Marc Jongen, March 31, 2025, Academic Freedom

EU Parliament, Strasbourg, P10 CRE-REV(2025)03-31(1-0158-0000). 

Madam President, so the Trump administration in the United States is threatening academic freedom? This claim by the European Commission and some MEPs here is pure hypocrisy. Where was the outcry from the EU and the academia in Europe when more and more non-leftist scientists in the US were dismissed or forced to resign by their radical colleagues and the left-wing student mob simply because they didn't bow to the woke ideology? Bret Weinstein, Joseph Manson and Mike Adams even committed suicide. The wokeness virus has taken over US academia and in Europe it's also widespread, including its cancel culture. 

If President Trump now takes action against the intolerant and unscientific gender ideology, if he stops DEI programmes that discriminate white people and also restricts the dogmatic, almost religious climate research, then he's taking measures that help restore scientific freedom, not suppress it. We need such measures in Europe too.

 

Alexander Gauland, March 18, 2025, Merz, CDU and Germany

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/214, pp. 27761-24462. 

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen. 

In the course of this debate, on the previous Thursday as well as today, much which is correct and also false has been said. A new assessment by me is therefore not needed. Allow me then to make a couple of personal remarks. 

Herr Merz and I were for many years in the same party. I went, because I could no longer bear the destruction by Angela Merkel of the CDU as a conservative-liberal, bürgerliche alternative to the left-green mainstream. Herr Merz was a victim of her will to power. 

I grant, ladies and gentlemen, that I therefore expected much of his return to politics: A different economic and social policy, a reversal of false developments, like the illegal mass immigration to the exit from atomic power and the combustion engine. 

            Andreas Mattfeldt (CDU/CSU): That is coming! All comes!

My idea – you call it a vision – was that Germany receives a Politik of reason and judgment, thus a middle-right Politik, like many people in this country wish it as evidenced by the election results. 

            Andreas Mattfeldt (CDU/CSU): Yet you have only a hostile goal!

Instead, Herr Merz, you’ve erected a firewall, which today and in the future makes you prisoners of left-green social alterations. So as to get into the Chancellor’s Office, you have sacrificed everything that was still conservative or bürgerlich in the CDU, and your voters to whom you gave your word on the debt brake, you have betrayed with billions of euros at the pump. Seldom, ladies and gentlemen, has bügerlicher decency been so quickly replaced by political cynicism. 

Herr Merz, that you do not listen to me is fully clear. Yet you would have been able to listen to Andreas Rödder, the earlier chairman of your basic values commission, who in the Welt am Sonntag wrote precisely the same in the album of the CDU. 

You will, Herr Merz, apparently become Chancellor with a Politik like we have experienced in recent years. And this Politik will exactly so fail as that of the subsiding Ampel. Not even your transatlantic allies in Washington support your dubious efforts to solve today’s problems with yesterday’s answers. Such a change of times [Zeitenwende], dear Herr Merz, will only be with us, not with the failures of yesterday. 

And if in recent years I ever again had doubt in my own party, today I am proud and glad to have stood with others as godparent to it in the year 2013. For since this week is it clear: The Merz CDU is the continuation of the Merkel CDU – a further so, Herr Merz, in Germany’s downfall, for which you in the future need to answer. 

I am grateful. 

 

[trans: tem]

Alexander Sell, March 12, 2025, Automobile Industry

EU Parliament, Strasbourg, P10 CRE-REV(2025)03-12(3-0110-0000). 

Frau President. 

Five years ago, Frau von der Leyen presented here the Green Deal; Europe should become the first climate-neutral continent. Greta Thunberg would now say: We are on a good way. For years declines the CO₂ output in Germany. Yet that is primarily due to the regressing industrial production. The steel, chemical and automobile industries are no longer competitive on account of higher duties and much too expensive energy. 

The result is massive profit breakdowns and job cuts. Thirty percent less profit at Mercedes and Volkswagen, 35,000 positions eliminated at Volkswagen, up to 300,000 workplaces in the entire automobile industry. Especially wrong is: As a result of the EU’s arbitrarily set climate goals, European automakers will be forced to buy CO₂ certificates from Chinese competitors so as to avoid penalties from Brussels. We thus finance the rise of China and the sell-out of our industry. 

The Commission is responsible for this industrial policy harakiri of Europe. Frau von der Leyen and her CDU are a danger for the competitiveness and prosperity of Germany and Europe. Here helps no course corrections, here helps only voting out of office.

 

[trans: tem]

Tino Chrupalla, March 18, 2025, Democracy and Debt

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/214, pp. 27752-27754. 

Right honorable Frau President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen. Dear countrymen. 

It is now three months since Chancellor Scholz put the confidence question. The starting point was the debts policy in which the Ampel coalition fell apart. The citizens were on one side assured that there can be no further so, on the other side were political processes paralyzed. To the 20^th German Bundestag, this one here, was denied that it still can reach decisions of significance; since there should be new elections and first of all the new parliament and the new Federal government should bear the responsibility for Germany’s future. All who wish to recall, know how many motions were referred back to the committees by the Praesidium. Nothing should be possible. 

The vote on the migration crisis offered an intermezzo. Here, the CDU/CSU, somewhat disconnected, sought to draw to its side the leading theme of the Bundestag election. In the result, Friedrich Merz anxiously retreated and vowed an improvement; since “Firewall Merz” assured: With the Alternative für Deutschland can no one cooperate. 

And then came the great quake of the February 23 Bundestag election. Now was clear: The majorities were quite clearly shifted, and suddenly everything was different. The outgoing Bundestag was to be made use of so as to reinforce the future Federal government, and indeed because only you have the majorities here – even though today the majority of the newly elected members is here, and today an organizing sitting would have been able to take place. The fearful Chancellor candidate Friedrich Merz stands now at mid-point. Where is actually – and the question needs be allowed – Olaf Scholz? 

            Stephan Brandner (AfD): He sits there!

This one of course still conducts as per the Basic Law the official business. Ladies and gentlemen, what a drama you require of the citizens and our voters! 

The highest good of politicians, valued colleagues, if credibility. With these embarrassing actions, valued Herr Merz, you have completely lost yours. The voters feel themselves defrauded by you, and that rightly. Are you actually sure that you will ever become Chancellor? Since that is your sole objective. You therefore bargain with the holders of the old majorities. For you, it is certainly not about the future of Germany. For you, it’s about your Chancellorship. And for you every means is proper so as to not become the next failed Chancellor candidate of your party. 

That you have no backbone, Herr Merz, we felt in the election campaign, and we all know that. But that you in the meantime are completely invertebrate, you will here prove with this vote. 

            Stephan Brandner (AfD): Like a North Sea crab!

You play politics and promise everyone almost anything, and that seemingly appears to be simple: When 50 billion does not suffice, it is simply 100 billion euros which you place at the disposal of the failed governing party, the Greens. The problem nevertheless is: You finance your power option to be Chancellor by means of debts at the cost of future generations, at the cost of our children and grandchildren, and then in the end perhaps send them to war. “Special funds” you name this new kind of state indebtedness. It is amusing that during the election campaign Chancellor Scholz named this exactly so in a political talk show. Now he moreover does what he can do best: 

            Stephan Brandner (AfD): Simply nothing!

He is silent, and simply lets everything thus happen. 

            Stephan Brandner (AfD): Has forgotten who is Chancellor!

The instrument of an inflationary special fund is abused so as to force through targeted investments. It would thus be important to ascertain the precise need so that this money does not simply come to nothing, or is lost through expensive consultant contracts. 

The positions in the Federal ministries continually grow for years. Yet no Federal minister appears to have found in the past decades the right people who understand their subject. On the one side to speak of de-bureaucratization, on the other to massively build up exactly that: Whom does that serve other than officials and the parties who are behind it? Why is the Federal Chancellor’s Office enlarged, and why after the Bundestag elections will be quickly created attractive posts for former political co-workers and fellow travelers? That, Frau Paus here could briefly explain. 

            Stephan Brandner (AfD): Where is Frau Paus?

The theme of credibility I already mentioned. 

You make of the state a by-word for plunder. And that is the real emergency situation in this country. And do you really think to thereby still have the backing of the citizens? In your parallel world, scarcely anyone still errs. No longer does one understand for whom you actually do politics – that really harms the democracy, Frau Haßelmann. All in fact may count yourselves fortunate that we of the Alternative für Deutschland as political competitors have taken trouble for a fabulously high election participation. 

Let us look for once at the problem child of national defense. Can this by the present Bundeswehr actually still be secured? Of course it cannot. 

            Johannes Fechner (SPD): Yet you don’t want that!

The principal cause is the Bundeswehr’s current build-up itself. For example, the surplus bureaucratization in procurement procedures. Encampments were closed, the venues sold, depots closed, material sold or donated to foreign countries. In which places do you then want to begin to invest? 

To secure the votes of proponents, you conduct the immediate re-introduction of the defense duty [Wehrpflicht] in the field. The CSU even wants to implement this by year’s end. In which district recruiting offices, which no longer exist, do you actually want to muster the soldiers? 

You see valued colleagues, this important theme for Germany will be made for a still not Chancellor Merz a sticking point for his majorities. 

With Donald Trump, you all now suddenly think the sole foreign partner has been lost. Tja, plainly one should not be so one-sidedly oriented, Herr Merz. Now of course will be painfully led before your eyes that the Americans now place in the foreground their own interests – what a surprise! And I ask you: What then actually are our interests? How shall the German and European security be guaranteed? Where then remains the European security architecture? Why do you never speak of your perspective of a peaceful Europe from a German viewpoint? You think now you can call upon the Ukraine war as a legitimization for a new partition of the European continent. Yet we need no new friend-foe imagery, as you today have briefly sketched it, Herr Merz. And a so-called war capability [Kriegstüchtigkeit] we also do not need. It belongs to another epoch. We need long-lasting peace on the entire continent of Europe. This signal must go into the world. The old continent must find and negotiate its interests, and stand united behind them. And thereby may Germany play a decisive role.   

The world looks on perplexed for quite a while at the German drift [Treiben]. This helpless stumbling must finally have an end. No one trusts a country which does not trust itself, and develops no plan for the future; this applies to the citizens even so as to foreign partners and our own economy. 

The core brands of German industry were incorporated in the automobile industry – as were the skilled trades and the Mittelstand. For that, we were known and esteemed throughout the world. The latest news of elimination of positions at Audi and VW, of the emigrations and insolvencies, are presently of little encouragement. To get underway, you now want massive infrastructure projects. Again the question: Which then and where? What are your priorities, and which firms will actually counter-finance [gegenfinanzieren] this by means of taxes and duties, by the creation of workplaces and training places? 

Ladies and gentlemen, here, without a plan, the state debt shall be driven to heaven. I can again only imagine the subvention package with which you want to attract business with expensive tax money. That, we all already know – Herr Habeck – from the past: 600 million euros for Northvolt in Schleswig-Holstein, 10 billion euros for Intel. It is, ja, also easier to always print more money than to examine the finances in a business-like way. Since one thing for years has simply not been touched: We really need an honest audit. And had the CDU still a profile, a DNA, as Herr Merz always nicely says, it would pursue that. Your former Finance Minster Worlfgang Schäuble stood for investing only that money which was covered by the state budget. And for what do you stand, Herr Merz? You have meanwhile let yourself be implanted with the SPD’s mRNA. 

We have a tax income at record heights. And with that do not come out right. Why actually not? You want to sell to the German taxpayer your un-economy as an “investment plan”. Yet special funds are and remain special debts, to which we even so little agree as every businessman who with such a behavior would give himself over directly into insolvency. 

I give you a short accounting example: One trillion euros of debts which you today want to issue,  special debts with a present interest rate of 2.9 percent, means in ten years 100 billion euros of interest. 100 billion euros of interest! 

And it’s interesting how important for you this time the science is. Are the economists and business experts less qualified than the vaccination doctors of the Corona time? 

What’s with the climate neutrality? This strategic goal I might and must not evaluate. Yet you want to write it into the Basic Law, and have it implemented until 2045. So presumptuous is not even the EU. And that is saying something. Herr Söder besides thinks it is no state goal, even if it is anchored in the Basic Law. And that is an interesting reading of the Basic Law. 

Valued colleagues, you’ve now finally overstrained the bow. You make yourselves and this parliament ultimately unworthy of belief, and that, we will not let stand. The CDU’s few voters in my constituency of Görlitz now well ask me: Herr Chrupalla, when actually are the new elections? 

I appeal to all colleagues, especially of the CSU/CSU delegation – many of you are directly elected, have contacts with the citizens, businessmen, associations: Follow your experiences and the freedom of your mandate. Vote against this draft law and thereby for our Basic Law and for Germany! 

Many thanks.

[trans: tem]

René Aust, March 12, 2025, The Will of the People

EU Parliament, Strasbourg, P10 CRE-REV(2025)03-12(3-0020-0000). 

Herr President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen. 

The European Semester should be concerned with producing stability in Europe. In fact, it would be necessary for us in Europe to again find stability, though what we are planning in the European Union, in the European Commission, is the further disempowerment of the parliament, is a further setting aside of the will of the people. 

We want that austerity does not continue to occur in Europe. We do not want that the European Parliament be further disempowered. We want that the people’s will is really, fully respected. What we presently see in Europe is: The people’s disempowerment itself destabilizes. Look at what just occurs in Roumania: A candidate wanted by the people, who is ahead in all surveys, will be excluded from being a candidate. Look at what has happened in Bulgaria: A referendum for an introduction of the euro is rejected. Look at what has happened in Germany, where is discussed whether a party should be banned, or where a re-count of the results of the German Bundestag election is rejected, even though the entry into the Bundestag of a party will thus possibly be prevented.   

We need to again find in all Europe that the people’s will is brought to bear. We thereby provide for stability, not by additional centralization through the European Commission. 

 

[trans: tem]

Peter Boehringer, March 13, 2025, Debt Brake and War Budget

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/213, pp. 27710-27711. 

Frau President. 

“I would find it…most highly problematic if the 20^th German Bundestag, which has an almost completely lost democratic legitimacy,…reached in its last days such fundamental decisions.” 

These are not my words, but of colleague Frei of the CDU, not of today – today, he said something different – but of a good ten days ago. That is approximately the shelf-life of CDU promises. 

We thus today as the 20^th German Bundestag are then still allowed to act only if, fully surprising, an existential and unavoidable decision for our nation is pending. Which however is not so. This morning here already could the 21^st Bundestag sit. It is simply anti-democratic that Herrn Merz and Klingbeil, disregarding the 21^st Bundestag, want to have the Basic Law changed with majorities of the old, outgoing Bundestag.   

We speak today of hundreds of billions of euros of special debts. We speak even of the long-term undermining of the regular order of a unified Federal budget with a clear debts upper limit. Over one trillion euros as additional state debt shall be taken up. Upon every net taxpayer shall be inflicted debts calculated at more than 60,000 euros if these amounts are issued, which will only last a few years – perhaps pretty much like this coalition’s time in office. 

Debts are, despite the propaganda, never investments in a good future and also never, Frau Dröge, in the state interest. On the contrary: The interest and thus tax burden take design options from future generations. Naturally the debts intoxication leads to high inflation under which primarily the little man suffers. You devour in advance one trillion euros for which others need later starve. In this regard, the recognition of the debt brake is even in the Union’s election program: 

            “We adhere to the debt brake…Today’s debts are tomorrow’s tax increases.” 

And Herr Merz said in the election campaign: 

“The debt brake defends…the tax payments of the young generation. Shall we today expend their money? We take in 1,000 billion euros in taxes…and with that we should make do.” 

Herr Merz, you commit, even before entry into office, the quickest and greatest election fraud in German history. Nothing, simply nothing in today’s situation is surprising. The problems exist for decades. Supposedly, the money will now be expended exclusively and rapidly for infrastructure and the Bundeswehr. Investments in these areas under black-red chancellors in the last 35 years – the fat years – were never sufficiently undertaken; otherwise, there would not generally be giant, structural deficits: Who should believe that this time, for the first time, it will be different? 

In addition, the 2022 100 billion euros of special debts were in part mis-appropriated [zweckfremdet] for the Ukraine. Mis-appropriation now also threatens with the new regulation whereby such defense expenditures may be under taken without regard to the debt limits of the Basic Law. Note well: Open at the top and without time limitation. That is unbelievable. 

Besides, today in Article 87a of the Basic Law, of which all of you here formulate lies, is that debt-financed military support would be one time only. That is in the Basic Law. The truth is: You conceal, with the debt mountains created today, the giant budget problems which you in any case would have had. The truth is: This coalition could not draw up its first of all budgets in the summer of 2025 in conformity with the constitution, if you did not today approve a giant gulp from the bottle of future tax payments. You want to create an enormous ancillary budget which nearly doubles the money available for your dubious purposes. You obtain the means to govern authoritatively for four years, cost what it will. So too could Laurel and Hardy govern [Sie erschleichen sich die Mittel, um vier Jahre durchzuregieren, koste es, was es wolle. So könnten auch Dick und Doof regieren]. 

In a real Cold War, the GDR, for 40 years until 1991, could bring in Federal defense spending of a sum of two percent and more of GDP, quite without special debts. The Bundeswehr has no budget problem, but a management and strategy deficit. Yet who with negligent frankness talks up enmities and war, can naturally no longer pocket a peace dividend. 

The future indebtedness relations, ladies and gentlemen, were earlier only in times of war and pre-war. The war capacity demanded by Pistorious, Merz and von der Leyen shall be completed by a war financing without a war. That is irresponsible – not only fiscally. 

“Who is against debt is for Russian panzers in Germany.” That is the perfidious argument – from Frau Haßelmann – which brands every critical budget member as a traitor. That is a quite wicked level. Do not make an enemy of both East and West! Invest in diplomacy! We will then need billions less for the military. And it is not initially clear what then shall be the defense policy ideas behind the new, unlimited armaments spending: An EU army, or perhaps a NATO with the U.S.A. or without the U.S.A.? It’s all open. Yet there is not unlimited money in a machine which does not even have a basic plan. We will give you here no 13-figure blank check. The way to the war economy goes without us. 

Your chancellorship, Herr Merz, leads, before its beginning, without any emergency, to a crisis of democracy. In case this delegitimizing coup against the 21^st German Bundestag and against the people’s will ascertained by the Bundestag election is in fact forced through, then is actually just the question: Where is the Constitution Defense when it is needed? 

Many thanks. 

 

[trans: tem]