Dirk Spaniel, December 1, 2023, Auto Industry and Combustion Engine

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/142, pp. 18008-18009. 

Right honorable Frau President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen. 

I also rejoice over this debate. It is always important to remind the Federal Transportation Minister of his public promises and of his presentation that he is the saviour of the combustion engine. I however believe – and here I clearly share your opinion – that this will not happen. This Transportation Minister will enter into the history of the Federal Republic of Germany as the one who not only has taken from the automobile driver the affordable auto, but also the existence foundation from the German auto industry. 

Let us begin with the auto industry. The German auto industry – it cannot be said otherwise – is at the abyss. This leads to citations from Volkswagen, a large German concern, which acknowledges itself to no longer be competitive in the supplier industry, and to a raising of eyebrows in the populace. Yet it is in fact a public confession of the failure that your policy of subvention of electro-mobility obviously does not matter to the manufacturers. The production of vehicles in Germany has receded in this year from five million to 3.5 million vehicles. That is a failure of this government. You have not managed to bring about the transformation. 

It is however not only a failure of this government, it is also a slap against the auto driver himself. We have the problem in this country that the people buy no electro-autos because they are plainly impractical as a first vehicle and are not useful. That means, electro-mobility occurs where there are two or three vehicles in the parking lot, or simply in the small car sector as a third vehicle. That is the reality; all of the experts say it to you. 

It is an affront to demand at an auto summit of the auto industry that one should now please manufacture small cars and cheap electro-vehicles. Are we here in socialism? Nein, we are not; we have overcome that, even if you again want to go back to it. It’s bad that you participate in that. It is really bad. 

What then is the result when we in Germany promote cheap electro-mobility? What will that then cause? It will bring about, exactly so as in regards the solar industry, that we will promote Chinese and other foreign concerns with German tax money. German taxpayers, German employees, support with these subventions the abolition of their own workplaces. That is your policy. We are against that; we do not participate in that. 

Now I come just briefly to your motion. Your motion basically means the same thing as we brought in here to the Bundestag five years ago. Five years ago, we pushed for that there be a credit on the fleet limit values. The Transportation Minister was then Herr Scheuer from your delegation. He however did not commit himself in Europe that it happen. That unfortunately needs be said. Today, you join in, five years too late. The principal problem with your motion is: It comes five years too late. And because you thus come too late, what you here demand will thus no longer be feasible on the timeline where it may take effect. 

We have now in Europe a situation in which industry requires planning security. We know that electro-mobility is a chimera, at least in general. That, we all know; at least the reasonable side of the plenum knows that. The fact is that we now require a solution. The solution however cannot be to now again start up the synthetic fuels as you demand it. Nein, the solution must be to set aside this senseless ban on the combustion engine on the European level, or at least postpone it for ten years. Otherwise, we have a disaster for our industry and for the people in this country. All else is an irresponsible policy. And I expect from you of the government that you finally accept this and that you go this way at the European level. 

Many thanks.

 

[trans: tem]

Dirk Spaniel, October 19, 2023, Electric Vehicle Subvention

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/131, p. 16445. 

Frau President. Right honorable viewers and listeners. Right honorable colleagues. 

As I read the motion, dear colleagues of the Union, I needed to look twice, whether it really came from you. 

            Klaus Wiener (CDU/CSU): It is printed on the upper left 

This is at the least an open coalition offer to the Greens. Here you want to maintain or again introduce the subventions for electro-mobility. 

Tilman Kuban (CDU/CSU, turned to the Greens delegation): You could just vote in favor!

Now you certainly know – you have already written it in your motion – that these subventions so far have indeed not worked. How then do you actually want to introduce with a motion something which has not worked? You yourselves write in this motion that there is mis-use, that we have promoted vehicles which were sold off in foreign countries, which we here in this country do not have in our fleet of vehicles. You write this in your motion. 

When we since 2016 so far promote electro-mobility with 10 billion euros

            Stephan Brandner (AfD): Madness!

and have just 1.2 million vehicles in this country, then it needs for once be asked: What actually is awry here? And then you want to knock out by 2026 six billion euros for the charging infrastructure. I want to say to you here: It can be believed that climate change is hindered with German tax money; you do that. We do not believe that German tax money hinders, stops or in some way influences the climate change. Yet you believe it. Yet if it is believed, then one cannot nevertheless proceed and senselessly incinerate so much money. Electro-mobility’s CO₂ avoidance costs per ton of CO₂ – the Scientific Service of the German Bundestag says this – are from 800 to 1,000 euros per ton of CO₂ – 800 to 1,000 euros! In European emissions trading we are at approximately 80, 90 euros per ton. That is to say: You buy the ton of CO₂ avoidance at ten times the expense that it actually needs to be. For that, you can easily do away with the coal power plant CO₂, and indeed ten times as much. There, we are at 65 euros per tons of CO₂. You want the dumbest thing that can be  done with German tax money: You want the promotion of electro-mobility. 

The FDP besides ought to know better. They commissioned an estimation according to which it is even 2,300 euros per ton. That is to say: All of you here know: What you are doing here does not serve CO₂ reduction, does not serve the climate change. What you are doing serves for the impoverishment of the German population. 

The employment of your methods is absolutely unsuitable for reducing the CO₂ emissions, and it is absolutely unsuitable for making the population accustomed to electro-mobility. Most, 70 percent of users of electric vehicles, use this vehicle as a second vehicle. What you are doing is socially unjust. You redistribute tax money so that people who gladly want to have an electric auto as a second or third auto will have it in the future. 

That also applies to business. The well-to-do business can do it, and the poor, the not so well-to-do business cannot do it. All essentially use the electric vehicle not as a first vehicle but essentially as a second vehicle. Thus the method which you employ here is completely wrong. 

Ladies and gentlemen, when one is headed in the wrong direction, then one does not go faster – which you here want – but turns around. Electro-mobility is a wrong way. We are of the opinion that here you should rationally use the tax money. Preferably exert yourselves to achieve the CO₂ avoidance, when we at all do it in this country, with synthetic fuels, with openness to technology, which you besides are always preaching, dear colleagues. That should be our way. I can assure you of one thing: There will still be the combustion engine when your policy long since no more exists. 

Many thanks.

  

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

Dirk Spaniel, March 28, 2023, EU Synthetic Fuel Taxation

AfD Kompakt, March 28, 2023.

Energy taxes on synthetic fuels ought only be raised to the level equivalent to that for electric current.

The AfD delegation will look precisely at the plan as soon as it is concretely put forward. From the view of the AfD delegation, it would be right to dedicate ourselves in this relation to the entire taxation of motor vehicles and eliminate one-sided subvention measures by tax mechanisms and instead find complete solutions. Today already more than half of the diesel and benzene prices consist of taxes and duties.

 

[trans: tem]

Dirk Spaniel, May 20, 2021, Individual Transportation

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/230, pp. 29581-29582. 

Many thanks. – Herr President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen.

At first glance, it reads nicely, what is brought in here as a law from the side of the coalition: The bureaucracy and the various national regulations on tolls shall be unified at the European level, and the whole nicely modern speaks: Digital. So far the theory, irrespective that one can proceed from the experience that the bureaucracy then, when you announce a deconstruction of bureaucracy, in most cases in the end is enlarged.

Here also arise still other questionable side-effects at the EU level. Thus the personal data of those in traffic, together with the EU driver’s license, shall be combined in a data bank for all states. Yet which personal data is that? Is it address, name and date of birth of the driver, or perhaps yet more?

It could already be seen in regards the trucking toll in Germany that a system was established by which all registrations are automatically controlled. In regards considerations of data protection, it was at the time naturally assured that the data would be immediately deleted and there would be no possibility of abuse – other than when for clarification of a violation, a quick look back at the registration plates could help.

We also have a draft law of the Linke. Here, it is about a theme – ever the wishful imagination of the leftist utopists – with the prescription: Back to the Reichsbahn, financed by a pool of an ever fewer number of automobile drivers. You conceal with the formulation: “Dissolution of the roads’ financing cycle” [„Aufhebung des Finanzierungskreislaufes Strasse”]. Do you actually  have people who think through to the end your visions?

Here for once it is about: You want in the future to no longer use the levies on those using the roads for the completion and new construction of roads projects. The only thing you still want to do with the revenue is to finance repairs. The rest shall serve the expansion of public transportation.

You are thereby not alone – therefore let me dedicate this theme here to a greater contribution – : Your socialist brothers with skins of green even announce it in their party program.

            Marianne Schieder (SPD): Absurd!

You are not thereby meant; thereby meant are the colleagues who still somehow continue to sit in the middle. – With new mobility concepts, the Greens want by 2030 to reduce by a third personal and delivery transportation nationwide. Aha. From where then shall the money come for the mobility pass and cost-free ÖPNV [public transportation]? Exactly, out of the purses of the ever fewer automobile drivers. That we cannot allow. That is namely for the greater part the hard-working employees who have been alloted the automobile. With the AfD, these people finally have a voice in this parliament. You can laugh: We want a look at who laughs in the end!

            Stefan Geldhaar (Greens): The worst comedy tonight!

We stand for the retention of affordable automobiles. Affordable individual transportation is the core of a modern free society. When the citizens of this country catch on to what you all are doing with them, then your hype is a thing of the past; that I can guarantee you.

We will abstain from the coalition’s draft law. The draft law of the Linke – as was said: Even in spirit, the Greens’ program we will reject.

Many thanks.

 

[trans: tem]

 

Dirk Spaniel, September 16, 2020, Mobility

 German Bundestag, September 16, 2020, Plenarprotokoll 19/175, pp. 22000-22001.

Right honorable Herr President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen.

In as good as every sitting of the transportation committee, sociologists will all-knowingly assert that the combustion engine will be replaced by electro-mobility. And when you reiterate that each evening before going to sleep, yourself apparently in the meantime believing it: That is a fiction, consisting of three parts which I will now clarify for you.

First fiction: You assert that electro-mobility can be implemented in the short-term. For the implementation of your plan for CO₂ reduction, you require by 2030 about 10 million electric vehicles in Germany. These autos must first be purchased by customers in Germany and for that are required a distribution system, transformer houses and lines. How slowly we in Germany can lay cable, each can estimate by how badly that works in the fiber optic structure. If almost no one in this country buys these autos because the operation is an imposition, how shall the number of vehicles in stock be increased? Should the manufacturers give away their autos? What do you wish to do?

Second fiction: You say: Electro-mobility contributes to CO₂ reduction. The national power mix is clearly weighted toward coal-generated power. The CO₂ output per kilowatt hour will next year further increase with the shut down of the nuclear power plants. Today the CO₂ emissions of an electric vehicle in the contemporary power mix is somewhat comparable to that of a modern diesel. According to the numbers, with electro-mobility you decrease CO₂ emissions in the transportation sector, yet you thereby generate CO₂ emissions in the energy sector. That is an affront to every scientist. It is inconceivable that you get away with that in public.

Your third fiction is that with electro-mobility workplaces in Germany will be secured. That is, with permission, one of your most impudent false statements. 95 percent of the workplaces at an auto concern depend on the combustion engine. The workplaces which are going to be lost with the end of the combustion engine will be gone for good. Period. Ja, we of the AfD see the maintenance of workplaces alone as an essential point of why we fight for the combustion engine.

Synthetic- as well as bio-fuels, as formulated in our motion [Drucksache 19/22428, 22446], are the only solution for the maintenance of the combustion engine in light of this EU legislation. He who subsequently rejects it has nothing to say when the abolition of workplaces in the automobile industry continues. We therefore request your support for our motion. I will be glad if you support the synthetic fuels. You can then later vote for this motion.

Many thanks.

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

 

Dirk Spaniel, September 11, 2020, Transportation Policy

German Bundestag, September 11, 2020, Plenarprotokoll 19/174, pp. 21837-21838.

Right honorable Herr President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen.

The present perspective for employees in the automobile industry could actually not be worse than it is at the moment. What is to come is for us nothing other than the meltdown of the German automobile industry.

That it comes is furthermore not surprising. In the previous year, we had an experts’ hearing. Those there who heard the experts were – for you, it must be said, would have been – warned. Especially we of the AfD delegation have denounced time and again in this house your CO₂ legislation which is catastrophic for the auto industry.

Ja, now you will object: The legislation comes from Brussels.

        Daniela Wagner (Greens): No matter where it comes from! It is right! No matter                                        where it comes from!

The fact that you voted in Brussels for a law which will foreseeably destroy this country’s leading industry is either a sign of your incompetence or of your insufficient assertiveness in regards German interests in the European Union.

My estimate of your disastrous policy is shared in unison with leading experts of the automobile industry and also recently by the FDP. Of course, we in the meantime have a climate of angst

            Helin Evrim Sommer (Linke): The tears are coming!

and almost no one dares to openly contradict the socialistic control mania of your transportation transformation.

            Daniela Wagner (Greens): There ought to be angst only for the likes of you!                                            There ought to be angst for the enemies of democracy, like you!

– Ja, das ist so.

If we look at the past week, we may ascertain that, on the periphery of the auto summit, the partial nationalization of auto industry firms in extremis was demanded by IG Metall, the SPD and the Greens. The government’s hollow words were then the result of the summit. It there let it be known that it sees the salvation of the auto industry in digitalization and autonomous driving. As to the concrete problems of automobile firms – the perspective of a lack of market for combustion engine vehicles – it put in not a word. The end of the combustion engine, politically desired by you, is the cause of the loss of workplaces in the automobile and machinery building industry here in Germany.

            Stephan Gelbhaar (Greens): Please speak on the topic!

You cannot compensate for that with a state subsidized electric auto industry.

We have seen in the example of the solar cell industry how badly senseless technological demands function. Where are they then, our billions of tax subventions? Solar cells are today made in foreign countries and all the respective workplaces in Germany are gone.

            Marianne Schieder (SPD): Rubbish!

Precisely that may happen if subventions are invested in economically senseless projects, as you here again are demanding.

How did the works council chairman at Daimler AG say it in the summer of this year?

            Ralph Lenkert (Linke): Ach, the betrayer!

95 percent of workplaces depend on the combustion engine. – A little group of SPD, Green, CDU/CSU and FDP politicians, alien to technique and resistant to counsel, withdraw the basis of livelihood from hundreds of thousands of hardworking people and Mittlestand businesses, and that on the basis of the false assumption that electro-mobility will reduce CO₂ emissions in this country.

We here introduce a motion [Drucksache 19/22186] for saving the combustion engine. The workplaces dependent on the combustion engine will be saved by a charge on the use of synthetic fuels; and at the same time, more CO₂ emissions will be spared than by means of the operation of electric vehicles. And if you reject this motion, then you act against the interests of hundreds of thousands of workers in this country. And we will take care that you bear the complete political responsibility for destroying the livelihood of these people. Yes, sir!

Many thanks.

            Michael Grosse-Brömer (CDU/CSU): Off course! From the start, again                                                   the rhetorical way!

 

 

[trans: tem]