German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/122, pp. 15143-15144.
Right honorable Frau President. Valued colleagues.
There are almost 200 ways how the Bund finances the Bahn. That was computed for us in the last months. I have understood that as a warning, that this complexity is a problem. A good Bahn reform should drastically simplify that. And now the government lays on the table before us a law which makes of these 200 ways probably 250 or 300. If you want to demonstrate that you cannot do Bahn reform, then you have thereby really succeeded.
Yes, all of that will be later improved, you will say. Yet on a bad foundation you can build no good house and this fatal failure you clearly make again – colleague Donth just now used the same image. The analysis thus needs to agree. Decisive for an effective and transparent direction of the Bahn is the legal form of the Bahn undertakings. The new infrastructure company shall now again be a joint-stock company. That is a legacy from the time of the Bahn stock market plan, and that is the worst of all possibilities for control by the owners.
Today the Federal railways construction law is on the daily order. By means of this law, the Bahn shall in the future receive money not only for the construction of the Bahn sections but also for their maintenance and repair. Yet that does not always apply, but only when there is an extra contract between Bund and Bahn. Otherwise, you apparently do not manage control of the Bahn. If you now make a new contract for each new measure, then we are soon at 300 ways of financing.
The Audit Authority moreover sounds the alarm because the Transportation Ministry in another contract proposes hectic changes which could result in a disadvantage to the Bund. Here, it is about the performance and financing agreement which with an authentic Bahn reform will necessarily be, plain and simply, superfluous.
A couple of new Bahn billions in the Transportation budget, then still a couple of billions from the shadow budget “climate and transformation fund”, additional billions as equity of the Deutschen Bahn: What you tie up here crowns the financial chaos.
Because the money still does not suffice, you get it from the citizens, all the same whether the trains run or not. Yes, from the citizens; since we all must pay for the billions of your brutal increase of the trucking fee. Everything that we buy in the supermarket ultimately comes by truck.
Matthais Gastel
(Greens): What?
One already reads in the media how thereby the prices of foodstuffs climb. The inflation will be still higher and the citizens still poorer.
We require an authentic Bahn reform and that is something other than your bungled job. Who does it fundamentally, gives the Bahn and its subsidiaries a new legal form. Yet you need to enforce it against the great red union at the Bahn. The Bund as owner needs to take in hand the direction of the railway networks. The Politik is responsible for the infrastructure. Period. And for that, the Bund needs to clearly command the firms’ rail network, not by umpteen contracts, but by one, unequivocal structure.
The Federal railways construction law now goes to committee. The AfD delegation clearly names the problem. Because the wrangling in the Ampel is not less than the chaos at the Bahn, hopes for an improvement are however limited. We will in no case vote for your adventurous cobbling [abenteuerlichen Flickschusterei] as it now stands in the draft law.
[trans: tem]
