Kerstin Brinker, July 2, 2026, Housing in Berlin

Berlin Abgeordnetenhaus, Plenarprotokoll 19/89, pp. 9106-9108.

Oh, man, that was class warfare rhetoric par excellence - without an economic 
understanding of the matter.

Right honorable Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen. Dear Berliners.

Who works in Berlin, provides for a family, cares for relatives, or is every day 
concerned for that our city functions, needs naturally to be able to live here. 
That is a quite simple standard, and by which the Berlin housing and building 
policy needs to be measured.

Many Berliners however unfortunately experience the opposite. They find no 
suitable housing when their lives are changed. The Berlin housing market is 
quasi frozen. Who has an affordable dwelling remains housed there, even 
if it is no longer suitable. Who urgently requires a new dwelling finds none
which he can afford. That is the result of years and decades of false course 
corrections in the housing and building policy. Responsible are all those who 
in the last 30 years have sat here in the government, namely those who now 
so loudly brag and snort they knew entirely better. Nein! You are all 
responsible for this shortcoming, from left to black all. Just one little 
indication: Under red-red-green, the rent in Berlin doubled. Na, oh Wunder, 
how did such happen? - Through your senseless, fully incompetent economic 
Politik. 

Berlin requires not only corrections in individual laws or terms, Berlin
requires a change, primarily in regards costs and guidelines, and we 
require a rational investments climate. Therefore, these leftist 
expropriation debates need finally be off the table. Expropriation creates
no housing, expropriation however stands for more debts, for complicated
and expensive [aufwendige] processes, and an inflated new state economy. 
Honored Linke, Greens and SPD! Name me one country in which communist 
redistribution, thus the abolition of private property, lead to more prosperity
for all. You cannot do it. 

It plainly does not, because life does not work thus. Communism - what 
you want - leads to a scarcity economy, and straight to a shortage of housing. 
All, up to a small political caste to which you all openly want to belong, are
in the end in communism similarly poor. Should that be our future model of
living? Ours does not agree. 

Who wants to abolish property profanes the basic ideas of the sozial market 
economy, and needs not wonder about absent investments. Who wants more 
housing needs to make construction possible. That begins with reliable terms
and clear competences. Construction planning and approvals are not allowed 
to last longer than three years and buildings, before all, need to become less 
costly. For that, the construction guidelines need to be considerably reduced, 
and over-drawn additional obligations be dismantled. The law for simple 
construction is certainly a beginning, but it does not suffice by far. Every new 
obligation in the end makes the rents more expensive. Every unneeded
prescription makes new projects more difficult, and each regulation makes 
projects more difficult. Who wants affordable housing must thus speak 
openly of the real costs, namely those originating from the state.
The state's quota in regards construction - this, I've never heard here - 
is meanwhile at, believe it or not, 37 percent. For 100 euros of 
investments in construction, the state's quota costs 37 euros. The state is 
the costs driver. With taxes, levies, bureaucratic hindrances, the state, 
the lawgiver, thus you, makes more expensive the construction for us all. 
If this cost factor were cancelled, then rental costs in new construction
could be no more at 20 euros but at about 14 euros net per square meter. 
Here you see what a leverage effect this has. This applies for all things 
regarding the disastrous added energy requirements. Climate policy 
symbolism is not allowed to further increase the expense of housing 
construction. What costs much and brings scarcely anything may not as a 
rule be accepted. 

The private housing business which is here so diabolized presents the 
largest part of the Berlin rental housing market. Those are the small and 
mid-sized landlords. Who incessantly frightens them off, diminishes the 
supply of housing, and who diminishes the supply of housing intensifies 
the housing emergency. Thus finally stop measuring all landlords 
by one measure. Black sheep are everywhere, and need to be and will be 
held to account. Yet surely the small, private landlords suffer even now 
under the prevailing regulations. 

Therefore we are also opposed to the rent registry. You will not manage
the black sheep with a registry, they always find the gaps. The honest 
landlord, he is always the dummy. That cannot still be! Ever more small 
landlords want to take leave from the housing market and sell. Three times 
they may consult with those to whom they then sell. - They sell to the large 
investors, to the internationals, to the funds, to the insurers. 

Tobias Schulze (Linke): You must find that good!

Do you notice something? You drive the Berlin housing market with your 
regulations into a complete dead end. You always achieve exactly the 
opposite of what you actually want to achieve. That for once finally needs 
to be realized, Herrgott noch mal!

Frank-Christian Hansel (AfD): Bravo!

What instead needs to happen? - In regards the housing construction 
promotion, Berlin requires a clear standard. Rent allowances and 
supplements housing money for WBS Berechtige [housing entitlement
certificates] can of course work faster than a promotion of individual 
objects. The sozial housing needs to succeed with those for whom it was 
conceived. False verifications need to stop. Sub-leasing of sozial housing
is not allowed to become a business model. Cooperatives need to be 
more strongly supported, and Berlin needs to make possible long-term 
property formation. Housing ownership protects against old age poverty, 
and that is no secret.

Frank-Christian Hansel (AfD): Right!

Housing ownership protects against dispossession and against dependency 
on the rental market.

Tobias Schulze (Linke): When the rents are too 
expensive, the people should stop buying, neh?

Here we see a top priority completely neglected for decades. A city 
which gives up on ownership for normal employees, takes from Berliners
opportunities for security and quality of life. 

Tobias Schulze (Linke): The market regulates that, 
Frau Brinker!

I say what you here can learn for once: In Berlin, the housing 
ownership quota is around 14 percent. Have you taken a peek at the other
major European cities?

Tobias Schulze (Linke): The market regulates that!

- Ja, wunderbar! - Paris: 30 percent, London: 50 percent, Budapest, Warsaw
even a 80 to 90 percent ownership quota! They do not have such a problematic
situation like Berlin, because we have never taken care to promote that 
the normal employees be in a position to provide themselves with housing
ownership. Precisely that is the problem.

The Berliners feel the consequences of the false housing construction policy
every day. Families find no larger dwelling, seniors find no smaller housing, 
young people do not leave the parents' house. Many businesses which keep
Berlin running can scarcely afford this city. The state-owned firms are here 
for that. The state-owned housing stock is, despite 400,000 units, a scarce 
public good which requires a fair distribution.

On that account, we are for that we allocate our state-owned housing to the 
Berliners. The state-owned undertakings, in 2024, rented on average at 8.81
euros Nettokalt [per square meter, without heat], the free supply price was 
around 14.50 euros. Thus who receives state-owned housing obtains a real 
opportunity to be able to live and remain in Berlin. Thus precisely is this 
allotment question of public housing no peripheral matter, but a central 
component of construction policy justice. 

To the point, we want and we require a transparent allotment model of 
state-owned housing by way of a reasonable point system, as is possible 
and was implemented in other cities. It considers the local connection, key 
and scarce occupations like tradesmen, nurses, police officers, firemen, 
honorary officials. In any case shall be considered as well additional 
sozial criteria: Handicap, old age mobility, cramped living conditions of 
families, income from the housing entitlement certificates. These are all 
people who require the sozial housing of the state-owned firms. Decisive
is thus: Who here lives, works, overtakes responsibility, he shall receive a 
publicly promoted dwelling. That would be just because it considers the 
roots and the Berliners who over decades finance the housing construction
with their taxes and duties. 

Ario Ebrahimpour Mirzaie (Greens): Housing space 
for white Germans. You want that!

It is a sozial point system because it includes the actual need. It is practical
because it creates a standard which all citizens can understand and examine. 
The standard for us is simple. 

Ario Ebrahimpour Mirzaie (Greens):  Racism is your 
standard!

Who keeps Berlin in the running needs to be able to live in Berlin.
I am grateful for your attention.

Frank-Christian Hansel (AfD):  Bravo!

[trans: tem]

Alexander Jungbluth, August 12, 2026, AfD Excluded from Local Elections

EU Parliament, August 12, 2026.

Written Question E-003265/2026.

Following the exclusion of several AfD members from local elections in Rhineland-Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia, a large number of AfD candidates have now been prevented from running in the local elections on 13 September 2026 by the electoral committees in Lower Saxony. The candidates in question are Member of the Lower House of the German Parliament Martin Sichert (Friesland council election), Member of the State Parliament Thorsten Moriße (Wilhelmshaven mayoral election), Justin Vogel (Herzberg am Harz mayoral election) and Reinhild Goes (Nörten-Hardenberg mayoral election). What’s different about the situation in Lower Saxony is that the decision has been made on the basis of the new local election law adopted in April 2026 by the SPD–Green state government, which provides that, in cases of doubt regarding loyalty to the constitution, recommendations from the Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the Ministry of the Interior may be taken into account – although the AfD has not been banned.

1. Does the Commission consider the exclusion of democratically elected party representatives from local elections solely based on the fact that they are part of the AfD to be a possible violation of fundamental democratic principles of the EU?

2. What does it make of this case, considering that it effectively constitutes an exclusion of a party through the back door, when such a decision should be the sole responsibility of the Federal Constitutional Court?

3. In view of the above, will it consider initiating a procedure under Article 7 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU) against Germany?

Stephan Brandner, July 9, 2026, Surveillance State

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 21/89, pp. 10939-10940.

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen. 

One aspect so far comes up somewhat short, namely, the activity of the 14 state
media institutions financed from compulsory fees, the duty of which is to secure
the variety of the offerings and of the opinions, to protect the media freedom and 
supervise private broadcasters.  It should be thought, with that, these institutions 
were used to capacity. Yet a couple of days ago we read what these institutions 
may still put out. By means of artificial intelligence, they uninterruptedly 
rummage through the internet, thus without cause spy on all citizens and pass on 
the knowledge thus gained to those of the so-called Constitution Protection 
Office, the domestic secret service. And what they thus thereby put out, can be 
imagined in one’s darkest thoughts.  

With a software which bears the nice name of KIVI, media guardians sift
through the internet. How, what, where, exactly how gathered remains
a secret. We nevertheless know: From 2022 until today, KIVI has identified
nationwide over 130,000 alleged violations of the law. These offenses were
automated and reported to the Federal Criminal Office. Contact data, photos, 
audios, videos, data, region, reactions, religious and ideological convictions, 
political opinions, data on sexual orientation – these state media institutions 
filter all of that from the internet. One needs imagine what is loose there, 
ladies and gentlemen. 

The good George Orwell once accordingly expressed himself, cite:
“To need live in belief every noise made was heard, every movement
observed.” – Dark words of Orwell from the novel 1984, which meanwhile 
are sadly a mournful reality. 

The state surveillance apparatus grows and flourishes, ja, it routinely blooms. 
The compulsory financed public broadcasting serves in fact the uncontrolled 
manipulation of opinion and the propaganda. The state media institutions
on the other side overtake the surveillance on the internet. How precisely 
and with which consequences remains in the dark. The intimidation 
apparatus unfortunately functions very well in Germany. 

And not only that: Free podcasters will in addition be blocked by the state 
media institutions intervening for statements thought to be false, and these 
are immediately presented or classified as not true. Otherwise in the blather 
shows and news bulletins in the state broadcasting at ARD and ZDF: 
There, lies and propaganda can be spread unfiltered and unpunished. Never 
have I understood that Lanz, Hayali and consorts were requested to contradict 
falsehoods with moderation, or keep to the truth. Two different standards! 
And that is scarcely communicable [vermittelbar], ladies and gentlemen.

Freedom of opinion ends there where the over-reaching state begins, and there 
we are already too far. The state media institutions make themselves a part of 
this apparatus for accomplices and for a Zenzurapparat. They all know as of  
September Leif-Erik Holm in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and our friend Uli
Siegmund in Sachsen-Anhalt will clean up and this construct will be brought to 
a collapse. For that, we work dawn to dusk, ladies and gentlemen.

Many thanks. 

[trans: tem]

Leif-Erik Holm, July 9, 2026, Public Broadcasting

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 21/89, pp. 10933-10934.

Dear citizens. Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen.

The theme of public broadcasting [öffentlich-rechtlicher Rundfunk, ÖRR]
affects very many people. They are rightly discontent with an extremely 
expensive broadcasting which we all need to finance and which at the same
time often reports without balance. When over 40 percent of the citizens no 
longer trust the ÖRR along the path, then is clear: We need to change 
things, and that we will do. I personally will also do that in my 
homeland in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern if I should become the next 
minister-president.

The question is: Is in the digital age still at all required so large a public 
broadcasting? The media supply is meanwhile gigantic; there are many 
free providers on the internet. And that is thus good. In this place, I thank 
all who are active on the internet, for thus has been developed a corrective
for a public broadcasting very close to the state. I say in addition not 
everything on the internet pleases me. Yet there is a distinction to public
broadcasting: I need not pay for it. 

Martin Renner (AfD): So it is!

And exactly that is it. While we need pay for everything on the ZDF, even 
for a dose of poison like Böhmermann, things can be freely received on the
internet. I can really understand anyone who no longer wants to finance 
the format like “Böhmermann” and Co. 

Maik Brückner (Linke): I don’t want to finance you!

That of course goes for me exactly so. Unfortunately, there are too many 
examples of it.

It is ever again the problem in the public broadcasting: It plainly does not 
report as it would be in its contract, objectively and balanced, but it ever 
again has a slant. We see that in the talkshow invitations, in the ever again 
tendentious reporting. For example, it was asserted in the NDR, in regards 
me in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, our government program had a völkisch-
nationalistischen keynote – completely absurd!

Everyone who has seen the program sees it. Even other journalists shake 
their heads over it. Or it is seen in the “Correctiv” fairy tales, or in the attack
on Elon Musk, he had called for a hunt of migrants. That completely
by-passes the truth. On that account: The ÖRR need not complain about its
loss of trust.

The citizens do not want to pay 9 billion euros so as to then receive 
curated [betreutes] television. They want an honest service provider which
says to them what is, which shows them the entire picture in a debate so 
that the people themselves can form an opinion. And here the public 
broadcasting ever again fails. 

Maik Brückner (Linke): Just don’t scream so!

In addition, the costs run out of control. When intendants earn more than 
the Federal Chancellor – over 400,000 euros per year – that can be 
explained to no one. We will change that. 

We need also end the power of parties in the supervisory boards. I find 
it an unequalled impudence that in regards to me in Mecklenburg-
Vorpommern, the Minister-president Schwesig deployed two active State
legislative politicians in the NDR broadcasting council. I find that simply
not suitable.

One thing is clear, ladies and gentlemen. If the AfD in the autumn 
overtakes responsibility in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, then there will be 
reforms. For the broadcasting clearly needs to become cheaper. It needs 
to guarantee a balanced reporting. And the partisan clique at the 
broadcasting and administration council needs to stop.

Therefore, my promise: As minister-president, I will directly after 
overtaking office cancel the NDR broadcasting contract

Vice-president Josephine Ortleb: Your speaking time is 
at an end. 

because it is necessary. 

[trans: tem]

Ulrich Siegmund, June 23, 2026, 24 Years of CDU Government, II

Sachsen-Anhalt Landtag, Stenografischer Bericht 8/115, pp. 69-71.

Herr Hasselhoff has of course – I’ve just not brought it, be patient a 
few seconds.

Herr Hasselhoff promised his voters at the beginning of the legislative 
period that he will remain minister-president to the end of the legislative 
period. Herr Schulze, you were still more concrete, you also promised the 
people something. I have sought it out. It was in August 2025 – cite: “We 
push no political games”. Herr Schulze, you said that in September of the 
coming year you wanted to be elected by the people and not – I cite: 
“pushed through anyhow”. Then, according to reports, came the call from 
the chancellor’s office. Herr Merz said, a strong AfD is coming, you need 
to do something, the change should come now. And schwuppdiwupp, Herr 
Schulze, you were pushed through. You lied in the face of the people. Quite 
honestly, what does that have to do with honor and with respect? How to 
lie in the face of your own voters and on the basis of a broken promise 
present yourself for election?

Herr Schulze, in this same time frame, thus in August, you promised the 
people you are politically committed for a work obligation for asylum 
applicants. – Wait for once! – We previously moved for that. The CDU 
rejected it. Your statement was then in the newspaper to read, we thus 
moved again for it. And do you know who again rejected it? Your 
CDU, Herr Schulze. Your interior minister said she did not want it. 
You thoroughly lied to the people. I do not comprehend how one 
can reconcile with his conscience, if one still has one. 

Guido Kosmehl (FDP): Oh!

That is the quite big problem. However, now arrives the second 
big problem: For those lies work hand in hand with large parts 
of the media landscape. They plainly do not exhibit such a double 
morality, but they then let out that you want the work obligation 
for asylum applicants. They do not at all question that, even though 
your own party, your own interior minister spoke out against it. 
That would be a double morality that needed to be in the press. 
But no, that doesn’t go. 

And on that account, there are still people who always fall for these 
fairy tales and, on that account, is this debate so important. We need 
to open the eyes of the citizens so as to exhibit these lies.  
Yet in Sachsen-Anhalt it is insidious that not only promises of content
were broken, but also personal promises. That is for once a whole, new 
league. But I know, ja, you learned from the best, from Friedrich Merz. 
He entered the election with the goal of maintaining the debt brake, and 
directly after the election there was the largest debts package in the 
history of this country. Herr Heuer, you always speak of a schwarzen 
Null, and then you discover a Corona situation so as to take up 
unconstitutional debts. Thus, how can one so disgrace himself here?

It is a gigantic scandal. Yet at the State level this show is ever more 
revised. Now we have an election campaign, now you traverse the State
with all the solutions which you are selling. You thereby hush up that it
is you governing here who were able the entire time to have done exactly 
what you now communicate in every, single talkshow. But what do you 
do as performance in office, Herr Schulze? You make the first queer 
promotion program in Sachsen-Anhalt! A State program, a package of 
24 measures. I do not grasp which priorities the CDU sets: A queer 
program. We have so many other problems in the country, Herr Schulze, 
migration, energy, rising prices, and you trouble yourself for the queer 
community. It is simply incomprehensible. I know exactly why you do 
that. You of course prepare yourself for your new partner, for the Linke.
There, the red carpet well needs to be rolled out.

Herr Thomas laughs. Ja, there I have caught you a bit, Herr Thomas.

But for once you prepare yourself for your cooperation with the Linke. 
Here today, the citation was still not mentioned which I wanted to do. 
Luigi Pantisano, the national chairman of the Linke, said: There is no 
difference between the CDU and the fascists. If that is your new partner, 
then I surely haul out the popcorn. It will be exciting in the coming 
months! Inconceivable!

Frau von Angern today has at least distanced herself from the national 
chairman of the Linke. That is surely the first step. Super! You stick 
together with the Linke. Thus, that is simply just a heap of rubble!
Dear colleagues, in conclusion yet one matter. Certainly many podium 
discussions are running. No matter who sits there, whether it be someone 
from the delegation or from the government, one here always acts as if 
one with the government in that last years has simply not been in charge. 
You act in these talkshows, in these podium discussions as if here 
someone else governs, likely the AfD, and you were simply not in charge.
It is always the same picture. That is an incredible double morality. 

I come to a conclusion in which I freely say: It can be changed, and we 
need to change it. The citizens have not deserved this. We want that they 
finally again can put trust in political institutions, in which they are 
able to set up the AfD-led State government. On that account, we say 
quite clearly: Whether the CDU sometime once again correctly turns 
aside, or whether they go further with Frau von Angern, with Luigi 
Pantisano to the way of the downfall, that is their thing, it’s entirely the 
same to me. We concern ourselves with the important problems in this 
country, with the political challenges, migration, domestic security and 
much more. You play around with your firewall. You do that. 

Vice-president Wulf Gallert: Herr Siegmund, that changes 
nothing therein that your time is over.

I come to a conclusion. Last sentence, Herr President. We love this 
country. We will protect it from your leftist course. On that account: 
45 percent plus x on September 6, 2026, here in Sachsen-Anhalt!

Andreas Schumann (CDU): Encore, or what? Honestly!

[trans: tem]

Beatrix von Storch, July 8, 2026, Germany and the U.S.A.

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 21/88, pp. 10804-10805.

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen.

We want an alliance with the U.S.A. That is due to national interests 
and to the common cultural roots, but not to the mission of liberating 
mankind from all evils of this world. 

There are two viewpoints on the 250 year U.S. history. The Transatlantiker 
transfigure [verklären] it, and the anti-Americans diabolize it. Both are 
wrong. The history of the U.S.A. is like that of every great nation full of 
light and shadow. We need not transfigure the U.S.A. so as to be allied 
with them.

Our relation to the U.S.A. and to Russia will always be other than that to 
China, India, Iran or to the Arab states, because we are branches of a 
European stock, 

Metin Hakverdi (SPD): “Branches of a European stock”!

because we have the same Christian root, and naturally because 50 million
Americans have German roots. And we are proud of that, what Germans have 
achieved by construction of the New World. It could be said: Those were
American-speaking Germans; it’s true all around. The Steuben parade in New 
York or the Carl-Schurz-Straße in Spandau recall that. 

The migrant German revolutionaries of 1848/49 played just so a decisive role
in the founding of the Republicans as in the fight against the slavery. Thus 
my proposal to our leftist post-colonialists: A memorial in Friedrichshain-
Kreuzberg for the white German men in the American Civil War. If anyone
fought against the slavery, then it was them. 

250 years of U.S. history also stand for the myth of an immigration society 
with open borders in which every unfortunate from all the world was 
accepted. Aristide Zolberg in his book “A Nation by Design” has done away 
with this myth. The Americans have knowingly selected who they have 
wanted as immigrants and who not. Thus 19th Century European immigration 
was promoted and the Chinese limited, otherwise the U.S.A. today would be 
Chinese. Donald Trump’s immigration policy is thus no break with the 
American tradition; but the conscious control of the immigration over 250 
years is the basis for the U.S. model of success. 

In the last 250 years, there was always two Americas. The America of the 
progressive elite and that of the culturally conservative majority – and so it
is also with us. The progressive elites on this and that side of the Atlantic believe
that we have a global mission to free the world from all evils, that we are 
responsible for the fate of every citizen on earth as for our own citizens, or still 
more, and that our national interests are identical with the interests of all 
humanity. 

In the U.S.A., this wrong way lead to a long series of disastrous military 
interventions as in Iraq or Afghanistan, and in Germany to a self-destructive
refugee and climate policy.

The MAGA movement and the AfD both stand for the same political goals:
The end of this errant global mission and the return to the interests of an 
entirely normal nation. The order of our day enjoins: Solve the problems of 
Detroit and Gelsenkirchen instead of those of the Ukraine and of Afghanistan. 

And I want to close with a sentence of U.S. founding father Thomas Jefferson
which is today as valid as then, and unfortunately very current. Where the 
government fears the people, freedom prevails. Where the people fear the 
government, tyranny prevails. 

Many thanks. 

[trans: tem]