WATCH: German Leader Breaks Down In Tears Over JD Vance’s Epic Speech Torching Europe

European political leaders embraced one another in the fallout of Vice President J.D. Vance’s speech in Munich on Friday as they worked to absorb his calls for greater freedom of speech and less political persecution of conservatives.

In his closing remarks, Christoph Heusgen, chairman of the Munich Security Conference, became noticeably emotional while processing Vance’s call to end free speech restrictions that have seen pro-life demonstrators in the U.K. jailed for standing outside abortion clinics as well as a Christian demonstrator in Sweden who burned a Quran.

“After the speech of Vice President Vance on Friday, we have to fear that our common value base is not that common anymore,” Heusgen told hundreds of the developed world’s political elite. “I’m very grateful to all those European politicians that spoke out and reaffirmed the values and principles that they are defending.

“No one did this better than President Zelensky,” he went on, singling out the Ukrainian president over his repeated calls for intervention in his war with Russia. Zelensky has seen a similar change in circumstance under President Donald Trump, who has promised to negotiate an end to the conflict.

“Let me conclude, and this becomes–” Heusgen said, wiping his eyes and sniffling, “difficult.”

Applause broke out to fill the void, and a woman rose on stage to hug Heusgen for saying what was likely all on their minds.

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During his speech, Vice President Vance harbored no quarter for members of the U.K. Parliament after they passed last year a law that prohibits “stirring up hatred” through speech that targets race, ethnicity, religion, or gender, among other protected categories. Since then, the law has been the impetus for a number of high-profile arrests, including of one man who raged against recent Muslim immigrants he accused of being behind the stabbing of a local 17-year-old. He was right.

Swedish courts earlier this month convicted a Christian activist who burned a Quran during a public protest. Doing so “resulted in his friend’s murder,” Vance said, chastising the Nordic nation’s political elite.

“As the judge in his case chillingly noted, ‘Sweden’s laws to supposedly protect freedom of expression do not, in fact… grant a free pass to do or say anything without risking offending the group that holds that belief.”

Vance also cited the case of Adam Connor, a physiotherapist and Army veteran who was charged with a hate crime after standing 50 feet from an abortion clinic and praying silently for three minutes. “Not obstructing anyone, not interacting with anyone, just silently praying on his own,” the vice president said.

Courts ultimately found Connor guilty of violating the country’s new buffer zone law, which prohibits “political activity” within 150 meters of an abortion clinic. His punishment, Vance went on, included paying “thousands of pounds in legal costs” to prosecutors.

“I wish I could say that this was a fluke, a one-off crazy example of a badly written law being enacted against a single person. But no… Free speech, I fear, is in retreat,” he added.