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 Index 
 Full text 
Verbatim report of proceedings
Wednesday, 17 April 2019 - Strasbourg Revised edition

Debate with the Prime Minister of the Republic of Latvia, Krišjānis Kariņš, on the Future of Europe (debate)
MPphoto
 

  Krišjānis Kariņš, Prime Minister of Latvia. – Mr President, I took notes as everyone was speaking. I have lots of notes that I’ll be processing in the next while. The topics: security, energy, cohesion, agriculture, immigration, money laundering, social justice, China-EU, Russia, etc., etc. I think if I truly tried to answer them my second speech would even be longer than my first. You don’t get to the votes and then you really turn, so I won’t do that.

But what I do want to do is to say a couple of things.

First of all, as a former MEP, I want to thank each and every one of you for the opportunity, the pleasure and the honour that I had of working with you. The past almost 10 years, and also this past term, has been a tremendous time for me – even getting a little emotional it seems – but I really want to thank all of you for the great cooperation.

(Applause)

Many of you are saying that this is your last speech in Parliament, but for me, I can say this is my first speech in Parliament as Prime Minister. So I’m very pleased about that indeed.

To sum up on the debate.

Colleagues, the EU is not perfect. It’s not perfect, and when voters are telling us that something is wrong, we need to listen to the voters. We don’t need to say: no, everything is fine, you’re wrong. No, we need to listen to them because people have real concerns. Whether it’s about their jobs, whether it’s about immigration, whether it’s about the climate, whether it’s about security, these issues are real. But we also have real answers to these. We can work forward in the future as a Union of sovereign and independent nations, not giving up one square centimetre of our national identity or pride or languages, but pulling together to fight and to pull as one.

We are a Union of values: freedom, democracy and the rule of law. As a Latvian, I can say that we know what it means to live without freedom, to live without democracy and to live without the rule of law.

(Applause)

This is not something that anyone should ever need to experience.

We have a key way to unlock economic growth within the EU and this is the simple thing called the single market. What we need to do is to tear down the barriers of the single market within the EU, to create the environment so that our own companies, national companies, can grow to become European companies, can grow to be real, tough and successful players on the international stage. This is in our power.

(Applause)

We can address the tough issue of immigration by strengthening our outer borders. This has to be done, because when we strengthen the outer borders, we can keep the internal borders open and not hamper the single market. We can have a clever transition to clean energies, again the key is to make sure that market forces are at play. Let the market in, deregulate prices, green energy will take off, smart technological solutions will take off, consumers will participate, and the market will help us make this transition.

And regarding our common security, I see no contradiction between membership in NATO – my country is – and stronger EU security and defence cooperation.

(Applause)

We need to work as a union to strengthen ourselves as a member of the NATO alliance. There is no contradiction. But in terms of our security we need to go one step further than military security. This is security of our information, the information environment our citizens are living with, and as I said previously, I think it’s time to consider seriously legislation to look at the responsibility of social media platforms concerning the dissemination of false and misleading information which is a hamper to our democratic development.

(Applause)

Colleagues, we don’t need necessarily to fight the populists. The populists are being listened to because people are unhappy. We need to address the root causes, remind them that as a union we are stronger. Like the bundle of sticks. You take any one stick, you break it, break it, break it, like our little nations. All nations in Europe on the world stage are small, but united we’re like that bundle of sticks that cannot be broken, and we can take our way of life, our idea of free trade and push it on other markets, not have them push themselves onto us.

(Applause)

We have a great responsibility, which is to take the values of freedom, democracy, the rule of law, with the single market and to move it forward. We do this in a peaceful way. We do it through debate. We do it in a way that includes citizens, and we move forward.

(Sustained applause)

 
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