Birgit Malsack-Winkemann, September 30, 2020, 2021 Budget – Foreign Office

German Bundestag, September 30, 2020, Plenarprotokoll 19/179, pp. 22570-22571.

Right honorable Frau President. Worthy members.

You all know the film “The Never-ending Story” – a perfect title for the troubles in and with the Foreign Office. It could also be named “The Announcements Ministry”.

But in order. As we of the AfD, ever again the only party, have reproved: According to a report of the Federal Audit Office from the year 2018 – mark well: 2018 – the Foreign Office had no knowledge concerning the processing status of its application and proof of employment procedures [Zuwendungsverfahren und Verwendungnachweise] of around 2.5 billion euros in the area of humanitarian aid and crisis prevention. Has anything essentially changed? No, and we are now writing of the year 2020, the end of September.

Nevertheless, the Foreign Office, meanwhile and in any case with a more precise viewpoint, has attempted – in the words of the witness, “troubled itself” – to draft a law for the establishment of a Federal office of foreign affairs because the applications and proofs of employment in the future are to be handled by its newly created officials as non-ministerial duties. I repeat: Attempted!

The Federal Audit Office presented a report on this on February 27, 2020. This report is scarcely to be surpassed in regards its catastrophic evaluation.

First of all, the Foreign Office has undertaken no economic examination. Which duties shall be taken over by the new Federal office and which shall remain with the Foreign Office itself, the draft law simply leaves open. It should also be stated, Why is a completely new set of officials needed and which duties shall these assume?

If it is not then known what all the new officials shall do, it is naturally also not known which financial or personnel effects the whole endeavor shall have. Accordingly, the draft law allows to be ascertained neither what the personnel assignments should be nor what effect the new establishment has on the personnel assignments of the Foreign Office itself. In addition, the new Federal office shall be able to form branch offices. And as to why that at all shall be and why the number and size of these shall possibly need be unlimited, there is lacking in the draft law any reason. Is there being set up something of a new officials’ octopus?

            Ulrich Lechte (FDP): What rubbish!

Beyond that, it is thought that a ministerial supplement could be retained for non-ministerial basic duties – obviously not under the designation “ministerial supplement”. Nevertheless, the Foreign Office recognized that this designation for non-ministerial duties, those moreover outside the ministry, could indeed be illegal.

Yet when it is about the acquisition and retention of funding, the Federal cabinet, along with the Foreign Office, suddenly becomes intellectually flexible and discovers the wondrous word “Aufbauzulage” [construction supplement]. A droll idea, thinks the Foreign Office. Since there is still not one legal text for this wonder word, here can one’s own inspiration be allowed to work to full extent.

And the result of this quite individual, ja, peculiar thought process of the Foreign Office was that the total of the so-called construction supplement initially correspond to the full extent of the ministerial supplement, and then over a time period of five years will be melted down at 10 percent per year and then remain at 50 percent. That shall naturally be for all employees. Even for the couriers. What an insult to all honorable taxpayers. Is the Foreign Office, shall we say, a self-service store?

Thereupon the Federal Audit Office – fully according to the law – intervened and the Foreign Office complied by putting forward an economics examination. Yet this was again so insufficient that the Budget Committee with a measures decision on May 13, 2020, charged the Foreign Office to finally ascertain the personnel, material and overhead costs and verify the financial expenditures with serviceable figures.

And quite remarkably: According to the measures decision, only the administration and central office should be in Brandenburg. In other words: You all wish in the future to create a kind of officials’ octopus;

            Franziska Brantner (Greens): That is all in the compensation!

since the branch offices remain untouched. You wish to merely examine the so-called construction supplement. No, ladies and gentlemen, a construction supplement is to be rejected. Since how do you wish to substantiate that to the taxpayers?

And last, but not least: For the fulfillment of this measures decision, the Foreign Office allows itself time; generally understood, from May of this year. Keyword: “Officials’ Mikado”. He who first makes a move, loses.

And in the interim time will furthermore be expended – more or less unexamined – around 2 billion euros per year for humanitarian aid and crisis prevention, and no person knows where essentially this money actually lands.

            Jürgen Hardt (CDU/CSU): You know that guaranteed!

            Ulrich Lechte (FDP): What nonsense!

Which NGOs with fine-sounding names might here rejoice over German tax money? To be continued, ladies and gentlemen.

Thank you.

            Jürgen Hardt (CDU/CSU): “Never-ending Story”.

            Alexander Lambsdorff (FDP): Fake news!

 

 

[trans: tem]

           

 

           

 

 

 

 

 

 

Birgit Malsack-Winkemann, September 10, 2019, Food and Agriculture

Birgit Malsack-Winkemann

Food and Agriculture

German Bundestag, September 10, 2019, Plenarprotokoll 19/110, pp. 13601-13602

[Birgit Malsack-Winkemann is an Alternative für Deutschland Bundestag member from Berlin where she has served for over two decades as a magistrate. She here responds to the proposed 2020 budget for the Food and Agriculture Ministry currently led by Julia Klöckner (CDU).]

Honorable president. Worthy colleagues.

New food and agriculture budget, old problems. The bottom line is that the promotion of agriculture is essentially the result of EU farm subsidies – approximately 58 billion euros for the EU states each year, almost 40 percent of the EU budget.

From the federal government in 2020 comes 965 million euros for the community expenditure “Improvement of Farm Infrastructure and Coastal Protection”, including 200 million euros for the special area plan “Promotion of Rural Development”.

Who receives the money? How sustainable is German agriculture? Researchers illuminate the system for the Bundestag…The result is depressing: Massive sustainability deficits at all levels. Experts judge that the ecological sustainability has even become worse, as was to be read in the Süddeutsche Zeitung of July 12, 2019. With the increased use of agricultural chemicals, the species variety declines and the dependence on imported feeds increases. Intensive forms of animal husbandry without outflow increase and ever more frequently will livestock be one-sidedly culled for high performance. A unique catastrophe! Is that the result of more than a decade of the CDU’s supposedly fabulous ecological agriculture policy, Frau Klöckner? And there is more, since the social and economic consequences correspond to the ecological disaster. Agriculture, like almost all other key sectors, shows large-scale loss of employment: During 2012 to 2017 alone, cattle raising declined 18 percent, dairy 28 percent, and swine raising between 2007 and 2016 by one-half. Many farmers complain of financial pressure, and many wish to re-direct but lack the means. Consumers in Germany want healthy, ecological food yet farmers find no help for conversion of their farm [Höf] to a bio-farm.

            Artur Auernhammer (CDU/CSU): Oh, God!

Germany is far behind other European countries in ecological rural construction. You have aimed at 20 percent by 2020. And where are you, Frau Minister? Between a ridiculous 7 and 9 percent. And what do you do, Frau Klöckner? You indeed promise you will seek payments from Europe for environmental affairs and assert that you promote small and mid-sized operations [Betriebe] with the so-called redistribution premium. Yet in truth you promote – directly with your system of redistribution premiums – industrial lobbies and thereby the continued death of farming.

Since the first 46 acres of an operation are more strongly supported than the next, the redistribution premium with all the palaver and print comes to 2,000 euros a year. With the ridiculous sum of 2,000 euros a year you evidently maintain not one, single job. Germany can do more here. The EU regulations permit the redistribution of up to 30 percent of the EU’s direct payments to small operations. That is what we require, the AfD, the only Alternative for Germany.

            Gerd Clemens Hocker (FDP): Not for agriculture!

Actually, it is only 7 percent, Frau Minister, and that is your responsibility.

You thus defend Germany’s big business with your ridiculous 2,000 euro redistribution premium. Since at the agriculture ministries’ conference at the end of April, beginning of May, in Brussels it was agreed that any member state which distributed some money for the first hectare need not fear a capping of payments at 100,000 euros. You, Frau Minister, know quite precisely that a fifth of farm land in Germany belongs to only 1 percent of the operations, 80 percent of the money going to only 20 percent. Thus Südzucker [world’s largest sugar producer], with a profit of 300 million euros in the last two fiscal years, cashed in 2016 a subvention sum of 1.82 million euros. And you, Frau Klöckner, epitomize this utterly decrepit system and its unbearable bureaucracy with your ridiculous redistribution premium and even now permit  yourself to celebrate this patent scandal which is ruining our farmers.

The principle “More money for more surface area” destroys all. Across Europe, it is leading the small farmer to give up his farm. With the false agricultural policy, between 2005 and 2016 alone were almost 30 percent of all operations quasi-publicly eliminated. It cannot thus go on, Frau Minister. How about respecting the employment figure of an operation or ecological animal husbandry and protection and the re-foresting of the drought-damaged woods of our native land, instead of further de-foresting the woods for inefficient windmills destined for the toxic waste dump?

That is what we require, the AfD, the only Alternative for Germany.

Instead you promote a kind of not to be excelled industrial-lobby big business when you require that an operation may maintain only two large animal units per hectare of surface area, that is two cows or 20 sheep. In the rural economy, the fertilizer and seed manufacturers, the feed industry and before all the marketing firms are doing fine, only not our German farmers.

Our farmers on account of an ever greater tax burden daily struggle for their survival. But with industrial lobbyism,  garnished with poisoned sugar bits like the redistribution premium, life is much easier, isn’t it, Frau Klöckner? It is precisely this policy which will secure the defeat of your party at the ballot box and for that you can thank the future people’s party, the only Alternative for Germany, the AfD.

Thank you kindly.

[Translated by Todd Martin]