Second, a lot of countries where on board, including Germany

That means nothing. The governments (which the stances of were being counted) have not that much to say on how the MEPs will vote.

For example, if the Polish government was in favour of this, half of their MEPs would’ve still been against.

You can be cynical all you want arguing that “people’s voice don’t matter” and saying there’s no causality there, but people made themselves heard, and thing moved

I think he’s arguing the exact opposite, mate. He literally said that:

EU is a democracy with different opinions, and when a small group of facists tries to read your chats, it does not represent the EU opinion

There was a lot of panic about the EU being an oppressive “over-government”, trying to subjugate the population like the UK government is doing. That propaganda never made sense to me, but it felt very much like something the pro-russian mob would be spewing because it sows division and chaos, decreasing people’s appreciation of the EU, stoking exit views.