Alice Weidel
Brexit
German Bundestag, March 21, 2019,
Plenarprotokoll 19/89, pp. 10495-10496
[Alice
Weidel is a chairman of the Alternative für Deutschland Bundestag delegation.
She here responds to the German government’s latest statement concerning
Brexit.]
Right honorable Herr President. Right
honorable ladies and gentlemen. Worthy colleagues.
Frau Chancellor, you have spoken of the
insecurity which Brexit will bring. We have thereby learned nothing new. It was
your tested brew of boilerplate and sedatives. One thing is clear: This Brexit
will be expensive – expensive for the EU and thus by definition expensive for
the German taxpayer: Expensive like the banks bail-out, the Greek rescue, the
energy change, the border opening, the destruction of the German automobile
industry and key industries and the gigantic inflation of our common currency.
Future-oriented policy appears otherwise, right honorable ladies and gentlemen.
Thus now the part you had in Brexit, which,
in the best case, was one of negligence, though it was a rather intermittent
assistance. In this way are the historically good relations with the United
Kingdom endangered. Since what frightfulness had David Cameron demanded? No
social assistance instantly for all, stronger national parliaments, less EU
bureaucracy. Yet for that he bit granite in Brussels. It would have been a great
opportunity to make and maintain a trimmer community, recollecting the core
proposition of a common market. But no, no way. You prefer to put in play the
cohesion of the EU member states.
Now we struggle with the reckoning: In the
future, the 15 billion euro British contribution will be missing from the
budget. Every family indeed knows when the income shrinks to more tightly
fasten the belt, but not the EU. It does not have to, not when the German
taxpayer is the paymaster. Greater than the hole in the EU balance sheet are
the costs to the German economy. The United Kingdom is the second largest
economy in the EU, as great as the 19 smallest combined. From the economic
viewpoint, the EU thus shrinks not to 27 but to a total of 9. The unconcern and
indifference of Brussels and Berlin regarding this matter, manifestly of the
greatest magnitude, borders on a pathological denial of reality, right
honorable ladies and gentlemen.
The United Kingdom is Germany’s largest
trading partner in the EU. With no other country are the economic interweavings
so close. Unhindered conduct of trade and investment clearly lies in the German
interest. German prosperity, German jobs are here in play. You however place
yourselves with unquestioning loyalty [Nibelungentreue]
behind France which wishes even to deny to the British access to the common
internal market. You are even weighing the possibility of not conceding British
access to the European economic area because Paris rejects it. That would also
be much too much: Much too much free trade, too much fresh air in the market,
too much competition and contention over the best economic site. Of
self-sufficiency is there nothing in your ratified Aachen Treaty which is
extolled as the crowning of the Élysée Treaty. What a conceit! The Aachen
Treaty from front to back bears a French handwriting. This “Europa”, for which
centrally organized France with its failed industry and economic policy serves
as a blueprint, is coming sooner than one thinks.
At the latest then, when the European Council
next votes, will we see it quite precisely: The costliest consequence of Brexit
is that Germany can no longer muster a blocking minority in the Council. In the
present EU of 28, Germany represents 16 percent of the population, Great
Britain 13 percent, making a total of 30 percent. With some of the smaller
countries – Denmark, the Netherlands, Austria – was a blocking minority always
secure. Thereby one could defend against a grab at the common till by the
crisis-shaken “Club Med” states as well as by France. With Great Britain’s exit,
that will now soon be history. And it is becoming clear: Without reform, the
European Union cannot go on. Where is your strategy? You generally have none at
all.
We begin with Article 50, which regulates
exit. It is as bloated as a sponge. The only concrete instructions therein are
how desertions and betrayals are to be dealt with: According to Article 218,
thus as with any Choice-X third party. For a partner with whom one has lived
together, in good times and bad, for 40 years can one not really find a modus other than that for Paraguay and
Papua New Guinea, right honorable ladies and gentlemen?
That is just bare-faced scorn. Is it to be
wondered that the British suspect ill will behind any maneuver out of Brussels?
Brexit negotiator Barnier should have trusted his erstwhile friends. I cite:
My
mission will be a success when…the conditions…
for the British are so brutal that they prefer…to
remain in the European
Union.
Alexander
Lambsdorff (FDP): Nonsense!
Who has such friends, needs no enemies, right
honorable ladies and gentlemen.
Alexander
Lambsdorff (FDP): Unproven nonsense!
There is not a word of self-criticism on the
continent, none in Brussels, none in Berlin, certainly none in Paris. The
contrasts of those in Brussels are made distinct by Brexit. It also shows where
Europe’s true enemies sit: among others, here on the government bench, right
honorable ladies and gentlemen. Europe is too important to abandon it to them.
Looking away is not worthy, nor is running away. The EU must be reformed from
within. To that belongs the national states’ right of veto against the
proposals of Brussels, as exactly so does a reform of exit Article 50 to
maintain the internal market, even for the exiting country, and the securing of
the EU external borders, which we for years have required. And to Europe belong
our British friends, right honorable ladies and gentlemen.
Many thanks.
Martin
Schulz (SDP): European party spending regulation! Including
Switzerland!
[Translated by Todd Martin]
