Nordrhein-Westfalen
Landtag, Plenarprotokoll 17/159, pp. 33-34.
Right
honorable Frau President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen.
For years,
local politicians complain that retail trade in the cities is suffering.
Obstructed streets as well as too few parking places – with all that, customers
are no longer attracted to the inner cities. Instead, people drive to the large
shopping centers or buy on-line.
Amidst this
development, Herr Wüst and Herr Stamp divide business into virus-infected and
virus-free and force upon it utterly incomprehensible control measures. One
almost imagines to be in a prohibited zone.
Vaccination identification, personal identification need be continually
displayed, otherwise one may not get through.
For the
additional 2G measures there is today no scientific basis. There is no evidence
that retail trade is a relevant vector of the pandemic. Due to the government’s
preventive measures, however, the customers stay away, which primarily affects
the co-workers and owners of small business.
Last week,
23% of the customers had no 2G status. Yet meantime there are many more, since
many of the recovered were interdicted by the weekend action of Lauterbach and the
RKI [Robert Koch Institute]. And persons who were vaccinated with Johnson &
Johnson had basic rights withdrawn overnight.
The danger
for our retail trade is not the virus but the State government which poses as a
lobbyist for the pharmaceutical concerns. With your preventive measures, you drive
the people into the arms of the large internet concerns.
Public
regulations should be effective, understandable and appropriate. Your
regulations, however, are not. Do you know which status you require if you want
to be in the cinema, for the massage, or simply in the hardware store?
(The speaker holds up a newspaper.)
A week ago,
the Kölner Stadt-Anzieger sought to
clarify it with pictures. Perhaps you know the pages. These Corona rules apply
to you.
Vice-president Carina Gödecke: Herr colleague Loose, you know exactly that holding up pictures, presentations, etc., is forbidden. I had said this already yesterday to your colleague and ask you to take that down; otherwise, there are consequences.
On the left
page of the just held up graphic of the Kölner
Stadt-Anzieger, you find the businesses to which you may go, on the right
page you would have seen now nine various combinations of vaccination and
recovery status. At the barber may be people other than in the cinema, and
again at the tavern other than at the swimming pool. People simply no longer
look through it.
This list is
meanwhile also obsolete. Last week you still had rights if you were recovered
for five months. This week you are thereby practically outlawed. You can thus
with confidence toss this newspaper in the trash.
(The speaker crumples the newspaper.)
Gabriele Walger-Demolsky (AfD): Och, I still wanted that!
How it
further goes with Johnson & Johnson, no one knows. Is it at all still
worthwhile to be vaccinated with Johnson & Johnson, or then only when one
is recovered, or then not? Simply no man still understands that. Because people
no longer understand it, they buy on the internet or at the large department
stores. In reality, any may buy a pair of jeans or a television, but alas they
want to buy these jeans at the H&M or the television at the Media Markt.
That they may only do if they belong to the people with valid basic rights and
the correct G status. Yet who possesses these valid basic rights, no one
actually knows exactly.
Helmut Seifen (AfD): No one knows that!
The virus is
also not everywhere equally bad. In Osnabrück, thus in Niedersachsen, the visit
to the hardware store is free, yet not in Munster – as if in 30 km such a virus
can change.
Specific
courts are stopping those in government, twice in this week alone. In Saarland
and in Baden-Württemberg, the courts overturned the 2G rule in retail trade.
These decisions show that freedom is still possible. Thus, the managing
director of the German Retail Federation appealed this week – I cite:
“I expect from the politics the courage to acknowledge the value of experience as well as facts, and rescind a bad regulation.”
That goes for
you, too, Herr Laumann. Yet I now appeal to you, dear members: Stop driving the
customers further into the arms of the large on-line concerns. Let us in common
strengthen commerce in the inner cities and compensate the merchants for previous
costs of the inappropriate control measures. Vote for the freedom and
self-responsibility of the citizens and the retailers [Drucksache 17/16274].
Many thanks.
[trans: tem]
