German
Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/50, pp. 5321-5323.
Right
honorable Frau President. Right honorable Herr Chancellor. Right honorable
ladies and gentlemen.
Thank God the
navel-gazing between Herr Merz and the Chancellor is over. They have thereby
clearly shown that they lack the gravity for the situation in which our country
finds itself. Germany steers into the worst storm since the foundation of the
Federal Republic. Millions of livelihoods are in play. Countless citizens are
threatened with impoverishment, the Mittelstand
economy with collapse, the state finances with permanent ruin. And on the
bridge of the ship of state stands the captain of the Titanic who wants to know nothing of icebergs and calms the people
with hollow announcements. We have just heard it.
With such a
crew, the journey can only end in disaster: A Chancellor who is involved in a
tax and finance scandal and can remember nothing; an Economy Minister who
fleeces the citizens to give to lobbyists and energy concerns, yet who has no
idea at all of economic and technological relationships, and does not know what
insolvencies are – as he himself acknowledged yesterday evening in a talk show;
a Finance Minister who systematically disguises debts; an Interior Minister who
is blind in the left eye, ignores Islamism, and misuses the Constitution
Defense as a defense for those of the establishment; a Justice Minister who
arbitrarily restricts basic rights; a Health Minister obsessed with a virus who
continually gives gives himself over to confusion and nonsense; a Defense
Minister who apparently can only be somehow occupied with military equipment if
it used as a vacation vehicle; and finally a Green Foreign Minister who
promises to stand at the side of the Ukraine, unconcerned by how hard and
ruinous the sanctions policy becomes for her own citizens. “All the same, what
my German voters think” – that apparently is the motto of this government.
Your oath of
office to avert harm from the German people becomes a perjury. Ideological
fantasies and arrogant adherence to false decisions are to you more important. The
best evidence of that is your obstinate adherence to the disconnection of the
last nuclear power plants. You are ruining this country economically so to
serve the irrational dogmas of the Green clientele and lobbyists.
You have
every reason to fear a hot autumn and winter; for the citizens have every
right, Herr Merz, to go into the street against such a government and against
such a policy. Naturally they have the right: Galloping inflation, a dying
currency, and exploding energy prices mean more than a bit of a freeze for
millions of citizens as has been patronizingly announced to them from above.
Even for middle class households, it is about existence. They can no longer pay
their accounts, their reserves, pension and assistance claims have been
furiously devalued. They are threatened with impoverishment and dependence on
public assistance; yet that is at an end, as we already today see in the
fleecing of taxpayers to the point of extinction. Many, who today are still
able to feed their families, will lose their work. Now already, one after
another Mittelstand businesses stop
production because they can no longer support the energy bill, such as bakeries
and fertilizer plants, porcelain and glass makers, foundries and aluminum
plants. Inflation and energy crisis are destroying the business Mittelstand and the bürgerlichen middle class.
Your relief
package besides has nothing for our Mittelstand
and for our middle class. You promise supplements which the working people
themselves must pay for. You distribute money which multiple times you have taken
away from the citizens, and present that as an act of charity. 60 percent of
German households need to commit their entire after-tax income to maintain the
living standard; for savings, nothing more remains. A savings bank study shows
this: You among the Greens need not shake your heads, you simply need to read
the study. That you do not want that, and also have no idea of that, you demonstrate
that with your politics. If this is the Green economic miracle which was
advertised in the election campaign, then thanks for nothing. And your
hypocritical appeals and calls for perseverance to the citizens to restrict
themselves, to make sacrifices and cold showers, to use wash cloths for the
Ukraine, for the energy transition or for the climate, these you can spare
yourselves. The people do not want to hear that.
So as to
withstand this crisis, our country needs to address the origins of inflation
and energy crisis. Of that, I have heard nothing from you in this discussion.
Inflation and energy prices rise for well over a year and a half. Both developments
are the direct result of a bad, decades-long policy. The energy crisis is
homemade. It is the direct consequence of the energy transition which, with
your disconnection mania and horrendous taxes and duties, has artificially made
electricity scarce and expensive and led us into a one-sided dependency on
Russian natural gas. That is nevertheless the truth. The Greens shall
nevertheless do nothing! It is their aspired goal to drive energy costs to the
heights and thereby to restrict the demand. That goal you have thereby, ja, now attained.
Katharina Dröge (Greens): Can you
stop screaming so?
First. Taxes
must be reduced; a reduction of energy taxes, the added-value and income taxes,
elimination of the CO2 duty and a real elimination and abolition of
the unspeakable EEG.
Second. The
ECB must be obliged to fulfill its mandate and to concern itself for a stable
currency.
Third. State
expenditures need to be concentrated on the essentials: Domestic and external
security, a securing of the state of law and public order, an end to
ideological policy, to clienteles and to money distribution to all the world.
Fourth.
Illegal migration and immigration into the social system is already again above
the level of 2015. Yet you open the last of the sluices and send new migration
signals by means of an almost conditionless naturalization [Einbürgerung].
Fifth. The
energy supply needs to be expanded. We need to stop moralizing energy
generation and energy imports. That means in clear text: An end to the resource
squandering for windpower and photovoltaic. They are not fit for crisis and are
not a secure supply. Windpower contributes only a fraction of the installed
capacity, nuclear power nearly 100 percent.
Sixth.
Normalization of gas imports from Russia and, if necessary, an opening of Nord
Stream 2. – Yes, of course.
Seventh.
Prolongation of running time for the still active nuclear power plants,
reactivation of the recently idled, and naturally the construction of new
nuclear power plants. We require nuclear power for a clean, safe and affordable
energy.
It’s nice
that the CDU also now at last appears to grasp this. Herr Merz, it is your
party, which for 16 years danced to the red-green pipe, which we have first of
all to thank for this misery. The energy transition into nothing is the result
of your policy and of 16 years of Merkel. The continuation of the energy
transition and the abuse of the crisis, such as you still enforce, clearly ends
in ruin.
Irene Mihalic (Greens): How many pages still?
The citizens of
this country, the working people and the Mittelstand,
the industry, require freedom and air to breathe and not ever new prescriptions
and manipulation. And they certainly do not require – and not in this
situation; it only needs be imagined – a new infection protection law. In most
countries, the Corona virus is already being treated like a seasonal viral flu,
without a preventive measures chaos, compulsory masks and mandatory
vaccination. The law which you want to put to a vote tomorrow makes the state of
exception into a permanent arrangement and the restriction of basic rights into
a rule. Shame on you!
It is the pauper’s oath for the FDP that it gives itself over to this; a Herr Kubicki has no use for it.
Yet perhaps –
it is my hunch – you now already want to secure a pretext so as to forbid
demonstrations against your policy through the backdoor of infection
prevention. Frau Faeser certainly omits no opportunity to put demonstrations
critical of the government in the corner of rightist radicalism.
Omid Nouripur (Greens): No, no, no!
They are there already!
Till Steffen (Greens): They are there already!
What a
declaration of bankruptcy for this government which treads underfoot the
freedom of demonstration and opinion!
End the
German wrong way drive in Corona, energy and migration policy! Return to the
ground of facts! Correct your false politics instead of reaching ever new wrong
decisions!
Till Steffen (Greens): If you want the wrong way drive to end, stop speaking!
- Yes, that’s
good in your eyes, the mockery of the Greens! Note that!
The people
will take note of how you here react, how this country drives straightaway into
the wall as a result of your policy. And if you are unwilling or incapable of
changing your course, then please resign; since that would be the best relief
package for our country.
[trans: tem]
