German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/148, pp. 18939-18940.
Frau President. Frau Defense Commissioner. Ladies and gentlemen.
The CDU/CSU this week carves out motions in which it demands,
free of charge, “more weapons for the Ukraine”: Day before yesterday Taurus
cruise missiles, today one million artillery shells. What comes next? Atomic weapons?
Some of my colleagues name this CDU/CSU motion “populistic”. I find this not apt. The populist listens to what the people want and then implements it. Basically, the populist, as a politician, is an authentic employee of the people.
Marianne
Schieder (SPD): O Gott!
Yet what the CDU here demands, the majority of Germans do not want.
Henning
Otte (CDU/CSU): And you are a pacifist?
I know: Direct democracy is to the super democrats of this house a horror. But imagine for once a referendum as in Switzerland, and indeed on the question: Should Germany deliver to the Ukraine cruise missiles and one million artillery shells? My prognosis: You would receive not ten percent for this nonsense.
Nein, ladies and gentlemen of the Union, with this motion, you do not want to make foreign policy – you want only to irritate the government.
Markus Grübel
(CDU/CSU): Nein, we represent German
interests!
And that as opposition is of course your good right, and it, ja, also works out well. For almost two years, the FDP’s lead candidate for the European Parliament, Frau Strack-Zimmermann, passes by no microphone without demanding more weapons for the Ukraine. Yet the day before yesterday she needed to submit to party discipline and vote against the delivery of Taurus cruise missiles. It is plainly so with the FDP’s convictions: At four percent in the polls and in a government which at anytime can fly apart, for a Strack-Zimmermann also is the shirt closer than the trousers.
Politically, the CDU/CSU motion put forward is for two reasons nonsense. In the motion text is quite correctly stated the Bundeswehr’s stock of munitions is at a dangerously low level. Yet then the CDU demands under point 2, “to comply with…the Ukrainian request…for munitions… of all calibres…from the Bundeswehr’s stock to the greatest extent possible.” Here, colleague Otte apparently does not know his own motion. The CDU thus knows that the Bundeswehr is not defense-capable – yet despite this, it wants to further disarm. That surely has features of treason [Das hat schon Züge von Landesverrat].
Henning
Otte (CDU/CSU): You just had to say that!
And second: The war for the Ukraine will not be decided on the battlefield. Everyone knows that. It would meanwhile thus be a German responsibility to start a diplomatic great offensive from the Bundestag,
Sara Nanni
(Greens): Oh ja!
instead of here calculating munitions needs. Were you statesmen, you would, immediately and with regard to the impending U.S. elections, begin such diplomacy and not waste additional time with such senseless motions.
Many thanks.
Joe Weingarten (SPD): That is again the speech of the Russian press office!
Götz Frömming (AfD, turned to the CDU/CSU): Show window motions!
[trans: tem]
