Götz Frömming, May 14, 2025, Cultural Policy

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 21/3, pp. 109-110. 

Right honorable Frau Vice-president. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen. 

Immediately after me, the new Culture State Minister Wolfram Weimer will here make his first speech. I can say: We are very curious [gespannt], Herr Weimer. In the run up, it was reported that you are a conservative man and that here was negotiated an ideological decision to now name you Culture Minister. The talk was even of a shift to the right [Rechtsruck] and the beginning of a new Kulturkampf.

We find that astonishing in view of the fact that you replace Claudia Roth. More ideological than the previous culture policy under Claudia Roth, it can scarcely be, ladies and gentlemen. The talk of a shift to the right in the culture policy is therefore pure hypocrisy. A shift to the right considered from the standpoint of a Claudia Roth, that would be nothing further than a normalization. 

In fact in regards these accusations, it’s about the money. The culture scene is highly subventioned, without tax money it is scarcely viable. The Spiegel interpreted the naming of Weimer as “a prolongation of the minor inquiry” of the Union to the Federal government which is known under the shorthand, “551 questions”. Now the Federal government could itself answer these questions. We will remind you not to forget that.

We certainly expect from the new Federal government no shift to the right, ladies and gentlemen. An escape from the left would be fully sufficient. It would be fully sufficient if no more tax money flows into extreme leftist propaganda which passes itself off as art. 

            Filiz Polat (Greens): So, really! What is that then?

 I know that you here feel yourselves addressed; that is also thus correct. 

The culture policy in the era of Frau Roth was not merely leftist, ladies and gentlemen, it was anti-German, anti-Christian, and was directed – we have previously heard – also against Israel. What we, with the documenta and during the Berlinale, needed to experience in anti-semitic invective was unbearable. It has never come to a real reappraisal of those events. 

Much thereof speaks that in regards to what we have seen, only the tip of the iceberg is dealt with. The leftist anti-semitism has more deeply penetrated the culture scene than many want to admit. Were it an anti-semitism coming from the right, ladies and gentlemen, I am sure Heaven and Hell would have long since been set in motion against it. 

We therefore welcome that the new State Minister, as a first act in office, has separated himself from the upper officials and confidants of his predecessor – I now leave the names aside. Their anti-Israel attitude was “known to the scene”, as the Judische Allgemeine recently wrote. 

So as to name one additional positive point: The agreement with the house of Hohenzollern on the storage place of art treasures is a good sign. Since let us look back: Frau Roth and the Greens wanted, as is known, to break up and re-name the Prussian Cultural Foundation. It meant nothing other than to eradicate Prussia. Frau Baerbock even let the Bismarck room in the Foreign Office be re-named. Frau Roth wanted to fade out [überblenden] the Christian inscription on the Berliner Schloss and have the cross on the roof preferably dismantled. 

Ladies and gentlemen, to the Greens, all is a horror which is German. Peoples and cultures they only accept when they are as foreign and exotic as possible. Yet who does not love his own, ladies and gentlemen, he cannot also respect the foreign. 

            Alice Weidel (AfD): Exactly!

 Herr Weimer, you see in Christianity, as you formulated, the opportunity for a “cultural renaissance of the West”. You thus clearly have concepts different from your predecessor and we are therein very curious. Primarily, we are curious as to how you will get along with Frau Nancy Faeser, who now as a kind of revenge of the SPD could possibly overtake the chairmanship of the Culture Committee so as to be able to there continue her fight against so-called disinformation which, ja, principally comes from her house. That will become an exciting show. 

            Filiz Polat (Greens): What then is that for an unashamed imputation?

 Ladies and gentlemen, it is besides no political goal of the AfD to generally abolish the cultural subventions which were here and there maintained. It is merely our goal to end the one-sided political enlistment of theaters and other cultural institutions. We want to no rightist theater. We also want no leftist theater. We want an independent theater. 

Britta Haßelmann (Greens): What you want is nevertheless not to be reconciled                        with artistic and cultural freedom! 

Ladies and gentlemen, the leftist daily newspaper taz fears, following the change of government, a headwind for many leftist cultural projects. We do not fear that. We even hope for it. To stay in the metaphor, ladies and gentlemen: He can really sail who also comes forward with a headwind. In this sense: Herr State Minister, make a steady wind [machen Sie ordentlich Wind]! In this regard, you can count on us. 

Many thanks. 

 

[trans: tem]

Götz Frömming, May 22, 2025, Cultural Goods

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 21/7, pp. 540-541. 

Herr President. Herr State Minister. Ladies and gentlemen. 

The protection of cultural goods is a concern which we share. Nevertheless, this lofty aim ever again encounters the question: To whom belong culturally significant works of art actually? We in the past years have learned that to each people is due a right to its cultural goods, and these cultural goods if necessary need to be returned. If that however, ladies and gentlemen, applies for African peoples, so it needs also apply for our own people. 

Three years ago, our former Foreign Minister, in common with the then Federal Commissioner for Culture, handed over the so-called Benin Bronzes to the state of Nigeria. The Nigerian President immediately gave by decree the rights of ownership to the official Oba of Benin, and thereby to the private possession of the ruling family. In the U.S.A., there is a group of descendants of former slaves from Benin, who expressly rejected the return of the Bronzes, and indeed with the words – cite: As a result, the descendants of slaveholders receive a second opportunity to profit from the enslavement of people. It is embarrassing that the Federal government had a hand in that. 

Western ethnological museums for long saw therein their mission to preserve such cultural goods, to research and to make them accessible to the public. Today, all of that is colonial robbery art which needs to be given back, and then in the worst case disappears. Protection of culture can be very paradoxical, ladies and gentlemen.   

Let us look at the reverse case. The State Museum of Berlin and the Prussian State Library stored during the Second World War a large part of their inventory in places which today belong to Poland. The most well-known collection is the Berlinka, from the Prussian treasury, which is now to be found in Cracow. Among thousands of valuable, Middle Age manuscripts are writings of Luther, Goethe and Schiller – clearly, German national cultural goods. Ladies and gentlemen, these manuscripts need finally return to Germany. We expect your engagement, Herr State Minister. 

Additional German cultural goods are found in depositories and storerooms in Russia – presently difficult to access – and in the surrounding states, and in the Ukraine. Why actually has the Federal government not demanded, in consideration for our billions in assistance payments to the Ukraine, the return of the art still to be found there, among which are valuable paintings and precious porcelains; for example, from Dresden? These cultural goods also belong to us, and we gladly want it back. 

Ladies and gentlemen, an inquiry of the AfD delegation has yielded that also in Georgia German cultural goods are still to be found. 70,000 books have been found in a cellar of the University of Tiflis. This treasure was offered to the Federal Republic of Germany, yet the gift was rejected. Supposedly, it is too expensive to restore these books. I need be quite astonished. Recently, the Elders Council decided, in compensation for members’ air travel, to pay hundreds of thousands of euros to water swamps and for cooking pots for Rwanda. Ladies and gentlemen, this money should have better been used for the German cultural goods, in this case in Georgia. 

            Rebecca Lenhard (Greens): That is repulsive!

There are still further examples; for example, the Paramentenschatz [liturgical vestments]. Here, we have a cultural good in the hands of the church; the state has not the least access. The Evangelical Church decided to simply give it away. Here unfortunately, the law put forward does not have effect. We see here a need for subsequent improvement. 

Ladies and gentlemen, let me in closing say: We should grant all peoples and nations have the right to the conservation of their respective cultural goods. Yet we have not only the right, but also the obligation to conserve our own culture and all cultural goods which the German people have created. We owe that to our ancestors and to the generations which come after us. 

Many thanks. 

 

[trans: tem]

Alice Weidel, May 14, 2025, Democracy, Migration, Extremism

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 21/3, pp. 89-92. 

Right honorable Frau President. Right honorable Herr Chancellor. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen. 

Weakness and instability are the signals which proceed from your historic false start, Herr Merz. You are the Chancellor of the second ballot, and from this stain you will no more be free. You are weak primarily for one reason: You are a Chancellor of the leftists. 

            Heidi Reichinnek (Linke): We are not to blame for everything! 

            Sören Pellman (Linke): This is an impudence, what you say! That is ridiculous.

Your way to the Chancellor’s office is lined with broken election promises and capitulations before the Linke and Greens. The debt brake, to which you high and holy wanted to adhere, you have removed in a financial policy coup d’état, with help of the Greens, with an old Bundestag voted out of office. 

This manner also shows your character, Herr Merz. Up to 1.7 trillion euros in new debt are thereby authorized at one blow. In sum, that is the doubling of the Federal debt – and this in times of recession, of the shrinking economy and the accelerating impoverishment of the citizens. What you thereby serve up, you know quite precisely, since you yourself before the election warned of it. This money will trickle away in all possible channels. The urgently necessary consolidation of the state finances is thereby sacrificed, and the costs for the taxpayer and consumers will drastically rise. In regards another opportunity, you flirt with new taxes and tax increases. And that is an additional broken election promise. Almost 47 billion euros of tax money was devoured in 2024 by the Bürgergeld – you name it basic security – which has long since mutated into migrant money. 47 billion! Almost every second recipient is a foreign citizen. The naturalized foreigners have already fallen out of the statistics. 

            Luigi Pantisano (Linke): What’s with the foreigners from Switzerland?

Around 4 billion euros go to Syrians. That corresponds to the entire budget of the Federal police. Afghans – the nationality with the highest criminality charge in regards violent crimes – received around 1.6 billion euros, as much as foreseen for the social housing construction. It cannot so continue! You however are too weak to change course. 

It continues: The promised abolition of the heating Verbot and the cold expropriation of homeowners by means of the compulsory heat pump is also already again disowned. Exactly like the combustion engine Verbot. You go further with the destruction of the German automobile industry. And you continue Habeck’s heat pump coercion by other means in which you namely make heating with oil and gas even more expensive by the CO₂ air management. 

Instead of ending the planned economy wrong way of the energy change, you even give it a new push, for you, under pressure from the Greens, have even written climate neutrality into the Basic Law. You have additionally cemented the German wrong way drive into impoverishment and de-industrialization. That is dramatic! Heating now becomes more expensive by around 20 percent – the situation this week in the newspapers – tendency rising. The assets of private households in Germany, which in European comparison as well lie in the lower range, according to the Bundesbank’s newest numbers adjusted for inflation since 2021, sank around 20 percent. 20 percent for private households!  The industrial production is in a dive in any case, while the unemployment rises steeply because the production in Germany recedes. It will be stopped. Why? Because the energy prices are too high. 

Without a reliable and affordable energy supply, no economic reconstruction is possible. That goes only by means of a fundamentally different energy policy. End the energy transition. You need to push the re-entry into nuclear power, coal power and the use of advantageous natural gas from Russia! 

            Konstantin von Notz (Greens): Still going to Moscow!

All of that, you do not want. The election promises to correct the nuclear power exit by a responsible CDU Kanzerlin, you in any case have broken. The rest of the world commits to nuclear power. You cling to the Greens’ fetish, hostile to technology. You thus ruin Germany as a business venue. 

Even when you hit upon something correct, half-measures and chaos come forth. The turning back of illegal migrants who enter from secure third states needs be forcefully pursued. It is not discretionary. Border controls and turning back need to ensue without a break and long-term, and not just as momentary pacification measures. Since the illegal immigration into Germany and into the German social system needs to be driven back to zero. 

Turning back at the borders is just a first step, and you even stumble over that. The migration magnets need to be turned off, which lead poverty migrants from all the world over the EU borders to Germany. The Bürgergeld is only one of them. The family reunifications for refugees and asylum seekers, as well as the practices of turbo- and mass-naturalization, need to be immediately completely set aside! Millions of people in illegal ways have come into the country in the last ten years as a consequence of the migration policy rule of injustice which a CDU Kanzerlin set in motion. Hundreds of thousands are immediately obliged to depart, for countless others the residency status needs to be examined and if necessary revoked. To that end, nothing comes from you. 

The migration criminality as a consequence has exploded. The murders, knifings and rapes go on, day by day, week by week. To speak out on these facts is, in the eyes of your subordinated Constitution Defense, allegedly hostile to the constitution. I named named facts, which is urgently necessary so as to finally correct this mis-development. 

The citizens await your plans for sending back and deportation [Abschiebung]. They will well need continue to wait; since your coalition partner, the SPD, does not want to cooperate in any of that. You are stuck in the asylum case, Herr Merz. You yourself have actually built this case because you submitted yourself to the dogma of the anti-democratic firewall which, for the Linke voted out of office here, shall secure a long-term subscription to power. 

And the domestic secret service, the Constitution Defense, which in regards the fulfillment of its actual duties, the defense against Islamic terror and foreign espionage, has miserably failed, arbitrarily and abusively cements this dogma. 

            Konstantin von Notz (Greens): Agent Moscow!

The absurd confidential opinion, which the SPD Interior Minister voted out of office launched shortly before the end of office, is the best evidence for that. Under pressure of the legal situation, the Constitution Defense needed to meanwhile take back its classification. 

            Konstantin von Notz (Greens): Such rubbish! 

            Luigi Pantisano (Linke): That is false!

To you, despite that, it is right to discriminate against our delegation and over 10 million voters, and withhold from us essential parliamentary rights. 

            Britta Haßelmann (Greens): No idea! You would have it gladly!

That the Constitution Defense’s defamations are ludicrous, you know quite precisely. An ethnic term for the people is not counter to the Basic Law; since the Basic Law itself takes it as a basis [Ein ethnischer Volksbegriff ist nicht grundgesetzwidrig; denn das Grundgesetz selbst legt ihn zugrunde]. 

            Saskia Esken (SPD): Then re-read it!

Ah, ja, that was a caesura, because you all have experiences with real extremists. Since an extremist is he who installs and maintains the destructive policy of the open borders. The U.S. foreign minister Marco Rubio certainly needs be recalled: An extremist is he who under the label of Corona preventive measures spreads panic, arbitrarily limits basic rights, and with hate campaigns, with the aid of the public broadcasting, covers, defames and discriminates against those not vaccinated. 

That you laugh, I can imagine.

An extremist is he who destroys the welfare of the citizens and the nation with an eco-socialist transformation. 

            Britta Haßelmann (Greens): You’ve gotten lost with your speech!

An extremist is he who, with majorities voted out of office, manipulates the constitution so to present himself with a debts blank check – at the cost of the taxpayer and of the future generations. 

And now you come in!

            Katharina Dröge (Greens): What was that then?

An extremist is he who with a hammer gang attacks those who think differently, and for that, with the blessing of Bavarian Minister-president Söder, receives a culture prize, paid for by the state, for smashing life and limb [Gelenke und Leben zu zertrümmern]. You should be ashamed! 

An extremist is he who like the Linke wants to overthrow the system, and shoot the rich, or stick in works camps, and, despite that, will be flattered by you with submissive pandering. 

An extremist is

            Ralf Stegner (SPD): Who speaks like you!

he who wants to abolish our free, democratic basic order – you screech the entire time, I know that it hits you – 

Britta Haßelmann (Greens): Yet you know what’s what with the theme! Look at your ranks!

the pluralism, democratic basic principles, bürgerliche freedoms and the freedom of opinion. He is an extremist! 

To maintain this mendacious, leftist, double morality, you plan, under the false label of the fight against hate and agitation, an attack on the freedom of opinion which even exceeds the excesses of the Ampel. You want to intimidate and silence the citizens, thereby to still be able for a while to go on in the old, false paths and sun yourself in the shine of power. 

To the same purpose serves the martial rhetoric with which you spread the war mood so as to divert from the mountains of domestic problems and conflicts. The agitators in your own ranks still bloviate, far from every reality, of Ukraine’s victory over Russia, without saying that would be without having a third world war – and with a third world certainly not. You yourself flash with your advances that the European leadership should dissemble [simulieren sollen], just so in Washington as in Moscow. That is no wonder; since vis-à-vis both powers, you yourself have already shattered very much political porcelain. Of a return to diplomatic reason in the Foreign Office under your government, is also not much to see. If it’s up to you, weapons deliveries to the Ukraine should no longer be spoken of in public. Does that mean you want to deliver Taurus cruise missiles to Kiev, secretly, silently, easily, so as to manage the escalation of the Ukraine war and make Germany a target? 

The citizens have a right to learn what you propose. You however have no answer. Since your government is not a government for citizens, but a government for warmongers and the maintenance of one’s own power. And before all, you have no answer to the question which most moves the citizens: Where remains the political change for the voters, which the people in this country voted for? When finally comes the break with the false, leftist policy which has thrown our country into prosperity annihilation and de-industrialization, into servitude and insecurity? Should there still be anyone in the Union who still has a sense of responsibility for our country 

Britta Haßelmann (Greens): Please do not speak of that!

and wants these questions answered, he knows where he may find the alternative majorities. 

I am grateful. 

 

[trans: tem]

Björn Höcke, March 20, 2025, Financial Coup d’État

Thüringer Landtag, Plenarsitzung 8/12, pp. 2-4. 

Right honorable Herr President. Right honorable colleague members. Right honorable visitors in the gallery. 

I want to beforehand admit that I stand before you today with a feeling that represents a mixture of rage and sorrow: Rage and sorrow over what happened two days ago in the German Bundestag. We need to speak of it, that we have a political special situation in Germany these days. On that account, the summoning of this special plenary session has been enormously important, and was a correct decision which we as the AfD delegation have reached. I very much regret that even in regards this important theme that Minister-president Voigt is not in the house. 

Right honorable colleague members, on February 23^rd of this year, the state sovereign of the Federal Republic of Germany with a perfectly clear result voted out of office the Ampel government. The Greens lose massively, the SPD brings in its historically worst result and the FDP left the Bundestag. The message of the voters was clear: We want no further so, we want a fundamentally new direction in the German Politik, we want less multi-culti, we want less climate policy, we want less debt, we want more fiscal solidarity. The was the clear message of the sovereign. 

And what did the CDU do, did Friedrich Merz do, in fellowship with the red-green government? They summoned the old, voted out of office Bundestag, already dissolved by the Federal President, so to go around the new power relation to enforce a debts policy of madness to the harm of the German people. 

            Liebscher (SPD): That is just nonsense, stop spreading lies! So far, the                                    new Bundestag has not yet met…!

What we experience here, right honorable colleague members, what was passed in the Bundestag two days ago and tomorrow in the Bundesrat shall brought to a conclusion, is nothing other than  a financial policy coup d’état. Ice cold, a career-crazed Friedrich Merz slapped the voters in the face. Merz broke a central election promise of the CDU and piled up a debt mountain of a trillion, and that only so as to receive in hand the key to the Chancellor’s office, only so as to make his latest, striven career step. This, right honorable colleague members, this conduct is without character and is one of the low points in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany. 

The pre-history of the financial policy coup d’état well needs enrage every democrat. Still in February, Merz vigorously twittered – just a few days before the Bundestag election, he did this – against the Ampel government’s debt orgy, especially that of the SPD, and posed as a defender of the debt brake. 

Yet it was a central election promise of the CDU to maintain this debt brake and let justice be done for coming generations. And now leading CDU representatives and leading Green representatives disclose that the debts coup was already planned in November 2024 in a CDU committee, and this quarreling with the Greens was pure election campaign noise. The Union simply lied impudently in the face of the Germans. 

Do you know, right honorable colleagues of the SPD and right honorable colleagues of the CDU, that this theater which has now been contrived in the German Bundestag – the Greens are, Gott sei Dank, no longer present in the sovereign house in Thüringen – 

            Liebscher (SPD): What you contrive here is theater!

do you actually know what an injury you have caused? Do you actually know which injury you have inflicted on the German democracy? 

I am much underway in Thüringen, I speak with many of Thüringen’s citizens, and ever more say to me: I no longer have the feeling of living in a democracy; I have the feeling of living in a simulation of democracy. And I cannot contradict these people. 

The changes of the Basic Law and the undermining of the debt brake first in the Bund and then in the States have fatal effects for coming generations. Thüringen, right honorable colleague members, right honorable State government, must set itself in the Bundesrat against this financial policy run amok. An abstention does not suffice for this highly important theme. And your conduct and this circumstance which I have just sketched, it is now to be discussed, and I therein rejoice. 

Many thanks.

[trans: tem] 

 

Bernd Baumann, March 18, 2025, Debt and Democracy

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/214, p. 27736. 

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen. 

A new great coalition of Union, SPD and Greens had the Budget Committee called in last  Sunday so as to vote on a gigantic debts package of 1,000 billion euros. Yet the final statutory proposal reached the members just one day previously with profound innovations. Suddenly to be taken up is the compulsion for climate neutrality in the Basic Law. Climate neutrality, this central dogma of leftist-green ideologues, destroys the competitiveness of our industry. No other country does something similar to its economy. 

Members of the AfD, SPD and BSW thus demanded an immediate hearing in committee, which the committee chairman would have needed to grant, since the necessary quorum was attained. That was compulsory. Yet the committee chairman, Helge Braun – former chief of the Chancellery Office and intimate of Angela Merkel – refused and forced the immediate waving through of the debts package. What a parliamentary low point, ladies and gentlemen! 

Yet why this flogging through? Because already in the coming week the newly elected Bundestag meets. But it has new majorities which the people want. It would thereby completely reject the mega-debts and Basic Law alterations. And the new Bundestag is the legitimate one, which reflected the majorities, ladies and gentlemen. Yet why does the new Bundestag meet just one month after the election, even though such fundamental decisions should now be passed? The Union and the SPD have rammed this through the seniors council. Against the will of all other delegations, Bundestag President Bas called in the new Bundestag just at the last possible moment. 

The entirety ultimately shows the true spirit, the true character primarily of Friedrich Merz who in this way wants to become Chancellor. 

            Stephan Brandner (AfD): “Whatever it takes!”

With a trillion in debt, approved by a Bundestag long since voted out of office, he wants to buy the Chancellorship with the SPD and Greens – like in a banana republic, ladies and gentlemen. 

And we thereby have still not spoken of the gigantic election fraud. I cite Herr Merz: I will put an end to this politics of leftist and green spin doctors. I cite CDU Secretary-general Linnemann: New debts are not to be made with the CDU; with us, there is no alteration of the debt brake because that is our deepest conviction. 

Ladies and gentlemen, who wants to lead the democracy ad absurdum, needs not falsify the ballots, as Erdoğan and Putin have been accused of. He just so robs democracy of every substance when by such false promises he deceives the voters, thus swindles their votes, and then does the opposite. 

 

[trans: tem]

Michael Espendiller, March 18, 2025, Debt and Defense Spending

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/214, pp. 27767-27768. 

Right honorable Frau President. Right honorable colleagues. Dear viewers in the hall, on YouTube, and on X. 

The election fraudster Friedrich Merz, today in common with SPD and Greens, is having determined in six days as much new debt as the entire Federal Republic of Germany in total took up from 1950 until 2009, thus in 59 years. It will be, in ten years time, between 1.6 and 1.8 trillion euros. Most already surmise that with this money everything possible will happen, yet in the end it will not arrive at the citizens. 

On this there prevails a widespread consensus that the so-called infrastructure special debts are to be refused because infrastructure belongs to the regular state orders which the state has to finance from its current income. Yet there persists the erroneous belief that in the case of the Bundeswehr it would be different. I want for my delegation to here again clarify: Defense expenditures also need be defrayed from the regular budget if we want to economize efficiently and responsibly. 

All economists agree that Germany needs fundamental structural reform, that we need to rein in the bureaucracy and initiate a growth impulse. And all are agreed that in that regard it does not help to simply pour more money over the problem, as has been done without success in the past years. Why should it be different in regards the Bundeswehr? 

I have attended in the last three years as reporter for section 14 the regular expenditures in the defense area as well as the “Special Funds Bundeswehr”, and I can say to you: Our problem here is not primarily the money. Of that, the Defense Ministry now has so much that it routinely affords itself money squandering. Did you know, for example, that we spend each year 654 million euros for the so-called property security [Liegenschaften]? What is that? That is the cost for the private security services which guard [bewachen] our barracks, because that is evidently no longer to be expected of our soldiers. And we yearly pay from the Federal budget around 180,000 soldiers, the fewest of whom are on active duty. It is not known what they do all day long, yet the guarding of our barracks is apparently not a part of it. 

Or let us go to the procurement theme. In regards procurement projects also we routinely pay too much, for one thing because our government simply negotiates poorly, for another because the Federal Ministry of Defense’s requirements are set completely wrong. An example is the infantry’s heavy weapons carrier. Here, we procure the Boxer from Rheinmetall which shall replace the weapons carrier system Wiesel 2 which has been in service for around 30 years. So far, so good. Actually, the Boxer could quite easily be purchased in Germany, because it is also produced by us. Only, Rheinmetall was unfortunately at the time of the order fully booked in its  German production. One would thus need to wait somewhat longer. That besides would have been fully justifiable. But no, the Russians who lose the last two years in the Ukraine, are, ja, next week in Berlin. Thus Pistorius decided to purchase the Boxer at Rheinmetall Australia and from there have it flown in. The result: The originally planned 2 billion euros for the project does not suffice. The finance requirement climbs around 700 million euros to 2.7 billion euros. 

            Alice Weidel (AfD): Madness! Anyone can figure that!

And the flight from Australia is besides not climate neutral. 

I have only four minutes speaking time, yet I could recount for hours additional examples. 

An evaluation in the Federal Ministry of Defense does not routinely occur, neither for the use of funds and for the procurement, nor for our military doctrine. 

            Henning Otte (CDU/CSU): Who then wrote your speech for you?

The Bundeswehr needs to correspond in structure and character to the altered demands of our time. Yet at the Bendlerblock is ever still a mindset of 50 years ago. And we do not change that when we now write into the Basic Law in the defense area an indebtedness possibility completely without upper limit. 

Also in the military area it remains as in the sentence: Germany has an expenditure problem and not an income problem. We will at some time look back on this day and ascertain that it did not bring us much other than debts and inflation. 

Thanks for the attention. 

 

[trans: tem]

Tino Chrupalla, March 18, 2025, Democracy and Debt

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/214, pp. 27752-27754. 

Right honorable Frau President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen. Dear countrymen. 

It is now three months since Chancellor Scholz put the confidence question. The starting point was the debts policy in which the Ampel coalition fell apart. The citizens were on one side assured that there can be no further so, on the other side were political processes paralyzed. To the 20^th German Bundestag, this one here, was denied that it still can reach decisions of significance; since there should be new elections and first of all the new parliament and the new Federal government should bear the responsibility for Germany’s future. All who wish to recall, know how many motions were referred back to the committees by the Praesidium. Nothing should be possible. 

The vote on the migration crisis offered an intermezzo. Here, the CDU/CSU, somewhat disconnected, sought to draw to its side the leading theme of the Bundestag election. In the result, Friedrich Merz anxiously retreated and vowed an improvement; since “Firewall Merz” assured: With the Alternative für Deutschland can no one cooperate. 

And then came the great quake of the February 23 Bundestag election. Now was clear: The majorities were quite clearly shifted, and suddenly everything was different. The outgoing Bundestag was to be made use of so as to reinforce the future Federal government, and indeed because only you have the majorities here – even though today the majority of the newly elected members is here, and today an organizing sitting would have been able to take place. The fearful Chancellor candidate Friedrich Merz stands now at mid-point. Where is actually – and the question needs be allowed – Olaf Scholz? 

            Stephan Brandner (AfD): He sits there!

This one of course still conducts as per the Basic Law the official business. Ladies and gentlemen, what a drama you require of the citizens and our voters! 

The highest good of politicians, valued colleagues, if credibility. With these embarrassing actions, valued Herr Merz, you have completely lost yours. The voters feel themselves defrauded by you, and that rightly. Are you actually sure that you will ever become Chancellor? Since that is your sole objective. You therefore bargain with the holders of the old majorities. For you, it is certainly not about the future of Germany. For you, it’s about your Chancellorship. And for you every means is proper so as to not become the next failed Chancellor candidate of your party. 

That you have no backbone, Herr Merz, we felt in the election campaign, and we all know that. But that you in the meantime are completely invertebrate, you will here prove with this vote. 

            Stephan Brandner (AfD): Like a North Sea crab!

You play politics and promise everyone almost anything, and that seemingly appears to be simple: When 50 billion does not suffice, it is simply 100 billion euros which you place at the disposal of the failed governing party, the Greens. The problem nevertheless is: You finance your power option to be Chancellor by means of debts at the cost of future generations, at the cost of our children and grandchildren, and then in the end perhaps send them to war. “Special funds” you name this new kind of state indebtedness. It is amusing that during the election campaign Chancellor Scholz named this exactly so in a political talk show. Now he moreover does what he can do best: 

            Stephan Brandner (AfD): Simply nothing!

He is silent, and simply lets everything thus happen. 

            Stephan Brandner (AfD): Has forgotten who is Chancellor!

The instrument of an inflationary special fund is abused so as to force through targeted investments. It would thus be important to ascertain the precise need so that this money does not simply come to nothing, or is lost through expensive consultant contracts. 

The positions in the Federal ministries continually grow for years. Yet no Federal minister appears to have found in the past decades the right people who understand their subject. On the one side to speak of de-bureaucratization, on the other to massively build up exactly that: Whom does that serve other than officials and the parties who are behind it? Why is the Federal Chancellor’s Office enlarged, and why after the Bundestag elections will be quickly created attractive posts for former political co-workers and fellow travelers? That, Frau Paus here could briefly explain. 

            Stephan Brandner (AfD): Where is Frau Paus?

The theme of credibility I already mentioned. 

You make of the state a by-word for plunder. And that is the real emergency situation in this country. And do you really think to thereby still have the backing of the citizens? In your parallel world, scarcely anyone still errs. No longer does one understand for whom you actually do politics – that really harms the democracy, Frau Haßelmann. All in fact may count yourselves fortunate that we of the Alternative für Deutschland as political competitors have taken trouble for a fabulously high election participation. 

Let us look for once at the problem child of national defense. Can this by the present Bundeswehr actually still be secured? Of course it cannot. 

            Johannes Fechner (SPD): Yet you don’t want that!

The principal cause is the Bundeswehr’s current build-up itself. For example, the surplus bureaucratization in procurement procedures. Encampments were closed, the venues sold, depots closed, material sold or donated to foreign countries. In which places do you then want to begin to invest? 

To secure the votes of proponents, you conduct the immediate re-introduction of the defense duty [Wehrpflicht] in the field. The CSU even wants to implement this by year’s end. In which district recruiting offices, which no longer exist, do you actually want to muster the soldiers? 

You see valued colleagues, this important theme for Germany will be made for a still not Chancellor Merz a sticking point for his majorities. 

With Donald Trump, you all now suddenly think the sole foreign partner has been lost. Tja, plainly one should not be so one-sidedly oriented, Herr Merz. Now of course will be painfully led before your eyes that the Americans now place in the foreground their own interests – what a surprise! And I ask you: What then actually are our interests? How shall the German and European security be guaranteed? Where then remains the European security architecture? Why do you never speak of your perspective of a peaceful Europe from a German viewpoint? You think now you can call upon the Ukraine war as a legitimization for a new partition of the European continent. Yet we need no new friend-foe imagery, as you today have briefly sketched it, Herr Merz. And a so-called war capability [Kriegstüchtigkeit] we also do not need. It belongs to another epoch. We need long-lasting peace on the entire continent of Europe. This signal must go into the world. The old continent must find and negotiate its interests, and stand united behind them. And thereby may Germany play a decisive role.   

The world looks on perplexed for quite a while at the German drift [Treiben]. This helpless stumbling must finally have an end. No one trusts a country which does not trust itself, and develops no plan for the future; this applies to the citizens even so as to foreign partners and our own economy. 

The core brands of German industry were incorporated in the automobile industry – as were the skilled trades and the Mittelstand. For that, we were known and esteemed throughout the world. The latest news of elimination of positions at Audi and VW, of the emigrations and insolvencies, are presently of little encouragement. To get underway, you now want massive infrastructure projects. Again the question: Which then and where? What are your priorities, and which firms will actually counter-finance [gegenfinanzieren] this by means of taxes and duties, by the creation of workplaces and training places? 

Ladies and gentlemen, here, without a plan, the state debt shall be driven to heaven. I can again only imagine the subvention package with which you want to attract business with expensive tax money. That, we all already know – Herr Habeck – from the past: 600 million euros for Northvolt in Schleswig-Holstein, 10 billion euros for Intel. It is, ja, also easier to always print more money than to examine the finances in a business-like way. Since one thing for years has simply not been touched: We really need an honest audit. And had the CDU still a profile, a DNA, as Herr Merz always nicely says, it would pursue that. Your former Finance Minster Worlfgang Schäuble stood for investing only that money which was covered by the state budget. And for what do you stand, Herr Merz? You have meanwhile let yourself be implanted with the SPD’s mRNA. 

We have a tax income at record heights. And with that do not come out right. Why actually not? You want to sell to the German taxpayer your un-economy as an “investment plan”. Yet special funds are and remain special debts, to which we even so little agree as every businessman who with such a behavior would give himself over directly into insolvency. 

I give you a short accounting example: One trillion euros of debts which you today want to issue,  special debts with a present interest rate of 2.9 percent, means in ten years 100 billion euros of interest. 100 billion euros of interest! 

And it’s interesting how important for you this time the science is. Are the economists and business experts less qualified than the vaccination doctors of the Corona time? 

What’s with the climate neutrality? This strategic goal I might and must not evaluate. Yet you want to write it into the Basic Law, and have it implemented until 2045. So presumptuous is not even the EU. And that is saying something. Herr Söder besides thinks it is no state goal, even if it is anchored in the Basic Law. And that is an interesting reading of the Basic Law. 

Valued colleagues, you’ve now finally overstrained the bow. You make yourselves and this parliament ultimately unworthy of belief, and that, we will not let stand. The CDU’s few voters in my constituency of Görlitz now well ask me: Herr Chrupalla, when actually are the new elections? 

I appeal to all colleagues, especially of the CSU/CSU delegation – many of you are directly elected, have contacts with the citizens, businessmen, associations: Follow your experiences and the freedom of your mandate. Vote against this draft law and thereby for our Basic Law and for Germany! 

Many thanks.

[trans: tem]

Peter Boehringer, March 13, 2025, Debt Brake and War Budget

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/213, pp. 27710-27711. 

Frau President. 

“I would find it…most highly problematic if the 20^th German Bundestag, which has an almost completely lost democratic legitimacy,…reached in its last days such fundamental decisions.” 

These are not my words, but of colleague Frei of the CDU, not of today – today, he said something different – but of a good ten days ago. That is approximately the shelf-life of CDU promises. 

We thus today as the 20^th German Bundestag are then still allowed to act only if, fully surprising, an existential and unavoidable decision for our nation is pending. Which however is not so. This morning here already could the 21^st Bundestag sit. It is simply anti-democratic that Herrn Merz and Klingbeil, disregarding the 21^st Bundestag, want to have the Basic Law changed with majorities of the old, outgoing Bundestag.   

We speak today of hundreds of billions of euros of special debts. We speak even of the long-term undermining of the regular order of a unified Federal budget with a clear debts upper limit. Over one trillion euros as additional state debt shall be taken up. Upon every net taxpayer shall be inflicted debts calculated at more than 60,000 euros if these amounts are issued, which will only last a few years – perhaps pretty much like this coalition’s time in office. 

Debts are, despite the propaganda, never investments in a good future and also never, Frau Dröge, in the state interest. On the contrary: The interest and thus tax burden take design options from future generations. Naturally the debts intoxication leads to high inflation under which primarily the little man suffers. You devour in advance one trillion euros for which others need later starve. In this regard, the recognition of the debt brake is even in the Union’s election program: 

            “We adhere to the debt brake…Today’s debts are tomorrow’s tax increases.” 

And Herr Merz said in the election campaign: 

“The debt brake defends…the tax payments of the young generation. Shall we today expend their money? We take in 1,000 billion euros in taxes…and with that we should make do.” 

Herr Merz, you commit, even before entry into office, the quickest and greatest election fraud in German history. Nothing, simply nothing in today’s situation is surprising. The problems exist for decades. Supposedly, the money will now be expended exclusively and rapidly for infrastructure and the Bundeswehr. Investments in these areas under black-red chancellors in the last 35 years – the fat years – were never sufficiently undertaken; otherwise, there would not generally be giant, structural deficits: Who should believe that this time, for the first time, it will be different? 

In addition, the 2022 100 billion euros of special debts were in part mis-appropriated [zweckfremdet] for the Ukraine. Mis-appropriation now also threatens with the new regulation whereby such defense expenditures may be under taken without regard to the debt limits of the Basic Law. Note well: Open at the top and without time limitation. That is unbelievable. 

Besides, today in Article 87a of the Basic Law, of which all of you here formulate lies, is that debt-financed military support would be one time only. That is in the Basic Law. The truth is: You conceal, with the debt mountains created today, the giant budget problems which you in any case would have had. The truth is: This coalition could not draw up its first of all budgets in the summer of 2025 in conformity with the constitution, if you did not today approve a giant gulp from the bottle of future tax payments. You want to create an enormous ancillary budget which nearly doubles the money available for your dubious purposes. You obtain the means to govern authoritatively for four years, cost what it will. So too could Laurel and Hardy govern [Sie erschleichen sich die Mittel, um vier Jahre durchzuregieren, koste es, was es wolle. So könnten auch Dick und Doof regieren]. 

In a real Cold War, the GDR, for 40 years until 1991, could bring in Federal defense spending of a sum of two percent and more of GDP, quite without special debts. The Bundeswehr has no budget problem, but a management and strategy deficit. Yet who with negligent frankness talks up enmities and war, can naturally no longer pocket a peace dividend. 

The future indebtedness relations, ladies and gentlemen, were earlier only in times of war and pre-war. The war capacity demanded by Pistorious, Merz and von der Leyen shall be completed by a war financing without a war. That is irresponsible – not only fiscally. 

“Who is against debt is for Russian panzers in Germany.” That is the perfidious argument – from Frau Haßelmann – which brands every critical budget member as a traitor. That is a quite wicked level. Do not make an enemy of both East and West! Invest in diplomacy! We will then need billions less for the military. And it is not initially clear what then shall be the defense policy ideas behind the new, unlimited armaments spending: An EU army, or perhaps a NATO with the U.S.A. or without the U.S.A.? It’s all open. Yet there is not unlimited money in a machine which does not even have a basic plan. We will give you here no 13-figure blank check. The way to the war economy goes without us. 

Your chancellorship, Herr Merz, leads, before its beginning, without any emergency, to a crisis of democracy. In case this delegitimizing coup against the 21^st German Bundestag and against the people’s will ascertained by the Bundestag election is in fact forced through, then is actually just the question: Where is the Constitution Defense when it is needed? 

Many thanks. 

 

[trans: tem]

Alice Weidel, March 13, 2025, Finances and Values

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/213, pp. 27703-27704. 

Right honorable Frau President. Right honorable Herr Chancellor. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen. 

We live in historic times. Yet no applicant for the Chancellor’s office in so brief a time has broken so many election promises as you, Herr Merz. Border controls, you no longer want, refusals certainly not. Deportation of those obliged to leave? Nonsense! Debt brake? Away with it, even though it is in your election program. You will enter history as the gravedigger of the debt brake which you in the election campaign just as vehemently as mendaciously defended. 

Without consideration, you sacrifice the well-being of the citizens so by hook or crook to become Chancellor. You have therein agreed with the SPD, the great election loser, to approve beforehand the largest debts package since the existence of the Federal Republic of Germany. Around one trillion euros – 1,000 billion – which is just so unclear as your entire profile. You want to force that through with an unscrupulous attack on our constitution and on democratic legitimacy, which you, with the dubious special sessions and rush jobs, make contemptible. 

Because the election results do not suit you, you again bring in the old Bundestag – thus, forces which the voters voted out and punished – with whose help you want to tie the hands of the newly elected Bundestag by means of a trillion in additional debt. These procedures show your contempt for the will of the voters. These procedures derive from your contempt for the democratic legitimization process, and these procedures derive from your character, Herr Merz. 

500 billion euros of special debts which you re-classify as “special funds” [Sondervermögen] for barely defined infrastructure measures and for the nullification of the debt brake, and for additional, in any case not more precise, defense expenditures in a similar sum, yet without an upper limit, and debts for climate protection so as to purchase the assent of the Greens. That is a gigantic mortgage with which you have indebted the coming generations who need to answer for this spending frenzy. 

With your blank check rises the debt burden per taxpayer – this value is more significant than the usually given per capita indebtedness – from today’s 58,500 euros to over 77,700 euros, that is an increase of 33 percent. Measured by GDP, Gross Domestic Product, Germany’s debt burden with your coup will rise from the present 64 percent to over 85 percent, and that is nothing other than a financial policy coup d’état which you here manage. 

The German government bond is valued as a risk-free benchmark for the costs of borrowing in the euro area. Germany’s financial policy change of course thus has negative effects on the risk premiums of German state bonds; that is to say: We will need to pay higher interest rates. 

At the announcement of your plans, the return for ten-year German government bonds rose in one day around 16 basis points, and in one week until today over 50 basis points – and that, even though the ECB had previously again reduced the interest rates 25 basis points. You thereby not only shrink the scope of action of future governments and drive the German state finances into derangement. By your actions you put at risk the creditworthiness of Germany in the international financial market. 

You thereby similarly endanger the house of cards of the weak euro currency, the existence of which is still primarily based on the present triple-A top credit. Germany will lose this triple-A rating as a result of your irresponsibility, Herr Merz. The interest rates will go through the roof and the euro will be devalued with massive consequences for the people. People in this country will be paying for that by higher interest rates on mortgages, through higher rents and rising prices for import goods for production and consumption. 

Your reasonings are just as pretentious as mendacious, as we’ve heard here today. You conjure up an ostensible “suddenly altered world situation” and stir up a war panic so as to intimidate and make pliant the citizens. It is the same cheap manipulation with which earlier governments have supported themselves in the Corona hysteria and the climate mania so as to justify the massive expansion of state spending and the limitations of freedom. And you commit this grotesque enormity just at this moment when the U.S.A. and Russia are about to end the mass death in the Ukraine, while you, the black-red-green coalition, want to there unconcernedly sink financial aid and armaments. 

Yes, it is right: Germany needs to do more for its defense capability so as to create an army which does not just devour money but is also fully mission-ready for the defense of the country. Yet required for that is no debts watering can, which will be exactly so thrown away as the first so-called special funds. Required for that is first a strategy, and then targeted expenditures. To recruit motivated soldiers, required is not only money, but a positive, patriotic Selbstbild of one’s own nation and one’s own army. For a woke, leftist ideology will no one give his life. 

And right: Germany urgently needs to invest in its neglected and rotting infrastructure. I ask myself: What in the last decades have you actually done as you were in the government? Yet also for that, a previously manipulated in the budget law, 500 billion euro shunting station is not the solution. Infrastructure and defense are core duties of state action. To appropriately finance them, the priorities of state expenditures need to be correctly set. 

A total state income in taxes and duties of over two trillion euros does not signify the solution of still more debt, but to rigorously slash superfluous spending. Thus eliminate all incentives for immigration into the social system. End the illegal immigration by closing the borders. Concern yourselves for a turning back without exception and a consistent sending back. End the horrendous subventions for climate protection and the failed energy change. Eliminate all payments to so-called NGOs, which in truth are not when they are dependent on state money. In this way, you can liberate a three-figure billion contribution in the budget to invest in infrastructure, defense and domestic security, and nevertheless still reduce taxes. 

Your exploratory paper negotiated with the Social Democrats is a declaration of capitulation before the green-socialist desires for which you have thrown overboard nearly all of your election promises. One may well ask, what you still want to offer the Greens after you submissively threw yourself on your knees. What you have charged to social and economic policy bears throughout the handwriting of the SPD and the Greens: Redistribution, subventions, state interference, Verbote. For this lamentable result, you betrayed your voters, ripped wide open the debts sluices and damaged the constitution. 

This voter fraud and this attack on democracy you’ve publicly planned with care. The unworthy presentation which you delivered here, Herr Merz, sounds now like an end-stage, black Ampel. It happens, just as each time it has happened: Those who vote for the CDU get presented with a left-green Politik. 

Because you cling to the firewall, you deliver yourself over to green-left-red majorities. You arrogantly show contempt for the votes of over ten million voters, who voted for the AfD, and thus for a political new beginning right of center. The duties, to which you have not awoken, continue to lie at hand: To correct the failed leftist policy which has led the country to loss of prosperity, de-industrialization, collapse of domestic security, collapse of infrastructure and public order. The wrong way of mass migration, squandering of tax money, and a planned economy, is to be left behind. We need to again bring Germany to the right way. 

We of the AfD are unalterably ready to take up these duties and assume responsibility, yet not with you, Herr Merz, and also not with the Union which maintains you as Chancellor candidate and a left-green policy. Render to this country, Herr Merz, a service, a quite great service: Give up wanting to become Chancellor. Since you cannot do it. On this point, Angela Merkel was right. Your time has run out, before you’ve at all begun. The Union should separate itself from you – for the good of our country and the good of their party; since you cannot do it. Why, Herr Merz? Because you have no principles and no values.

 

I am grateful.

 

 

 

[trans: tem]

Matthais Moosdorf, January 29, 2025, Ukraine and Corruption

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/209, pp. 27149-27150. 

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen. 

With the election of Donald Trump, the Western leading powers began to set policy aright. The Trump Administration’s most recent Ukraine peace plan is – with the exception of EU membership – identical with the peace motion of the AfD. For that very reason, the new U.S. government supports our party’s position of reason and rejects your war delusion. It was of course recognized by the AfD since 2022 that weapons deliveries without negotiations prolong the war, exact countless human lives on both sides, and can produce only an ancillary peace diplomacy. 

Since 2022, according to available numbers, the Ukraine has received from around 40 countries a total of 424 billion euros in promised weapons and financial assistance. In the year 2017, Ukrainian economic experts estimated that the Ukraine’s corruption level was comparable with that of Uganda. 

            Marcus Faber (FDP): Worse even than Russia!

In 2019, Transparency International believed that, in regards armaments expenditures, some 30 percent of the budget disappeared into unknown channels. And today the country stands there in this ranking somewhat like Algeria, 

            Marcus Faber (FDP): Radio Moscow!

yet clearly behind states like Ethiopia or Burkina Faso. A counselor of the Ukrainian president explained in 2023 that money would be pilfered without penalty, and the officials – cite – “steal as if there were no tomorrow”. 

According to one study of the Ukrainian agency for corruption in the year 2023, 88 percent of the population and 81 percent of business held the corruption to be the most considerable problem in the Ukraine. The three most corrupt areas are the customs service, the military, and public procurement. 

Agnieszka Brugger (Greens): The Ukraine in regards the anti-corruption campaign has gone up according to Transparency International, despite the war. Did you realize that, or do you just recite the talking points from Moscow? 

In March 2024, 70 percent of the Ukrainians were of the opinion that their government profits from the war and increasingly sinks into corruption. From January 2023 to June 2024, the perception of increasing corruption rose from 15 to 49 percent nationwide. 

            Sebastian Schäfer (Greens): Then how much do you make from Moscow                                each month? 

Jörg Nünnberger (SPD): How would it be if you consider the Ukrainian war victims? The civilians who each day were killed?

Interpol warned already in June 2022 that delivered weapons arrive in the hands of organized crime. And the New York Times reported that the whereabouts of around 60 percent of the goods deficiently delivered to the Ukraine is so far unexplained. All of this is no Putin lie; 

            Marcus Faber (FDP): No, that’s simply Radio Moscow!

since the U.S.A. is now investigating the whereabouts of 100 billion euros of Ukraine aid. Under the guidance of Robert Gates, over 200 researchers are thereby engaged. Storch explained it’s about theft, fraud and corruption. 

            Marcus Faber (FDP): Of which you know! 

The Pentagon reported 63 percent of the military aid has disappeared without a trace. 63 percent! 

            Carolin Bachmann (AfD): Listen! Shame on you!

Germany is the second largest bilateral aid donor to the Ukraine after the U.S.A. Our support is more than double so high as that from France and Italy together. In 2024, it was again double in comparison to 2023. Yet the EU control council set up in June 2024 has so far named merely three members as independent experts for an audit. A great interest in transparency thus obviously does not exist. 

The AfD demands of the Federal government, following the U.S. model, to finally set up a staff of at least 50 members which examines the entire German Ukraine assistance of almost 40 billion euros, and finally uncovers and prosecutes corruption. Your motion for an additional three billion euros we of course reject. 

And besides: The change of times begins now! 

Many thanks. 

 

[trans: tem]

Marc Bernhard, December 6, 2024, Heating Law

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/204, pp. 26450-26451. 

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen. 

Last year, the Ampel, against every sense and reason, come hell or high water, flogged the heating law through the Bundestag, without regard to loss, and thereby practically banned the new installation of oil and gas heating. 

Konrad Stockmeier (FDP): Wrong!

30 million households, thus around 64 million people, heat with oil and gas. That means that 75 percent of the people in Germany are directly affected by your heating hammer, and regardless whether owner or renter. Yet it was already clear prior to the passage that for many it will be unaffordable, that it destroys the old age provision of many millions of people, and is nothing other than a cold expropriation. Your heating hammer makes the costs of dwellings and heating unaffordable for many people. 

It was previously also fully clear that your heating hammer is absolutely ineffective; since even the most optimistic estimates of Habeck’s ministry proceed on a yearly savings of just one, single percent of the total German CO₂ emissions – thus, the CO₂ quantity which China blows into the air in just five hours. And for that, you destroy the savings, the old age provision and the prosperity of the people in our country? How crazy are you, actually? 

            Stephan Brandner (AfD): That is a rhetorical question!

Had you simply done nothing, but simply just let the last three nuclear power plants continue to run, 

            Bernhard Herrmann (Greens): Ach, you heat with atomic power, or what?                            Nonsense!

we would each year – just listen for once – save 15 million tons of CO₂, thus double as much as by your entire heating hammer. 

Even Construction Minister Geywitz has practically confirmed here in a questioning in the Bundestag that, with the heating hammer, what demonstrably works was forbidden, without really knowing, without having any functioning plan, as to how the people instead should heat in the future. 

Almost every second municipal utility considers an affordable heating supply no longer secure on account of your heating hammer. The city of Leipzig ascertained that the implementation of the heating hammer for Leipzig alone costs 30 billion euros. 

            Karsten Hilse (AfD): It’s only money!

That is 45,000 euros from infants to old men. No one can pay for this madness. 

Mannheim in 2035 as the first city in Germany completely disconnects people from the gas network. And thus happens exactly what I had said many times last year in the Bundestag: On account of your heating law, people now need to tear out new heating in the most brief time because it does not suit their city’s heating plan. 

Yet the crowning is that you of the FDP, then still in the government, yourselves had reckoned, before passage of the heating law, that the heating hammer will cost the people the unimaginable sum of 2,500 billion euros, and despite that, you in common with red-green, against better judgment, against every reason, simply forced through this law. 

And now? After the Chancellor showed you the door, you suddenly want to know nothing more at all of this. You, like the Chancellor, can remember nothing more, simply assert the opposite, and apparently want to rescind the law which you yourselves introduced. Thus, how credible your turnaround actually is, you can here and now give evidence by you voting for our motion [Drucksache 14031]. 

The same applies to you of the CDU. In all media, you announce that you want to rescind the heating law – exactly as Jens Spahn a couple of minutes ago here in the Bundestag confirmed – thus exactly what we today propose. 

If you of the CDU and the FDP thus really meant it seriously, then we would have for this today a majority. Yet you know quite precisely that with the reds and greens with whom you want to form a coalition in the future, there will never be a revocation. Thus show whether you mean it seriously, 

            Vice-president Katrin Göring-Eckardt: Many thanks.

or whether you are only once again lying to the people out there.

[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]