Rainer Kraft, July 6, 2023, Emissions Decree

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/115, p. 14242. 

Esteemed President. Valued colleagues.

 The 31^st decree presented for the enforcement of the Federal emissions protection law is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Duty-bound, the protection of labor and environment is addressed, and you promise the new, the healed world. Yet, thought through to the end, your assessment means the zero harm strategy, that the safest workplace is no workplace, and that the most environmentally friendly production is to be a production outside of Germany. 

Chemistry, ladies and gentlemen, chemistry is life; life which you gladly wish to comprehensively control and regulate. Your planned economy shall thereby be in reality implemented by legions of self-named consultants, institutes and agents. You create entirely new job descriptions without any productive activity – to the harm of the entire nation and its citizens who everyday stand at the value-creation front.    

I know, you can only with difficulty imagine; solvents in industry are indispensable. They make possible the manufacture of chemicals, undertake cleaning chores, support the production fabrication, and assist in the optimization of the surface area; in regards corrosion protection, phosphating, chromating, anodization, etching, painting, and in regards to thousands of additional uses which you want to restrict and make more expensive. 

You assert that an intensification of the emissions protection would have no effect on the consumer prices. That – and it needs be said quite clearly – is a lie, and a bad one at that. For of course added certifications cost money. Of course additional expertise costs money. Of course additional bureaucratic positions in Brussels cost money. And of course the unnecessary re-equipment of industrial installations costs money. 

It is the taxpayers’ money which you here, with your dream of an eco-socialist Utopia, throw out the window by the handful. Many, many small and mid-sized businesses require in one form or another simple solvents. What else remains for these businesses as a result of your price hustling than to shift the costs onto their customers? 

As if that were not enough, the product quality will also suffer. The quality of paints and colors will diminish. Metals will rust sooner; woods will more quickly rot. Your reducing plan is the way back to the Dark Ages. That has something to do neither with sustainability nor with environmental protection. It will simply cost money and workplaces. 

We of the AfD say no; no to your irrational fear of everything which human ingenuity and the urge to create has brought forward; no to your agenda hostile to economy and freedom, and no to measures which serve environmental protection only on paper. The Federal emissions protection decree should serve the German people and not put together an additional stimulus program for India or China. We, the AfD, want to export goods, not workplaces. We reject the decree.

 

[trans: tem]