Jörg
Meuthen
EU
Unemployment Insurance
AfD
Kompakt, August 14, 2019
[Jörg Meuthen is a national
chairman of the Alternative für Deutschland and he
leads the AfD’s delegation
in the European Parliament.]
It
is fully in order that the German employers reject a European unemployment
insurance. Such a common unemployment insurance as Ursula von der Leyen and
Emmanuel Macron are planning for the EU would penalize those countries which
have set up competitive labor markets. That would concretely mean that Germany
must pay for the entire EU’s unemployment. No one who represents Germany’s
interests can want that. The AfD is therefore committed in the EU Parliament
and in the German Bundestag for the maintenance of a national unemployment
insurance and against the creation of an EU unemployment insurance. We are
optimistic that we will be successful since the EU Treaty states that the
relevant competence belongs to the member states.
The
German employers forewarn of surrendering the principle of unanimity. In that
they are also fully in order since Brussels is urging that in the future the
[EU] Council should decide social policy with a qualified majority instead of
unanimously. What sounds good and harmless means that the profiteers of a
common social system could in any given situation outvote Germany. A bottomless
barrel would thus be opened and the financial consequences for Germany would be
unforeseeable.
[Translated
by Todd Martin]
