Alexander Gauland, October 29, 2020, Covid-19

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/186, pp. 23357-23358.

Herr President. Frau Chancellor. Ladies and gentlemen.

There is a simple solution to reduce to zero the number of traffic fatalities. Abolish traffic.

            Ulli Nissen (SPD): A caustic comparison!

As is known, we do not do that, but we do consider: Which price – even for human life – do we pay for which uses? Therefore, there is traffic although people die there. People also die of illnesses – every day.

            Jan Korte (Linke): There are traffic laws.

That unfortunately is so.

If we regard the present Corona situation, two statements may be made. First. Yes, the incidence of infection is no longer controllable. Second. There are nevertheless comparatively few deaths.

            Ulli Nissen (SPD): Every single one is one too many!

Presently, a low to medium two-figure number of people daily die of or with Covid-19. Many therefrom infer that the virus is not especially dangerous. Actually, it is relatively so that for most people it is not especially dangerous. I greet from this place the Federal Minister for Health whose infection apparently takes a happily mild course. Yet for some people – yes, that is right – the virus is highly dangerous or indeed deadly.

This returns us to the simile of traffic accidents. Their number has been reduced by means of alcohol prohibitions, speed limits in municipalities and other means without banning transportation. We now must transpose that to the Corona crisis. Evidently are infected primarily active and younger people and thus such as those who can well cope with an infection or sometimes indeed do not notice it. These contemporaries need no protection and nothing must be forbidden to them. We must instead define and protect the groups at risk. I have already once proposed here special shopping times for seniors and the chronically ill.

Ladies and gentlemen, there are besides also victims of whom no one speaks; namely, the collateral victims of the anti-Corona preventative measures: Isolated elders, depressives, the socially frail and, not last, our children. The quality of school instruction declines due to lost hours, home instruction and the continual wearing of masks,

            Armin-Paulus Hampel (AfD): Dramatically!

and that in a country which possesses no other raw material like education.

Ladies and gentlemen, Frau Chancellor, angst is a bad counselor. The daily bombardment of infection numbers however shall obviously make people anxious because most see nothing of Covid-19 in the everyday. Pardon me, but it is a question of type of war propaganda

            René Rospel (SPD): You know about that!

whereby it happens we are lately governed by a type of war cabinet, the Corona cabinet. It has decided upon the greatest limitation of freedom in the history of the Republic

             Armin-Paulus Hampel (AfD): Shamelessness!

in the name of the citizens’ health. Herr Lauterbach, in an interview in the “Rheinische Post”, now even places at disposal the inviolability of a residence.

            Carsten Schneider (SPD): False!

With permission, ladies and gentlemen, are we by degrees losing our heads? Where in the Basic Law is it written that the head of government together with the Minister-presidents may reach such decisions over the heads of the parliament?

            Carsten Schneider (SPD): We certainly do not do that! We are still in discussion – or not?

“Sovereign is he who decides over the exceptional state of affairs”, as it was said by Carl Schmitt. May I remind you that the sovereign of this country is the German people, represented by the Bundestag. And it is for this house alone to determine the limitation of basic rights and no one else. Otherwise, we are again in exactly the situation of Carl Schmitt.

We consider to be immoderate and inappropriate the paralysis announced by Frau Merkel of cultural activity, the restaurant trade, practically all of the citizens’ leisure time. For the concert scene, to name one example, will today be sold exclusively on-line tickets. Each visitor will be registered. According to the information of the president of the German theater union, there is not a single known case of Corona infection as a result of attendance at a performance in a German theater, and even a normal visit to a restaurant observing AHA regulations has produced no new hotspot.  

I want to expressly warn you, Frau Chancellor, of a second lockdown. We will not stand for that [Das verkraften wir nicht]. We must consider which price we are ready to pay. This price is too high, and primarily paying it are those who have done everything correctly: The operators of small restaurants and hotels, even the classic, German Mittelstand which you are quite near to ruining.

We therefore demand that the parliament again be completely appointed [eingesetzt] in its rights. The preventative measures against the pandemic shall be decided here in this house and nowhere else. A Corona dictatorship at revocation does not agree with our free, democratic fundamental order.

           Armin-Paulus Hampel (AfD): Quite right!

Our world is altering itself in the direction of serfdom [Unfreiheit] in terrifying ways. A new hierarchy of values is being set up, away from individual decision and towards a collective organization. Ladies and gentlemen, we have in this country won freedom with too much hardship to hand it over in the cloakroom of an emergency cabinet. A Corona dictatorship at revocation is no solution. We must consider, and at what price, that people are dying.

“Life is not the highest good”, said Schiller in the “Die Braut von Messina”. He was right. The highest good is freedom. Freedom in dignity, the Herr Bundestag-president would add.

            Götz Frömming (AfD): The dignity of human beings!

I am grateful, ladies and gentlemen.

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

 

           

           

 

 

 

 

Andreas Bleck, October 28, 2020, Common Agricultural Policy

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/185, pp. 23275-23276.

Esteemed Frau President. Esteemed colleagues.

The agriculture ministers of the European Union have come to an understanding as to a general direction of the Common Agricultural Policy. The negotiations between the European Commission, the European Parliament and the European Council continue.

The Greens now use the present hour in the German Bundestag to cultivate agriculture as one of their enemy caricatures. Agriculture should perform more consumer protection, more animal protection, more environmental protection, more nature defense.

Niema Movassat (Linke): Yes, that would be nice!

            Kirsten Tackmann (Linke): Don’t you want that?

It should apply less fertilizer and less pesticide as well as use less agricultural area. And it should at the same time and in hard competition within and outside of Europe, grow healthy, high-value food. Esteemed colleagues of the Greens and Linke – it is heard in the heckling – agriculture is no all-purpose animal [eierlegende Wollmilchsau] and that for once ought to be clearly said. In your ideologically motivated crusade against conventional agriculture, you ask for everything and concede nothing. You are thereby the gravediggers of our farmers.

            Kirsten Tackmann (Linke): Such nonsense!

Nevertheless, this field was also previously plowed with zeal by the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats. Although the producer prices are too low, the Federal government with its requirements and its bureaucracy drives the production costs to the heights.

Furthermore, the Federal government kowtows to the European Commission in its management of excess nitrate values. The fertilizer regulation was thus once again intensified at the cost of the our farmers. The outcomes and consequences have not been attended to. Amidst these problems, the AfD is in solidarity with the protests of the farmers.

            Kirsten Tackmann (Linke): That has not profited the farmers!

Tens of thousands of farm operations have already been destroyed by the Federal government. There must be an end to that!

The Federal government, exactly like you, has caused great harm to agricultural operations.

You should for once scrutinize yourselves, instead of engaging in such inappropriate heckling.

            Kirsten Tackmann (Linke): Says he who never yet was in committee!

The farmers no longer have an understanding of the responsibility ping-pong between the agriculture minister and the environment minister. They also have no longer an understanding of the Federal government’s empty promises.

That Germany, with a portion of only 2 percent of the worldwide CO₂ emissions, scarcely has  an influence on the climate change – all the same. That hundreds of thousands of livelihoods in the automobile industry and agriculture will be destroyed – collateral damage. Since the Greta sect and the Green elves consider to be heretics any who refer to suitability and proportionality in regards man-made climate change. The Federal government prefers to bend the knee and blindly pursue the idols of climate protection. While Germany thus sacrifices its energy economy and agriculture on the the altar of climate protection, countless coal power plants will be built in many emerging and developing countries and agricultural acreage expanded.

Not for one second would the emerging and developing countries actually participate in our energy and agricultural policy wrong-way drive. How then shall the feeding of the world population actually be secured? The European commission wants by 2030 to protect 30 percent of the land and ocean surface, 10 percent even strongly protect. Beyond that, it wants to strictly limit the share of fertilizer and pesticides. That means: Less agricultural area shall be less intensively cultivated. It thereby comes to a reduction of food production.

            Kirsten Tackmann (Linke): You should have participated in the agriculture debates!

Yet by 2050, the worldwide demand for food will have doubled.

Ja, esteemed colleagues, the AfD is the only delegation which sees the elephant in the room, namely the world population’s rapid explosion.

            Ulli Nissen (SPD): With you as it is, the elephants die out!

Out of political correctness, you avoid this topic like the devil does holy water. It is nevertheless irresponsible to work toward the national and international reduction of food production and to undertake nothing vis-à-vis the rapid population development. Here, more uprightness and more honesty are to be urgently brought to bear.

The AfD thus wants to turn the agriculture policy upside down. Not climate protection but food security must be in the first place. An intact and sustainable agriculture is in the interest of our country and of our citizens. Since we also wish to be independent of food imports. Our farmers deal better with the environment and nature

            Kirsten Tackmann (Linke): They are not your farmers!

than most farmers in other states. They have thus earned respect and esteem. They produce our daily bread and it is healthy and excellent. For that, the AfD says thanks.

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

 

 

Marc Bernhard, October 9, 2020, Fuel Emissions

German Bundestag, October 9, 2020, Plenarprotokoll 19/183, pp. 22972-22973.

Herr President. Ladies and gentlemen.

When on vacation you drive with your diesel through Finland, Sweden, Holland, Austria, Spain, Lithuania or Denmark, you expel 65 percent less CO₂ than in Germany with the same auto; since these countries by means of synthetic fuel with one stroke reduce CO₂ emissions by diesel vehicles by 65 percent, and all that without any technical adjustment of the auto. On Germany’s roads drive over 46 million autos which could immediately fill up with synthetic fuel at the presently existing fuel station network. CO₂ emissions could just the same be thus reduced 65 percent without being in any way a charge to the people.                 

 Yet what does the government do? What does the Federal government do? You prevent the authorization of synthetic fuel and instead prefer to rip off the people with the introduction of an additional CO₂ tax.

            Anja Weisgerber (CDU/CSU): That is not a tax! When will you learn that?

And why do you do that? Why do you do that?

            Jan Korte (Linke): Just don’t shout so!

So as to enforce, against every sense and understanding, the dirtiest type of drive of all; namely, battery autos.

            Jan Korte (Linke): Thanks.

Despite the most massive subventions and purchase incentives, in the last half year electric autos were not 4 percent of all new registrations. That shows quite clearly: No one wants your expensive, harmful to the environment, life-threatening electric vehicles.

            Marianne Schieder (SPD): Ogottogott!

If, for you, it actually and really had to do with CO₂ reduction, then you would give new technologies a chance, as for example the C.A.R.E. diesel, produced from waste materials. The operators of European refineries themselves wish to invest 650 million euros for the change to CO2-neutral synthetic fuel and you of the government block that, destroying millions of workplaces by means of electric mobility and instead introduce a CO₂ tax

            Anja Weisgerber (CDU/CSU): That is no tax!

which today, even before its introduction, you wish to raise 150 percent.

            Anja Weisgerber (CDU/CSU): Such rubbish!

A family of four now already pays 4,000 euros per year for your climate hysteria without having reduced in any significant way Germany’s CO₂ emissions.

Yet that is not enough: Now you have put forward your master plan for de-industrialization, the so-called Green Deal, which shall cost 3,000 billion euros. For a family of four, that means an additional charge of 4,000 euros per year. The measures decided and planned on by you will thus in the future cost this family of four around 10,000 euros each year.

            Anja Weisgerber (CDU/CSU): What is that for a reckoning?

            Marianne Schieder (SPD): A milkmaid’s reckoning!

What you are doing here is to drive the German automobile industry into the ground, to annihilate workplaces and to rip off the citizens.

You destroy the prosperity which the people of our country have achieved with many, many years of hard work and thus abolish Germany.

            Anja Weisgerber (CDU/CSU): Panic making! Not serious!

            Marianne Schieder (SPD): Ogottogott! One is not right just because one shouts! 

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jochen Haug, October 9, 2020, Election Law

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/184, p. 23135.

Four weeks ago, the coalition delegations laid before us in a first reading a fully unfortunate draft law. This provided that, by statutory ordinance, regulations can be made which weaken one of the most important principles of our election law; namely, the principle that candidates for election to the Bundestag must be determined [bestimmt] in assemblies ... It evidently violates state-of-law and democratic principles. That itself appears to have caused you to think; since you have put forward in committee a motion to amend your own draft law which deviates considerably from the original wording. So far, so good, it could be thought.

Far from it! The motion to amend also is not justified according to constitutional guidelines. Despite all criticism, you insist on leaving to the Interior Ministry, by authorization of decree, the control of a new ruling on the law of presentation of candidates. A cooperation of the Bundestag is now indeed provided in the form of an assent [Zustimmung] – Herr Frieser had addressed it directly; this however on the other hand shall lapse in determined situations. Then the election examination committee shall decide on the assent.

Ladies and gentlemen of the coalition delegations, in the wake of the Corona crisis, you appear to be accustomed to the making of law by ministerial emergency decree. Therefore, in this situation it may yet again be written of you in the Book of the House: Election law is not a field which may be left to the making of law by the executive. New regulations must be taken in hand by the parliamentary lawgiver itself.

            Michael Grosse-Böhmer (CDU/CSU): Ach, what! Then just what are we doing here?

– An authorization of decrees; that, hopefully, is clear to you.

Therefore already, an assent to your draft law is self-evidently eliminated.

Decisive here is nevertheless a yet further, more fundamental aspect which we go into in our opposing motion. The principle of presence belongs to the core stock of the democratic rules of play. The exchange of arguments and opinions among those present is fundamental for democracy. In no case might this important element of the democratic formation of purpose be lightly sacrificed with regards to Corona. Concerning one thing, we are all still hopefully clear: The occurrence of infection in connection with Covid-19, as we observe it up to now, does not in any case justify a retreat from the presence principle.

Instead, the legislature should give primary consideration to how it can make possible, even under difficult conditions, the carrying through of assemblies. This is also coherent with the proportionality principle of which, besides, you yourselves speak in your motion to amend. An important step in this regard is that the parties, and indeed all parties, place halls of sufficient size at the disposal of their assemblies – sufficiently large so as to maintain minimal distance.

In our motion, we demand that a legal claim in effect be created. In this regard, initially to be considered is naturally the requisition of areas in the pubic domain. Beyond that, there must also be considered as ultimo ratio an obligation to contract for operators of private halls. This is also justified in regards our democracy’s ability to function. Worthy of remark: The Greens have fully taken up this thinking of ours, and indeed in their motion to amend in which it is directly addressed. I combine this with a call upon the coalition delegations to likewise bestir themselves in our direction. That would be a real service to democracy.

Thanks.

            Michael Grosse-Böhmer (CDU/CSU): We like the freedom to contract!

 

[trans: tem]