Debate contributions by Alexandre VARAUT

Dear colleague, perhaps we do not have the same opinion of what is good for France. And perhaps I am in a better position than you to judge my country. France is an important net contributor to the European Union. We put a lot more money into it than we get. If we bring in new countries, it is obvious that this will be even more important. And if by misfortune we were to bring Ukraine back again, then this would be the last way to trample on the corpse of French agriculture. You know that we are very attached to our agriculture. The CAP is already in decline. With the entry of Ukraine, it would really be the end of our farmers. That's it, so we're skeptical.

Mr President, it is very common in the European Union to vote on reports whose title is attractive, but whose content is less so. Today we are debating the changes in the functioning of the institutions that would result from the entry of new countries into the European Union. The Rassemblement National opposes systematic enlargement. It is all the more opposed to this because the ten candidate countries suffer from serious shortcomings in economic development, democratic culture and political stability. The report, moreover, itself admits this. However, we could, as a hypothesis, try to imagine what the consequences of the accession of these countries would be for the functioning of the Union. Unfortunately, this is not what this report does, which considers the accession of these countries to be a certainty and which therefore devotes itself, for the most part, to identifying how the European Union can use this as a pretext to seize a whole series of new powers. Everything goes through it: Europe of defence, end of the unanimity of the states in the Council, European own resources, that is to say European tax, and of course revision of the treaties towards even more federalism, almost in the best case, and why not a single state? Enlargement is here only the Trojan horse of European authoritarianism. We hoped that the lessons of the 2024 European elections would have been learned. It seems that the European Union wants to remain blind, not to hear the rupture desired by the peoples. The National Rally, now acclaimed, will carry their voice.

Madam President, Prime Minister, we have seen this clearly since 2024 and particularly in France at the moment, the progressive and globalist order is fractured by the awakening of peoples and the return of nations. The political majority on which the European Union has built its action is now fragile and the governments that support its action are unstable. If the European Union is truly democratic, it must take this reversal into account and not take a leap forward in an attempt to make its current policy irreversible. In this context, I would like to address the issue of the enlargement of the European Union, which it is seeking to implement on a forced basis for the benefit of six or seven new states – some say even more. In our view, the enlargement of Montenegro to include Ukraine poses great economic, social and even military dangers. But this enlargement also seems to us to be the Trojan horse of European federalism, which uses this pretext to demand a recast of the Treaties, to cut back even more on the sovereignty of the States and to fuel the bulimia of competences of the European Union. I would like to know your position on these points.

Mr President, the European Union likes to believe that it embodies the meaning of history and that it cannot be otherwise. The slap in the face of Brexit, which denied this claim in the clearest way, sounded it for a while, but the strange illusion resumed. It has even worsened, as evidenced by this morning's debate, which links the enlargement of the Union to global challenges. This association is a joke. Who can believe that the European Union is seeking to emancipate itself from American tutelage? When the United States threatened to seize Greenland by force, the European Union did nothing but immediately buy more weapons from the Americans in the hope of softening them. And even if the European Union were to emancipate itself, it must not be to become itself a bloc that would crush the peoples and nations that make it up. To this political messianism and impotent bulimia, we oppose a pragmatism based on reason. The peoples of Europe are a family brought together by natural civilizational ties. Further integration will only be possible once the integrative framework itself has been redressed. Let's fix Europe first, let's see the rest afterwards.

Mr President, when discussing the anniversary of the end of the Second World War, I would first like to mention the soldiers, civilians, French resistance fighters, actors or victims of this war, and to have a personal thought for my grandfather, decorated with the Croix de guerre for his contribution to the Resistance. Today we commemorate freedom as a heritage for Europe; For Europe, but not for the millions of Eastern Europeans handed over to Stalin, who was Hitler's ally until the summer of 1941, let us not forget. Today, Sovietism has disappeared in turn, but for what benefit? Freedom and democracy are denied by the so-called liberals and democrats to their opponents in Romania or Hungary, showing that, in their mouths, these universal principles are political capital that they exploit, but do not respect. Security is absent from our societies fractured by mass immigration. Crimes are multiplying. This record proves that the lessons of the war have not been learned. It proves that modern ideologues persist in sacrificing men and lives to their disastrous utopias. It proves that, increasingly contested in their dogma, it is ideological or legal repression that they resort to and that they will not hesitate, to build their earthly paradise, to make Europe a purgatory.

So as for the Egyptian pharaohs, it depends on the dynasties. As you know, for the longest of them, they were Greek and they married brothers and sisters to remain of pure Greek race. But maybe you don’t know, I don’t know. With regard to Léon Blum and Victor Hugo, yesterday I re-read with amazement the way in which Victor Hugo explained that the black man came to civilisation thanks to the white man. Blum said just as much, and Jules Ferry just as much. But I will gladly pass this text on to you. Everyone knows that. I did not come knowing by heart the works of Léon Blum. I'll leave it to you if you know him. I am happy to quote them, because that is the reality.

Mr President, demography is Europe’s great challenge, the only one on which its very existence depends. Our answers are ridiculous: a few coins and the immigration chosen. With one hand I close the door, with the other I open the valves. On the benches of the left and its extremist friends, we look forward to these new waves of migration, which will soften your settlement complex, which you have supported so much, or the memory of your heroes – Hugo, Blum, Ferry – who defended the superiority of the white race. On the benches of the centre, we will happily see a cheap workforce returning to your grandfathers’ factories, or why not, to plunder the elites of the African continent as part of the infamous immigration chosen. Our challenge is as follows: People without children are condemned to die. We need housing assistance, work support, nursery places for those who have children. Otherwise, prepare for the end!

Mr President, in the history of the seizure of power, there were first the strongest, then the noblest, the richest, the most eloquent, and it seems that Cicero has given way to TikTok. The truth is not known, the investigation has barely begun, and the election has already been cancelled and our Parliament is in turmoil. Would it not be necessary, in a State governed by the rule of law, for the trial to precede the sentence? Should we fear that candidates will no longer be free and that the freedom of voters will be disregarded, since they are regarded as sheep following the movement – tik tok tik tok tik tok...? If there is interference from a foreign country, it is scandalous and justifies annulment a posteriori, not a priori. If it is necessary to prohibit political comments on networks, let us do so by law, a priori, not a posteriori. This precedent testifies to a growing tendency of judges to substitute themselves for the people. Truth and freedom would have only one side. "If the people vote badly, we must dissolve the people," says the tyrant disguised as a democrat. Let us trust our peoples.

Mr President, the overthrow of the Syrian regime has plunged the region into chaos. A militia led by a former member of Daesh and Al-Qaeda has imposed itself in a vacuum. Religious minorities, and especially Christians, could be the victims of a real cleansing under the watchful eye, I fear, indifferent to the international community. This chaos does not stop there. He announced a new wave of migration, which Europe, already weakened, would not be able to bear. Earlier, you accused us, colleagues, of being obsessed with immigration rather than dealing with Syrians. Immigration, in fact, obsesses people, and must therefore obsess us. The fate of Syrians touches me, the future of Syria concerns me, but I am elected to defend the French and Europeans. Ankara is ready to manipulate this new power, which the Turks have largely contributed to put in place, and to instrumentalize once again the migratory flows, with their procession of threats and violence. We need to protect our people, strengthen our borders and save persecuted minorities before it is too late. So, in conclusion, I would like to know what the European Union's plan is, given that it is now arrogating to itself expanded competences in foreign policy? You heard us, we listen to you.

Madam Speaker, the lawyer I was had a difficult dialogue with the member I became. Nevertheless, our pity must be directed primarily towards the victims, who suffer savage acts, sometimes barbaric, perpetrated more and more often and earlier. Everyone still has in mind these martyred men, like this taxi driver killed by a bullet in Marseille by a fourteen-year-old miner. Criminal minors are minors, but they are mostly criminals. We must be able to discern, according to persons and acts, which of these minors, often immigrants, unaccompanied minors, are partly victims of their environment, and which already have a violent and hardened personality. To some, we can try to give them a chance again; towards others, we need to enforce and strengthen our legislation. We must punish earlier, before they sink further into the "benefits" of delinquency. The Dutch have successfully applied short but immediate sentences. This is the only way: monitoring, controlling and punishing, before the benefits of the crime outweigh the risks involved.

Madam President, online hatred, which we must combat, is first and foremost harassment, insults, the dissemination of montages that cause children, sometimes very young, to fall into depression or even to commit suicide. However, we must beware of abusing this term in an attempt to criminalise opinions. And some in the European Union very often have this temptation. Hatred is a feeling. It is very difficult to legislate on feelings. We can only legislate on concrete acts, which cause concrete harm to concrete victims. We do not have the right to use it to hunt down opinions and to sanctify woke notions that do not materially exist – such as the collective imagination, human consciousness or universal values. The risk would be the reign of an ideological arbitrariness, which could perfectly turn against all of us, of you, even if at this moment, it is undoubtedly the patriots who are targeted by the thought police.

Mr. Speaker, we are talking about the essentials, about our future, about the life or death of our civilization, and there are 30 of us in this chamber. Perhaps we are part of the problem. After the attacks in Toulouse in 2012, Marine Le Pen alerted the French in these terms: "How many Mohamed Merah in the boats, the planes that arrive every day in France?" What tragedies, what suffering would have been avoided if we had been heard earlier. In Solingen, on August 23, three people died because of a barbarian who entered Europe on the pretext of seeking asylum, as always, and remained clandestinely in Germany after his application was rejected. Three dead because of the crazy welcoming policy initiated by Angela Merkel. Today, Germany reacts by implementing a measure that has always been advocated by the National Rally: the reintroduction of border controls, the refoulement of illegal immigrants and the application of the double border principle at European level. These measures, the day before they were adopted by the German government, were denounced as illegal, impracticable, perhaps fascist. Today, everyone sees that it is our analysis and our solutions that have been the right ones for 40 years, and that they are the ones that all over Europe nations will have to adopt if they want to preserve their security and their future.