German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/87, p.
10392.
Right honorable Frau President. Esteemed colleagues.
Honored Frau Minister, I repeatedly remonstrated to you that
the research policy lacks a clear strategy and alignment. My expectations for
the future strategy put forward were correspondingly high.
And now? What a disappointment! Here, generalities alternate
with flowery phrases and vague intentions. It is a series of ever the same statements
on the importance of research, on the transfer from research to application and
on international cooperation. I ask myself: Do you want to disguise with this
wordy work how little you have to say substantially on the future of research
and science, or is this just one of many voluminous marketing brochures? From a
strategy deserving of the name, I in any case expect very much more substance
and less verbiage.
You call this strategy – I cite: “The basis upon which we want
to continue to build in the course of the legislature”. May I remind you that
17 of 48 months of this legislature are already past? Yet you, ja, write you will “accelerate the tempo”.
Oh ja, here one can become quite
dizzy after putting forward in just 17 months 86 pages of printed paper.
Nevertheless, let us look at a small selection from your
deliberations. You want to more strongly delineate variety in regards to sex,
migration background, etc. Should that now mean that more should be promoted
not according to performance but according to quota? You certainly act as if we
had scientific talent like sand by the sea which has not previously had a
chance on account of an alleged discrimination.
In another place you speak of a “continual further
development of the education system”. “Further development” is here indeed a
euphemism when one considers the requirements for those starting studies in
math and science subjects ever again need to be reduced because those studying
for the Abitur no longer bring with
them the necessary tools.
You want to “further raise our attractivity as a country of
immigration” and “construct and make more attractive immigration opportunities”.
That is, ja, one of the few points at
which this government has long since succeeded. Only plainly not for
well-qualified skilled labor and academics.
You finally also identify “limiting or constraining factors”
like a lack of transfer culture, a skilled labor shortage and others. Only the
most constraining factor you disregard: A dark mood of despondency which lay
like mildew on our country in 16 years of Merkel government [eine düstere Stimmung der Mutlosigkeit, die
sich in 16 Jahren Merkel Regierung wie Mehltau auf unser Land gelegt hat]
and which by the present government has again been reinforced.
In the end, all that you have contrived is under a general
finance reservation. The solution of our problems thus lies according to your own
words in education, research and innovation; yet this solution is under a
finance reservation. Do you fail to recognize, does the Federal government so
much fail to recognize the priorities, or is that your colleague Lindner, who
still has not recognized what hour has struck?
I fear this work shall verbosely cover up that, basically,
your hands are tied. Your hands are tied because our resources, instead of
securing the future, are preferably expended for weapons in the Ukraine and
uncontrolled migration into the social system.
Maja Wallstein (SPD): That must come! Naturally!
Gabriele Katzmarek (SPD): And here we have it again! Is nothing too stupid for you, or?
In the present situation, we require an authentic mood of
change [echte Aufbruchstimmung], the
concentration on essentials and the unchaining of all powers. To that, this
so-called strategy unfortunately makes no usable contribution.
[trans: tem]
