Marine Le Pen in Koblenz: “The European Union is Taking Away Our Cultures”

Last Saturday a summit of immigration-critical and EU-skeptical political leaders was held in the German city of Koblenz. Frauke Petry of the AfD (Germany), Matteo Salvini of the Lega Nord (Italy), Marine Le Pen of the Front National (France), and Geert Wilders of the PVV (Netherlands), among other prominent “populist” politicians, met to discuss the dismantling of the European Union.

Below is Marine Le Pen’s address in Koblenz. Although she spoke in French to an audience that was largely German, she was given a rousing reception.

Many thanks to Ava Lon for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:

Transcript:

00:04   Oh, thank you!
00:16   Thank you!
00:20   Thank you! Thank you, my friends.
00:24   Thank you, and I would like to thank
00:28   warmly our friends and partners from AfD, who are hosting us today,
00:32   and especially Frauke Petry and Marcus Prezell
00:36   for their hospitality. Thank you both.
00:40   Thank you also
00:44   to all other representatives from different countries,
00:48   members of the group ENF [Europe of Nations and Freedom] in the European Parliament,
00:52   our friends: Dutch, Italian, Austrian, Flemish,
00:56   Romanian, British, Czech, Polish,
01:00   and British I think I already said, it’ll be twice, but I like
01:04   Janice [Atkinson] a lot; that’s the reason. Thanks also
01:08   to all the organizers who made this meeting possible
01:12   under the leadership of our General Secretary Ludovic de Danne.
01:20   I have already said this in France, but this
01:24   is being noticed everywhere in Europe. We are living through
01:28   the end of one world and the birth of another one.
01:36   Plenty of hope and new opportunities!
01:40   We are witnessing the comeback of the nation state,
01:44   Which globalism tried to make disappear.
01:49   For the last ten years, since the first referendums in France,
01:53   in the Netherlands, then in Ireland, we could feel the
01:57   approaching uprising of the peoples of Europe against an unelected power
02:01   That pretended to do without democracy.
02:13   But the first real punch to the ancien régime,
02:17   the trigger that would make all the dominos of Europe fall,
02:21   was Brexit. A sovereign people
02:25   decided to do without the permission of the powerful ones
02:29   in order to decide its own destiny by itself.
02:37   Then the second punch wasn’t long to follow:
02:41   the election of Mr. Trump as president of the United States
02:45   put the partisans of neoliberalism into even greater embarrassment!
02:57   His policy concerning Europe is loud and clear: we won’t support
03:01   a system of oppression against peoples. And on top of all,
03:05   he buried the Transatlantic Treaty. 2016 was
03:09   the year of the awakening of the Anglo-Saxon world,
03:13   and 2017, I am certain, will be the year of the awakening of the peoples of continental Europe!
03:25   It’s no longer
03:29   a question of possibility, it’s a question of time.
03:33   But our elites cannot see this world change. They refuse it.
03:37   And everything is being done in Europe, in every single one of our countries
03:42   to obstruct this evolution, which is nevertheless irreversible.
03:46   The European Union became a religion,
03:50   and they are its priests. They cannot think outside of it.
03:54   They are excommunicating every differing thought.
03:58   They forbid every criticism of their system. They are
04:02   the real dogmatists, they are the real anti-democrats.
04:14   I would like to remind you still
04:18   of this sentence from Mr Junker,
04:22   so revealing that it could be featured in history books:
04:26   “There cannot be a democratic choice against the European treaties.”
04:30   There you have the very definition
04:34   of tyranny!
04:38   The German people, the Italian people,
04:42   the Spanish people, all the peoples of Europe are subjected to a tyranny.
04:46   This tyranny occurs also through an information war.
04:50   It’s imperative to prevent the people at any price
04:54   from communicating among themselves! Hence the importance of our meeting.
04:58   Finally the peoples talk to each other!
05:10   In their logic, every people has to
05:14   be separated from others so they cannot become allies.
05:18   That’s why we are being lied to in France concerning Germany.
05:22   In Germany people are being lied to about the UK, and so on!
05:26   In Italy, in Austria, in Greece. Because if the peoples
05:31   were to discover that they aren’t that different from one another,
05:35   and that they all have a common interest, freedom,
05:39   then the European Union would be done for!
05:51   And that’s exactly
05:55   what is happening! In France
05:59   Mrs Merkel is being painted as a humanitarian hero,
06:03   who is a model of generosity
06:07   towards the migrants, while the French are all
06:11   less than nothing! Except that the French press never
06:15   ask the question about the opinion of German people. They never come to interview
06:19   Germans themselves, to find out if they are satisfied with
06:23   Mrs Merkel’s migration policies. And we understand why!
06:27   If they were to ask the Germans,
06:31   everybody would see that these migration policies are a disaster
06:35   in everyday life!
06:47   I salute the courage of the AfD, who dare
06:51   to defy German government on this subject! The European elites
06:55   definitely want to silence the peoples and make the world believe
06:59   that their current representatives are acting in their best interests. For my part,
07:03   I will never mix up the people with their leaders.
07:07   The German people are like everybody in Europe in aspiring to one thing only:
07:12   freedom!
07:20   Freedom and tranquility.
07:24   Being able to live in peace.
07:28   To decide for oneself one’s own future. Today
07:32   European leaders don’t take national interests into account,
07:36   but the interests of a financial oligarchy.
07:40   An oligarchy that uses institutions to defend choices
07:44   that are opposite to the wishes of we the people. It’s not the Germans
07:48   who want to welcome the migrants. It’s German big business,
07:52   which is, in addition, harming medium-sized and small businesses.
08:00   It’s not the French people who want to erase the borders of their country.
08:04   It’s French big business and their multinationals.
08:08   We need to see clearly the economic interests of the powerful,
08:12   who hide behind those beautiful words.
08:16   Because if we stop for one second to consider immigration,
08:20   we can say something that is valid in all European countries.
08:24   We have generously, even very generously
08:28   proven our solidarity in this area,
08:32   and it’s time, high time, that this stop!
08:44   Germany experienced a huge influx
08:48   of immigrants. And the chancellor
08:52   wanted to welcome them so much that she doesn’t even know
08:56   what happened to 500,000 of them. Incredible thoughtlessness!
09:09   In France they would like to make us believe that the phenomenon
09:13   of migrants is marginal. But who knows for sure the vanished migrants
09:17   haven’t already left for France?
09:21   How can we accept that towns and villages are being forced to welcome
09:25   dozens and hundreds of them, more or less everywhere in the country,
09:29   often without the consent of the population or even of the municipality?
09:33   How can we accept that this new influx adds
09:37   to the already massive
09:41   legal immigration; so massive that every year there have been
09:45   200,000 people entering French territory,
09:49   for ten years now? How are we supposed to accept this additional immigration?
09:53   When we know that for dozens of years illegal immigration
09:57   hasn’t been drying up? Immigration exacts a considerable price
10:01   that weighs on social budgets, and makes paychecks smaller,
10:05   and makes unemployment grow. It’s a source — it’s obvious! —
10:09   of insecurity. And we know very well that inside the
10:13   influx of the immigrants terrorists are hiding.
10:25   How long are we going to continue — in France,
10:29   in Germany and in all the other countries subjected to the madness of Schengen —
10:33   in this manner, and not protecting out borders?
10:37   There is, my dear friends in the European Union,
10:41   not only the immigration problem. There’s also the problem,
10:46   the huge problem, caused by the common currency. Which forces
10:50   every member of the Eurozone to have the same economic policies. I’m not saying that
10:58   everybody has to leave the Eurozone. It’s a sovereign choice.
11:02   It’s a sovereign choice to make, which has to be respected in every
11:06   nation. But it’s imperative that every country
11:10   may leave if that is their wish!
11:22   I have never thought that all European countries need the solutions I’m recommending for France.
11:26   I’m only saying that every country has to think
11:30   freely about its own interests and let its people
11:34   make the decision that seems to be the best. And if for some
11:38   countries it might seem advantageous to stay in the Eurozone,
11:42   for others it’s becoming more and more clear that it’s the opposite.
11:46   For France the single currency is a tool for the destruction
11:50   of the economy. Despite all the strategies put in place to save
11:54   the Euro, as the mandatory tool for all,
11:58   to mend it, as well as possible, so it might stay in place,
12:02   the deep diversity of European peoples and their particular economies comes back with a vengeance.
12:06   There is behind the word “people” a particular social fabric,
12:10   particular family traditions;
12:14   there’s a language, a history.
12:18   In sum: a people has a certain nature. A nature
12:22   that can be neither compressed nor interchanged.
12:35   So when we are told it’s one unique currency,
12:39   “a unique whole” — do they mean to say that
12:43   what is convenient for a German is also convenient for a Frenchman and a Spaniard?
12:47   But the German economy, the French economy,
12:51   the Spanish economy don’t operate in a void! They are
12:55   anchored in national realities, they breathe in the rhythm
12:59   of the peoples. Deny this diversity,
13:03   as the idea of a unique currency imposed on everybody is doing —
13:07   this means to brutalize Europe!
13:15   Concerning the people,
13:19   one doesn’t calculate an average by a simple
13:23   mathematical formula. There is no Franco-German average,
13:27   no more than a Franco-Spanish average.
13:31   I like Germany, because it is German.
13:35   I like France, because it is French.
13:47   I don’t like a chimera,
13:51   that would, like that legendary monster, have
13:55   a German body and a Greek tail, and three heads —
13:59   one French, another Spanish and the last one Italian!
14:08   The distinctions between the peoples
14:12   cannot be deleted by a stroke of a pen!
14:16   I used the example of the euro. I could have talked about fiscal affairs,
14:20   about social rights, retirement systems, or minimum wages.
14:24   They want to meld all the European nations into
14:28   the same economic mold, while crushing their distinctiveness.
14:32   If there must be reforms, they can only happen
14:36   at a national level, where there is a unique people. And over which
14:40   it is possible to act in a coherent way. Economic integration
14:44   followed by political integration is a dream
14:48   that is turning into a nightmare.
14:56   So we are seeing it in migration policies, but also simultaneously
15:00   in economic policies; there’s no more freedom when there’s no more sovereignty,
15:04   meaning the ability of deciding for ourselves about choices to make
15:08   for our country. Today they let representatives from one country vote
15:12   to create laws for another country on the other end
15:16   of the continent. But this makes no sense whatsoever!
15:20   I don’t want another country deciding what my country has to do!
15:24   And I don’t want mine to decide about the others, either!
15:32   For this reason
15:36   the goal of our parliamentary group above all
15:40   is to give the maximum of freedom back to every nation, and it has always worked
15:44   in this direction. Now we need to move on to the next stage,
15:48   a stage where we will no longer be content as a minority in the European parliament. The stage where
15:53   we will be the majority in the ballot boxes in every election!
16:04   2017
16:09   is a year rich in elections, first in France
16:13   but also in the Netherlands, and I wish the biggest success possible
16:17   to our friend Geert Wilders! Here also —
16:25   Here also, dear Frauke,
16:29   you will be leading the electoral battle. Your success since 2013
16:32   is already remarkable. I know that you’ll keep growing,
16:35   because you are the future of Germany!
16:49   This success could change the face of Europe.
16:53   if we come to power in every country in the EU, we could organize
16:57   in consultation with each other a reasonable discontinuation of the
17:01   old order, in which everybody will discover their best interests.
17:05   I want this transition to occur in the most tranquil way.
17:09   But if only one of us reaches his goal,
17:13   he will carry the hope of others. Let’s not contemplate this scenario!
17:17   We will get there, all of us!
17:29   Our organisation at the level of the European Parliament, our meeting today,
17:33   are the testimony of this solidarity that exists
17:37   among the movements close to, or very close to reaching power.
17:41   Often our adversaries warn us that we
17:45   are alone in case of victory. Well, it’s already starting
17:49   to be refuted at the ballot box, but more fundamentally,
17:53   the peoples share obvious interests, and everyone can see
17:57   that patriotic policies wouldn’t isolate their country, but on the contrary,
18:01   they would prompt a strong adherence by other peoples.
18:06   In a world where the United States is re-centering on itself,
18:10   in a world where 95% of countries have national borders,
18:14   in a world where we find protections, patriotism isn’t
18:18   a policy of the past; it is a policy of the future!
18:30   From then on,
18:34   from the moment when we abandon the prison of the European Union,
18:38   we will see the rebirth of the diversity of European cultures and the nations
18:42   that compose it. This diversity isn’t synonymous with war,
18:46   contrary to what years of ideology wanted to make us believe.
18:50   War, on the contrary, is this Union in lock-step.
18:54   War is those disconnected elites who are calling for
18:58   arming against Mr Trump or Mr Putin!
19:10   A different people isn’t an enemy people.
19:14   A different people is one with
19:18   with which I am going to build a relationship. With the European Union,
19:22   the relationship is not being built, it’s being endured.
19:26   The euro doesn’t unite us; it ties us down!
19:30   A project that opposes by force the peoples’ aspirations
19:34   is not a viable project.
19:42   I wish, I wish to see
19:46   the rebirth of the culture, the art, the literature of
19:50   every country on the continent. I wish to see the rebirth of their economies,
19:54   their inventiveness, their national genius!
19:58   Today the European Union is taking away our cultures.
20:02   It is a sterilizing power.
20:11   I am certain that the liberation
20:15   of the peoples will go hand in hand with a true Renaissance of Europe!
20:19   where we will see the languages — crushed nowadays — flourish,
20:31   English, English invaded all our universities,
20:35   and in Germany it’s the same. Our British friends didn’t do it,
20:39   those for whom English is a mother tongue.
20:43   It’s the cowardice of our own elites that allowed this surrender of
20:47   every culture.
20:55   I know that if we find the gearshift of our
20:59   sovereignty, we will find, by the same means, the taste
21:03   of our own culture. I await this moment with hope.
21:07   And I know in any case that the aspiration
21:11   of the peoples to freedom cannot be stopped any longer.
21:15   Long live European nations, long live Europe of nations!
 

8 thoughts on “Marine Le Pen in Koblenz: “The European Union is Taking Away Our Cultures”

  1. It’s actually quite ironic. I was 26 years old when Switzerland was holding an election on joining the EU and I voted against it, as did most of the Swiss. At the time, I was the owner of a record store, records as in vinyl, and everybody that came in wanted to drink coffee at the bar and talk about politics.

    I remember so many conversations with my music store customers back then, and the two central topics of almost every discussion about the EU were: It will destroy Swiss culture, and it’s masterminded by Germany, France and England merely to roll off their financial burdens onto every other European country.

    And looky here, 24 years later……. what did we know back then that these politicians all over Europe are only just now beginning to realize? I wasn’t even a conservative! I was a bloody Swiss liberal with all that “hold hands and sing kumbaya” getting-along-isms in my head.

    Seriously. It didn’t take a rocket scientist or a PhD to figure that out even back in 1993 at the start of the EU. I instinctively knew back then, as liberal as I was, that it wasn’t going to end well.

    • You obviously had your ears and eyes open. But some people will never get it. They will never appreciate what others with too much power can do to them if they do not take note of what it is they are doing, and it is generally those who permit this to occur who also refuse to know history and what history can teach everyone who bothers to know it, about those who like power with which to control their fellow humans.

    • And I bet you and your customers weren’t particularly right wing at that age? Just sensible people who loved their country, culture and indepedence?

  2. It will be interesting to see what Madame President Le Pen will do about the sleeping Muslim problem after she is elected into office. It is herself , Mr. Wilders and Prime Minister Orban, who have been the most openly critical about this pressing issue while others have yet to find their popular voice.

  3. Follow the recent example of president Trump and establish an immediate ban on immigration of all people from Islamic countries. Then ; educate yourselves by careful historical research on what Islam really is. It is just that simple. Do not become distracted by the howling ” politically Correct ” advocates of a pseudo religion that calls itself Islam….but does not practice the tolerance toward all mankind that is the basis of true religions that worship our Divine Creator.

  4. Thoroughly enjoyed her speech and pray she and other like-minded individuals take their countries back.

  5. For more on Marine Le Pen, see Fred Siegel at City Journal:

    https://www.city-journal.org/html/french-twist-14875.html

    The new political climate generated by breakneck globalization, aggressive political correctness, and elite arrogance is so turbulent that pollsters have repeatedly failed to see what’s coming. They got last year’s Israeli elections wrong. Same with the Colombian referendum on peace negotiations with the narcoguerillas. They missed the boat on Brexit and the American presidential elections. In France, they failed to see that former prime minister François Fillon would win the race to become the conservative party’s candidate in April’s presidential election. A social conservative with liberal economic views, Fillon scrambles our notions of Left and Right. He represents an alignment unseen since the 1840s.

    But it’s not just the pollsters who’ve missed the changing tides….

  6. “the European union is taking away our cultures,” that is one of the main reasons it was formed by the communists. all that stuff about its economic advantages were a cover up for its real purposes that most Europeans fell for. we won’t have to work, the union will get the slaves from other countries to work for us. Well your slaves went on the dole, so now you work for them. did you really think the communists would tell you the truth?

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