Monday, December 23, 2024

Tino Chrupalla, December 16, 2024, Confidence in Government

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/205, pp. 26525-26526. 

Right honorable Frau President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen. Dear countrymen. 

Following the elections for the 20th German Bundestag, was very quickly clear that a government of SPD, FDP, Bundnis 90/Greens will yield no policy in the interest of Germany, and we were more than confirmed in that. 

In regards the decision of conscience of the now to follow vote on the Chancellor’s confidence question, numerous origins of the Ampel government’s failure need to be considered. 

Herr Chancellor, to express confidence in you would be counter to the interests of the economy and the citizens. This coalition wanted to combine programs which are simply incompatible. Thus were entirely obvious compromises in statutory form carried through which only served the Ampel’s stability. In that regard, the future of German industry was never at the central point. As a result are over 20,000 business insolvencies in the year 2024. Germany declines economically, and international investors, due to the enormous tax burden, still come only when robust state promotion means are promised. 

Along with the one-sided and aggressive climate policy, there remains from this Ampel only a state becoming ever larger, more interventionist and more restrictive of innovation, which devours the citizens’ taxes. Consent for restrictions was expensively purchased with promises and gifts of money, as the heating law only too well demonstrated. 

In that regard, the Free Democrats have committed the truly greatest betrayal of their voters. Who, for a securing of power, so far distances himself from his program, needs also show no tenacity in regards resignation. That is not only too late, Herr Lindner, but simply unbelievable, just as you are as a person. That, Herr Mützenich has today wonderfully summarized. 

Yet now we also need be so honest and say that politics is a long-term business. Every Federal government knowingly takes up the inheritance of its preceding or penultimate government. Accordingly, it’s simply just ridiculous when the CDU/CSU again shows no humility and not once develops its own ideas. You copy AfD demands: Solve the migration question by border controls and deportations, re-name Bürgergeld in a new basic security, abolish the supply chain due diligence law, reduce the business taxes. Herr Merz, the question is: With whom do you want to actually implement all that? With whom do you want to actually do all that? 

            Friedrich Merz (CDU/CSU): With you, certainly not. Certainly not with you! 

That, you did not say today in your unsympathetic speech, Herr Merz.

            Friedrich Merz (CDU/CSU): With you not! 

So as to make our country competitive again, of course need be developed the infrastructures which were neglected for decades: Structural, personal, and of course also financial. In that regard, it’s also about efficiency. Finally look at what you expended for particular posts. For years already, I call [anmahne] for an audit and it would have been your duty as Finance Minister, Herr Lindner, to finally realize that. We of course may no longer fleece those who create value in Germany. And we need not do it if the Federal government finally had come or would come to decisions with a future. 

A successful state provides an infrastructure – streets, railways, schools, hospitals, etc. – in which firms gladly settle and create workplaces and also can expand. If however these firms are alienated by ever more bureaucratic demands and expensive energy, they will go to another country, as we, ja, presently see. 

Herr Chancellor, I nevertheless hold one thing of yours to be good: Your Nein to a delivery of Taurus cruise missiles. For the war-lovers of the FDP, the CDU, the Greens, you were hesitant; for me in this case prudent. It is really not to be imagined if a Friedrich Merz had decided in your place. 

            Hermann Gröhe (CDU/CSU): Radio Moscow!

We would have been drawn much deeper into war. For there is, ja, peace in every cemetery. There we can, with a CDU/CSU-led government under Friedrich Merz, then visit our children. 

            Alexander Dobrindt (CDU/CSU): That is unbelievable!

Right honorable ladies and gentlemen, we finally need a politics in German and European interest. And that is only with a Chancellor candidate Alice Weidel and with the Alternative für Deutschland. 

Many thanks. 

 

[trans: tem]

Friday, December 20, 2024

Marc Jongen, December 17, 2024, Roumania, TikTok, Democracy

EU Parliament, Strasbourg, P10 CRE(2024)12-17(2-259-0000). 

Herr President. 

It cannot be conceived: Yesterday this parliament applauded the nullification of the democratic presidential election in Roumania. When the wrong candidate is in the lead, who does not suit the EU elites, then he obviously must go. We are on the way to a totalitarian system, ladies and gentlemen. And what is the reasoning? Manipulation of citizens on TikTok by foreign agents. 

You credit the citizens with so little discernment. You see the citizens as a manipulated mass. That is a declaration of bankruptcy. Following this logic, all elections in Germany need be nullified, since there the state media manipulates without end – but then nothing will be done. Yet when a 14-year-old posts something patriotic on TikTok, then in the morning the police are at the door. Where are we coming to? And following this logic, all elections could be nullified at will. Since how can the foreign influence ever be proved? 

Democracy enjoins accepting the will of the people, and even if it does not suit you. Respect that, if you want to be called democrats. 

 

[trans: tem]

Monday, December 16, 2024

Stephan Brandner, December 6, 2024, Lèse-majesté

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/204, pp. 26472-26473. 

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen. 

I find that we are quite well set. When I look at the ranks of the other delegations, it appears quite good in regards to us. 

Let me begin with a pre-Christmas fairy tale. There was once a kingdom, let us call it Collapsistan, with all that pertains thereto. There was a king, let us call him Olaf the Forgetful, a prince, let us call him Robert Feeble-minded [Schwachkopf] the First, his beautiful but rather dumb consort princess Anna the Clueless, a wicked, gruesome, cunning stepmother, Marie-Agnes, and a court jester by the name of Karl the Confused. There were also dark, corrupt powers: The BlackRockers, led by Fritz the Babbler and Jens “Allow us a villa” Spahn. 

This Collapsistan sank into chaos for want of qualified leaders. It was not at all on this account chased from the castle, because the secret service, the police and the media protected it. The social and economic chaos was so great that the people were continually impoverished and enraged; whereas the rulers lived in unimaginable, lavish luxury, riotously, made horrendous debts due to deficient income, and, despite that, tossed off hundreds of thousands for castle photos in which they should appear in shining lights, for hairdressing, which in one day cost as much as what many poor people in Collapsistan did not have available in a month. They flew with luxury jets which the people needed to finance – who else? – to and fro through world history, made flights of a distance walked by other people. The state religion paid homage to the climate pharaohs for which insane gifts and sacrifices were prepared. 

The result is clear: The world laughed over this incompetent barn of corruption. And the citizens in Collapsistan were offended, insulted and mocked. Yet the rulers made no better policy, but demanded draconian penalties for critical statements. 

Ladies and gentlemen, thus far a fairy tale; nevertheless with a present reference. 

In Germany also chaos governs. The citizens are disquieted; by rustic, pointed expressions make themselves noticeable and vent their feelings. Yet those who govern here govern no better, but have critical citizens persecuted by the police by means of warnings and legal intimidations. Through the years, a denunciation and spying network has been laid over Germany like a mildew, and those who govern have created for themselves protective, special laws, like section 188 of the criminal code which is here on the table and which only particularly punishes the insulting of politicians, and indeed with two to three years custody. Three years! If a simple citizen is insulted, a penalty of merely one year threatens the perpetrator. 

In addition, the normal citizen needs to trouble himself and file a criminal complaint. For a politician, in practice, that follows automatically, as per section 194 of the criminal code. And so it can well be that, in the morning in the residence of a supposed critic of the government, as for example in mid-November of a former soldier with a handicapped child, officially stand the police who almost kicked down the door just because he shared a funny photo of Robert Habeck. 

This special law was created in 2021 as a measure against hate and agitation and rightist extremism by politicians who now profit therefrom. It reminds me personally, I need quite honestly say, of the anti-state agitation in the DDR penal code, or the statute against malicious attacks on the state and party from the year 1934. 

And precisely the politicians who created this statute now profit therefrom, and thus earn for themselves a cornucopia. Comically, start-up businesses were founded which do nothing other than warn blameless citizens, demand warning fees and then make fifty-fifty with the politicians. Something is thus just so transparent, ladies and gentlemen. Robert Habeck alone has filed 800 criminal complaints [Strafanzeigen erstattet] during his time in office, a total of a thousand criminal complaints by Baerbock, Strack-Zimmermann and as they all are called. They do not defend themselves by means of good politics, they defend themselves by means of harassing measures. Especially is the FDP at the fore, have I read. The FDP manages such warning unions, such warning start-ups, and is proud of it. 

Katharina Willkomm (FDP): No, no no! We have nothing to do with that. Those are private people.

Ladies and gentlemen, we politicians are not especially worthy of protection. Publicity is part of our jobs. We seek publicity. We wallow in publicity. We go with joy into publicity. And why should we be better protected by the criminal code than normal people? 

We politicians are not weaklings who require the special protection of the criminal law. We are no majesties, no kings, no princes. We are employees of the citizens who elect us and pay us. There thus needs be an end to that you of the cartel parties lift yourselves above the citizens, an end to the special law for politicians, an end to section 188 of the criminal code, the lèse-majesté of modern times which is nothing other than an expression of a repressive, authoritarian understanding of the state. 

Likewise, go our way! Section 188 out of the penal code! This here is only a current hour, yet the corresponding draft law is done and will be brought in next. 

            Axel Müller (CDU/CSU): Where is it, then?

Many thanks and Merry Christmas if we should no more see one another. 

 

[trans: tem]

Monday, December 9, 2024

Marc Bernhard, December 6, 2024, Heating Law

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/204, pp. 26450-26451. 

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen. 

Last year, the Ampel, against every sense and reason, come hell or high water, flogged the heating law through the Bundestag, without regard to loss, and thereby practically banned the new installation of oil and gas heating. 

Konrad Stockmeier (FDP): Wrong!

30 million households, thus around 64 million people, heat with oil and gas. That means that 75 percent of the people in Germany are directly affected by your heating hammer, and regardless whether owner or renter. Yet it was already clear prior to the passage that for many it will be unaffordable, that it destroys the old age provision of many millions of people, and is nothing other than a cold expropriation. Your heating hammer makes the costs of dwellings and heating unaffordable for many people. 

It was previously also fully clear that your heating hammer is absolutely ineffective; since even the most optimistic estimates of Habeck’s ministry proceed on a yearly savings of just one, single percent of the total German CO2 emissions – thus, the CO2 quantity which China blows into the air in just five hours. And for that, you destroy the savings, the old age provision and the prosperity of the people in our country? How crazy are you, actually? 

            Stephan Brandner (AfD): That is a rhetorical question!

Had you simply done nothing, but simply just let the last three nuclear power plants continue to run, 

            Bernhard Herrmann (Greens): Ach, you heat with atomic power, or what?                            Nonsense!

we would each year – just listen for once – save 15 million tons of CO2, thus double as much as by your entire heating hammer. 

Even Construction Minister Geywitz has practically confirmed here in a questioning in the Bundestag that, with the heating hammer, what demonstrably works was forbidden, without really knowing, without having any functioning plan, as to how the people instead should heat in the future. 

Almost every second municipal utility considers an affordable heating supply no longer secure on account of your heating hammer. The city of Leipzig ascertained that the implementation of the heating hammer for Leipzig alone costs 30 billion euros. 

            Karsten Hilse (AfD): It’s only money!

That is 45,000 euros from infants to old men. No one can pay for this madness. 

Mannheim in 2035 as the first city in Germany completely disconnects people from the gas network. And thus happens exactly what I had said many times last year in the Bundestag: On account of your heating law, people now need to tear out new heating in the most brief time because it does not suit their city’s heating plan. 

Yet the crowning is that you of the FDP, then still in the government, yourselves had reckoned, before passage of the heating law, that the heating hammer will cost the people the unimaginable sum of 2,500 billion euros, and despite that, you in common with red-green, against better judgment, against every reason, simply forced through this law. 

And now? After the Chancellor showed you the door, you suddenly want to know nothing more at all of this. You, like the Chancellor, can remember nothing more, simply assert the opposite, and apparently want to rescind the law which you yourselves introduced. Thus, how credible your turnaround actually is, you can here and now give evidence by you voting for our motion [Drucksache 14031]. 

The same applies to you of the CDU. In all media, you announce that you want to rescind the heating law – exactly as Jens Spahn a couple of minutes ago here in the Bundestag confirmed – thus exactly what we today propose. 

If you of the CDU and the FDP thus really meant it seriously, then we would have for this today a majority. Yet you know quite precisely that with the reds and greens with whom you want to form a coalition in the future, there will never be a revocation. Thus show whether you mean it seriously, 

            Vice-president Katrin Göring-Eckardt: Many thanks.

or whether you are only once again lying to the people out there.


[trans: tem]

 

 

Sunday, December 8, 2024

Christine Anderson, November 27, 2024, Ursula von der Leyen

EU Parliament, Strasbourg, P10 CRE-REV(2024)11-27(3-0025-0000.). 

Frau President. 

Donald Trump presents his new cabinet: Highly competent patriots determined to Make America Great Again, determined to again make policy for the people. And what do we get? You, Frau von der Leyen –hearty thanks. The wrecking ball which mercilessly demolishes all that made the European peoples strong. I want a Europe which is strong, sovereign and successful; a Europe of success, a Europe of freedom, of democracy and of the state of law. With you, we receive nothing of all that. 

Frau von der Leyen, you alone would be bad enough. Yet the prospective commissioners which you have gathered, they are the purest wrecking crew as far as freedom and democracy and the state of law are concerned. For once make an accounting, Frau von der Leyen, of your unspeakable mRNA vaccine delivery contract. Otherwise, your commissioners proposal can take its hat. My delegation will not support it. Now, regrettably, I am not allowed to call you corrupt, else my microphone again be turned off – but even so: Frau von der Leyen, you are corrupt to the last fiber of your existence! 

 

[trans: tem]

 

Monday, December 2, 2024

Götz Frömming, November 13, 2024, CDU and Democracy

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/199, pp. 25915-25916. 

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen. 

“…parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where, not local purposes, not local prejudices, ought to guide, but the general good...” [*] 

            Hendrik Hoppenstedt (CDU/CSU): Amen! 

            Patrick Schnieder (CDU/CSU): Claims for which you have never been fit!

So far Edmund Burke in his famous speech to the voters of Bristol in 1774. Ladies and gentlemen, let us compare the present situation of this parliament with the ideal of then. 

            Patrick Schnieder (CDU/CSU): You might need to get out!

This, what you have made of our parliament, is the exact opposite in comparison to what Burke described, ladies and gentlemen. 

Real deliberations, the struggle over the best solution for the good of the people, no longer take place. 

            Johannes Fechner (SPD): No self-evidently! 

            Patrick Schnieder (CDU/CSU): You’ve never done it!

SPD, CDU, Greens and FDP have come to an understanding for a trimmed daily order of the German Bundestag. Only urgently necessary points of the daily order shall spoken on. Initiatives of the opposition – the actual opposition – shall be set aside with or without debate. Ladies and gentlemen, that is unparliamentary, that is undemocratic, that is an assault on the heart of our democracy. 

It is evident, ladies and gentlemen, for you, the general good does not come first, but your party interests. We presently in fact have a minority government. That has been seldom acceded to in German parliamentary history, but is commonplace in other countries. There, one has no fear of the free struggle for the best solution. Minority governments, ladies and gentlemen, need not necessarily go along with a parliamentary standstill. They could be stellar moments of democracy. Yet for that is required authentic and courageous democrats. 

            Patrick Schnieder (CDU/CSU): Then you need to get out!

Of those, ladies and gentlemen, we have too few in this parliament. It also does not help that you yourselves always mutually dilute being democratic. Now, where it would come to that, you deny democracy, ladies and gentlemen. 

What then would be so bad if members for once really follow their consciences when a good motion achieves a majority only with votes of the opposition? Yet as I hear, you want no votes from the wrong side. Honored colleagues of the CDU, when it is about the good of our country, then there is no such wrong side. 

Patrick Schnieder (CDU/CSU): The level was already low, but now it becomes subterranean.

You then stand with your firewall on the wrong side. 

            Patrick Schnieder (CDU/CSU): You are always on the wrong side!

Following the frightful terror attack at Solingen on the 23rd of August of this year, the CDU/CSU  delegation chairman wrote an urgent letter to the Chancellor. I may cite therefrom: 

“Release…the vote in the Bundestag on the the required laws…We want no participation in your government and no offices; we want that you fulfill your oath of office and avert harm from the German people. For that, with us you have a majority in the German Bundestag…” 

            Jürgen Braun (AfD): Aha! Hear, hear!

Thus far the Chancellor. In what concerns forgetfulness, Friedrich Merz in fact has a Chancellor quality, ladies and gentlemen. 

In fact in September the CSU/CSU brought in such a motion. Its content: To limit the migrant flow and begin with a return. Not by far enough, but a step in the right direction. And what have we experienced? Last week, precisely this draft law was on the daily order for a second and third reading. It would have been able to receive perhaps a majority with the votes from the ranks of the FDP and AfD. Yet precisely on this account it was withdrawn by the CDU/CSU. 

            Jürgen Braun (AfD): Ach, here, someone is afraid!

You were afraid that your own motion could pass, ladies and gentlemen. That allows a deep look and says much of your understanding of democracy. 

Who should at all still believe that your motion was seriously meant by you, which you previously presented and in which was written a bit in the AfD sound? Did you perhaps only present all of these motions because you know that they will be rejected, and now where you could receive a vote in favor, 

Hendrik Hoppenstedt (CDU/CSU): No, we want to pass them, only not with you! That is the only reason! 

you present no more such motions. 

The long since running secret negotiations on a new government with the Greens or the SPD should not be encumbered. Ladies and gentlemen, you have the entire time only simulated opposition. That is shabby. 

Ladies and gentlemen, the problem nevertheless is: Who votes for Merz, receives Habeck. How often have the two actually met for secret negotiations? 

            Till Steffen (Greens): What does secret mean? 

            Erhard Grundl (Greens): If you knew it, it’s not secret. 

            Sebastian Hartmann (SPD): What did you plan in Potsdam?

The citizens can vote for that they want, they receive always the same politics. Here, one need not be surprised by a political dissatisfaction. 

            Vice-president Aydan Özogŭz: Come please to a conclusion. 

Following the next elections, ladies and gentlemen, we will, in Edmund Burke’s sense, again make the parliament of our nation a deliberating and deciding assembly. 

Many thanks. 

            Gabriele Katzmarek (SPD): There, you contribute definitely nothing! 

 

[*] The Works of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke. 6 vols. London: Henry G. Bohn, 1854-1856.

[trans: tem]

Saturday, November 30, 2024

Petr Bystron, November 26, 2024, Ukraine War

EU Parliament, Strasbourg, P10 CRE-REV(2024)11-26(2-0018-0000.) 

Frau President. 

More weapons to the Ukraine – you do it for whom, actually? The colleague has just said it: The majority of Ukrainians want negotiations, want finally peace – and for that they will even renounce territory. This is now a current poll from the Ukraine. Ten million Ukrainians have voted with the feet. They have already left the country. Among which are 500,000 men of military service age, who do not want to die most miserably. An additional 500,000 certainly could no longer vote, since they are dead. Is that not enough for you? 

Even Zelenskyi now says he wants negotiations and a diplomatic solution. That is precisely what we demand for two years. All of you have insulted for two long years those who demanded this as Moscow’s agents, as Putin’s agents. So, is now Zelenskyi Putin’s agent? Of course not. He has only noted that the war is over. Trump has won the elections. There is an end to further weapons deliveries. You here want in all seriousness to further escalate and draw us all into a third world war – just before the war’s end? 

Here actually the question needs be asked: Whose interests do you at all represent? Not those of the Ukrainian people. Here, you only represent the weapons lobby, NATO and the secret services, since they conduct the war against Russia. Who now feel themselves already in a war against Russia legitimated by no one. No parliament at any time has voted for that. The people in the Ukraine do not want the war. Most Europeans do not want the war. So stop drawing us into the war. It is over. 

 

[trans: tem]

Monday, November 25, 2024

Beatrix von Storch, November 7, 2024, Anti-semitism, Israel, Trump

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/197, pp. 25719-25720. 

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen. 

We stand today before the end of the quite grand illusion: Trump again President of the United States and the Ampel at an end – a real double Wumms! And now this admission of the former Ampel parties and of the Union with this common motion for Jewish lives: Yes, the exploding Judenhass in Germany has something to do with immigration and with Islam. 

            Kordula Schulz-Asche (Greens): And with the AfD!

I can still well remember all of your gasping here – primarily by the Greens – as the AfD warned of imported Moslem anti-semitism. Now we read in this motion – co-introduced by the Greens – of anti-semitism which is based on, cite: “Immigration from the countries of North Africa and the Near and Middle East”. 

            Leni Breymaier (SPD): And on rightist extremism!

Those are the Green figures for imported Moslem anti-semitism. You have restrained the reality. 

And the solution proposal in your motion also goes in our direction: Cite: “Exhaust punitive possibilities, especially in criminal and citizenship law, and in asylum and residency law”. In German: Remove Moslem anti-semites on the aircraft and in the homeland. “Tschüss!” and not Auf Wiedersehen!”

You finally recognize that in addition to your mantra-charged, extreme right anti-semitism there are also dangers from the left. 

Britta Haßelmann (Green): With what chutzpah you at all speak here! Take a peek at the “Sächsischen Separatisten”! With AfD covering! It is not to be taken seriously, your contribution as an AfDer here, with your rightist extremism!

You name that the “leftist, anti-imperialist anti-semitism”. And for your fight, you now also take up our proposal. You want to test the ban on the BDS movement. Here you need test nothing and rediscover the wheel. Our motion to ban is long since put forward. That even a portion of the Greens meanwhile take up AfD positions, we name “Zeitenwende” [change of times]. 

The problem with all of these resolutions is: With you, action never follows. Only the AfD will implement what you ever only demand, 

            Britta Haßelmann (Green): Think of your Gauland! “Vogelschiss in der                              Geschichte”! Gauland citation! Enough! 

            Konstantin von Notz (Greens): “Sächsischen Separatisten”, Frau von Storch!

and that quite practical and concrete; for example, no more public money to colleges and cultural undertakings for Judenhass and Israel enmity. 

It is little surprising that resistance to that comes from the left wing of the Greens. 

            Britta Haßelmann (Green): Is it about Jewish lives in Germany here? 

Katharina Droge (Greens): Of course for Frau von Storch it’s not about Jewish lives in Germany! Who comes from so extreme a rightist party, is certainly not interested in Jewish lives in Germany!

The Greens’ national working groups for migration and refuge, for peace and international and for culture, fear, cite: “The instrumentalization …by rightist actors, and the targeted defamation and undermining of civil society work”. 

Translated into German: You are afraid that the AfD has seized the theme, and leftist and Moslem anti-semites lose their state feeding troughs. Here, I can only say to you: You are fully right to be worried. 

In the political left, there is an obsessive hatred of the State of Israel; for this anti-imperialist left, Israel is a racist, a colonizing, a white apartheid state which should disappear from the map. 

Britta Haßelmann (Green): Look at “Sächsischen Separatisten”! And the state associations which have been classified extreme right! 

The leftists hate Israel because the Jewish state represents all that Europe once was, and what they hate: A strong state, self-conscious, national, religious, prepared to protect its cultural identity and defend its borders. These Greens have spoken out against their own resolution because they know that the fight against anti-semitism today primarily affects the left and its darling Moslem minority. It’s not right-wing extremists who occupy universities, drive Jewish judges from the podium, and gather in masses in the streets behind the flags of Hamas and Hezbollah and chant “from the river to the sea”. Those are Moslems and leftists. 

Does anyone believe that without Merkel’s border opening Jews would not live here more safely? Do you believe that, Herr Merz?  Do you believe that, Herr von Notz? You know that I am right. 

Reality can be pushed aside, yet reality sooner or later catches up. That is unavoidable, and that has come to pass. 

The time of lies and extenuations is over. The defenders of Jewish lives and the friends of the Jewish state are today not found on the left, but on the democratic right side; with the AfD, with Geert Wilders, with Viktor Orbán, and with Donald Trump in whose election all democrats in this house very heartily rejoice.

 

Many thanks.

 

 

 

[trans: tem]

Friday, November 22, 2024

René Aust, November 14, 2024, European Defense

EU Parliament, Brussels, P10 CRE-PROV(2024)11-14(2-0018-0000). 

Frau President. 

In the past decades, the European Union has neglected to coordinate the member states’ security policy so that a maximum standard is guaranteed for our citizens. Whether it be the defense of the air space, the ending of mass migration or the protection of our raw material or commercial routes on the world seas, we are generally dependent on the structures of the United States of America. In none of these areas are we currently in the position to independently defend our security interests. 

Yet the EU itself is guilty of this dependence. It invests much money in ideological projects – from gender questions to climate protection – it worries about all possible things, but does not correctly worry about what is important. It is therefore necessary to dismantle [zurückzubauen] the European Union: Fewer competences, fewer duties, fewer expenditures. The European level should concentrate on fewer, yet decisive, duties for all; one of which would be a coordinated defense and security policy at the European level; for example, fewer weapons systems instead of 150 in the European Union today, few of which are comprehensively compatible for the armies. 

Yet it needs be clear: More security policy cooperation does not mean the creation of a common European army. It would be a nightmare if the EU bureaucrats and Frau von der Leyen were allowed to decide on the mission of German, French, Polish and other European soldiers. The further distant from the citizens are the decisions over war and  peace, the greater is the danger that decision makers thoughtlessly undertake a war – and nothing is further from normal life, from we citizens, than Ursula von der Leyen. To summarize: We say yes to more cooperation in defense and security questions, but a clear Nein to any phantasms of a European army. 

 

[trans: tem]

Friday, November 15, 2024

Alice Weidel, November 13, 2024, Government and Politics

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/199, pp. 25840-25843. 

Right honorable Frau President. Right honorable Chancellor. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen. 

This government goes to an end as brainless and undignified as it has acted for three long years.

Even in leaving, you show neither insight nor responsibility. You indulge in self-pity, self-righteousness and mutual denigration. 

Humility would thereby be only appropriate; since what your government has done to this country and its citizens is unprecedented. This Ampel like no other previous government has destroyed prosperity and damaged our country. Your frantic policy of the green transformation drives Germany into de-industrialization, productive business out of the country and the Mittelstand to ruin. 

Hundreds of thousands of workplaces are already lost as a consequence of your policy. The number of insolvencies in October has reached a 70 years record. The bankruptcy rate is around two-thirds higher than just five years ago. Your e-auto planned economy ruins the German automobile industry and cuts a corridor of devastation through Mittelstand and service industries. 

You flood the country with illegal migrants while you likewise drive native and immigrant labor forces into emigration. You derange the social system and destroy the domestic security. Imported Judenhasser romp in the streets. 25 sexual assaults per day by immigrants are noted in one current statistic of the BKA. The financial consequences you press upon the citizens with record taxes and social duties, 

            Lamya Kaddor (Greens): Then what does the AfD do on the other hand? 

even though the total state income scrapes the one trillion mark, yet will erode because you have made business kaputt and put employees into the street.

You divide the country with the malignant spirit of the spying, the hotlines, with censorship measures, and grotesque Gessler cap laws like the self-determination law which makes the denial of biological facts a penalty-enforced duty. 

            Beatrix von Storch (AfD): Markus!

You, the tumbling champions [Umfallerhelden] of the FDP, have not only cooperated with all of this for three long years, but what’s more made it possible. The FDP has shared in every nonsense, like the heating law, building energy law, the ban on combustion engines and the disconnection of capable nuclear power plants, gender without end, toking for all and the change of sex once a year. This stain, Herr Lindner, will stay with you forever. Your attempt at the last minute to leave the sinking ship comes too late. The voters and your party will ban you from the Bundestag. 

For the Union. You want no political change for Germany, otherwise you would not hide behind your firewall, and quite openly speculate that this mismanaged SPD and the Greens may make you Chancellor, Herr Merz. What you have to offer in reasonable demands, you’ve meanwhile copied from us. Yet you want to implement simply nothing of that, but merely deceive your voters. You admit it quite openly: You are afraid of putting any motion for a migration policy; since you could pass it with our votes, and that, you do not want, Herr Merz. 

            Friedrich Merz (CDU/CSU): Nay!

With that, all should be said of the CDU, yet this for long has still not been: For even in this existential crisis, CDU politicians have nothing better to do than drive forward an anti-democratic banning procedure against us, the second largest power in Germany. And your party friend Haldenwang is the handyman for that, and abuses the domestic secret service, the so-called Constitution Defense, to criminalize citizens critical of the government, and the opposition in Germany, and for that shall be paid with a Bundestag mandate. These are the most wicked DDR methods of which you make use. 

Important immediate measures against Germany’s further decline – the withdrawal of the combustion engine ban, the re-entry into the nuclear power, the tightening of the right of asylum and the turning back at the border – we would have long since concluded, with or without the Chancellor’s confidence vote. 

But the Union does not want that. You have cowardly taken back all your motions and agreed to simply eliminate from the daily order central initiatives for a correction of this ruinous Ampel policy. You place the firewall above Germany. What an embodiment of democratic Unkultur! What a pitiful low point in parliamentary government! 

So spare yourself your talk of responsibility and respect, Herr Merz! With you, it’s quite alone about you, about your power, about partisan tactics, and primarily your vanity. 

            Friedrich Merz (CDU/CSU): This the righteous says!

With you as a Scholz replacement, Germany will not make headway. You can implement nothing of what you promise. You are no alternative for this government and for this Chancellor. You hardly can be, since the CDU is exactly so responsible as the Ampel for the existential crisis in which our country finds itself. 

As good as all the wrong decisions which are responsible for the downfall of Germany and our economy go back to the governing years of a Union Kanzlerin by the name of Angela Merkel; the best Kanzlerin which the Greens have ever had. The energy transition and the subvention nonsense about the so-called renewable energies, the hasty withdrawal from the nuclear power, the CO2 duty, the planned economy war against the German automobile industry, the fight of the worldwide leading engine technology and an electro-auto planned economy, the euro rescue policy and the inflation arising therefrom: All of it Union. 

And the citizens have not forgotten how you of the Union divided the country just three years ago with defamations against the unvaccinated. 

            Enrico Komning (AfD): Right!

“No more unvaccinated in the office” from Friedrich Merz, “Lockdown for the unvaccinated” and “Vaccination as a moral obligation” from Markus Söder, and “The pandemic of the unvaccinated” and “Exclude the unvaccinated from public life” from Jens Spahn. All of it was supported and ushered in by you. 

Not to be forgotten: Opening of the German borders for unruly, illegal migration by means of the 2015 welcome putsch: The mother of all trespasses in our country. The rule of injustice in the migration policy which was driven to the heights by the Ampel government, was erected under a Union Kanzerlin, and not only that. The Union delegation supported most of the motions of the Ampel government. After 16 years of Merkel and three years of Merz, the CDU is no more the  counter-weight to the left-green ship of fools, but its willing collaborator. I can say to you: The people have enough of that. 

A Federal government with participation of the AFD in the first 100 days would thus implement the future plan for Germany. And it reads as follows – with the sub-heading that the CDU will prevent all of this: We want technology openness, to repeal the ban of combustion engines as well as of oil and gas heating, to lower income, consumption and business taxes, to abolish the CO2 duty, to massively reduce energy taxes, to eliminate without exception the solidarity surtax, 

            Lamya Kaddor (Greens): How then all of it?

to get underway fundamental tax reform and tax simplification, to abolish the bureaucracy monster “supply chain law”, to eliminate subvention and promotion programs for climate protection and the EEG assessment, to bring in the end of the energy transition and the withdrawal from the EU energy policy, to again take functioning nuclear power plants into the network and to invest in future-capable, new generation reactors. 

We demand longer run times for coal power plants. Why? Because Germany has the most modern coal power plants worldwide. 

To completely close the borders, to turn back everyone entering illegally or without papers, and a clear announcement to the entire world that the German borders are finally shut. To convert provision of asylum applicants from money to benefits in kind, to eliminate social benefits for those without a right of residency and to organize returns in grand style, which simply maintains and implements the asylum law. Asylum is residence for a time and ends when the refuge basis is eliminated, local provision of refugees – they thereby do not initially come to Germany – immediately end turbo-naturalizations and the automatic claim to the German passport. And follow the model of the Netherlands and Hungary: Withdrawal from the EU asylum system. 

            Lamya Kaddor (Greens): Wow! That then remains for them, Frau Weidel?

The better, last: This is the AFD’s future program for this country so as to bring this country forward. Since you need to listen for once. It goes exactly so. 

And what we will do: Convert the Bürgergeld to an activating basic security, to confine it to state citizens and EU citizens legally present, and, for that, to take care that hundreds of thousands of employees capable of work again come into the labor market. 

We have already worked up many of the laws necessary for this. – Yes, because you rejected them. 

            Lamya Kaddor (Greens): They were all rejected!

It is a question of political will – which you do not have – of again giving hope to the Germans and to setting free the power for a comeback from the crisis. 

            Irene Mihalic (Greens): All those are competences which you do not have!

The Germans want normality, 

            Lamya Kaddor (Greens): No! The Germans are ashamed of you!

and they have a right to it. They want work. They want security. They want prosperity. They want to live by the fruits of their labor, to be able to start families and construct a livelihood. 

            Joe Weingarten (SPD): They want no AfD!

They want security in the streets, and they want a good education for their children. 

They demand a reliable and reasonable politics which creates the prerequisites for this and which does not meddle in the private life and in their freedom of opinion. The people in this country want primarily one thing: 

            Lamya Kaddor (Greens): No right-wing extremists in power!

They want freedom! They want bürgerliche freedom! This will be possible only with us in government responsibility. 

I am grateful. 

            Katharyn Dröge (Greens): You yourself need laugh over the madness! 

 

[trans: tem]

Monday, November 11, 2024

Stephan Brandner, October 18, 2024, Internet Censorship

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/195, pp. 25551-25552. 

Herr President. Ladies and gentlemen. 

Friday afternoon – important themes of freedom of opinion. The Federal Network Agency [Bundesnetzagentur] comes along with a modest name, scarcely anyone knows it, is thereby meanwhile in fact the commanding censorship authority in Germany. 

            Tobias B. Bacherle (Greens): That is just rubbish!

What is that for an agency? With the dissolution of the Postal Ministry, in 1998 founded as a regulatory authority for telephone and post, then also competent for gas and electric lines, later for the railway network. Meanwhile, it has almost 3,000 co-workers settled in the work area of green Economy Destruction Minister Habeck, and the chief is the Green party friend Klaus Müller who since 1990 is with the Greens, and since 2022 leads the Federal Network Agency, this censorship authority. He is now in fact the chief of the German commanding censors. He names so-called trusted flaggers. As a member of the German Language Union [Vereins Deutsche Sprache], it is clear to me: Who has something to hide, he speaks Denglish, or tries to with anglicisms, and precisely so is it here. 

Tobias B. Bacherle (Greens): As opposed to you, most people meanwhile understand that.

Trusted flagger is officially translated as trustworthy whistleblower [„vertrauenswürdige Hinweisgeber“]. At first, it sounds quite good. Yet for we citizens, they are plainly not trustworthy, but only for those rulers sensitive to criticism; wherefore in our view the better fitting translation is “digital block warden”, “thought police” or “government spy”; since that is what they are. 

Tobias B. Bacherle (Greens): You now again show that you do not manage the translations so good.

Here is driven another massive frontal assault on Article 5 of the Basic Law, the freedom of opinion, one of the most important basic rights, and core component of a living democracy. The idea of course is only illegal content shall be reported by internet spies and internet accusers equipped with exclusive access to the platforms. Yet the answer to the question, Who specifically shall that ultimately be?, leaves the worst to be feared. Who can become an internet accuser? Non-government organizations, civil society actors, religious pedagogues, trades union members, thus anyone who in fact emits the left-green thinking. 

And so no wonder that the first reporting office, in good Denglish manner, is named “REspect”, in which is sheltered one of the Islam teachers trained in the notorious and suspected Al Azhar University in Cairo. 

Tobias B. Bacherle (Greens): Herr Brandner, we’ve heard all that from Reichelt! What’s new?

The reporting office belongs to the Youth Foundation Baden Württemberg, is nursed with tax money and thus arises – we all know of it – from the left-green swamp. And this troop of, among others, religious pedagogues shall now be qualified to decide over which expressions of opinion are legitimate and which not. Actually inconceivable, or? 

Ladies and gentlemen, I do not believe to go too far when I say: If there had earlier been censorship authorities as presently – there were as is known some better – then would have been unthinkable showbiz greats like Thomas Gottschalk, Harald Schmidt or Rudi Carrell. 

            Beatrix von Storch (AfD): And Helmut Schmidt!

They would no longer be allowed on the screen. We of course live in an increasingly homogenized [gleichschalteten] television- and in an increasingly oppressed digital-world, which sets up instructions and limitations, instead of open, substantial discussions. Tutored thought everywhere from the public broadcasting. 

The internet was still a bit of a free space. It becomes ever more limited. The rulers are watching. All that is unsuitable is out. Thus alternative media in Germany will be blocked, oppressed and hindered. Trusted flaggers become still more active, and will judge whether something is hatred, fake news or illegal. The worst is to be feared. 

And the worst is: There is nothing in the Basic Law in this regard. The state precisely knows it may not censor. Yet so as to attain the opposite, it privatizes the censorship. It circumvents, so to say, the Basic Law’s command, and sets up a terror of unity opinion [Einheitsmeinung], instead  of variety of opinion. We of the AfD stand for the exact opposite. We stand for variety and for freedom of opinion, and not for the unity opinion terror. 

The FDP participates. It cannot be believed what the former free, liberal party is thus doing. Herr Kubicki, who as President sits behind me, distances himself a bit from that, yet in the end he will again be for it. We, ja, know him; he is something like the Rambo of the FDP, who now and then may blink right, but then is precisely in line. That does not make the matter better. 

Alone, the Alternative für Deutschland remains as before a guarantor for democracy, for law, for freedom and especially for freedom of opinion in Germany. 

            Stefan Gelbhaar (Greens): Blah, blah, blah!

We therefore demand with our motion [Drucksache 20/13364] – you’ve all read it – simply: The Federal government shall block financial grants to organizations which want to effect the deletion of user contributions which fall under the freedom of opinion. We want the Federal Cartel Office to be instructed to know, to look into: How do the arrangements for hate speech function? That would be a mission for the Federal Cartel Office. 

            Stefan Gelbhaar (Greens): The Federal Cartel Office should examine the AFD?

Herr President, I come to an end; I see it blinking here. – In addition, the censorship measures on the European level need to be abolished. 

            Vice-president Wolfgang Kubicki: Herr colleague, come to a conclusion.

And the trusted flaggers, the internet spies, may have no future in Germany. 

Many thanks. 

            Stefan Gelbhaar (Greens): On what censorship is, you need to read up again.

 

[trans: tem]

Friday, November 8, 2024

Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla, November 7, 2024, The End of the Ampel

AfD Kompakt, November 7, 2024. 

The end of the Ampel is a liberation for our country. The exit for the self-named “progressive coalition”, which with great strides has led Germany into an economic abyss, was more than overdue. After the months-long standstill and the innumerable self-referential therapy sessions, we now require quickly a fundamental political new beginning so as to lead the economy and the entire country out of the serious crisis into which it has come by means of the ideology-driven policy of SPD, Greens and FDP. Chancellor Olaf Scholz needs now do the country a final service and immediately put the confidence question.

 

 

[trans: tem]

Wednesday, November 6, 2024

Tino Chrupalla and Alice Weidel, November 6, 2024, Donald Trump

AfD Kompakt, November 6, 2024. 

In the name of the Alternative für Deutschland, we congratulate Donald Trump on the election! Like the Germans, U.S. citizens have enough of state indebtedness, economic decline, endless wars and illegal migration. We offer support and cooperation in regards the solution of these problems. Donald Trump can enter history as a patriotic President of peace. 

[trans: tem]

Monday, November 4, 2024

Nicole Höchst, October 11, 2024, Illiteracy in Germany

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/192, pp. 25064-25065. 

Herr President. Valued colleagues. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen.

In this debate, it is about illiteracy, immigration dangerous to the state, and tax money squandering of the luxury class. 

            Josef Oster (CDU/CSU): Aha!

Our major inquiry [Drucksachen 20/9984, 20/11885] yielded: The phenomenon of primary illiteracy is an immigration one. Many immigrants are illiterate because in their countries of origin they never learned to read and write. 

            Kassem Taher Saleh (Greens): What percentage is that, then? How many                                people is that? 

            Götz Frömming (AfD): Questions regarding the facts!

Thus, for example, the 2021 illiteracy index in Afghanistan was at 37 percent. 

            Kassem Taher Saleh (Greens): What is the source? 

            Hendrik Hoppenstedt (CDU/CSU): And for that you needed to put a                                        major inquiry?

Ladies and gentlemen, we have over 400,000 persons from Afghanistan in the country, mostly young men, and almost one million Syrians. For the latter, the refuge basis for the most part has lapsed. They no longer require a literacy program, but a return home. 

Your expensive literacy program knows no total numbers for course participants. You do not know how many German citizens with a migration background are illiterates, from which countries these come, nor whether their children are in any way affected. You do not know how many illiterates are employed in Germany, and are working, and in which occupations. 

            Kassem Taher Saleh (Greens): So I ask: From where do you have the numbers?

Without this control knowledge, the tax money can only be squandered, and flow in senseless measure which indeed makes the establishment operators richer, yet all of us poorer. Integration cannot be achieved with such a squandering of tax money which sets action for action’s sake before efficiency. Only in homeopathic doses is it successful. 

The Federal governments since 2015 have expended six billion euros – that is a number with nine zeros – for integration courses; of that, 1.4 billion euros for literacy courses. The statutory goal is B1. That is a language level according to the Common European Reference Framework for Languages which Realschüler after the tenth grade need to show for their graduation in English. 

            Kassem Taher Saleh (Greens): Well recited!

Since 2015, scarcely 37,000 persons have at all attained this statutory goal for the German language. Your Start Chances Program with one billion euros of Federal funds per year aims at the same target group, namely those affected by and victims of your failed migration policy. How long shall this palavering continue, ladies and gentlemen? 

            Martin Rabanus (SPD): That’s just in fact false! 

            Till Steffen (Greens): You can read quite well up there! You can read so good!

You throw much money at the migration industry. Alone, the 71-page annex to our major inquiry lists over 1,000 language firms which have participated in the moderately successful literacy program without the state’s tightly woven result controls. And, ladies and gentlemen, what if many immigrants simply have no interest in literacy or integration courses? There is finally Bürgergeld

            Till Steffen (Greens): It is soon again recitation day in the Grundschulen!

The German taxpayers in addition pay for the necessary translation services. The language groups which require translators come principally from Syria, Afghanistan and other countries in which the Moslem belief dominates. 

Many participants in integration and language courses have often led in many statistics, in the main over-proportionately to their portion of the population, such as criminal statistics, education statistics, in the categories “without school and without vocational school completion”. They have led just so over-proportionately in the recipients of Bürgergeld statistics, and at the same time are often found in the statistics of those obliged to depart. 

            Marianne Schieder (SPD): Almost 70 percent of the Syrians are working!

That is no secret. 

The uneducated Talahon immigration bred by you has long since integrated into parallel societies. Thus, why learn the German language? The language of conquerors is initially Kanak, already recognizable in kindergartens and school classes, yet in many places is already Arabic and Turkish.

            Hendrik Hoppenstedt (CSU/CSU): You yourself can do better!

Many disdain our way of living, our laws, our people. 

Yet entire branches of industry have arisen: The refugee industry, the anti-racism industry, the integration and language course industry, which present nothing other than an unholy alliance between Islamists and woke leftists. Even the leftist-woke trimmed churches profit. 

Yet all the mere bleating here, all the commanded silence and glossing over, is not longer of use in view of the abuses which are recognizable by all. For the well-being of the German people, whom you either hate or whose existence you deny, you do nothing. We do not want your Great Transformation which makes us poor, woke and ever more Islamic. 

We all have good friends from all cultures, 

            Vice-president Wolfgang Kubicki: Frau colleague, come to a conclusion, please.

who want to live together with us here peacefully and in all friendship in mutual respect. It was never about them, ladies and gentlemen. 

            Till Steffen (Greens): You learn nothing from them, then?

And now I am curious 

            Vice-president Wolfgang Kubicki: Frau colleague, please come to a conclusion.

how you here again talk your way out of it.

Many thanks. 

 

[trans: tem]

Tuesday, October 29, 2024

Tino Chrupalla, October 28, 2024, Electro-mobility

AfD Kompakt, October 28, 2024. 

Politicians and and short-sighted business functionaries have hastily and one-sidedly decided for the electro-mobility. This decision does not correspond to the wish of the consumers and to the well-being of the workers. The economic war against the east leads to high energy prices and harms Germany as a business venue [Standort Deutschland]. So as to save the works, politics and business need to change the strategy. The recipe reads: Openness to technology, realistic limit values and advantageous energy. 

[trans: tem]

Monday, October 28, 2024

Barbara Benkstein, September 26, 2024, EU Data Act

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/188, pp. 24461-24462. 

Frau President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen. Valued colleagues. 

We debate today a Union delegation motion for implementation of the EU Data Act. For a clarifying debate, it is nevertheless important to come to speak once again of the Data Act itself. This must by September 2025 be converted into the national law of the EU member states. 

Valued colleagues of the Union delegation, Frau colleague Hoppermann, in regards your motion, I see light as well as shadow. How do I come to this evaluation? 

Let us first look at the EU Data Act. As so often, the EU Commission also with the Data Act intervenes in the business and everyday life of the people. With the decree, it wants to break up the existing data oligopoly of the large tech concerns and facilitate the access of KMUs and start-ups to valuable, machine-readable data. From that, the Mittelstand also should profit. A thoroughly good goal! It remains to await how that actually in practice is implemented. 

Right honorable ladies and gentlemen, I want now to give attention to an important problem point of the EU Data Act. It remains unclear in regards the users’ right to the access of their data. Here should be distinguished between commercial and private users. Private users presumably rather have the interest that their data, when it is already uploaded, be stored only for a brief time. And thus the question occurs to me: Valued colleagues of the Union, will your motion, in view of these areas of tension, legislate the required implementation of the EU Data Act? 

Your motion for the implementation of the EU Data Act hides some of the Act’s deficiency; for example, the public emergency named in the text of the decree. By means of this, businesses can almost be compelled to make available their database to the pertinent authorities. 

Franziska Hoppermann (CDU/CSU): The Data Act has been decided. Nothing                       needs be hidden! 

I find this problematic in no place in your motion. 

The risk of an abusive data delivery in the name of a public emergency is not at all fabricated. Here is also required besides a clear definition of unmistakable enforcement regulations [Durchführungsbestimmungen]. 

Next critical point. Your demand to entrust the Federal Network Authority with the role of a data coordinator, we view critically. As a Federal supervisory authority, the Federal Network Agency belongs to the operating area of the Federal Ministry for the Economy and Climate Protection. Thus the independence is limited, despite all the bundled professional competence. We thus hold it better to create an autonomous office for data coordination, as for example is the case with the Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information. 

            Franziska Hoppermann (CDU/CSU): Who is meanwhile a woman!

Right honorable ladies and gentlemen, a strengthening of the German digital economy’s innovation and competition capability is unquestionably important. This however is in direct relation with the performance capability of a modern society and also with the digital rights of the consumer. These are not appropriately valued by the Union’s motion, as well by the EU Commission. Valued colleagues of the Union, you in your motion thereby fritter away the possibility of at least partially removing the Data Act’s weaknesses by its implementation in national law. 

So far, I still see in your motion some shady sides which we in the digital committee can in common polish. 

Many thanks. 

 

[trans: tem]

Monday, October 21, 2024

Bernd Schattner, October 9, 2024, Mittelstand

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/190, p. 24713. 

Many thanks. Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen. 

For thirty years, I myself was a businessman before I came here to the Bundestag three years ago. And I ever again realize: The German economy is meanwhile at the abyss. And what does this Ampel government do? With open eyes, it lets our country slide into ruin. While the German industry bleeds to death, the Mittelstand fights for survival and the citizens ask themselves how they shall pay for their electrical and heating costs, this government lives in its ideological bubble. Wishful thinking instead of economic policy, that is your sorry balance after three years of Ampel

Let’s begin with the energy policy. Germany has the highest electricity prices in all Europe. 

            Reinhard Houben (FDP): Not right! Wrong!

On the average, according to Destatis, private households pay 41 cents per kilowatt-hour, while in France it is just 25 cents. The reason: Your headlong energy transition. 

            Reinhard Houben (FDP): That is still wrong! 

            Lukas Köhler (FDP): Nonsense!       

All of you, from the SPD to the CDU/CSU over there, have taken care that the nuclear power plants in Germany be disconnected, without providing a secure and affordable alternative. Instead, you stuck billions into the construction of renewable energies without regard to the consequences. The result: Energy-intensive business fled to foreign countries. The BASF, for example, once one of our leading businesses here in Germany, shifts a large part of its production to China and the U.S.A.. That means loss of work in Germany by the hundreds of thousands. 

And who bears this burden? The German citizens and the Mittelstand. Since January 2023, the energy costs for many businesses have risen around 80 percent – 80 percent! How shall small firms, manufacturing undertakings and family businesses support that? You speak of a climate-neutral transformation, yet this transformation for many firms simply means ruin. 

The Mittelstand, the backbone of our economy, is completely ignored by you. The numbers speak a clear language: Over 70,000 businesses in the year 2023 have announced insolvency. That is already 17 percent more than in the previous year. Especially affected are small- and mid-sized businesses which for years suffer under rising energy prices, high duties and your bureaucracy entirely distant from reality. Instead of acting here, you ignore this development, and further intensify the situation by means of senseless prescriptions like the supply chain law or the planned CO2 pricing. 

And now let us speak of your catastrophic debts policy; the new budget needs to come, ja, at some time or other. In the year 2023, we reached a new record: The state indebtedness lies at 2.48 trillion euros. In the next year alone, you plan new debts to the sum of 45 billion euros. These debts will burden our children and grandchildren for decades. Yet instead of finally beginning a change of course, you continue as before and drive the country further into financial ruin. 

The reality which you do not want to see: The German economy finds itself officially in recession. In the year 2023, the gross domestic product shrank around 0.3 percent. For 2024, the Federal government itself now reckons with a further recession of 0.2 percent. And the OECD expects for 2025 a minimal growth of just 0.4 percent – far under the European average. 

Our neighbor countries grow while Germany stagnates or shrinks. You could not entice even Intel to Germany with 10 billion euros more. 

The tax and duties burden in Germany is crushing. Germany has the world’s highest tax quota. 42 percent of income on the average goes to the state. And in regards business, it does not appear better: With an effective tax burden of 29.8 percent, Germany is far above the EU average of 21.7 percent. Countries like Ireland or Estonia pull away economically because they have more favorable business taxes and fewer bureaucratic hurdles. And what do you do? Instead of sinking the tax burden, you introduce still more prescriptions which stifle business. The bureaucracy costs in Germany for the German economy amount each year to around 55 billion euros. 

And now comes the height of absurdity: Your so-called migration policy. While you expend ever more money for uncontrolled immigration, ever less remains left over for the German pensioners, families and employees. In the year 2023, you have levied 36 billions euros alone for the social duties in the migration context. At the same time, German pensioners need to gather deposit bottles so as to make ends meet. That is a bare-faced insult. That is a betrayal of one’s own people. 

My conclusion: Germany needs no utopian transformation which leads to economic catastrophe. We need an authentic economic transition. An end to the ruinous energy transition. An end to the crushing tax and duties burden. And an end to the ideological patronizing of citizens and business. An end to the Ampel economic experiment. Dear colleagues of the FDP, if you want to do something good for the economy: Put an end to the Ampel! What Germany now needs is a policy oriented to reality, a policy for our citizens, for our business and for our future. 

Many thanks. 

 

[trans: tem]

Monday, October 14, 2024

Ulrike Schielke-Ziesing, September 27, 2024, Pensions and Children

German Bundestag, September 27, 2024, Plenarprotokoll 20/189, pp. 24585-24586. 

Frau President. Dear colleagues. Honorable citizens. 

In the Middle Ages, it was common to attempt to heal the sick by draining them of blood by the liter – the sicker, the more and the more often. That, for most, did not turn out well. At some time, one became smarter and abandoned that. Gott sei Dank! 

Yet the Federal government still today thinks of stabilizing the statutory pension by operating on one artery after another. I do not now speak by way of exception of non-insurance benefits, but of the irregular and multiple cutting of the Federal added subsidy within three years until 2027 of a total 10 billion euros. These lopped-off billions will not be invested in, for example, a Generations Capital, but they are simply gone, disappeared into the depths of the Federal government’s budget holes – money which is lacking for the Pension Insurance. 

And thus these cuts lead to that the Pension Insurance’s reserves empty much earlier, and for that the contribution increases earlier and further than planned. The German Pension Insurance Union figures into the reckoning contribution rates of 22.4 percent up to 2040. It is not mentioned that it remains there. The basic reason for that is the limit line for the pension level, which was called up by the SPD only so long as to maintain the shaky construction until the Ampel is history, and a new government of shambles may sweep up. 

In this situation, the government tinkers with a so-called Generations Capital at the pump – beyond the debt brake and with the corresponding subsequent costs. The Federal Audit Authority has calculated that the yield from this Generations Capital can bring by 2039 a relief of the contribution of, believe it or not, 0.4 percentage points, if at all. The German Pension Insurance is rightly concerned that this more likely may not come; which is to say, contribution payments to the account for that will also be ordered. With an authentically funded support for old age insurance, as in, for example, Finland, Canada, Japan or Sweden, this Generations Capital has nothing to do. 

Ja, but why then is it done? Because Herr Scholz has so decided and Herr Lindner so far does not contradict, 

            Hermann Gröhe (CDU/CSU): Where is he, actually?

even when this does not suit colleague Vogel. And precisely that, I do not understand. His colleague Mordhorst said quite openly – cite: “The SPD lies in the face of pensioners and workers.” The Federal Budget Authority expresses it somewhat more finely and figures the added expenditures for the pension package until 2045 at, believe it or not, 507 billion euros, paid by the young people and those yet to be born. 

            Markus Kurth (Greens): But distributed over 20 years!

It is now well established that these generations will not at the outset receive from the pension account what they may pay in; in any event, that the increasing contribution for each employee will soon amount to nearly a year’s vacation. The question is whether these generations can then still at all afford a vacation. 

All of that, dear colleagues, needs not be. It is possible to stabilize the pension system, long-term and prudently. I am thus glad to here today bring in our motion [Drucksache 20/11847] with the title “For a Secure Pension for Our Children”, which does precisely that: Secures the pension long-term, and in fact quite without new debts. 

That will be possible by means of a goal-oriented savings plan for which the state pays in monthly 100 euros for every child of a German citizen, born here and living here permanently up to the age of 18. What is gathered there shall then be administered by a community foundation [Gemenschaftsstiftung]. As a result of the long time period and the compound interest effect, it is possible, with a very reasonable commitment, to save up real wealth specific to a person. We are speaking here of a total 21,600 euros per child, stretched as was said over 18 years. That yields, with a return on capital of four percent, around 214,000 euros. Dear colleagues, that is a generations capital – sensible, feasible and affordable. 

Many thanks.


[trans:tem]