German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 21/49, pp. 5757-5759.
Right honorable Herr President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen. Dear countrymen.
Initially I want to remember the dead and wounded of the terror attack in Australia. We stand against this brutalization of and the growing violence against the vulnerable. It makes me speechless with which means throughout the world the struggle of the religions is ever still on the daily order, be it in the Near East, at attacks on German Christmas markets, or now in Sydney where a Jewish community wanted to celebrate the festival of lights. All of these incidents are to be condemned and political consequences need to be drawn, and precisely for that reason we as parliament need decide to speak out against religious fanaticism, extremism and terrorism. It is therefore only fitting when we as the Alternative für Deustschland demand consistently deporting perpetrators without German citizenship to their home countries, since these present a danger for all Germans, with or without a migration background. In that regard, in the various religions there should certainly exist a consensus, and which should enjoin peace.
It is precisely these negotiations for peace which we since 2022 ever again demand for the Ukraine and Russia. The German governments under Olaf Scholz and Friedrich Merz have allowed themselves a long time for this. In the meantime, the re-elected President of the United States, Donald Trump, seizes the initiative and mediates between the parties to the conflict. The goal needs be ending the senseless death on both sides. I for years have said: The Ukraine will not be able to win this war.
And what were the political consequences? Herr Merz burdens the German taxpayers with 70 billion euros of debt for weapons deliveries and military assistance to the Ukraine – and here we do not know to this day into which channels it in part trickles away – and with an additional 11.5 billion euros in the next budget. In addition comes the Bürgergeld payments in a sum of 6 billion euros per year to Ukrainians.
Before which challenges do we now stand? After almost four years of war, hundreds of thousands of soldiers have fallen or been wounded; in addition, comes the civilian victims and a destroyed land. The United States for months have clearly signaled it will withdraw from the circle of supporters of the war. Yet that also means that the billions required for additional weapons purchases, for example in the U.S.A., now need to be paid for by Europe alone – thus, new debts for Germany and precisely that is completely unacceptable.
I thus insist: It was and is not our war. At the beginning of the destruction was clear that here much money will be required for the reconstruction, that however also much more can be earned. Precisely there has Friedrich Merz been able to gather his best experiences in his mother house, BlackRock. Quite according to the motto: “Good business with other people’s money” [Mit fremdem Geld lässt sich gut wirtschaften], the Chancellor proceeds with his over-reaching plan to illegally expropriate Russian state assets and to give it to the Ukraine. This announcement alone pours additional oil on the fire of this war. Beyond that, the Chancellor promises that Germany self-evidently is readily available for an eventual default of payments. As has been said, Herr Merz: Other people’s money – the money of the Germans – is plainly easier given than one’s own.
In common with your Union comrades in Brussels, you impose one sanction after another which should be directed against Russia, yet which primarily harm Germany. The energy prices burden the private budgets even so heavily as those of business.
Britta Haßelmann (Greens): Do you make a memorial of Putin, who has bombed every week, every day?
You are responsible for the death of the German economy, and there, Frau Haßelmann, the tears come to me. We in Germany in the year 2025 have lost almost 1,000 industrial workplaces per day; 60 bankruptcies per day.
Britta
Haßelmann (Greens): Are you already through with the Ukraine?
It affects the automobile industry, its suppliers and thereby the skilled trades and the Mittelstand. And “gone” means gone. You need be politically responsible for that, yet our children and grandchildren need to solve this dilemma.
Vice-president Omid Nouripour: Herr Chrupalla, do you allow an interim question from member Hoffmann?
No, later please.
Vice-president
Omid Nouripour: Then continue readily.
And these need already today shoulder the financing of your credits. You make debts so as to be able to cope with the basic expenditures of the social system. The pensioners you fob off in the future with 48 percent of the last years of service. You drive those who create value, after at least 45 years of work, into old age poverty. Yet you want, ja, to bring precisely the pensioners again into an occupation and then call that an active pension [Aktivrente]. Know, Herr Merz, one as Chancellor can scarcely more dismissively deal with these who keep the social state running with their work.
At the same time you drive forward the de-industrialization, willfully bring us into conflict with Russia and support a corrupt system around the still president Zelenskyi. Your colleagues of the Union delegation emphasize to the press the German Bundestag should be tied up in the use of the frozen Russian assets, and that shows us two things: First, you want to have your perfidious plan provided with a parliamentary majority. And second, we as members should agree to the almost certainly arising contributions of billions to the further support of the Ukraine. That is a deceit scarcely to be surpassed!
Steffen
Bilger (CDU/CSU): Hä? Why then should
the Bundestag occupy itself with
it?
You travel today and tomorrow for the EU summit. Should you there make good on precisely these commitments, with your solo you act completely against the interests of the German citizens. And I may therein remind you: In Germany are lacking investment means for the vital infrastrucure, for streets, bridges, railways, schools, hospitals and kindergartens.
We are all elected by the German people so as to bring forward our country, Germany. Besides, with Victor Orbàn, Andrej Babis and Robert Fico, three EU countries have already indicated the rejection of using the Russian assets, or giving financial guaranties for the Ukraine. So much for your European unity. And those in the Union who still some weeks ago made themselves advocates of the transatlantic relations, now slowly note that there are no more guaranties and no hegemon. The United States’ new security strategy shows us quite clearly: In the center stands the U.S.A. – and only the U.S.A. – and which already has written off the partnership with the old Europe.
Jens Spahn (CDU/CSU): And therefore your young people make a pilgrimage to America!
Simply nothing is understood of how one can bring balance to the continent and Europe’s interior security with a failed migration policy and lacking a relationship to Russia.
And once again our Chancellor appears to falsely analyze this announcement. Driven by his old Federal Republic antipathy against the east, he drives forward strategies which let the graves become ever deeper, in foreign lands even so at home. At the CDU party day in Magdeburg, Herr Merz once again showed his quite charming side as he said he had the good fortune to have grown up in the west. And here you once again have misunderstood something: It is we eastern Germans who have given ourselves to the long way of integration in a unified Germany. We do not want to return to the old Federal Republic.
Ralf
Stegner (SPD): You’ve still not arrived!
In that you give citizens in the east the feeling that, for you, they are of less value, you again prove your incapacity for dealing with people.
Jens Spahn
(CDU/CSU): That is simply just nonsense, what you are telling here!
And therefore, Herr Chancellor, I am happy that you grew up in the west. You would have failed us in the east!
Jens Spahn
(CDU/CSU): Oje, deeper is does not
get!
Allow me in conclusion just briefly go into the Chancellor’s announcement to set up a multinational troop for the Ukraine. You thereby show not only that you continue to want to spin the escalation spiral in Europe. You speak of securities for the Ukraine, but mean armament and the construction of new scenarios of intimidation in Europe.
Steffen Bilger
(CDU/CSU): That is bad for your Russian friends!
For me and us, you however also show that we, with our positioning for peace and against the reinstatement of conscription at the present point in time, stand exactly on the right side. Since this reinstatement indeed later becomes what you here today and also what you yesterday announced, and is in a later future only to be rejected. You said yesterday we would need to respond to a Russian attack. Meanwhile now, not unjustly, the German press also asks: Do you know what you actually said there? Do you actually know what that means, Herr Merz? – We cannot trust you. For you, it is not about the defense of the country. It is to be feared that you with your policy, in view of a loss of tension, initiate or want to initiate deploying conscripts in the Ukraine.
Lisa Badum
(Greens): You are a problem for the defense of the country!
We do not trust you with our children!
And in regards the present negotiations with the Ukraine has become very clear that it will be no part of NATO and thereby is excluded a possible alliance. You however attempt with all means to create options for yourself and the Ukraine to prolong the war. To that are we quite clearly opposed.
The President of the United States had begun the negotiations with Russia as equals [auf Augenhöhe]. Your attempt, Herr Merz, to make clientele policy for Herr Zelenskyi will not be crowned with success. With your kind of policy-making, you were and remain at the children’s table. Herr Chancellor, a state is no international finance concern. Leave therefore the foreign policy to the foreign policy makers, and finally concern yourself over how you may relieve the German economy, the Mittelstand and the skilled trades, in west as in east. For that, you wanted to become Chancellor. Finally trouble yourself for Germany!
Ladies and gentlemen, I am happy to have left the east-west conflict behind us. With an international troop, you again conjure this up, Herr Merz. You, on that account, are and remain a diehard of the old FRG. You do not consider the future of our country or our children; you as Chancellor are already history.
Sara Nanni
(Greens): Who actually wrote that for you?
I wish you and your families a peaceful Christmas and hope for a peaceful year in 2026.
Steffen Bilger
(CDU/CSU): For the Ukraine, too!
Many hearty thanks.
[trans: tem]
