Christine Anderson, November 17, 2025, Digital Omnibus

EU Parliament, Brussels, November 17, 2025, P-004565/2025 Commission. 

Written Question. 

The Commission has signaled that the forthcoming Digital Omnibus may introduce changes to concepts of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) such as compatible use, purpose limitation and secondary processing. Since the GDPR forms the legal foundation for the European digital identity wallet, digital travel credentials (DTCs) and other identity and biometric systems, any modification of these concepts could materially affect the guarantees on which these systems were legislated. 

1. Will the Commission explicitly confirm that any expansion of ‘compatible use’ under the omnibus will not enable personal, identity-linked or biometric data collected under the revised Electronic Identification and Trust Services Regulation (eIDAS 2.0) or for DTCs to be repurposed for analytics, AI training, or security or intelligence objectives? 

2. How will the Commission ensure that identity or travel-related data cannot be further processed beyond the purposes that were originally authorised by sectoral legislation, even if the horizontal GDPR framework becomes more permissive? 

3. Does the Commission commit to maintaining strict purpose limitation for all identity and authentication systems irrespective of any omnibus-related GDPR adjustments?

Arno Bausemer, October 22, 2025, Russian Energy Imports

EU Parliament, Strasbourg, P10 CRE-REV(2025)10-22(3-0498-0000). 

Herr President. Ladies and gentlemen. 

At a late hour I say welcome to you in the multi-colored, energy policy fantasy world of the green world-improvers. There one rejoices over the the sun which shines, the wind which blows and over the electricity from the socket which costs so little since the sun and wind, ja, present no bill. And so as to make the world still a little better, there the gas valve is turned off and one thereby takes care that Russia goes down before the European Union. 

Who follows our debate here, he needs think, in this parliament, the madness has broken out. Have you not understood, even after three years, that ever new sanctions packages harm our own national economies, and presently in Germany alone 10,000 industrial workplaces disappear every month? They are gone. Have you not understood that Russia simply seeks new customers? Through the new pipeline Siberia 2, 50 billion cubic meters of natural gas will yearly flow to China. 

Putin party, Russia friend, Moscow’s fifth column, you only ever continue to insult the critics of your failed policy. The new, old Europe of fatherlands again makes sense, and acts to the advantage of these fatherlands and their citizens, and to that then also again belongs economic   relations with Russia. 

 

[trans: tem]

Hans Neuhoff, October 21, 2025, Russian Frozen Assets

EU Parliament, Strasbourg, P10 CRE-Rev(2025)10-21(2-0458/60-0000). 

Frau President. 

The planned seizure of Russian asset values is not an expression of the state of law. It is its hollowing out. The immunity of states is a fundamental pillar of the international order. Does the EU want to bring on the downfall of this order? A reparations credit sounds harmless, yet here it is nothing other than legally disguised expropriation. The EU thereby opens a Pandora’s box. When we today seize reserves of a foreign central bank, who then tomorrow still trusts the euro? The warnings come not from us alone, but from the ECB, from the IMF and from Euroclear itself. They all speak of a risk for the financial stability, of capital flight and loss of trust. 

Colleagues, the EU states apparently no longer possess means to still meet the Russian advance. Your latest project is thus an expression of sheer desperation. Wars make new realities. Finally arrive at the reality. 

…Herr colleague, the error from which you proceed consists in that Russia would ever make reparations payments. That, Russia, plain and simple, will not do. How then do you want to force Russia to make such reparations payments? You cannot do it. The consequence is: Either the central bank reserves will in fact need to be expropriated, or else the EU remains seated on its offerings to the Ukraine. 

 

[trans: tem]

Alexander Jungbluth, October 22, 2025, Hungary, Soros, EU

EU Parliament, Strasbourg, P10 CRE-REV(2025)10-22(3-0378-0000). 

Frau President. 

The Digital Freedom Fund, the Hungarian ostensible research portal Direkt36, and the German NGO Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte have much in common. For example, all three organizations are co-financed by the Open Society Foundations of George Soros. The GFF, for example, receives since 2018 nearly 280,000 U.S. dollars from the pockets of dubious U.S. billionaires. All three organizations participate in the so-called clarification of the supposed espionage accusations against the Hungarian government. 

The Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte, which also receives money form the Digital Freedom Fund, thus EU money, supports the EU member Daniel Freund in regards his complaint against Orbán. Herr Freund accuses the oh-so-evil Orbán of having installed a spyware. These allegations are themselves inferred by the press – a sequence of concurrences. There is little evidence for that, yet a quite a lot of need for revenge by Daniel Freund. Thus why do we occupy ourselves with such unimportant matters? Because Soros orders and the EU elites carry out. 

[trans: tem]

Tomasz Froelich, October 21, 2025, Serbia

EU Parliament, Strasbourg, P10 CRE-REV(2025)10-21(2-0502-0000). 

Frau President. 

What do you actually want from Serbia? Do you want to make Serbia a second Ukraine? Legitimate student protests against corruption are being mis-used for geopolitical purposes. You goad on assailants who batter the Serbian police. You destabilize a country which has had very, very bad experiences with Western intervention policy. 

Why all of this? Because Serbia maintains pragmatic relations with China and Russia. That is  Serbia’s good right, for Serbia is a sovereign state, and the Serbs are a proud people – a proud people who do not want your arrogant tutoring. And if you doubt your own unpopularity, then simply take a look at the newest numbers of the Eurobarometer: Just every third Serb is for an EU accession – a record low.  At the same time, 60 percent of Serbs are for an accession to the BRICs. You are driving Serbia out of Europe. A fatal failure, since we need Serbia as a strategic partner, perchance in the fight against illegal migration, yet in Europe only Fico and Orbán grasp that. Hands off Serbia. 

 

[trans: tem]

Markus Buchheit, October 8, 2025, Combustion Engine Verbot

EU Parliament, Strasbourg, P10 CRE REV(2025)10-08(3-0208-0000). 

Herr President, my valued ladies and gentlemen. 

In 2019, as the Green Deal stood directly in the starting blocks, and as Greta Thunberg here still strode through the meadow, we already had studies which said that we in the next years alone in Germany would lose 200,000 to 400,000 workplaces in the automobile industry, if it came to the Verbot of the combustion engine. Now we stand here again today, and the question is put: Man, the industry, it goes so badly; we just don’t know why it goes so badly. 

Herr colleague Wölken of the SPD: It goes badly for the industry because people like you want to represent an activating industrial policy, and it is called nothing other – the viewers may want to look at the previous video of colleague Wölken – than a planned economy. You want to interfere in the production management of individual firms, and that certainly cannot be. If here is brought in the examples of iphones and the accomplishment in relation to Nokia, of the horse and carriage and the setbacks of the automobile, then to all that can only be said: These projects, these technologies have succeeded – planned by free undertakings, demanded by free citizens. 

What we require is freedom, not still more planned economy, not still more Wölkens in this house here. We again need freedom for our businesses and for our citizens. In this sense: Away with this Verbot, yet also away with the fleet penalty payments! 

 

[trans: tem]

Volker Schnurrbusch, October 8, 2025, EU Digital Rules

EU Parliament, Strasbourg, P10 CRE-REV(2025)10-08(3-0217-0000). 

Frau President. Valued colleagues.

The core of the EU is the Common Market. Yet what does this Commission do? It builds one hurdle after another. It would be nice if we too had a Silicon Valley. Yet instead of complaining that a few U.S. firms dominate the tech market and the platforms, it would be the duty of the EU to promote the entrepreneurial spirit which first made this dominance possible. Why does the risk capital flow to California and Texas and not to Germany and France? Why do IT professionals emigrate from Asia to the U.S.A. and not here? Why do we experience the emigration of our programmers? 

Because this Commission is hostile to business and growth; because it constructs ever higher bureaucratic hurdles; because it understands the market not as the exchange of ideas but as something un-regulated which is to be surveilled. Thus it invents tools like the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act. The EU wants to control, it blocks entrepreneurial freedom, and it wants to censor freedom of opinion on the internet so that only its own propaganda will be spread, as in Roumania, as in Moldavia, as in Georgia, and lastly also in the Ukraine. We reject that. 

 

[trans: tem]

Marc Jongen, September 11, 2025, European University Alliances

EU Parliament, Strasbourg, P10 CRE-REV(2025)09-11(4-0024-0000). 

Herr President. 

We’ve heard it from Frau von der Leyen: The EU wants more sovereignty, more power, more centralization. So as to achieve this, all will be instrumentalized, even education. 

Yes, student mobility by means of Ersamus+ is a good thing. Yet the true sense of the European University alliances is another thing; it shall give rise to a Europe-wide, post-secondary [Hochschul] education conforming to the EU, with EU study courses for ideological programs like green transformation, etc. And universities, once they are dependent on the EU promotion pot, no longer get loose – whose bread I eat, his song I sing. Where that leads, the Bologna process has shown: To a bureaucratic schooling of post-secondary studies which has driven out of the universities the spirit that made Europe great and upon which the EU unjustly calls. 

In fact, the European universities fall ever further back in the international rankings, and the level of our qualification [Abschlüsse] becomes ever worse. Authentic excellence is not achieved by such university alliances, but by optimal conditions for leading researchers, selection of the best students without quota mania and free from ideological guidelines.

 

[trans: tem]

René Aust, September 10, 2025, State of the European Union

EU Parliament, Strasbourg, P10 CRE-REV (2025)09-10(3-0025-0000). 

Frau President. 

Europe, that was once a dream: A continent in which families could win by work a house of their own; a continent which was the motor of worldwide progress; a Europe in which women could live safely, the poor were secured by good sozial legislation, and young people had the opportunity to build by their own work a good life. 

Yet this dream has been destroyed by politicians like Angela Merkel and Ursula von der Leyen. While the world economy grew and new markets arose, Europe regressed. Who wants to know why, he need only attend again to the previous speech of Ursula von der Leyen. Not a single time did she mention the core of the market economy – business freedom – but, for that, a central planned program of billions – bureaucracy from above to below. Yet prosperity arises through work, through innovation, through entrepreneurial courage, not through Ursula von der Leyen’s five-year plan. 

And in the migration policy, the dreams of Europe have been severely damaged. Enrichment was promised. The reality: Knife attacks, terrorism, rape, drug gangs from Spain, Italy, through Germany to Rotterdam and Malmö. And in Brussels, where the EU ever still preaches diversity, the Belgian government seriously considers an army mission so as to at all be able to protect the capital city from the violence of migrant gangs. 

And Frau von der Leyen? She ever still speaks in melodious marketing phrases. She speaks of unity on our own continent. Which however will only be when finally on this continent the persecution of opposition ceases. In Roumania, elections were rescinded; in France and Germany, candidates were excluded from elections. 

If you want unity, then we need to return to democracy and freedom of opinion. On that account, we say: Yes to industrial workplaces which emit CO₂; no to chat controls and censorship; yes to remigration in all of Europe, and no to Ursula von der Leyen. 

 

[trans: tem]

 

Irmhild Boßdorf, July 10, 2025, German Language in Poland

EU Parliament, Strasbourg, P10 CRE-REV(2025)07-10(4-0109-0000). 

Frau President. 

Mohnkuchen, Toleranz, Schneekoppe [poppy seed cake, toleration, Snieźka Mountain]: All of these terms unite us with Silesia, an age-old cultural landscape. In the Polish provinces of Oppelen and Silesia live far over 600,000 Silesians – 200,000 of whom have declared to speak mainly German in everyday life. And yet the protection of the Heimat does not legally progress. Dual language locale signs are not used, or only after a long wait; German instruction in the schools is neglected. 

Yet precisely here can the Cohesion Means Assistance help. It should be used so that the expansion of German instruction finally comes forward and the village school infrastructure is secured. It needs be employed so that Europe’s cultural wealth is no longer lost. It should be used so that the involvement with the Silesians in Poland becomes a model for all Europe. We therefore support with complete conviction the European Citizens Initiative. 

 

[trans: tem]

 

Hans Neuhoff, July 8, 2025, Georgia

EU Parliament, Strasbourg, P10 CRE-REV(2025)07-08(2-0512-0000). 

Frau President. Colleagues. 

The European Parliament gladly presents itself as a moral institution, as a judge of good and evil in politics. For months, the Parliament is enraged that the Georgians in October 2024 did not elect the government which the EU had foreseen. For months, the committees and panels brood over how to punish the Georgians for that. The Georgian government also then even has the shamelessness to itself set aside the EU accession negotiations until 2028 which nevertheless would have been gladly done. 

The EPP report on Georgia shall now indemnify for that. It presents itself as a singular catalog of sins which thereby exceeds itself in demands which quite clearly contradict EU law. Personal sanctions without judicial process or collective punishments are just two examples of that. No word of acknowledgment that the Georgian government has kept its country out of the conflict between power blocs into which it, like the Ukraine, would have been so gladly driven. With this report, the EU will overstep the institutional mandate and disregard the principle of sovereign equality. The ESN delegation will decisively reject this report. 

 

[trans: tem]

Christine Anderson, July 9, 2025, EU Stockpiling

EU Parliament, Strasbourg, P10 CRE-REV(2025)07-09(3-0405-0000). 

Herr President. 

In Soviet communism also was stockpiling managed – giant, secret storehouses full of grain, fuel and medical supplies which often remained unused. Now the EU Commission, under the covering of resilience, builds up stocks inaccessible for citizens, administered by non-elected elites, according to guidelines for which no one has voted. The Russian dissident Vladimir Bukowski already warned of this rising EUdSSR, a bureaucratic super-state with economic planning as per a Soviet model. One just thinks of the mRNA injections debacle. 215 million doses disposed of, having decayed. Four billion euros simply gone – thanks to the EU Commission. As always, the reckoning is paid by the taxpayer – families, workers, farmers – while inflation shoots up to the heights and supply chains collapse. Europe requires freedom so as to build, to trade, and to prosper. Crisis provisions, yes; but um Gottes willen, no storage economy under Brussels incompetence. Here, solely and alone are demanded the member states. 

 

[trans: tem]

René Aust, July 9, 2025, New Majorities

EU Parliament, Strasbourg, P10 CRE-REV(2025)07-09(3-0018-0000). 

Frau President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen. 

I want to initially begin with something positive, for the national states have allowed a hint that they want to weaken the supply chain guidelines. Finally thus the Council too goes in the right direction, as it also often and increasingly happens in this parliament – unfortunately however always too slowly; for the world is changing, it changes rapidly, profoundly and irreversibly. Radical technological change, demographic shifts, geopolitical tensions – everywhere we feel the change. Only one continent in comparison to the speeds of other parts of the world apparently stands still, namely Europe. While China runs away in artificial intelligence, while India rises to be a global technology site, and the U.S.A. opens new growth centers, we unfortunately lag behind. 

What we experience is no accident; since as before this continent is fettered by a left-green ideology. Much too seldom do politicians in responsible positions have the courage to use the new majorities in this parliament, but also on this entire continent, to the benefit of a patriotic change. We are available for that. We know that Europe works when its richness is respected, and not when it produces egalitarianism; and besides, only when there is freedom of opinion, and it is not circumscribed, as you seek to do. 

 

[trans: tem]

Alice Weidel, June 24, 2025, Germany, the U.S.A. and Peace

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 21/12, pp. 986-988. 

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

Even following the ceasefire called for by U.S. President Donald Trump, the danger of an escalation of the Israeli-Iranian conflict into a wildfire is still not banished. In this situation, it is important to use all existing channels at one’s disposal so as to actually take leave from the dynamic of military escalation. A foundation for that is a realistic estimate of the situation. Israel’s right to exist thereby stands beyond any discussion. Israel has the legitimate right to a maintenance and guaranty of its security. An Iranian atomic bomb would not only be an existential threat to the State of Israel but also for stability and peace in the Near and Middle East and in the entire world. 

Iran, like every other country in the world, has the right to peaceful and exclusively civil use of nuclear power. It needs to not only acknowledge a renunciation of the development and manufacture of nuclear weapons, but also to open all facilities and establishments of nuclear development and research for independent international control. With the removal of Iranian nuclear capacity and rocket launch facilities by Israel and the U.S.A. lapses a central reason for the further pursuit of an exchange of military strikes. This opens the opportunity for a diplomatic solution which takes into account Israel’s security interests. The U.S. American Vice-president J. D. Vance has expressed himself in this sense and thereby indicated the way which now needs be taken. That will not be possible without the participation of world nuclear powers allied with Iran, especially Russia. The Israeli-Iranian war forcefully demonstrates how severely [bitter] necessary an American-Russian understanding for peace and security would be in this world.   

The EU states and Germany have needed to painfully experience that in this discussion also they  play no role. For mindless action for action’s sake, and embarrassing false estimates, the German Foreign Minister Wadephul, his European Office Minister and the overwhelmed EU Foreign Affairs Commissioner are thoroughly to blame. A European Union which is primarily occupied with itself can play no serious role in the world. Who harms himself with a ban on combustion engines and a climate planned economy, squanders his resources in the manipulation and restriction of citizens’ rights, and is grimly fixated on the prolongation of war in the Ukraine, takes himself out of the game. 

Still a word to you, Herr Chancellor: Unserious tough talk over supposed “dirty work” damages Germany’s image, primarily in international matters. I could not believe it as I heard it. 

Germany and the European nations need to find a way back to a realistic estimate of their own possibilities and limits so that they can credibly enter on the way of mediation; since it is most urgently in the German and European interest to quickly end the warfare in the Near East. It threatens commercial movement and supply of raw materials, and contains the danger of new migration flows which destabilize the European continent and especially Germany. 

Where we ourselves can act, we need to take the matter in hand. It is of concern to us to prevent, with robust border protection, a new wave of immigration of Islamists and those posing a danger into our country. It is within our power to put a stop to the import of conflicts and civil wars from other regions, in which we consistently deport foreign instigators and rigorously punish anti-semitic excesses. Therein ultimately depends the continuation of Germany as a democratic and freely constituted Republic of Germans. This existence right of Germany should be in the hearts of us all at least even so as the uncontested and legitimate existence right of Israel. 

Hundreds of thousands of soldiers have already fallen in the Ukraine in this American-Russian proxy war. To quickly end it is in any case in the German and European interest. The key to peace lies in Moscow and Washington. That a new American leadership is ready in that regard signifies a grand opportunity. 

It is frankly absurd when, Herr Merz, in a grotesque self-overestimate, you believe you needed to take responsibility to continue the proxy war in which even the U.S.A. has for long lost interest. While you with martial rhetoric dig the graves ever deeper, the U.S. President long since sounds out the possibilities of future economic cooperation in Russia. 

You instead are enthusiastic that for the 17 EU sanctions packages against Russia an 18^th is to follow which will again harm the German economy. President Trump besides rejects new Russia sanctions because the U.S.A. would thereby – I cite – lose “billions of dollars”. The American President is right! 

            Markus Frohnmaier (AfD): German interests!

And on the other hand, your Foreign Minister as it happens says – I cite – “Of German claims there need be now no consideration taken”. This disdain for the interests of our country frankly appears to be the leitmotiv of your government. 

You are silent when the EU Commission plans, to Germany’s disadvantage, to completely forbid gas deliveries from Russia, and to thereby drive the energy prices still further to the heights, and you even signal agreement when the EU by law permanently prevents any restart of Nord Stream 

            Hendrik Hoppenstadt (CDU/CSU): Who turned it off?

and in this way wants to retroactively legitimate the criminal assault on Germany’s infrastructure. It would actually be a post facto witticism [Treppenwitz] if the exploded Nord Stream gas pipelines were restarted as it happens by a U.S. consortium. Advantageous pipeline natural gas from Russia is indispensable for the supply of Germany with secure and affordable energy. Expensive imports by sea of liquified gas are in the long-term no alternative. 

The foolish remark of your Foreign Minister Wadephul, Russia will ever remain our enemy, is revealing. The overcoming of the fatal hereditary foe thinking by the generation of Konrad Adenauer and Charles de Gaulle was once the foundation for peace and prosperity in Europe. And you regress [Sie fallen dahinter zurück]! Geography does not allow itself to be simply denied! Russia will in the future be our European neighbor. No way, short or long, leads past agreement with Russia and a new security architecture of all actors and their legitimate security interests. 

            Ralf Stegner (SPD): Borders of 1937?

Now would be the point in time, Herr Chancellor, for a first step on this way to peace. 

Many hearty thanks. 

 

[trans: tem]

Mary Khan, June 19, 2025, Hague Judgments Convention

EU Parliament, Strasbourg, P10 CRE-REV(2025)06-19(4-0103-0000). 

Herr President. 

This convention shows how international cooperation without Brussels patronization can work. Great Britain is no longer part of the EU. For that, we have to thank the patience and steadfastness of a free people; of that, the British can be proud. And yet it succeeded in creating legal certainty on an equal level. 

A sovereign state, a treaty of international law, clear rules, quite without expense in the billions of an officials’ apparatus, without ideology – precisely that is our way. We need to reduce the European cooperation to the essentials: Interior market, protection of exterior borders and voluntary, bi-lateral treaties between sovereign national states. 

Instead, we experience an EU which inflates itself into a political super-state which costs billions and which meddles ever deeper in national decisions. We will vote in favor because it shows how an authentic partnership appears: According to a state of law, voluntary and sovereign. 

 

[trans: tem]

Alexander Sell, June 19, 2025, Germany Is Bankrupt

EU Parliament, Strasbourg, P10 CRE-REV(2025)06-19(4-0038-0000). 

Herr President. 

Germany is bankrupt. The Pension Insurance is bankrupt; sickness and care insurance – bankrupt, unemployment insurance – bankrupt. We Germans pay with the highest taxes worldwide 1,000 billion euros per year and despite that, it is lacking everywhere. Bridges and streets decay, schools are unfit, over 7 million pensioners have less than 1,000 euros per month, residential property is scarce. At the same time, we also pay the highest contribution for the EU by far, almost 30 billion euros per year, even though we, according to the European Central Bank, are one of Europe’s poorest countries. 

Yet instead of relieving the German taxpayer, you want to impose ever new burdens on us. Moldavia, Albania or the Ukraine shall now become a member of the European Union because Frau von der Leyen hopes for more weight on the world political stage. That will not work; we Germans will no longer let ourselves be plundered. We will turn off the your megalomania at the money spigot. You can rely on it, since for that my party was elected. Please say to your Commission President: We who shall fall down, he first becomes proud, and pride comes before the fall.

 

[trans: tem]

Tomasz Froelich, June 16, 2025, Hungary

EU Parliament, Strasbourg,  P10 CRE-REV(2025)06-18(3-0243-0000) 

Herr President. 

Hungary is a sovereign state, Hungary defends traditional values, and Hungary has every right to ban the Pride, for it is right to protect children from sexual exhibitionism. You here contrive a tribunal against Orbán so as to divert from your own problems. Since not in Budapest are women gang raped, the caliphate is not proclaimed in Budapest, but truly in our cities, in Berlin, in Brussels, in Paris. Here, you shut your trap. Yet when Orbán does something which does not agree with you, you turn right around. 

You do not respect Hungary, you expect obedience. Who does not obey, will be sanctioned. That is like a social credit system on a supra-national level. In countries which were under the Soviet knout, that awakens evil memories; yet you don’t get it. You don’t understand how humiliating and arrogant your words act in Hungary, because you lack every cultural sensibility. Your variety is a simple-mindedness. Your tolerance applies only to those of the same opinion. You behave like colonial masters with imperialistic values, and you do not once notice it. Hands off Hungary! 

 

[trans: tem]

Anja Arndt, May 21, 2025, Carbon Border Adjustment

EU Parliament, Brussels, P10 CRE-REV(2025)05-21(1-0244-0000). 

Herr President. 

The Green Deal has become a gigantic economy destruction program. European businesses needed to pay 39 billion euros in the year 2024 alone for emissions certificates. In Germany in the last year, 120,000 industrial workplaces were lost. Imports from non-EU countries meanwhile are essentially more advantageous, and are causing problems for our producers. 

And now shall CBAM – the CO₂ Border Adjustment – bring it again into order? From 2026, our importers of, for example, steel, aluminum, cement and fertilizer shall now also pay CO₂ penalty duties. Shall that reconstruct the competitiveness? That is the big question. A dangerous semblance of a solution. A very dangerous semblance of a solution. Farmers will be further ruined, who are dependent on the international economy. Deloitte estimates that, as a result of the CBAM, a VW Golf will become 1,500 euros more expensive, and even wheat around 7 percent on account of higher prices for fertilizer. The CO₂ certificate and the CBAM will have no influence on the Earth’s temperature, and ought to be abolished without replacement. All else is extremely dangerous. 

Germany needs the AfD. Europe needs the ESN.

  

[trans: tem]

Irmhild Boßdorf, May 5, 2025, EU Regional Development

EU Parliament, Strasbourg, P10 CRE-REV(2025)05-05(1-0186-0000). 

Herr President. 

Scarce success, billions in German tax money trickling away – that is the mournful balance of REGI [Regional Development] promotion. Less poverty, more jobs, less emigration from rural regions – a nil return, despite a 270 billion euro promotion. Yet what actually happened with so much money? I asked Elisa Ferreira, the last REGI Commissioner about that. She admitted that it’s not about costs and uses, but about peace, freedom and welfare. In the end, these means would also help to check right-populist parties in rural areas. 

In fact, there was in the past year a study of Kiel University which indicated that, without the REGI means in remote regions, rightist parties would have received two to three percent more. 270 billion repurposed to the fight against rightists – that is unheard of. Let us make the rural area livable again. Let’s finally put the REGI means to use for our Heimat.

  

[trans: tem]

René Aust, April 2, 2025, Steel and Metallurgical Industry

EU Parliament, Strasbourg, P10 CRE-REV(2025)04-02(3-0018-0000). 

Frau President. 

In Germany and Europe there is everything needed so that our industry can be successful: Ability, brains, technology and a centuries-old industrial tradition. Yet, despite these strengths, our industry falls behind, not because our people have become worse, but because Brussels always puts new chains on our economy: Bureaucracy, energy prices, duties – made by people far away from the practice. And now comes the EU Commission with an action plan for the steel and metallurgical industry. Yet like every plan of the EU Commission, this one also brings no added freedom, but new formulas. Not relief, but new hurdles. 

We who demand fighting for a strong economy, therefore demand: An end to patronization, and away with the blockades! CO₂ limit compensation, compulsory works decree, data defense basic decree, supply chain guidelines – all that sounds nice and is well meant, yet steers our businesses away form innovation and production, into control, paper shuffling and bureaucracy. Ever more operations thus think of emigration. Not because they want to, but because they need to. 

I want that Germany and all Europe are again places where industry can gladly invest and grow, where workplaces originate in our homeland and not elsewhere. We have the potential, we have the brains, we have the diligence. What we do not have is a good EU Commission. Let us finally give our industry the freedom to be successful.

 

[trans: tem]