German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/218, p.
27509-27510.
Right honorable Frau President. Excellency. Dear colleagues.
The Linke and the Greens want to pay out to Greece 300 billion
euros of the German taxpayers’ money – today, in the year 2021, as reparations
for a war which ended 75 years ago. In reality, it is not about the Second
World War. It is about here and today. Since as my colleague Dr. Jongen already
has stated: The Germans and the Greeks reconciled after the war. We have long
since found a balance.
Nothing underlines this better than the visit of Konrad
Adenauer to Greece ten years after the war in 1954. He moved freely about the
country, protected only by a handful of police. There were no
counter-demonstrations, there were no demands for reparations, there was no
hatred against him – quite in contrast to the visit of Angela Merkel in 2012.
7,000 police needed to defend the German Chancellor against demonstrations at
which were carried signs with swastikas and inscriptions like “No to a Fourth
Reich!”, “You are not welcome!”, “Imperialists out!”, and “EU and IMF out!”
From where came the Greeks’ rage at Angela Merkel in 2012?
The country lay prostrate and hoped for help, for the European solidarity so
often affirmed by you. Unemployment was at almost 30 percent, and for youths at
almost 60 percent.
Heike Hänsel (Linke): You certainly want no solidarity! Lies! You certainly want no solidarity!
And what did they receive? Aid packages. Of the money from the aid packages, only 5 percent was received by the Greek people.
Heike Hänsel (Linke): You had agitated against the aid!
95 percent of the money went into debt conversion, for banks, creditors, investors; in short: For speculators who had speculated in Greece.
Claudia Roth (Greens-Augsburg): What are you actually speaking on?
In this situation, the Greeks naturally had the feeling that here it was not about a rescue, certainly not about aid and certainly not about solving the crisis, but about a punishment. The idea of reparations had been born at this time. As the first, Dimitris Avramopoulos brought it into play in 2013. In 2015 sprang up the leftist populist Tsipras who in the elections promised to enforce this against Germany. And how high are the reparations? Almost 300 billion euros, somewhat as much as Greece owes us. Just an accident, or not?
Claudia Roth (Greens-Augsburg): My goodness!
Thus you see: It is not about the past. It is about here and
today.
Let us give back to the Greeks their dignity! Let them out
of the corset of the euro! Let they themselves devalue and convert their
currency! Then you need not throw out of the window the money of other people,
the money of the German taxpayer!
Thank you.
[trans: tem]
