07 May Commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War on European soil in the European Parliament

Today, the European Parliament in Strasbourg commemorated the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War on European soil. The result of this bloodbath started by the criminal Nazi regime is over 60 million dead. More than six million European Jews were murdered, hundreds of thousands of opponents of the regime, homosexuals, Sinti and Roma and disabled people were persecuted and killed.

Not least because of the horror of the Second World War, the realization grew that only through closer cooperation between all European nations could a repetition of such horrors be prevented in the future.

As a Saarlander who grew up just a few kilometers from the French border, I am aware of the importance of peaceful coexistence. The foundation stone for today's European Union was laid back in 1951 when Germany, France, Italy and the BeNeLux countries signed the treaties for the "European Coal and Steel Community" (ECSC). The EU is a globally unique, successful peace project, and I am proud to have been a member of the European Parliament, the world's only directly elected supranational institution, since 2020.

When Richard Weizsäcker referred to May 8, 1945 as "Liberation Day" in a speech in 1985, he was met with massive hostility. Today, there are once again forces that relativize or even trivialize what happened back then. In the German Bundestag, a party is now the second strongest force, from whose ranks voices are repeatedly raised that refer to National Socialism and its terrible consequences as "flyspeck" or call the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin a "monument of shame". That is why all democrats must work together resolutely to ensure that this party never comes to power and destroys the European peace project that is the EU.

I am also very concerned to see how the memory of the Second World War and the immense sacrifices of the Red Army are being misused in Russia today to justify the aggressive war of aggression against Ukraine. We must oppose this false reconstruction of history. In doing so, Russia has also forfeited its right to participate in commemorations for peace in the name of this state.