The prime minister is a strong supporter and advocator for free speech, and he believes that should be fundamental to any democracy,
Municipal autonomy is a cornerstone of our democracy but can never overrule the Belgian constitution guaranteeing the freedom of speech and peaceful assembly since 1830. Banning political meetings is unconstitutional. Full stop,
Who are you? I’ve never heard of you. No one in Brussels has ever heard of you!"
No official should have the power to shut down free and peaceful assembly merely because he disagrees with what is being said,
Thanks to God, thanks to the pressure we exerted, thanks to the scandal in all of Europe, Europe has shown that it was still the continent of liberal democracy, and of the rule of law,
The authorities should at least have tried to protect the people exercising their constitutional right to assembly,
Brussels just moved up a gear
It is not just undemocratic but anti-democratic in its very nature,
While common sense and justice have prevailed, what happened yesterday is a dark mark on European democracy,
The Belgian justice system has acted to protect the freedoms of speech and assembly with a decisive emergency late-night ruling in favour of the conference on National Conservativism,
I understand the police are very keen to shut this down,
What you may or may not know in the audience now is that this venue, which accepted this booking last night - and we give huge thanks to the Tunisian owner of this business for his courage and for allowing free speech to take place,
We are taking all necessary operational measures to prevent a public disturbance
What's happened here... where there is global media, we can see that legally-held opinions from people who are going to win national elections is no longer acceptable here in Brussels, the home of globalism
This is cancel culture in a very, very big way
I'm here with like-minded democrats, democratically elected politicians, leaders and experts in their fields
Police have instructed that they won't let people into the building but won't force them to leave,
Freedom of speech may indeed apply to everyone, within the limits of the law, but that does not mean we have to open our home to the far-right,
I think it's absolutely monstrous,
I've heard the police are very eager to close us down, so they can close it down with me on stage”.