MEPs look into the EU’s role in a changing world and Europe’s security situation in the wake of the Russian aggression and invasion of Ukraine. Introductory speech by Roberta METSOLA, EP President. Opening statements by Kaja KALLAS, Estonian Prime Minister and by Josep BORRELL FONTELLES, High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission in charge of a stronger Europe in the World. This transcription is a result of an automatic process. Please check against delivery.

EU - Ukraine (T)

statement

Strasbourg

plenary session

EU - Russia (T)

METSOLA, Roberta (EPP, MT, EP President)

KALLAS, Kaja (EE)

BORRELL FONTELLES, Josep (PSE, ES, EC)

The EU's role in a changing world and the security situation of Europe following the Russian aggression and invasion on Ukraine: opening statements by Kaja KALLAS, Estonian Prime Minister and by Josep BORRELL FONTELLES, HR/VP of the European Union

SOUNDBITE (English), Roberta METSOLA, EP President, Dear colleagues. The next item on the agenda is the debate with the prime minister of Estonia, Kaya Kallas, on the EU's role in the changing world and the security situation of Europe following the Russian aggression and invasion of Ukraine.

SOUNDBITE (English), Roberta METSOLA, EP President, Let me start by saying Dear Prime Minister, Dear Kaya, dear colleagues, this session today is devoted to one of the most pressing issues the EU's changing role in the changing world. Putin's invasion shattered the peace our generation has known. It has changed everything, and Europe's response must be proportionate to the serious, real and growing threat to our collective security.

SOUNDBITE (English), Roberta METSOLA, EP President, So we need to reassess the European Union's role in this new world. We need to boost our investment in defence and in innovative technologies. This is the time for us to take decisive steps to ensure the security of all Europeans. The time to build a real security and defence union and reduce our dependency on the Kremlin.

SOUNDBITE (English), Roberta METSOLA, EP President, What we have seen so far in terms of European coordination, solidarity and unity is unprecedented, and this must be the blueprint of what we do going forward. Our people in our states have welcomed more than 1.5 million Ukrainians into our communities, our homes and our hearts. We have matched massive sanctions with practical solidarity in a show of European values, and I know we can go further still and we must all do what we can.

SOUNDBITE (English), Roberta METSOLA, EP President, We have with us today the Prime Minister of Estonia, Kay Kallas. I thank you for accepting our invitation to address the Parliament and the people of Europe as part of our new This Is Europe debates where different EU leaders can be present to discuss our common agenda. We are also so pleased to welcome you back amongst us now as Prime Minister of Estonia, a member states of the European Union that shares a near 300 kilometre border with Russia.

SOUNDBITE (English), Roberta METSOLA, EP President, Let me assure you, Prime Minister, that you will find us together in opposing this invasion in ensuring a clear response to dealing with the Kremlin and in ensuring that democracy prevails. We stand together for Ukraine. We stand together with Ukraine. Prime Minister, you have the floor,.

SOUNDBITE (English), Kaja KALLAS, Estonian Prime Minister, Honourable President Metsola, esteemed members of the Parliament, dear guests. It's an honour and a privilege to be speaking here today. The European Parliament is not the only House of European democracy. It has also been my political base for four years. So here I feel at home, I feel amongst friends.

SOUNDBITE (English), Kaja KALLAS, Estonian Prime Minister, Sadly, our fellow Europeans in Ukraine cannot say the same. They are fighting for their homeland, for their loved ones, their freedom to choose their own destiny. The Ukrainian armed forces are putting up the fierce resistance that President Putin did not expect. Ordinary people are on the streets showing the flag to the invading army, inviting them to go home. Ukrainian farmers have become famous for towing captured tanks back home.

SOUNDBITE (English), Kaja KALLAS, Estonian Prime Minister, One story circulating on social media even speaks of a woman who downed the Russian throne by throwing a jar of pickles at it. Later, she contested that it was a jar of pickled tomatoes. How, asked a commentator, did they expect to occupy this country? At the same time, many others are streaming across borders. Over two million have reached safety in the European Union. These refugees will keep coming.

SOUNDBITE (English), Kaja KALLAS, Estonian Prime Minister, In the words of one humanitarian worker in a conflict, always watch which way the refugees are going. In the current war they are headed for the European Union, not for Russia. But this war is an act of war, military aggression against an independent and sovereign country that wants nothing more than to fulfil its own European dream. The aim is to terrorise civilians. We have seen it before in Grozny. We have seen it in Aleppo.

SOUNDBITE (English), Kaja KALLAS, Estonian Prime Minister, Kindergartens, hospitals, residential buildings are targeted in contravention to the international humanitarian law. You have been doomscrolling on your phones just like I have, so I do not need to tell you of the atrocities taking place now every day in places like Kharkiv. Mariupol, as well as Kiev, where many people are without water, electricity, food.

SOUNDBITE (English), Kaja KALLAS, Estonian Prime Minister, Putin's war has also left ordinary Russians without access to the truth. They are living in isolated in First space. We thought that in times of the internet, this could no longer be possible, but it is. Our task is to break the wall of lies. It is a complicated task. We need to mobilise our technological potential to win the war for truth. And it goes without saying that global internet platforms have a huge role to play.

SOUNDBITE (English), Kaja KALLAS, Estonian Prime Minister, If you allow me, Madam President, I would also like to address the Russian people directly. Dear Russian friends, the European Union is not acting against you. Our measures are intended to isolate President Putin and his government, which is conducting a brutal war against Ukraine. You are now seeing only the beginnings of deprivation, which will become much worse as our sanctions kick in.

SOUNDBITE (English), Kaja KALLAS, Estonian Prime Minister, Your government is already instituting practises that are familiar to me from the Soviet times like censorship, like threatening journalists with a 15 year prison sentences for speaking about the war, like rationing for food stuffs, like asking teachers to report on the political sympathies of their pupils and their parents. Global companies are pulling out of Russia. Airlines are no longer flying. You can no longer use your Visa and MasterCard. None of this is directed against you. It is directed against President Putin and his government.

SOUNDBITE (English), Kaja KALLAS, Estonian Prime Minister, We understand that it hurts you, but it also hurts us. It hurts you because Autocrat does not care for the people. He only cares for his power. That is something that is so hard to understand in a democratic world. Last year's Nobel Peace prise laureate Novaya Gazeta editor in chief Dmitry Murata called this a question between and I quote people for the state or the state, for the people, their Russian friends.

SOUNDBITE (English), Kaja KALLAS, Estonian Prime Minister, We continue to hope for a democratic and stable Russia that is respectful of its neighbours and is governed by a rule of law. Madam President There members since the 24th of February, which coincidentally was the 104th anniversary of Estonians independence. The world has changed. President Putin's invasion of Ukraine has ushered in a period of insecurity on our continent that we have not seen since that 1939, and like we saw after the Second World War, our world will not return to the status quo.

SOUNDBITE (English), Kaja KALLAS, Estonian Prime Minister, Under Russia's relationship with the outside world will be different. How to restore the trust in respecting international law and order European attitudes towards security will be different, and our institutional set ups will need to adjust. And we might just have rediscovered what the liberal international rules based order was all about in the first place.

SOUNDBITE (English), Kaja KALLAS, Estonian Prime Minister, So in short, we will in the future speak about before times and the after times the free world has already begun to respond. And the European Union has been at the forefront of this response, which itself is a welcome change. The EU is not normally seen to be particularly nimble organisation, but in terms of security, we have changed more in the last couple of weeks than we have in the last 30 years.

SOUNDBITE (English), Kaja KALLAS, Estonian Prime Minister, We have imposed three packages of tough sanctions on top of those existing already since Russia's invasion to Donbas and annexation of Crimea in 2014. We have frozen assets, stop Moscow's asset access to its reserves held abroad and thrown Russia out of Swift. We have closed our airspace to Russian registered, owned and operated aircraft.

SOUNDBITE (English), Kaja KALLAS, Estonian Prime Minister, We have shut down disinformation channels masquerading as media outlets, and we have acted to use the European peace facility to send a half a billion euros in much needed defensive weapons and non-lethal aid to Ukraine. The EU has acted with an urgency, conviction and unity that has surprised President Putin and the world.

SOUNDBITE (English), Kaja KALLAS, Estonian Prime Minister, And there I say, we have also surprised ourselves. We have indeed acted as a geopolitical union. Our citizens have responded as well by opening their pocketbooks and their hearts, by welcoming refugees, often into their own homes, by volunteering on humanitarian missions, by collecting food, clothing and medicines for those fleeing the war.

SOUNDBITE (English), Kaja KALLAS, Estonian Prime Minister, And let us not forget about the Irish fishermen. Our citizens are showing a generosity of spirit that makes me proud to be Estonian and proud to be European. I know a bit about kindness of strangers, as many of you know, I am the child of deportees from Stalin sent away to Siberia.

SOUNDBITE (English), Kaja KALLAS, Estonian Prime Minister, My mother was just six months old when she was deported on a cattle car along with her mother and grandmother to what the Estonians call the cold land. It was a stranger who gave my grandmother a jar of milk that kept my mother alive during this journey. It were strangers who dried the baby's diapers on their skin as it was the only warm place in the cattle car and it was strangers who helped in untold ways when they were allowed to return to Estonia.

SOUNDBITE (English), Kaja KALLAS, Estonian Prime Minister, So you could say we Estonians have some experience in being deported and fleeing wars, and we also have some experience with Russia, which we have been trying to share with the European Union since we joined. It was 78 years ago today when the Red Army bombed my home city, Tallinn, to the ground. But my mother, the same baby who took her first trip abroad to Siberia, always taught me that it was impolite to say I told you so.

SOUNDBITE (English), Kaja KALLAS, Estonian Prime Minister, Madam President, dear members. We are in this for the long haul. We will have to exercise strategic patience because peace is not going to break out tomorrow. Russia expects us to make a step back soon as military, Medvedev explained to Putin in a recent public meeting of the Russian Security Council.

SOUNDBITE (English), Kaja KALLAS, Estonian Prime Minister, And I quote "sooner or later, they, the West, will get tired of their own initiative. They will come to ask us about returning to discussions and negotiations regarding all the matters of strategic security". End of quote. Putin will come to test us, and yes, we will have to resist. That means that we need to keep supporting those fighting for Ukraine's independence while giving time for the sanctions and isolating measures to work to their full capacity.

SOUNDBITE (English), Kaja KALLAS, Estonian Prime Minister, This will require a sustained effort from all of us, but we need also to think about what comes next. I see two areas of action. First, we need to hardwire our fundamental change of heart into policy of smart containment. We all want the democratic and secure Russia. This house expressed that desire last year when it honoured a Russian opposition leader, Alexander Alexei Navalny, with Sakharov prize.

SOUNDBITE (English), Kaja KALLAS, Estonian Prime Minister, But what I mean by hardwiring is that we need now to consolidate with the free world what the free world has accomplished in the last weeks and build on it. We need to do this together with our trusted transatlantic partners and others who are like minded, and there are many like-minded partners. If you look at last week's UN General Assembly, the vast majority of the world community, 141 states voted to condemn Russia's military aggression against Ukraine.

SOUNDBITE (English), Kaja KALLAS, Estonian Prime Minister, This vote demonstrates not only a victory of multilateralism, but the win for the rule of law. We also need collectively to give our strongest support to the International Criminal Court once the time comes. Last week, ICC prosecutor Karim Khan announced that 39 state parties to the Rome Statute had referred the situation to his office.

SOUNDBITE (English), Kaja KALLAS, Estonian Prime Minister, This enables him to go ahead with the investigation in any past and present war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide committed on any part of the territory of Ukraine by any person here in the European Union. We need to push harder and faster to cut our energy dependence on Russian gas and oil because we have already committed to the green transition. This will be a win win for our energy independence, but also good for the planet.

SOUNDBITE (English), Kaja KALLAS, Estonian Prime Minister, We also need to move quickly to synchronise Ukraine's power grid with that of continental Europe and make sure all parts of the EU are synchronised into that continental grid as well. Turning to defence, our decisions of last week to use the European peace facility to assist Ukraine are about the first step towards strengthening our own continental security.

SOUNDBITE (English), Kaja KALLAS, Estonian Prime Minister, We must transform our deterrent posture into a defence plan. I am mindful that not all European members are NATO allies. When my father was leading the Estonian negotiations to join NATO, he was often asked, Why do you need this? Russia does not pose a threat anymore. Well, we knew our neighbour then and we also know our neighbour now.

SOUNDBITE (English), Kaja KALLAS, Estonian Prime Minister, I can only be grateful to the decision to join the Defence Alliance. But being part of the alliance also comes with obligations. The two percent of the GDP defence spending target must become an absolute minimum requirement. Estonia decided this already 10 years ago and allow me here to thank Germany for having taken the previously unimaginable decision of raising its defence spending to two two percent. All of Europe, thanks you.

SOUNDBITE (English), Kaja KALLAS, Estonian Prime Minister, Let me say here clearly that as we strengthen European defence, we need to work hand in hand with NATO. Time after time we have agreed that stronger Europe means stronger NATO, just the stronger Naito implies a stronger European defence. I look forward to a Third joint declaration between the EU and NATO on the matter. A stronger European defence means planning our spending wisely and in coordination.

SOUNDBITE (English), Kaja KALLAS, Estonian Prime Minister, We must concentrate on those capabilities that are too expensive for any individual member state to develop on their own, such as longer air defence, including missile defence. Our European capabilities need to be mobile so we can move them quickly if we need to, and they need to be state of the art. Russia may have an enormous military force, but we can compete with quality breakthrough technology.

SOUNDBITE (English), Kaja KALLAS, Estonian Prime Minister, I urge all member states to submit only PESCO projects that bring technological technological innovation to the table, and here is a sobering thought in stepping up European defence. We must find a consensus within the EU that sometimes the best way of achieving peace is the willingness to use military strength. These are my thoughts on the need of policy of smart containment.

SOUNDBITE (English), Kaja KALLAS, Estonian Prime Minister, Let me now turn to the Second area where we should concentrate as we think of the post-war order. And this is the future of Ukraine. Madam President, dear members. Ukraine came under attack in 2014 because it wanted to join the European Union. It came under armed attack on the 24th of February because it seeks to take its rightful place amongst us.

SOUNDBITE (English), Kaja KALLAS, Estonian Prime Minister, It is in our interest that Ukraine becomes more stable, more prosperous and solidly founded on the rule of law. I know from Estonia's own experience that this is how it works, but it's not only in our interests to give Ukraine a membership perspective, it is also our moral duty to do so. Ukraine is not fighting for Ukraine, it's also fighting for Europe. If not now, then when? I thank you for your attention.

SOUNDBITE (English, Spanish), Josep BORRELL FONTELLES, HR/VP of the European Union