvian citizenship from disloyal people in the case it was acquired through the process of naturalisation. So I want to ask you, Vice-President Schinas, are you ready to create a special package for the case of forced emigration?

Madam President, Algirdas Paleckis, Lithuanian, suffering a six-year sentence in prison in Kaunas, and Vladimir Linderman, in Latvia, whose trial will start in one hour in Riga. Both are being prosecuted just for doing their job as journalists. I pose the question of whether the new Media Freedom Act will help to avoid such situations and stop the prosecution of journalists. Will the new board be able to do it now? No. Not in such a proposal where this board will consist just of functionaries delegated by Member States. There is another version: just hold pan-European elections. Elections to the board when very famous, well-known journalists stand for election, and to hold them alongside with European Parliament elections. It’s not my idea. It’s the idea of the famous Italian journalist Giulietto Chiesa. The same approach can be applied to national elections of this supervisory board on media. Only in this case can we achieve the goals posed and formulated in the European Media Freedom Act.

Mr President, colleagues, Commissioner, I’ll speak about European citizenship, which, to my regret, is still a simple derivative from Member States citizenship. I'll start with a citation: ‘We do consider that EU citizenship based on residence should be the ultimate goal to make the European Union a genuine political community. The crucial reality of the enlarged EU is that among those covered by the term ‘third country nationals’ are half a million people who are not nationals of any state, being former citizens of a state which doesn’t exist anymore, the USSR. These people make 20 % of the population of Latvia, my country, and 9 % of Estonia.’ This is a fragment of the speech I made when considering the report on European citizenship in January 2006. If you think the situation of mass statelessness in the two EU Member States has been resolved since then, you are wrong. Moreover, the essential part of those people who changed their ‘alien’ status to the status of ‘citizens of Russia’, as the legal successor of the USSR, will receive in the nearest future the orders to leave Latvia. So the EU has not succeeded in solving the problem of European citizenship in general either, and Brexit did not reach us, regrettably.

Madam President, President, in your speech, you told that it is a moment for the EU to answer the call of history. One of the calls of history now is the unprecedented crisis taking place, it’s the crisis of falling capital efficiency, the element of which is the structural recession of the economy. The world is breaking up into currency zones, and we have to pose the question: ‘What is the place of the EU in the new world map? Will the EU manage to create an own economic zone?’ And this is a strategic, the existential question to pose now. Four times, I was elected to the European Parliament, the programme of my party contained the slogan of Charles de Gaulle: ‘Europe from Lisbon to the Ural’. To our regret, it was being in 2004 a real opportunity. Now it is a lost opportunity and the characteristic of modern history is, regrettably, the time of lost opportunities.

Mr President, 1 September was marked in my country Latvia’s calendar by two major events. First, children who started their studies in three grades of national minority primary schools will no longer hear their mother tongue. All lessons of the compulsory programme will be in Latvian. Second, thousands of locals who were not recognised as Latvian citizens 30 years ago – and who later only acquired citizenship of the Russian Federation – will start receiving orders to leave the country by the reason of bad mastery of Latvian language. Appeals to international bodies yielded results and the government is now ready to discuss indulgences. These bodies were the OSCE and the UN, but unfortunately not the European Union. The recent response to the collective petition about ‘Russophobia’ in Latvia is as follows: the European Commission has no general power as regards minorities; it is for Member States to ensure that fundamental rights are effectively respected and protected. I consider this position a disgrace for the EU.

Mr President, I think the title of our discussion should be modified. Putting the European economy at the service of the middle class? No, just putting new priorities on the service of all people. Middle class is disappearing. At present, the market, like sultanas from a bun, chooses a few in-demand specialists who are generously rewarded, while the rest of the bun is finally crumbled. Serious reforms are needed, concerning the ways in which society, not just the economy, is working. There is a terrible lack of understanding of the complexity of the crisis. We are not at all in front of a linear crisis or a cyclic recession. We are facing an unprecedented structural recession. First of all, we have to understand this, and secondly, manage it. New priorities should come in place of the dominant and uncontrolled power of market forces.

Madam President, the parliament of my country has three weeks ago adopted the law banning the use of languages other than the state language, Latvian, in election campaigning. This ignores the fact that a third of the country’s inhabitants speak minority languages – mostly Russian – at home. This law runs counter to the reasoned judgment of the European Court of Human Rights in the Mestan v. Bulgaria case. The leader of a political party was sanctioned for speaking in Turkish while campaigning for election to the Parliament. The Court held unanimously that there had been a violation of Article 10 on freedom of expression of the European Convention on Human Rights. The Court I am citing stressed the importance of pluralism, tolerance and the protection of minorities in a democratic society, and observed that respect for minorities, far from weakening democracies, could only make them stronger. So I want to address the following question to the EU legislators: is it not better to learn good experiences than to repeat the bad ones?

Mr President, colleagues, the amendments as approved by JURI radically increases the demands to the court proceedings proposed by the Commission. It is very important to enlarge by publishers, media organisations, whistleblowers, as well as civil society organisations, NGOs, trade unions, artists, researchers and academics the scope of those to be protected. In the remaining seconds, I will not even be able to list the names of all those journalists, whistleblowers, researchers, NGO, activists in three Baltic states who are actually facing, in my opinion, strategic lawsuits against public participation. Juris Aleksejevs, Tatjana Andrijeca, Olegs Buraks, Aleksandrs Gaponenko, Aleksejus Greičius, Vladimirs Lindermans, Algirdas Paleckis, Sergey Seredenko are facing criminal charges or already serving sentences as a result of unfounded lawsuits. The 14 journalists are under the court proceedings in Latvia just for publishing their articles in the ‘wrong’ media. The protection set up by the directive proposal gives hope to those who are at risk of such lawsuits.

Madam President, Vice President Dombrovskis, President Christodoulides, you mentioned in your speech, the EU slogan ‘United in Diversity’. I would like to ask you, how do you understand it? I posed this question already during previous debates on the future of Europe. Does the word diversity only apply to the borders and differences between Member States? Versus these states remains themselves as national states with only one official language, only one belief, only one appreciation of history. Policy of linguistic genocide is taking place, to my regret, in many countries, including my country, Latvia, by abolishing education on minority languages. More and more political prisoners appear. Their only guilt is difference in opinion of recent history. I must mention only three names in Baltic States: Algirdas Paleckis in Lithuania, Tatjana Andrijeca in Latvia, in my country, and Sergey Seredenko in Estonia... [the speaker was cut off by the President]

Madam President, Commissioner, honourable Chancellor, I just wrote my own points, you mentioned when speaking about geopolitical Europe. It is integrated European defence. It is new free trade agreements, a larger Europe, institutional changes, management of migration flows, and on the last place, ‘United in diversity’, our slogan. I just want to stay on this and to ask you, how do you understand ‘diversity’? Whether diversity finishes within the borders of 27 Member States, as national states and 23 official languages? I think it is not the way Europe has to go. I want to cite Yehudi Menuhin who told ‘Either Europe will become Europe of cultures or Europe will not’. And cultures are much more than 27 and 23, and much more languages. And politics of linguistic genocide is taking place in many countries – especially in my country, Latvia – by abolishing education in minority languages, by not even giving the possibility to learn native languages. It is not the way Europe has to go.