German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/206, pp. 26015-26016.
Herr President. Ladies and gentlemen.
The German economy suffers under your lockdown measures. The proposed November assistance has still not yet been paid to half the firms in need. Hundreds of thousands of citizens no more know how they shall pay accounts or rent. Parents toiling in a home office are at the same time tutor and teacher, and in my home of Baden-Württemberg, may not again leave the house after 8 pm.
And as if all that were not enough, you still adhere to your supply chain law. You sell the supply chain law to the citizens as a good deed. The supply chain law – it must ever again be said to the people out there – is an attempt to request payment from a German business for what is produced not according to German standards in developing countries. In an extreme case, that means: If a Schwabish tradesman in Sindelfingen drives into cabinet a nail manufactured in China, and cannot demonstrate that the manufacture followed certain social and ecological standards, then in the future he may pay. The Federal government’s draft legislation states that penalties in the millions can then be due.
Ladies and gentlemen, not only in Corona times would this be an unbearable imposition for many citizens. It is also completely ill-advised to privatize the making and enforcement of laws. We cannot expect German businesses to assume duties which are the inherent responsibility of governments and authorities everywhere on this Earth. You shift the competence of the state onto German business. Certainly by the larger firms, the supply chain, already in the second and third stage with its thousands of parts from suppliers and subcontractors, cannot be surveyed. Your law would pertain only to German firms. That would be in international comparison an absurd competitive disadvantage. We know, ja: You ever again present yourselves as advocate for the global south. In truth, for the sake of Marketing and Wellness, you destroy workplaces in these countries. When in the U.S.A. a kind of “supply chain law light”, the Dodd-Frank Act, was introduced which foresaw a documentation obligation for conflict minerals in the Congo basins, the consequence was plainly not that the American firms had begun to uninterruptedly document the supply chain. No, they simply withdrew themselves from the developing countries. That costs workplaces, that damages developing countries and, in the end, China comes and buys up everything.
If you are really concerned that people in developing countries will not be exploited, then there are in my opinion two clearly more reasonable charges: End the cooperation with highly corrupt governments and end your political correctness. Who today still seriously believes and ponders to thereby overcome the donor-recipient relationship, he has understood nothing. Do you actually believe that, outside your development assistance bubble, we can go to the local bank and say: “Dear banker, thus, with the credit we now make as equals, I now decide when the next re-payment is due”? That is just utterly absurd, ladies and gentlemen. That is just utterly contrary to reality.
A donor always ties his assistance to conditions. That is correct, that is good, and that is primarily one thing: A self-evident fact, ladies and gentlemen. The supply chain law is a law for the plundering of the German economy and not one trade association has not critically monitored it. Yet you, again as always, know better. I therefore say to you quite clearly: Finally renounce this law, once and for all.
[trans: tem]
