I was unjustifiably denied the opportunity to speak in the plenary session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg on July 18, 2024, and the reason for the lack of time cannot be invoked since the President of the European Commission had significant extensions of the time allotted for the speech.
In the European Parliament, we – the MEPs – are elected by direct vote and we represent the citizens who sent us here. The European Parliament should cease to be the annex of the European Commission that is not elected by direct vote, and MEPs should have the right to speak.
If you had respected the vote of the Romanians who sent me to the European Parliament and had given me the regular minute to address the message of the Romanians to the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, I would not have had to get my own time to speak on behalf of Romanians during the plenary.
Respect democracy, which should be the basic rule of the European Parliament and give me the time required by law to ask the questions asked by the voters and to make public their grievances and complaints! Ignoring my official requests to speak on behalf of the citizens who voted for me means ignoring the Romanian voters who sent me here, and I will not accept that their voice is marginalized and ignored, as has been the case for 17 years since Romanians have the right to be represented in the European Parliament.
I know that you are used to silent and obedient Romanian MEPs, but this is not the wish of the Romanian people! I know that the elites in Brussels do not want to hear the voice of the people who suffer and whose rights are violated not only in Romania, but also in other European countries. But, if you still avail yourself of the democratic rules, then you must accept that the aspirations and pains of the Romanian voters are also heard in the plenary session of the European Parliament!
You have buried democracy in oppressive regulations that have not been voted on by the citizens, and you have established in the European Parliament the dictatorship of silence and conformity to the official ideology. If you continue like this, this institution no longer deserves the name of Parliament, because the genuine opposition does not have the right to express itself, and different opinions are forbidden. And the instigation of civilians, be they and those of the security service, to act violently on a dignitary elected by vote and kick him out of the plenary session of the Parliament, denotes the establishment of a dictatorship worthy of states that you point the finger at, and in no case a European Parliament that invokes and demands respect for the principles of the ECHR and the human rights of the United Nations Charter. Moreover, you invoke the rights and non-discrimination of women, but you are the first to do so, and that is because I represent an Eastern European country and I do not belong to any group with which you can reach a common agreement on what my speech should contain, as you have done with the others. Moreover, I am a Christian, and that bothered you the most and I consider myself discriminated against as a person who is not allowed to express her faith and the Christian principles and values in which she was raised. The breaking of the bracelet with a cross on my hand and the scratches on the face applied by a woman from the security service, denote the discrimination and violence in the European Parliament and the violation of all democratic norms, just like in the Romanian Parliament where I was hit and insulted for four years, just because I have different opinions than those of a majority that riggs the elections and is supported by you, those who lead the European institutions. I think you are making an unacceptable confusion, you are not my boss or that of another MEP, but you are the head of an institution from an administrative point of view, and any provision of a Rules of Procedure of this kind, which invokes any boss on an MEP elected by vote of his people, cannot be accepted and applied because it violates the rules of the European Treaty and the accession of sovereign and independent countries, Therefore, each MEP is his own boss and acts exclusively in the interest of the people who voted for him and the country he represents. Therefore, to defend a person from security at the expense of an MEP, to allow them to exercise acts of violence against a Member, as well as the pressures to remove an MEP voted for by his people, fall within the scope of discrimination, incitement to violence and violation of European parliamentary immunity, as well as of the democratic principles that you keep invoking, but you don’t know them and you don’t respect them. The parliamentary protest is mandatory to be respected in a body that invokes democracy as the supreme order, and a regulation, an infralegal act, cannot violate the principles of the ECHR and the EU Treaty, just because you want peace in a parliament where 720 people must sit quietly and not disturb you. A Parliament is a living body where the right to free expression and opinion is guaranteed and can be expressed in any way that respects the norms of democracy, that is, without violence, which you have applied to me, which means dictatorship, violence and discrimination against a woman, a Christian and an Easterner, as this institution has been doing since I joined and it is unacceptable. What happened that day at your order touches on the criminal side and this is what a lawyer with almost 30 years of experience tells you. The regulation that you are invoking has nothing to do with democracy and human rights, for which millions of people have died so that we, and especially women, can have them.
The European Parliament has thus become nothing more than a form without substance, designed to give an appearance of democracy to the all-powerful European Commission, which has no popular mandate and whose work in recent years has been criticized by tens of millions of European citizens, and I myself have received tens of thousands of messages of support from all over the European Union after the criticism I addressed to the President of this institution.
Respect democracy and the voice of the people and then the voice of the many will be heard through me according to the regulatory times, which are extremely small and violate the right to free expression and opinion. We are elected not to speak for a minute, but for a reasonable time in which the opinions of all of us express the will of those who elected us, otherwise the time of a minute or two is nothing but dust in the eyes to give an impression of democracy, not a real one. You don’t hold the meetings for yourself, but for the rights of the citizens, so an issue can also be adopted in successive meetings of days, without haste, where we can talk for 20 hours on the same subject, because we are only paid well and we have financial advantages for which the whole world envies us. This money must be deserved, worked, not taken for meetings in which we applaud or raise our hands without anyone counting, just to mimic democracy. You adopt many and bad laws, which are to the detriment of the peoples who elect us: „The more corrupt a state is, the more laws it has” – Tacitus. However, if you violate democracy and put your fist in the mouth of the Romanian voters, I will find a way to represent my voters regardless of the dictatorial methods in the European Parliament. I am accountable to my voters, not to fleeting positions and regulations meant to bury real democracy!
„The nearer the collapse of the empire, the crazier its laws become” – Marcus Tullius Cicero
MEP Diana Iovanovici-Şoşoacă
President of the S.O.S. Romania Party
July 26, 2024
