German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/227, p.
28879.
Right honorable Herr President. Ladies and gentlemen
colleagues.
Dear colleague Kruse, I cannot share your opinion that your
motion is good. The grand coalition’s motion is in my view like a show window
proposal. Basically, it is nothing other than election campaign noise. In times
in which the vaccination prioritization will be cancelled, to demand a
prioritization for ship’s crew is surely very transparent.
You let China take away cargo ship construction. You now let
China take away the construction of cruise ships. On account of your
short-sighted and ideologically driven policy, shipbuilding in Germany is
facing ruin.
With your arbitrarily determined climate goals, you destroy
the competitivity of German shipbuilding and thus prevent urgently needed
investments for more efficient, more economical propulsion systems with
consequently reduced emissions. In the Green reality, ladies and gentlemen,
German shipbuilding will quite clearly not recover. Either you negotiate
uniform standards with the principle shipbuilding nations, or you forbid the
entry into German ports of “wicked” Chinese and Korean ships. Alternatively,
you could for once try the social market economy and release German
shipbuilding into a fair competition.
Ladies and gentlemen, due to the government’s long-term
lockdown, the German maritime trade has to write down dramatic declines. The
continued closing of retail trade leads the German shipping companies to the
edge of ruin. The Russian sanctions go out of the way to idle the great
potential of ocean commerce on the Baltic Sea. And while China and Great
Britain, thanks to more durable opening strategies, are long since again on a
robust course of growth, you are still discussing whether the confinements should
apply to the vaccinated.
In your motion you affirm you want to develop a coherent
national ports concept and to strengthen the cooperation of the port venues. Ja, Herrschaftszeiten, why have you then
not already done that in past decades? Instead,
for twenty years you have occupied yourselves with a deepening of the Elbe, the
future viability of which is already in question, and thereby let yourselves
dance attendance upon the people with whom you tomorrow would most prefer to
lie in a coalition bed, and indeed both of you, CDU/CSU and SPD.
In the lockdown crisis, all German overseas ports, and
especially the port of Hamburg, have lost massively vis-à-vis competitors in
Rotterdam and Antwerp. With the urgently required reform of the imports
turnover tax, you indeed have pushed back the expiration time frame. The
settlements model, which the AfD Bundestag delegation has here already many
times demanded, and, according to unanimous expert opinion, of which imports are
in urgent need, nevertheless still awaits its implementation.
Ladies and gentlemen, fine words and ideology cannot
overcome the crisis into which you have led the maritime economy. Turn back to
a policy shaped by the market economy! Throw the ideological ballast overboard!
With this motion, ladies and gentlemen, that will quite clearly not happen.
Many thanks.
[trans: tem]
