German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/150, pp. 19170-19171.
Right honorable Frau President. Right honorable colleagues. Dear spectators in the hall and on YouTube. And, of course, dear Frau Baerbock.
One of my favorite headlines of last week was: “Russian Campaign Uncovered”. The Foreign Office shall have undertaken a data analysis which of course is totally trustworthy, yet quite incidentally is put forward in Spiegel.
This data analysis comes to the conclusion that on X thousands of German language tweets were removed which include the accusation that the Federal government neglects its own people so as to support the Ukraine. O mein Gott! How has it come to this? One is, ja, completely shocked. Or yet: One is informed.
One need only read the Finance Ministry’s report of December 2023 in which is found that, since the war’s beginning, Germany has arranged a total expenditure in the sum of 27.8 billion euros for the benefit of the Ukraine. This number does not at all include the German contribution for the EU program. Thus, 27.8 billion euros: That is nearly the 2024 budget for the Foreign Office, the Family Ministry and the Agriculture Ministry reckoned together. Yet for this Ampel of horrors, this presumably is all just peanuts. Electricity comes out of the socket, money grows on trees and stylists are paid by the taxpayers.
Apropos taxpayers: While we here in this country burden our
citizens’ income with tax rates between 14 and 45 percent, there is in the
Ukraine a slim flat income tax of 18 percent, plus a 1.5 percent war tax. That
means, the average Ukrainian oligarch pays less tax as a percentage than most
of the normal employees in Germany. Presumably, the Christmas ski season in the
Ukraine thus again runs recht gut.
Deborah
Düring (Greens): You should be ashamed! This is unbelievable!
To the enjoyment of these pleasures come of course only those able to afford it and, in wondrous ways, are not with their countrymen at the front,
Vice-president
Petra Pau: Herr member?
at the front, where entire generations of Ukrainians are sent to death by their President, instead of finally starting armistice negotiations.
Jürgen Hardt (CDU/CSU): Kremlin propaganda!
Peter Beyer
(CDU/CSU): Shame on you!
Vice-president Petra Pau: Herr member – I have stopped the clock – do you accept a question or remark from member Farle?
No, thanks.
And this naturally interests the Ampel not at all.
In Germany meanwhile flutter into the mail boxes the utility bills for renters, which demand in part additional payments in the four-figure range. It is estimated that an average 581 euros has been the additional payment per renter. Price driver number one: The energy costs.
The government’s tellers of fairy tales will now again object that Putin is guilty for the high energy prices. That however is not the truth. Since it is the foreign policy and the energy policy of the Ampel and its black-red predecessor government which have gotten us into trouble.
Besides, no one yet has been able to explain to me why it is now so much better to be dependent on American LNG instead of Russian gas. It certainly cannot be the fault of Putin's evil Politik; otherwise, the government might also make no energy deals with the United Arab Emirates. I do not know whether you have heard, but women’s rights do not look so good there.
Deborah Düring (Greens): Since when are you interested in women’s rights? This is just a farce!
Gabriele Katzmarek
(SPD): An AfDer mouths the words “women’s rights”!
Yet to the Federal government it is quite obviously all the same – just so as the human rights of the Israelis who are routinely rocketed by their Hamas neighbors and cut down with the utmost barbarity. For years, the Federal government nevertheless supports the so-called Palestinian aid work of UNWRA with contributions in the millions.
Ulrich
Lechte (FDP): Have pity! Mercy!
And for ever has there been evidence that this organization supports the Hamas terrorists.
Peter Beyer
(CDU/CSU): You are the Kremlin’s useful idiots!
On X on Sunday, we were allowed to learn that twelve members had participated in the Hamas surprise attack on October 7 of last year. And for precisely these long since known reasons, my delegation for years ever and ever again demanded to stop the payments to UNRWA and to completely dissolve UNRWA.
Yet ever again the same thing happened: When the great media wave of indignation rolled, the payments were frozen for effect in the media, only so as to again be furtively undertaken a brief time later. And thus this Federal government not only supports terrorists and murderers, but furthermore, for example, the traffickers in the Mediterranean. And here besides we have moved for the elimination of the means.
While we are on eliminations: We have also moved that the means for the political foundations in the Foreign Office budget of around 84 million euros be cut. With this money, all of the old parties manage a kind of network of their own embassies. Look, for example, at the website of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation. There are worldwide locations; for example, in Manila, Islamabad, Lima, Harari and Tiflis. And so it is in regards all the foundations of the old parties – except of course in regards the AfD.
Yet the question actually is: Need the German taxpayer pay for that? Our answer to that is quite clear: Nein, he need not. In that we put this question in regards all positions of Frau Baerbock’s budget, we could identify a savings potential of a total sum of 1.4 billion euros. We thereby require 21.5 percent less money than this Ampel of horrors. And quite honestly, I think, there is still more.
Many thanks for your attention.
Ulrich
Lechte (FDP): Dank sei Gott!
[trans: tem]
