German
Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/218, pp. 27481-27482.
Frau
President. Honorable colleagues.
The draft law
put forward is, in a negative sense, historic. It marks the last step to the
illegal EU fiscal union which breaks all promises to the contrary since the
1990s. There was and is no legal basis for this EU indebtedness, moreover at so
extreme a level.
Alexander Lambsdorff (FDP): Read Article 122!
– We come to
that as well. Herr Lambsdorff, you should read that. – According to its
treaties, the EU is fundamentally forbidden to finance its expenditures with
credit.
An additional
business basis of the euro since Maastricht in 1992 was: Never a liability
community! We now have this and even almost without limit: By taking up debts
of a sum honestly reckoned at over 800 billion euros, with repayment until
2058, the assertion that this was nevertheless “limited” is a bad joke – and a
break in the dam. Once this dam is broken, then will Brussels ever again take
up giant “limited” specific sums at the cost of German solvency and grandiosely
redistribute them.The no-bailout rule of Article 125 AEUV [Treaty on the
Functioning of the European Union] has constitutional status. The European
financial system is to be re-built as an illegal debts and transfer union.
“Next
Generation EU” needs to be translated as “EU Debts for the Next Generations”.
In this regard, the Constitutional Court already in 2012 accordingly stated:
The Bundestag may approve no mechanism which terminates in an assumption of
liability for the deliberate decisions [Willensentscheidungen]
of other states. Yet Minister Scholz – and Herr Roth also was plainly of this
opinion – sets this aside with the disarming, terse and yet constitutionally
dubious sentence:
It is the way to the fiscal union and it is a good way…
Legal,
illegal, it’s all the same [völlig egal]:
The street talk of the 68ers, negligent of the law, is today chiseled into
marble above the Ministries.
At 800
billion euros, it is absurd when the government seriously maintains the budget
integrity [hoheit] of future German
Bundestags cannot be affected by a decision for one’s own means [Eigenmittel]. And this integrity, according
to the Constitutional Court, is an inalienable, core asset [Bestand] of our national sovereignty.
Here, it is
not about Corona, it is about an alteration of the EU’s character into a highly
budgeted state. A large portion of the reconstruction funds will be committed
to purposes entirely other than the elimination of the consequences of Corona,
and this is no secret. At Monday’s hearing, it was quite openly conceded by the
experts that practically anything can be done with the money: The earmarking [Zweckbindung] of the expenditures for
the elimination of the Corona consequences was in no way guaranteed, which
would be compulsory for an emergency program according to Article 122 AEUV –
Herr Lambsdorff, listen up!
Herr Roth,
the program is called Corona Construction Program. It is not about
digitalization, but refers – as the name “Corona Construction Program” says – to
the consequences of Corona. Only for that may this money be used. This however
is not the case.
From CO2 moon
projects to the payment of the Italians’ debts, there are the wildest ideas for
the Corona funds. And the Federal government still agrees to such ideas. No
wonder, since it is quite openly discernible that even Germany itself wants and
will commit over 80 percent of the Corona credits to non-Corona purposes. The
appearance of an earmarking is no longer maintained. The 800 billion euros have
long since been planned for throughout EUropa. Control mechanisms? Nil! In the
hearing, the experts of the Greens made merry over the demand for national
control and said national control simply might not apply.
Besides, from
the gifts of money only 28 billion euros flow back to Germany, although we pay
out four times that and are liable for thirty times that. It is entirely
absurd.
The Eigenmittel decision put forward leads
us to an illegal situation of an EU state with its own mega-budget. Here,
unequivocally, will be relinquished the ground of the free-democratic basic
order.
Only states
may take up debts because only states can also again pay them back out of
future tax revenues. The EU however, according to the highest jurisdiction, is
no state. According to the Lisbon judgment, it also may not become one without
a referendum – and that would be a referendum on the surrender of German
statehood. All of this is no trifle, but the abandonment of Germany’s ability
to form itself as a democratic constitutional state.
Upon the
issuing of this law, we will immediately submit a constitutional complaint. I
call upon the Federal President not to sign this law.
Hearty thanks.
Alexander Gauland (AfD): Bravo!
[trans: tem]
