Artis Pabriks (PPE). – Mr President, I highly value the work of the Committee on Petitions in order to promote the legitimacy and credibility of this House and the European Union. However, I have to draw attention to Paragraph 29 for today’s vote, where we have a red line from the PPE Group in this case, because it is exactly about credibility and about the rightness of this issue. The issue is one which does not fall under any kind of responsibility of the European Union institutions, and in these times of fake news we are including the issue of faked facts about the privileges of the former Soviet immigrants in formerly occupied Baltic countries.

By doing this, we are very much undermining the credibility of European citizens in this institution because, willingly or unwillingly, we are falling here into the trap of the Kremlin propaganda here which is promoted by some of our parliamentarians. Please bear this in mind.