German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/219,
pp. 27799-27800.
Herr President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen. Dear
viewers.
We are today deliberating on a draft law of the Federal
government for swarm financing, also called crowd funding. This is a fairly old
financial instrument which is plainly not only in the new form on the internet.
There are various kinds of swarm financing: For donations, for equity, for
loans. Then there are a couple of special forms, which I will not go into. This
instrument is thus nothing new. Already in the 1800s, the construction of the
American Statue of Liberty was made possible by means of 160,000 individual
donations. A very early form of crowd funding.
What are the advantages? With these products, there is often a better return than when I acquire a product through a bank. This simply depends on that here expensive intermediaries will have been eliminated. In addition, with it, I have smaller specific risks. A practical example: If a businessman has a path-breaking idea, and for the financing requires 10,000 euros, he will, if he does not have the corresponding securities, with difficulty receive this 10,000 euros from a bank. For venture capital companies, this sum is much too small. Here is offered to find 100 persons who also believe in this business idea and from these to gather in respectively 100 euros. We are thereby at 10,000 euros. That also works. As the banker says, we thus have to do, for all sides, with a very positive Delta; a win-win situation.
How does this preparation and implementation function these
days? As the State Secretary has just attempted to explain: Mostly over the
internet platforms. Here come together those seeking capital and those
providing capital. This today requires a great deal of paperwork and
bureaucracy. Naturally, existing laws will be adhered to today on the internet:
The banking act, the securities exchange law, the consumer protection laws. We are
thus already very, very well regulated. Yet these platforms have not figured on
Brussels. The EU in its merciless regulation mania has here issued an EU
guideline and an EU decree which the Federal government now wants to convert
into national law with this draft.
What does the EU want to do? It wants to make the platforms
obliged to register. It wants to place them under a European supervisory authority
and it wants to expand information and publication duties. We of the AfD are
quite distinctly opposed to this regulation mania. We as a parliament do not
see ourselves in the role here only to wave through these regulations from
Brussels and the laws which have been brought about there.
In addition, we see the great danger that the market entry
risks for additional platforms will be made more difficult, that market offers
may disappear, and we see the danger of forming an oligopoly. Here, we are
quite clearly opposed.
I do not want however to go substantially deeper into these
themes. We are here in the first reading. We will deliberate on these themes in
the committees. So it shall be good with this.
We have a supplemental motion from the Greens on payment
protection insurance [Restschuldversicherungen].
What this substantially has to do with swarm financing is not accessible to me.
Good, since the motion of the Greens is to be added, I want to briefly go into
it.
This is quite clearly an ideological motion. Your network
marketing [Strukturvertriebs]
rhetoric in the motion forcibly disturbs us. You of the Greens obviously have
not heard. The German economy is going to the wall, and you have nothing better
to do than occupy yourselves with a little credit by-product, namely the
payment protection insurance.
Katharina
Dröge (Greens): If nothing better occurs to you as an argument!
Stefan Schmidt (Greens): Clueless!
We of the AfD are against state intervention in the market.
We do not want to knowingly regulate these risk premiums. Yes, from a
subjective viewpoint, the payment protection insurance perhaps might appear on
occasion to be expensive. It nevertheless also covers a very high risk, namely
the risk of default. If a borrower defaults or becomes unemployed
Vice-president Wolfgang Kubicki: Herr colleague, please come to a conclusion.
then this insurance covers these risks.
Stefan Schmidt (Greens): You also need to pay a bit of attention.
At this point, it only remains for me to wish you a Happy
Easter and a nice weekend.
Many thanks and all the best.
[trans: tem]
