Rob Roos MEP - Dutch Courage: A Maverick’s Path in European Politics

Show Notes and Transcript

Rob Roos, a Dutch politician and member of the European Parliament joins Hearts of Oak to discuss his non-traditional journey into politics and his focus of representing the people over personal gain. 
He advocates for free speech, energy security, and national sovereignty while addressing issues like immigration and digital identity. 
Rob highlights the complexity of politics, emphasizing compromise and unity among diverse political groups. 
He stresses the importance of collaboration to tackle challenges like immigration and the changing European political landscape. 
Rob also shares his views on international relations, promoting peaceful resolutions and maintaining dialogue. 
As we look ahead, Rob remains dedicated to serving his country and advocating for critical issues, cementing his position as a notable voice in European politics.

Rob Roos (1966) has been a Member of the European Parliament since 2 July 2019, until December 2020 this was on behalf of the Forum for Democracy (FVD) and then until August 2023 on behalf of JA21. Mr Roos was a member of the Provincial Council of South Holland for several months in 2019 and chairman of the political group until July 2019. He is an entrepreneur in the ICT sector and worked in business and is the Vice President of the group of European Conservatives and Reformists.

Connect with Rob...
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WEBSITE             ecrgroup.eu/ecr/mep/rob_roos
INSTAGRAM        www.instagram.com/robroos.mep

Interview recorded  14.6.24

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Transcript

(Hearts of Oak)

I'm delighted to be joined by Rob Roos today, a Dutch politician, was a member of the European Parliament for five years.

Rob, it's wonderful to have you with us.

Thank you for giving us your time today.

(Rob Roos MEP)

Yeah, it's wonderful to be here and I try to explain the things that are happening in the European Parliament and in the Netherlands.

And I'm honoured to have me in the show. Thank you.

Great to have an eye of, as have many, I think, English speakers certainly enjoyed your fantastic short videos on a range of issues and it is, I guess, to see a member of the European Parliament speak sense and speak specifically, I just say what they think, love it. But you obviously were a member of the European Parliament for five years.

I'm still am.

Still am, yeah.

Yes, yes, till July 16.

Okay, till July 16 and you were vice chairman of the the ECR group, and we'll get into the groupings, the European Conservatives and Reformist Party.

But your background, you were in telecoms, and it made me smile because I know I worked with Gerard Batten, who was MEP for UKIP, UKIP leader, and his background was telecoms as well before he got into politics.

Maybe I can ask you just how you ended up being involved in politics.

It was an accident.

It always is.

No, I was never a member of a political party.

My background is I'm actually an electrical engineer.

But I'm an entrepreneur.

I have my own businesses.

I had an engineering company in energy.

That's what I'm doing for 32 years now.

But after a while I started to invest in my own fibre optic networks across the country so, I founded my own telecom company.

It started with the infrastructure but after a while I also had I had my own ISP and we did everything, but in 2016 I sold my engineering company.

And because I wanted to move on with my telecom company, it was a huge success. But then there was a private equity from London who wanted to buy my shares.

And so I did the negotiations for two years in 2018.

They bought my shares also of that company.

I still have one telecom company.

I still own a fantastic gym.

I'm also a boxing trainer.

But then in 2016, we had a new movement in the Netherlands.

It was called Forum for Democracy.

Thierry Baudet was very good at that time.

And, well, I funded his political movement so he can run for our national parliament. But I didn't become a member at the time.

But after a while, they called me. Rob, can you please help us?

You live close to Rotterdam.

Can you do the campaign over there?

I was never involved in politics.

I was always interested in politics since I was a child.

So I said, okay, let's do it.

I'm an entrepreneur.

Let's roll up the sleeves and just do it.

But it was a success.

And from one thing came another.

And, well, before I knew it, I was in the office in Amsterdam.

To them and yeah, building this organization because that is my background I founded nine companies, our board companies, our merged companies, and so I know how to build organizations.

Yeah, from there they said well can you record a video about entrepreneurship and it was so difficult because I was never in front of the cameras really it was maybe 50 takes or something like that it was terrible, but okay, I didn't have that experience, but finally this video was successful and then Rob you should also be on the list and I said absolutely not.

I want to help but I'm not going to be on this, but in the end to make a long story short, in the end I was on the list and I was elected as a member of of the European Parliament.

And, well, yeah, I did it with love and passion, and I loved what I did. I'm not really a politician.

I'm a representative of the people. I think that's a big difference.

Most people who go into politics have very good intentions, but once chosen, they make a career of it.

And, yeah, I didn't do that.

I'm really there for the people.

It's sometimes tough, you know.

They call you names.

But I don't care, you know, it's the right for people to call me names.

That's freedom of speech.

I don't block anyone on social media.

But yeah, I did it with love and passion.

And to be honest, I think I'm going to miss it.

But there will probably be something else in the future.

I keep on fighting for my country, absolutely.

And also for Europe.

Well I want to get on to what kind of your passions and what you wanted to to bring to that role but let me for our UK and half of our viewers are American and I don't know if we'll be able to explain all of the intricacies and little details in in the politics but obviously I watched Thierry Baudet start his movement and you've got all different letters in Dutch politics. So, that's the Forum for Democratie, the FVD.

And then there was, I think, a disagreement.

So things were said, as happens, and then you had broken away with some others and started a new group, the J21.

And then you had represented that and then as an independent.

And I guess there are always difficulties with a new movement or a new group or new party that starts, because it doesn't have the history of what it actually believes and it's evolving and that can lead to clashes I guess.

Yeah, that's true you know, but it's always in politics.

I was in Bangkok two weeks ago.

I was speaking there about food security.

I spoke with the the audience that were all kinds of ministers and and members of parliament of all kinds of Asian countries from Kazakhstan to South Korea, Japan, China, everywhere.

And it's everywhere the same.

You know, politics is just a dirty game.

But the point is for new political parties, if someone is, let's say, difficult to handle, there is no job somewhere else.

The establishment, if someone is not very favourable anymore in the party, they give them a decent job as a mayor or something else.

And this is not possible with a new political party.

So, yeah, that is the problem. But there are more problems.

Politics also attracts strange people.

I agree.

It's incredible.

And I'm just a simple human being.

The only thing that counts for me, I want results. I'm a businessman. man you know and I my my job is to solve problems and to to go straight to the result and I don't want to play all these games, and I don't do it, so it's, I stay, I stick to my principles and then that's why I fight for and if people said you should not speak about this, you shouldn't speak about that, and I said sorry I'm here to represent the people that's why they have chosen me and I will fight for them.

For me the party, a political party is just a tool.

It cannot be the goal and that is often the thing that they make the political party more important than our country and the people and yeah for me the people and the country is that that's the most important thing that's the highest goal there is.

Tell us about you as an MEP you as vice chair of the ECR one of the kind of three groupings on the right and people obviously will know Georgia Maloney her party part of that I think the Law and Justice Party and also I think the Czech Civic Democratic Party are part of that.

Tell us what that was, because obviously you were there for five years.

So you don't have a track record of being in the European Parliament.

That's not your life.

Your life, as you say, is service and serving the people.

Vice-Chairman of the ECR, that is a key position.

How did that come about?

And how did you find your time, I guess, working with the groupings in the European Parliament?

Oh, I love that.

I love to do that.

I can be tough on subjects, but I think I'm a very reasonable person and I can bring people together.

Even I cooperate a lot of times with, for example, the Greens.

I disagree.

On 100% on their climate policy, but I was a member of the industry and energy committee and we were responsible, for example, for the digital identity, etc.

And in the greens you have these pirates, you know, they are very hard on privacy.

So, I made my coalitions with them to create a majority on things.

So, there was also a very left liberal lady in the Renew, and she said, Rob, you are such a nice person, but you have such strange people around you.

And then I said, you have exactly the same.

So you can disagree on subjects, but you can respect each other as human beings.

And this is how I work.

And that is also that I did it in the ECR.

I think, yeah, it's so strange because in my political party, they said, they told me, you should not speak about this and you should not speak about that.

And they really disagree with me on the things.

And they made my life very tough to survive in that party.

But the strange thing is that I can go along with all the people in the group.

Even we have, of course, you have a bandwidth and you have the people.

We are the conservative, but you have people who are on the left side of this conservative movement and also the hardliners.

But I can get along with them very well. And I try to bring people together, because in the end, we have to do it together.

Together, you are strong.

And of course, you can disagree with each other, but you have to find a compromise on things so that you can show your strength.

And being united is very important to achieve the goals.

I was in Bucharest, I think it's now four or five weeks ago, I was the keynote speaker there at Make Europe Great Again.

Oh, yes.

And that was exactly the speech that I gave.

We have the elections coming up and we should be united on the right.

And I hope there are now negotiations going on to create this.

Conservative supergroup.

They try it every time we have new elections.

But this time I really hope it will work because.

We are bigger, if we are united, we are bigger than the socialists in the European Parliament.

And then we are the second largest group right after the European People's Party.

And then we are strong. We have the best positions.

You have the best, yeah, as a rapporteur, you can change things.

You have the chairman of all the committees, et cetera.

And so, yeah, I think we should respect each other as a human being and be tough on the subject, but we should find compromises and work together.

The elections have thrown up some interesting and exciting results.

Obviously, Marine Le Pen doing well. I remember meeting Marine 12 years ago in London, the only time I've met her.

But Gerrit Fielder is obviously doing very well in Holland, and I've met him a number of times.

And you've got two high-profile individuals that really make the left extremely angry.

And to me, that's kind of the part that I like, but also you need to come together.

But then you've got all these, obviously, where Giorgio Maloney fits in.

And then you've got all the conversation about the AFD and the FPO.

And it's an interesting mix.

And you said politics brings together estranged people.

It also brings together people who are extremely ambitious.

And sometimes that doesn't work with groupings.

But what are your thoughts looking across the landscape at what this election has produced?

And how do you see it moving forward with some of those conversations?

If we look at the numbers, then EPP is still the biggest group in the European Parliament.

But let's say the conservatives, if you count the numbers, then we almost have the same numbers. If I count the numbers, EPP can be around 190.

But also the conservatives, the right-wing conservatives, they have also 190 seats if we can merge.

And Renew lost a lot, especially in France. It's a chaos over there.

But also the Greens in Germany, the Socialists in Germany, they did a terrible job.

It was the worst elections for them ever on the European Parliament level.

So, this is a very strong signal from the people in Europe that they are fed up with all this climate communist nonsense. All this gender nonsense, because this is what it is.

It was so horrible the last five years.

Every legislation that we passed was full of gender ideology, climate ideology, and it was absurd, you know.

I was in energy for 32 years.

I really know what energy is about and how to do it.

You cannot do this energy transition with wind turbines and solar panels.

So, there is an alternative, and that is nuclear energy.

And I was advocating for that for a very long time.

I'm not against phasing out Fossil.

Partly, you cannot do it completely, but partly you can phase out fossil fuel.

But then you need something stable.

And nuclear energy is such a wonderful form of energy.

It's really a gift from the stars.

If you have this uranium, but also the new...

New reactors.

New reactors, the fourth generation reactors with thorium and other things.

There is so much energy in this tiny particle form.

And this is really a solution.

But this is the problem.

They don't want that.

So, to come back to the question, the Greens they lost, the Liberals they lost.

And, well, it's time to have a real democracy.

These people are upset.

It was also in the Netherlands, exactly the same when Wilders won the election.

These people are upset, but it's their democracy, it's not the democracy, it's their democracy.

They have a view of how the world should look like, and this is how everyone should behave.

But if it's real democracy, they should start listening to the people.

The people gave a very clear signal.

We don't want this anymore. We want change.

We want a normal life.

Of course, we want to take care of the planet, but we don't want to have this absurd laws where we are losing our freedom, where we are paying so much for just normal energy while it's not necessary.

Our food security is in danger because of the policy on the farmers.

And people start seeing it.

And now they want to go back to normal.

Well, of course, the farm demonstration, they started in your part of the world, in the Netherlands, and then really, really spread out.

But this idea of wanting your own industries, not necessarily relying on the global, of not wanting to, not seeing renewables as the full-on solution may be a part of it, but it can't be. This is where we put everything into.

And the gender ideology debate, the mass immigration that Europe has faced. I mean, but which one has it just been those coming together to give the push to to Gerd Willers, to Marine Le Pen, to Maloney, the Swedish Democrats, the FPO coming top and then even the Vox and Chega doing well in Portugal and Spain.

I mean, it's across the board where all these parties have come first or second or one or two end up third.

But it does seem a change of the guard.

I'm wondering which issue is it that actually is concerning Europeans the most?

I think it's immigration.

You know, we are flooded with people from the Middle East and Africa.

And even in my small village here, very close to Rotterdam, it's changing.

Our children don't have houses anymore the culture is changing.

Well I've seen the videos from London this is not Europe anymore and if these people want the Sharia, if they like to live by the Sharia there are lots of places in the world where you can do that. We should not allow that they are changing our society.

I didn't ask for it.

Most of the people didn't ask for it.

So why is this happening?

You know, it's not the will of the people.

So, I think immigration is something that is the most important issue at the moment.

But the rest, the Green Deal, all this climate policy, the gender policy, changing our identities, taking away our freedom, Yeah, I think we are heading, when I was in Warsaw, I said we are heading to a new kind of communism.

And I really think that is the case.

You know, if you look at communism, it's all central plant economy. Now, that is exactly what the Green Deal is.

As an entrepreneur, I want to make my own decisions.

And if we have new legislation and say, OK, we have to improve the environment, etc. Etc. Okay, make your goals.

And let me, let the market find out what the best solution is.

But they are not only telling you what to do, they are also telling you how to do it.

Like the civil servants in Brussels, sitting on the chair of the entrepreneurs and of the chair of the businesses, if they really think they can do a better job, it's so stupid, you know, that's not the case.

So, immigration is the most important thing.

We feel that everywhere.

We see the bomb attacks, we see the violence.

You should not speak about it, then you are a racist, of course, they call your names again, but also the women in our cities are not safe anymore.

It's just happening.

It started, this started in Sweden, but now we have the same problem here in Rotterdam.

And that doesn't mean that all the people who coming in are are evil, but it is changing our society and if you have too much of it and you cannot integrate in the society there are people here that live really 30 years in the Netherlands and they don't speak our language that is absurd, you know, that you then you are not a part of the society.

I don't believe in a multicultural cultural society, we should have a monocultural society with maybe multicultural people from other countries but multicultural society really means a parallel society you have so but yeah, I think this is this is something that we have to solve and I think the key is now, With Giorgio Maloney.

Fratelli d'Italia.

I really understand their position.

They are my colleagues.

They are very good colleagues.

I love them very much.

But Italy has problems, you know, with their debt.

So, they depend on what is happening in the financial market.

The financial market can break or they can break the government within months, I think. But also the Commission, because they have this money where they can bribe the member states.

They did it with Poland, they do it with Hungary, but they can also bribe Italy, because Italy, I think they still have to receive 85 billion Euros from this next generation EU.

EU, so that is serious money.

But it should not be the case that the government of Italy, of Giorgio Meloni, that they can hostage our whole group.

We in Europe, we have to move on.

So, I understand their position, but still I hope there will be a solution also for this big group, including... Fratelli d'Italia. I really hope that.

We're talking about Giorgio Maloni and you've seen, I guess, Orban with Fidets in Hungary and the Law and Justice Party in Poland really taking a very hard line against the EU and you posted, I think, on Twitter a day ago or so, Hungary getting fined every day.

Giorgio Maloney has taken a softer approach.

I think people have seen that as weakness but maybe she just realizes this is a game you need to play and you don't win everything on day one is that a fair assessment because, I would be talking to some people about my frustration with Giorgio Meloni not going all the way and they said patience this this takes time.

Is that a kind of a fair assessment that she knows how the game has to be played and to get to your goal It takes a number of steps.

Yes, absolutely.

If you are in government, you have to take responsibility.

You have to make compromises.

As long as you have no 51% of the seats, then you have to make compromises.

But also, she has to deal with the European Commission.

She has to deal with the financial markets.

So that is the case.

And even we have these elections in France at the end of the month.

And I really hope there will be, let's say, a common sense politics, because that is what it is, with conservatives, political parties.

But even then, they will lower down the vote.

It's always easier to be in the opposition and to raise your voice.

But if you have the responsibility and you have to solve the problems, yeah, you have to deal with many problems at the same time.

And of course, you have to make compromises, but it is possible.

Yeah, but I hope it's not too much and that there will be a solution to create this supergroup.

It is really necessary to change things.

I'm so happy that we have more and more prime ministers with a conservative background in the European Council, because that's probably the most important thing.

To have this blocking minority over there, maybe even if we look further in time, there will be a majority and we can really change things.

But I hope Maloney and Orban and Le Pen, they can find a solution because they are the most important, yeah, these are the biggest countries, you know, Italy, France, and Hungary.

So, you know, well, I think Orban is at this moment the only Western prime minister with a long-term strategy of the West.

No matter what people are saying of him, I agree on a lot of things with him.

And I hope he can achieve this super group.

Because Orban's sitting, I think, as an independent with Fidets at the moment in the European Parliament.

So to me, if he moved one way, if he said, no, I'm going to join Giorgio Maloney and encourage Marine to do the same, him or I'm going to join ID and encourage or if there's coming together he seems to be the figure that is so well respected and because he has led Hungary forever it seems like for me but you've kind of got individuals like that and is he kind of the the kingmaker the one that can bring them together or does it depend on Marine whether she wins the French elections end of this month.

And is there enough commonality, because obviously the issue with Russian Ukraine is a split with some people there, but there does seem to be enough commonality between everything else that is happening to actually come together.

Yeah, I think if you read the media let's say the mainstream media they blame Orban like Kiefer Hofstad is every day doing of supporting Russia, but that's absolutely not the case.

Orban, he wants peace, and I also agree with him on that, because Ukraine cannot win this war.

It's just as simple as that.

If you look at the numbers, Russia has all the resources to go on with this war, and they have also much more people than Ukraine.

That's just facts.

Should we reward Russia for the invasion in a sovereign country?

Of course not.

There are ways to punish him.

And I think that's right.

So, I'm not saying that we should reward Putin.

Absolutely not.

It's disgustful what happened.

But we have to find a solution.

You know, we cannot escalating more and more and more weapons fighting yet.

OK, you can use them across the border.

It's going on and on and on.

And last week I spoke someone from NATO.

Then I stay a little bit at this one and I come back to your question.

I spoke someone from NATO and they are also becoming very nervous of some politicians who are, for example, Macron.

Let me put it this way.

Macron, of course, he knows he is, before the election, he knew he was very unpopular.

And then he tried to make himself bigger as he was at that moment by saying all these crazy things about the war.

We should bring boots on the ground over there.

Really incredible, you know.

This guy is, he has no roots, you know.

He has no children.

And then I think my son is 22.

He is not going to fight, because Macron wants to set himself in a position as a big leader.

Let Macron put on his own boots and go there and fight.

Pick up a gun and do your job, you know.

But this is, we should, well, this is Ukraine and people are divided. But I think Orban is right.

The rest is, of course, supporting Ukraine.

I'm also supporting Ukraine.

Let there be no misunderstandings about that.

But I think also the people in Ukraine want peace.

You're never going to get back to Donbass.

You're never going to get back to the Crimea.

That is now what it is.

And I hope that the rest of Ukraine can be part of NATO and that we put sanctions on Russia as long as these parts of the Ukraine is in Russian hands.

But let's let's work on peace let's get people to the negotiation table because a war never ended on the battlefield it always ended on the negotiation table and I think the other conservatives also in it like this and they support Ukraine, but I think there can be a solution for that.

I think the kingmaker, that's your question, is Orbán the kingmaker.

I think Giorgia Maloni is the kingmaker in this.

It's her decision and I really know that she has a difficult position because of the financial problems and the market with Italy, but she She has to make the decision.

I think the rest will this.

Orban, Le Pen, Moranjewski, Kaczynski.

They are really ready to create a supergroup.

Because it's, I mean, Europe seems to be marching towards greater and greater confrontation with Russia.

And I think part of that's Boris Johnson's fault, because he was involved in rejecting the original peace deal.

But Europe seemed to have no money left, and yet they're sending it all to Ukraine.

And then the talk about conscription, which you mentioned.

In Britain, we're talking about conscription.

In Britain, it's rumoured that we will be at war with Russia by the end of the year, and that's why the election was called, and Macron calling for conscription.

And it is a very frightening situation for Europe.

Whenever the battle is not ours, it is to other countries that are neighboring countries.

But Europe and partly the US, actually Biden pushing us, we seem to be being sucked further and further into this, which could be a war.

Is these elections, are they enough to kind of break away and change that conversation?

Because the outcome could be extremely destructive for Europe, for all of us.

Yes, I think this is also what the leaders of this country should realize now, that we should unite.

We have the problems we discussed already with the migration, with the Green Deal, with the gender policy, etc.

But the war in Ukraine is also a big issue.

And that's why I hope President Trump will win the election.

I think he will choose a different approach than Biden.

Of course, we should help Ukraine, but we should not make the weapon industry that should not.

Booming weapon industry should not be the goal.

And I think this is what's going on right now.

It's all about money.

And there are people making a lot of money.

No, yeah, it can make a difference.

And even if we have this big group, and it's so strange, the left, and they were always the one who wanted peace, you know, the symbol, and they wanted to make peace, not war, make love, not war.

And now those are the ones who are the warmongers.

And the world has changed so much.

I really, I really, that's maybe also they try to, yeah, how do I say that?

No, let's hope Trump will win the election.

I think they make people very afraid of Trump winning the election because they tell the people he's crazy.

He is maybe a little bit rude in his conversation, but I think he's done a wonderful job in the time he was the president.

He was the only one who didn't start a war.

I even recommended him for the Nobel Peace Prize in the European Parliament.

Of course, it was rejected.

I made a resolution to give him, because of this Abraham Accords.

It was a wonderful job and what did the media said?

Oh, this is a very bad thing for the Palestinians.

No, it was peace. It was peace.

It was very good.

But yeah, let's hope that

How does that, because I've had the privilege of seeing him speak it at three different rallies actually over in the states and there's nothing like a trump rally and for my all my years in UKIP.

I've never seen anything like that, but how does it change because in most of your time in the European parliament it's been Biden in charge and with the rise of common sense parties more in the right it could be a different relationship with Europe and Trump.

I'm wondering how you see that because you want bloc countries to actually have commonality and work together and not have disagreements.

And the Trump derangement syndrome, the hatred of Trump, we've seen in many European governments. That could change now with these elections.

How do you see that kind of, is there a better relationship that can be had with the Trump administration and with European Union groupings more on the right?

Yeah, I think that relation is very good.

Of course, Trump is always saying America first, and that is his job.

You know, if he is the president of that country, he should put his country on the first place.

That is also what every leader of a country should do.

But for example, Orban and Trump, they can work very close.

Trump Jr. was yesterday in Hungary also.

But Trump was also speaking on the rally of Fratelli d'Italia.

So, this relationship is also good.

I think, let's say the Republicans and the conservatives here in Europe, they have a very good relation.

I have very good relations also in the United States, we can get along very well and it should be something that it is a global fight.

You know, this this this globalism is a left wing socialist agenda and we should fight it together. Not we see the problems everywhere in the UK, in Australia, New Zealand. South America and Europe, Canada.

We have all this woke ism and there's more warmongers.

And so we should unite and and also fight back together and I think this is something, that is happened that happened in the last uh years with for example CPAC and it started in the United States we have CPAC Hungary, we have CPAC in Mexico, in Brazil, in Israel, so yeah.

We have a movement and we know how to find each other.

And if Trump will be elected, I think there will be a very good relationship with Europe and the United States.

Can I just end with you personally, because you will not be an MP soon, but you've used your position as a member of the European Parliament to speak truth and connect with the public.

And you touched on energy as being something that you were intrigued about.

And I always was confused why Germany would rely through the Nord Stream pipeline on one country.

It doesn't matter who the country is to rely on one country.

But what are the other issues that you've tried to champion?

We've touched a number of them, but your kind of areas of passion and what issues did you want to bring during your five years in the European Parliament?

Well, I think most of all is defending free speech.

I think this is the most important thing and it's also, I was, I did the negotiations on the digital services act to.

To bring some common sense over there also the digital services act is something to control, the the big big tech companies but but actually now the European commission has so much power, because they can fight disinformation and misinformation and then I try to have a definition of that.

I try to also have a definition of hate speech and harmful speech.

But of course, they didn't make it because you cannot, it's impossible to say this is harmful speech, so this is disinformation.

These people who are advocating for this, they say to us that men can have babies and for me that is disinformation, for them, it's the truth.

So it's a very dangerous development.

We've seen the law in Scotland when you cannot discuss anymore the gender thing about the difference between men and women it's a hate crime.

In Canada, we have the same and Europe, the European Union is moving in that same direction.

Von der Leyen, two weeks ago, said we have to not debunk misinformation, we have to pre-bank this information.

This is really the synonym of censorship and that is what's going on.

So free Free speech is also a main topic for me.

I think it's the cornerstone of having a healthy democracy, that we can disagree with each other in a decent way.

And, yeah, of course, people have different opinions, but that is what politics is about.

And this is also the beautiful thing that we have, and it's very precious.

It's not in most parts of the world.

We don't have this luxury to speak out.

But they are taking it away, and that's why I called it also a new kind of communism. Because... Yeah, if you cannot speak out anymore, then we have a real problem.

We have seen that during COVID, it was real censorship.

It was a horrible time.

People were locked up.

If you disagreed, then you... So this should never happen again.

Digital identity is also a very difficult thing for me.

I did the negotiations on that too. I was able to delay that for two years, but finally it was adopted.

It's not as bad as it was at the beginning, but still it is there.

Central bank, digital currency, all kinds of tools to control people. You know, no one asked for this.

No one.

It's a top-down approach and it has nothing to do with democracy.

There is no problem.

Everyone can pay with their debit card or their credit card.

It's not an added value.

It's a dangerous development because you can control people.

These are also very important topics to me. Freedom, freedom of speech, having reliable and affordable energy.

Our food security, and, of course, stopping this illegal immigration and the sovereignty of our nations.

This is very important.

And just to end off, the future for you, when you finish as an MEP, I hope you're not going to disappear and become quiet. What does the future hold for you?

I have no idea.

Not yet.

Not yet.

But, you know, when I was an entrepreneur, I started to sell my first cluster of companies in 2016, and I sold a cluster of companies in 2018.

It sounds strange, but I really had the idea.

I've played that game.

I've seen it all and I've done it all.

That game is over.

I thought I have enough money.

That's also very strange if I see Bezos, you know, buying another super yacht.

Does that make you happy?

I don't think so.

I have enough money, so I don't need to do, I don't need to work anymore, so I can use my time to, service my country, to fight for the future of my children, and they're the generation.

So, this is what I wanted to do, but I don't have any idea what I'm going to do.

But I keep on fighting.

My wife, she hates politics.

So, I have to convince her.

But still, she also recognized that it's very necessary.

There are not many voices like me who really speak the truth. Because politicians make a career of it.

And yeah, let's see what's going to happen, what the universe wants to do with me. Not many speak to it, but also not many who can do it in English.

And I often have struggles talking to the French groupings and saying, could I have someone not speak English?

And it's like, no.

Rob, I really appreciate you coming on.

John, I thoroughly enjoyed your many videos going out and speaking truth in the European Parliament and looking forward to seeing what is the next step for you.

But thank you so much for joining us today.

Yeah, it was a pleasure.

And if I have news, when I know what I'm going to do, Id love to come back.

You're welcome anytime.

I keep on speaking, I promise.

Thank you, Rob.

Thank you.