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]

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]

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]

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]

 

Joachim Wundrak, September 27, 2024, Bundeswehr, Iraq and the U.S.A.

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/189, pp. 24644-24645. 

Frau President. Frau Defense Commissioner. Herr Minister. Ladies and gentlemen.   

Again the Federal government puts forward a motion for the prolongation of a mandate which presents an inadmissible mingling of the U.S.-led operation Inherent Resolve for the combatting the “Islamic State” on one side and the NATO Iraq mission for advising and training the Iraqi armed forces on the other. As in previous years, we reject the presented draft mandate. 

First, since 2019 the IS has been militarily defeated. The further and long-term containment [Eindämmung] of IS is the duty of the sovereign states of Syria and Iraq. The continuing presence of foreign armed forces in Syria, without the agreement of Syria and without a UN mandate, merely on the basis of an explanation of the right to self-defense according to Article 51 of the UN Charter, is to be increasingly evaluated as counter to international law. This applies in especial measure to the presence of NATO partners U.S.A. and Turkey, as also the German Bundestag’s experts indicate. 

The Federal government has shown itself to be thoroughly aware of this problematic and thus two years ago withdrew from the mandate the mission of German aircraft in Syrian airspace. Yet support of violations of Syrian airspace by the allies with German contributions of air refueling and radar surveillance is also in our view illegal. 

The U.S.A. continues to maintain around two dozen support points with nearly 1,000 soldiers in Syria, against the will of the government in Damascus and for the withholding of the output of Syria’s rich oil fields. 

And the Iraqi government – we have just heard it – has since 2020 raised an objection to the presence of 2,500 American soldiers in its country. The Iraqi Defense Minister Thabat Al-Abbas has now publicly announced that the Iraqi and U.S. governments have agreed to a step-wise withdrawal of U.S. troops and their allies. The withdrawal of the soldiers of the U.S.-led counter Daesh coalition shall follow in two stages. The coalition wants to give up by September 2025 its support points in Bagdad and other parts of Iraq. By September 2026, the coalition shall also leave the autonomous Kurdish area in northern Iraq. This plan is still not confirmed by the U.S. government, yet nevertheless indicates the direction of the foreseeable development. 

What the withdrawal of U.S. armed forces along with allies from Iraq announced by the Iraqi government means for the continued presence of NATO in Iraq presently remains unclear. Nevertheless, the abrupt and chaotic termination of the missions in Afghanistan and Mali should be a warning for Germany and the Bundeswehr. For the signals in the Near and Middle East are stormy. An involvement of NATO and thus also of the Bundeswehr in armed conflict in Iraq is not acceptable. The constitutional core duty of the Bundeswehr is the defense of the country. And Germany is defended neither in the Hindukush nor in Iraq. The NATO mission outside of the alliance area we fundamentally reject. NATO should be consistently directed defensively [Die NATO sollte konsequent defensiv ausgerichtet werden]. 

For the named reasons, we therefore reject the presented motion. 

I thank you for your attention. 

 

[trans: tem]