Preparation of the European Council meeting of 20-21 October 2022 (debate)
Speaker: Terry REINTKE (Germany, Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance / Bündnis 90/Die Grünen)
Date: 2022-10-19

  Terry Reintke,  on behalf of the Verts/ALE Group. – Madam President, Madam Commission President, Mr Minister, dear colleagues, I was born in 1987, two years before the fall of the Berlin Wall. My childhood and my youth were marked by an expansion of freedoms. Walls and borders fell, in 2004 we celebrated the eastern enlargement of the European Union. And over the last three decades, we strengthened the rights and freedoms of hundreds of millions of citizens through EU law.
I grew up with a sense of self-evidence that everybody can clearly see that democracy obviously is the best form of government, that through education, public discourse and finding compromise, we will build stronger, more resilient and more equal democratic societies, and that this would work almost automatically. And I must admit, this sense of self-evidence is gone.
Latest, on 24 February this year: everyone could clearly see there is a brutal, a violent and a powerful authoritarian backlash ongoing, a backlash against democracy, against freedom and against equality. Now you could argue we have to stand with Ukraine in this brutal aggression for the sake of the brave Ukrainian people, and we certainly do.
But it goes far beyond this. We have to stand with Ukraine also for our own sake, for our own freedom and our own democracy, because we have seen in the past weeks and months, light as day, that our democracies are not untouchable.
And Vladimir Putin very well knows this, this is why he’s funding the far-right. This is why he is using energy as a weapon against us. And this is why he’s using every single opportunity to try to divide us. 
And it is true that his initial strategy of dividing Europe, the West and all democratic countries who believe in a rules-based world order did not succeed. We reacted unitedly. We provided military aid to Ukraine. We adopted sanctions. We, finally, took very much needed measures to end our toxic dependence on Russian energy imports.
But, colleagues, politics is not a sprint; politics is a marathon. And we all know Putin’s game plan right now: doing whatever it takes to spread fear to destabilise our democracies in Ukraine with state terrorism, drone and missile strikes on cities and in the rest of Europe by trying to fuel the fear of energy shortages and an explosion of prices. 
And as it looks also for this, he is using whatever means necessary, whatever means necessary to create social hardships and divisions in our societies. And, Madam Commission President, a dynamic price cap on gas will not be enough to counter these injustices. We will need a bold and determined Commission also on tax and social issues, not to let the most vulnerable in our societies pay the price for this.
But he will also use whatever means necessary, threatening a global famine which will have to be prevented. But if you believe that food sovereignty can be achieved by agro-industries dependent on energy-intensive fertilisers or a global food system where massive amounts of crops are simply wasted in intensive livestock farming, you are wrong. We have to build a truly ecological, sustainable agricultural system that is also part of our commitment to the Paris goals.
And for all of this, and I’m very happy that we seem to have large unity, we will need a new common effort as Europeans. Just as with Next Generation EU, we will need to invest together a European solidarity fund with common balance to invest in through the renovation wave and the expansion of renewables, to counter Putin’s escalation strategy, to become less dependent on autocratic regimes for our energy supply.
And I’m not only talking about Russia here, because also Azerbaijan is not a democracy, to fund the necessary measures to tackle climate change and to protect our citizens from economic and social hits because social equality is essential for democracy.
Colleagues, my nephew was born in 2021, I want us to fight for a Europe in which his childhood and his youth will again be marked by an expansion of freedom, by more rights and a strengthening of democracy. I’m standing in front of you today as the newly elected Co-Chair of the Greens/EFA Group here in the Parliament but I want to appeal to all democrats in this House. The next months are not going to be easy, we will all have to make difficult choices.
But let us work together as pro-European democrats and not be taken hostage or collaborate with the far-right. And especially to you, Mr Weber, because at the end of the day, what this is going to mean is that Vladimir Putin will win. He will win the division and weakness of a far-right in Europe instead of the stability and the strength of pro-European democracy.
So let us work together, stand up to Vladimir Putin and draw a strong European Union for strong democracy.