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]

 

 

 

Rainer Kraft, October 20, 2023, Hydrogen

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/132, pp. 16606-16607. 

Right honorable Frau President. Valued colleagues. 

The speaking time is brief, yet despite that I need to begin with a joke which the colleague Spaniel told to me here – an engineer joke: The hydrogen, that was the technology of the future; the hydrogen, it is the technology of the future; and the hydrogen, it will also in the future be the technology of the future. 

Michael Kruse (FDP): You simply have nothing to do with a future!

I know: One needs know what a MINT-Fach [Mathematics Engineering Science Technology subject] is, otherwise one does not understand. 

            Götz Frömming (AfD): The Greens are still thinking!

Dear Union, your motion for a hydrogen start-up is completely out of date. The hydrogen strategy was of 2020, thus two decades after the beginning of the failed energy transition,  invented by irresponsible Union politicians so as to save what was no more at at all to be saved. The simple truth is: Hydrogen will not be able to store our electricity in sufficient quantities. 

Since then were billions of euros distributed in research of little purpose so as to ascertain what we all already knew: That hydrogen squanders enormous quantities of energy for manufacture, which we certainly do not have, its storage and transport ability is poor, and its employment quickly has every associated cost at an astronomical height. In the Pkw [passenger vehicle] area, despite your expensive resuscitation efforts, the hydrogen has already twice died. In the bus, trucking and trains area, hydrogen still appears in press articles. Yet the Union again rides a dead horse and thereby hopes to alter the laws of Nature. 

Yet in this the Union is not alone. The Ampel also pays its respects to the dead Gaul. There ultimately is tax money to distribute and posts to be filled with friends and acquaintances. The Ampel can thereby not generally disguise its own cognitive dissonance. According to the Ampel, the same hydrogen is inappropriate for home heating. Why? Because it is too expensive. Yet at the same time these same charlatans assert that the same hydrogen will be sufficiently economic to produce globally competitive green steel and green chemicals in Germany. That does not everywhere go together; thus you either deceive just yourselves, or yet deceive here your sovereign, namely the German people. 

While you thus merrily annihilate additional workplaces, the German citizens shall be forced to install heating pumps because these have a higher efficiency than hydrogen. Yet neither the SPD nor the Greens nor the FDP can guarantee the constant availability of electricity from wind and sun. How thus shall the people heat when Mother Nature someday leaves the German planned economy in the lurch? To that, the progressive coalition, ja, once again has no answer. 

This planned economy of yours also does not stop at the German border. With a new form of colonialism you want to generate energy in foreign states and allow transport back to Germany without a coverage of local requirements. Your entire post-colonial hypocrisy was well summarized by Antonio Osvaldo Saide, Vice-minister for Resources and Energy of the Mozambique Republic: That of course a nation, in which only every second generally has an electrical connection, can besides have no energy for export as long as not everyone in the country has access to economic energy. 

            Götz Frömming (AfD): That is all the same to the Greens!

This position, which he communicated to us at his visit in Berlin, I and my delegation completely share. 

Back to the rainbow colors of the Union’s hydrogen fantasies. In regards all of your color scenarios is noticed that one color in your spectrum is lacking: The so-called red hydrogen, made from nuclear energy. Yes, that would have been a very good opportunity to produce hydrogen competitively and approaching a coverage of costs. Yet unfortunately you, ladies and gentlemen of the Union, have already refused twelve years ago the branch upon which you so happily want to sit. 

Dear Union, your hydrogen fairy tales stop here. Your motion does not perch in the realm of reality, but bestirs itself in a post-factual fantasy world. There is no energy for that from unreliable wind and solar power and there never will be. Your motion is pure wishful thinking and we therefore reject it. 

 

[trans: tem]

Petr Bystron, October 19, 2023, Migrant Trafficking

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/131, pp. 16398-16399. 

Right honorable Herr President. Dear colleagues. 

We speak here today of the worst case of organized criminality since the Second World War. For it is an octopus which entwines billions, which costs human lives. It is no rescue at sea; it is human trafficking [Menschenschlepperei], and it is criminal. 

            Lamya Kaddor (Greens): Yes, what then do you dream at nights?

It begins with you enticing the migrants onto the high seas and plainly inducing them into an emergency at sea. 

Jamila Schäfer (Greens): Would you please for once read a scientific study? That would be total super!

This occurs with the aid of an app, which is called Alarm Phone. No one is so dumb as to climb into a rubber boat 

            Jamila Schäfer (Greens): Shame on you!

with benzine for 10 kilometers and to believe that he thereby comes 400 kilometers to Europe. 

Lamya Kaddor (Greens): What do you believe, where you live? Have you once made an impression of it? Quite honestly, it is shameless how you come forward here. 

The migrants do it just then when they see they are fished out of your boats 10 kilometers from the African coast. 

            Sebastian Fiedler (SPD): Who are desperate! Only one here is dumb!

And this app is financed by whom? By the Heinrich Böll Foundation, the Robert Bosch Foundation and Soros. For that alone ought the common use be withdrawn and the money eliminated. 

Julian Pahlke (Greens): Aha, and now even anti-semitism! That you are not ashamed, Herr Bystron! You are an embarrassment! 

This year alone – you yourself have said it – this has cost the lives of 2,000 people. 

Point two: Maritime law. What is the maritime law? To bring those rescued to the nearest harbor. 

            Derya Türk-Nachbauer (SPD): Secure harbor!

These trafficking boats do exactly the opposite: They do not bring them to Africa; they bring them 400 kilometers to Europe, intentionally, with announcement. That is trafficking. 

These inhuman doings are best documented by the incident of 2022. The migrants were already rescued by the Libyan coast guard. Then Sea-Watch came around and the migrants jumped into the sea because they wanted Europe. Twenty people thus died, among them children and women. For those deaths, you are co-responsible. 

If these ships would bring the migrants back to Africa – 

            Lamya Kaddor (Greens): For your sake! They will certainly not be asked!

for my sake to Algeria, Tunisia or Egypt, then thirty times more people could be helped for the same money than in Germany. Yet the salient point is: You do not want precisely that, because you want these people as care cases for your asylum industry. So it is. 

            Lamya Kaddor (Greens): You have no idea!

Vera Lengsfeld of the CDU has already worked this out wonderfully. She has shown that the Red Cross alone has more employees than BASF – and BASF is the world’s largest chemical concern – and Caritas more employees than BMW. Yet all these people produce nothing, do nothing constructive, build no autos; yet they cost, and for that you need the money. 

            Clara Bünger (Linke): What? Caritas?

The costs for one refugee approach 57,000 euros per year. You are hereby creating care cases and tax money for them. That is the case. 

 

[trans: tem]

  

           

 

 

Gerrit Huy, October 17, 2023, Citizens’ Wage

AfD Kompakt, October 17, 2023. 

Ever more employees, especially in the low-wage sector, quit their work because the citizens’ wage [Bürgergeld] promises a performance-free income. We of the AfD delegation have quite early warned that the Ampel’s Bürgergeld has been framed too abundantly and thereby lies dangerously near the applicable minimum wage. An optional increase of the statutory minimum wage needs to be carefully weighed and continually take into consideration that already today many Mittelstand operations and businesses in eastern Germany are under an enormous wage pressure and simply cannot pay a higher minimum wage. And the assertion circulating in the area of the Bürgergeld debate that there exists in this country no wage disparity requirement [Lohnabstandsgebot] is false. So decided the Federal Constitutional Court in 2020 that civil servants in the lowest pay grades need to be better off than recipients of the basic security. They should have 15 percent more net so that their work pays. And for the normal employees, who are not civil service, work should also pay. Labor market policy decisions following the Federal Constitutional Court’s ruling appear to be sensible. In this sense, future wage development should anticipate Bürgergeld development. Otherwise will still more employees wander away to the Bürgergeld. 

 

[trans: tem]

Tino Chrupalla, October 19, 2023, Peace

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 210/131, pp. 16344-16345. 

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

One almost feels returned back to February 2022 and the subsequent time. The world security situation has again intensified, and again a new war is ignited. Each war situation is different; similar consequences nevertheless yield death, destruction, flight and suffering. We thus mourn with the relatives of all innocent victims of this war. I also want to wish the relatives present all the best, united with a hope that they can again enclose their loved ones in their arms. 

We most sharply condemn the attack of Hamas on Israel. For the murder and kidnapping of civilians, there is no justification, on any side. We all therefore need to endeavor to avoid one thing: That the war in the Near East powder keg not be allowed to expand into a wildfire. To that also pertains resisting the war incitement and, even when it is awkward, to give a voice to diplomacy. And yes, Israel self-evidently is allowed to defend itself against attack. The right of self-defense is provided for in international law and is coherent with the UN Charter. Yet Israel in this regard needs to pay heed to proportionality. Humanitarian catastrophes are not permitted to arise, and the regional states need to avert this escalation. The Federal government therefore needs to work helpfully and supportively, instead of further heating up the atmosphere. 

Chancellor Scholz this time proceeds in exactly this way. With his visits in Tel Aviv and Cairo, he has shown that negotiation and mediation are the order of the hour. The basic provision for the civil population in Israel and Palestine is to be secured. Hamas must free its hostages, and the Federal government needs to commit itself to the immediate release and secure return of removed Germans. For that, you so far have done too little. 

I am nevertheless concerned over voices which push outward from the Union delegation. Herr Merz, you have spoken of “jargon”. It appears here as if one simply could not wait for the intensification of the war. Colleague Kiesewetter blusters through the world with his words, We should be ready “to defend Israel’s security with our lives”. This verbal warmongering, which is a matter of discord even in the CDU, we hitherto knew in the Ukraine war only from the Free Democrats, from Frau Strack-Zimmermann. For my delegation and me, in the case of Israel and Palestine, it is proximately about that peace be reconstructed in this region worn down for decades by conflict. In Herr Kiesewetter’s direction: Understand please, we want peace. We do not want to send our children into a military intervention [Kriegseinsätze]. Yes, we also want solidarity. Yet your words are irresponsible and not reconcilable with our values. 

Look around, how the world community reacts, and primarily at what that could mean for Germany and Europe. Politicians need to understand what happens if the Near East powder keg is set afire, what happens if Lebanon or Iran are involved in this war. Then quite quickly are the U.S.A. and the BRICS states at hand. This situation no one can or wants to put forward even just in estimates. Since how shall Israel then again be able to live in the region in security and peace? I ask everyone in the parliament to answer for himself this question and to verbally disarm. 

Valued colleagues, let us also include in the situation analysis the reactions, the opinions of the the affected regions. Thus, Egyptian President el-Sisi is opposed to the resettlement of Palestinians in Sinai; the peninsula would become a base for attacks against Israel. The normalization process of Israel’s relations to Saudi Arabia is stopped. The Iranian foreign minister calls on members of the organization of Islamic cooperation for an oil embargo and for an expulsion of Israeli ambassadors. Saudi Arabia calls on its citizens to leave Lebanon. Therefore, here there is allowed no further escalation. 

In this place, I demand of the Federal government to find just so clear words. Finally place in the foreground our own, the German interests! Additional or new migration waves to Europe and Germany are not in our interest. You must in any case prevent that, Herr Scholz. I ask you to work in that regard in Brussels at the European Council. Terror organizations and anti-semitism have no place in Germany. And in addition: Those posing a potential danger need to be immediately and consistently deported. Hamas and structures close to Hamas are allowed neither to be financed from Germany nor become a security risk for Germany. Therefore, finally examine a ban, and issue it in a timely fashion! 

With regards to the war regions, it concerns humanitarian support and durable solution possibilities. Thus China and Russia have proposed a humanitarian ceasefire. This resolution was indeed rejected in the UN Security Council. An overriding objective – this is surely beyond an all-party consensus – is nevertheless that further deaths must be prevented. A peaceful solution must be further pursued beyond political differences. Only so will the bloodshed be ended and long-term structure projects in the region be possible. The goal of diplomacy must be to find a durable solution for long-term peace in the Near East. This also is in the German interest.   

The only means which Germany, which the German Bundestag can here effect is the call for peace. The Federal government should not be able to be made co-responsible for a war in the Near East. We need an interests-led policy. We need free and peaceful commerce with oil and gas. We need trade routes and secure corridors instead of war and enmity. 

Many thanks. 

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

 

 

Gunnar Beck, October 4, 2023, Green Bonds

AfD Kompakt, October 4, 2023. 

How deficient actually is the so-called Green Economy is seen not only in the horrendous promotion programs for windpower and photovoltaic at the cost of the citizens and consumers, but also in the so-called Green Bonds. So as to be even only rudimentarily competitive, these loans require a green EU mark of quality so that they will at all be purchased and traded in large quantities. 

Under normal circumstances – without this unspeakable EU economy planned around the Green Deal – the current loans would scarcely arouse an interest. And this mark of quality shows how stubborn and aloof the EU elites act, far from any connection to reality. We of the AfD work for the citizens and want to return a sense of freedom, prosperity and growth to the expensive as sin Green Deal. 

 

[trans: tem]

Alice Weidel, September 8, 2023, Building Energy Act

AfD Kompakt, September 8, 2023. 

While the alarm sounds for the construction business because there are scarcely any more orders for the erection of new dwelling space, the Ampel unperturbed further pursues the disposition of the GEG [Gebäudeenergiegesetz, Building Energy Act]. Especially Economy and Energy Minister Robert Habeck thereby shows how far distant he is from reality. Who, like Energy Minister Habeck with unbearable arrogance demands of the citizens to leave the “comfort zone of self-contentment”, he demonstrates with what contempt he regards Germany. The assertion that the Ampel solves problems “like never before” is the crowning touch. 

The GEG will expropriate home builders and demolish their pension plans. At the same time, it presents landlords and renters with unimagined additional costs while it offers not the least little added value – neither for climate nor for the citizens in Germany. And this law is a symptom of a Federal government exclusively motivated by ideology for which it cannot go fast enough to destroy our country. The AFD will, should it participate in a Federal government, revoke all of these laws and direct the focus on what is really important for the people in this country. 

 

[trans: tem]

 

Peter Boehringer, August 29, 2023, De-industrialization

AfD Kompakt, August 29, 2023. 

The wave of insolvency which presently rolls through Germany does not fall from Heaven and it is not a purely market event, but the result of an utterly failed policy. It thus borders on whitewashing when some economics experts now speak of an “overdue market settlement” in regards to the “lack of ability to compete of numerous firms”. Since this ability to compete was systematically destroyed by the policy by means of half-witted energy and tax policy, by means of deranged Corona preventive measures, by means of over-regulation and planned economy subventions. Who should believe that presently in Germany new businesses are being formed which replace the defunct firms? The fact is that we in Germany thus need to do everything to stop the advancing de-industrialization, for the Mittelstand’s economic substance will not return once it has been squandered. The political substance needed here is nevertheless found only with the AfD, since the AfD alone is in the position to introduce the political turnaround which is required for the revival of Germany as a business venue. The solution does not lie in support and stabilization measures and not in costly implantations of chip factories out of tax revenues, but in a profound alteration of the general conditions. Only under this prerequisite will there at all again be in the future investing in Germany worthy of the name. 

 

[trans: tem]

Enrico Komning, July 6, 2023, Maritime Industry and Energy

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/115, pp. 14130-14131. 

Right honorable Frau President. Right honorable Herr Minister. Ladies and gentlemen. Colleagues. Dear visitors from my constituency up in the gallery. 

It was once earlier said: The future is good for us all. – Yet that now is certainly at an end. Your Scholz Zeitenwende [change of times] lacks a “d”; it needs be said, Zeitendwende, if not to say: End times change. 

            Enak Ferlemann (CDU/CSU): Oh Gott!

Ladies and gentlemen, German shipbuilding lies prostrate. The insolvency of the Genting Werften in my home State of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern cost the taxpayer hundreds of millions on account of bad political decisions. 50 percent of the entire worldwide ship production meanwhile takes place in China, 40 percent in South Korea. And do you know how high is the portion of German shipbuilding worldwide? I will tell you: At just 0.3 percent. That is the result of your maritime industrial policy, ladies and gentlemen of the Ampel, yet also previously of the Union. 

Investors in droves flee from Germany – see the net 125 billion euro capital flight of last year. With your energy disaster, you drive the still halfway functioning Mittelstand supply industry to foreign countries and into bankruptcy. And what is your idea? A “climate neutral Federal fleet”, an environment symbolic “environmentally friendly sea-going ship design” 

            Lukas Benner (Greens): Super!

and the regulated examination of Federal waterway sluices. Na, hearty congratulations. Your Ampel motion is more a threat than an assistance for the maritime industry. 

Nevertheless, you now want to investigate the adjustment of the import turnover tax collection in other European states. Ja, good morning, ladies and gentlemen! We of the AfD proposed that already in May 2019! You assert keeping as much as possible value creation in country, yet, at the order of the Chancellor, sell off a part of the port of Hamburg to China. The truth nevertheless is that primarily large foreign concerns, which finance Habeck’s lobbyist network, make a fortune, while the people in Germany no more know how they can pay their electric or gas accounts. 

            Felix Banaszak (Green): I am sorry about your constituency.

You promise a growth of 400 gigawatts of offshore wind output in the next 20 years. Herr Westphal presently speaks of an output yielding 8 gigawatts. And in view of the just 38 new installations in the past year with a nominal output of 342 megawatts, that is nevertheless just a dream wish. At that tempo, you need 1200 years instead of 20 years. 

You assert to want to make the seaports into hubs of a renewable energy system, yet build an LNG terminal for expensive and before all dirty U.S. fracking gas in the middle of a nature preserve area at Rügen. Not even your expert, Felix Heilmann, – besides, formerly active for Graichen’s Agora Energiewende – holds that to be a good idea. 

And the Union motion clearly shows how you, ladies and gentlemen of the Union, are as before imprisoned in the woke embrace of the Greens. 

            Michael Grosse-Brömer (CDU/CSU): We? Since when? Now I do not                                    understand that! 

            Enak Ferlemann (CDU/CSU): That is just ridiculous! 

Colleague Westpahl has also just approved of your motion. The Union motion throughout breathes the insecurity between compliant green obedience and the public pressure of needing just once to play at a little opposition. 

            Christoph Ploss (CDU/CSU): Name for once an example!

The crisis of the maritime industry is the crisis of German industry – a crisis created by all of you. Affordable energy: That is what Germany needs before all. 

            Vice-president Katrin Göring-Eckardt: Herr colleague, your speaking time                            is at an end.

            Felix Banaszak (Green): Yes, finally! 

And finally put an end to your bureaucracy crusade in unholy alliance with the EU.           

             Vice-president Katrin Göring-Eckardt: Herr colleague.

I thank you. Many thanks. 

            Michael Kruse (FDP): Rubbish Comedy Club for free!

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alice Weidel, August 16, 2023, Olaf Scholz

AfD Kompakt, August 16, 2023. 

In Germany, failure of the state has a name: Olaf Scholz! The result of the latest survey of the German people’s trust in the state is a ringing slap in the face for Chancellor Scholz and the Ampel government. These office-holding failures of the state ultimately bear the responsibility for that ever more people are losing their trust in our state. All state services and institutions in comparison to last year were evaluated as worse and on the whole miserable. That can and may not so continue! We of the AfD are doing all to reverse these fatal mis-developments. We are putting an end to open borders, escalating criminality, a desolate transport infrastructure and the destruction of Germany as a business venue. 

 

[trans: tem]

Rainer Kraft, July 6, 2023, Emissions Decree

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/115, p. 14242. 

Esteemed President. Valued colleagues.

 The 31^st decree presented for the enforcement of the Federal emissions protection law is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Duty-bound, the protection of labor and environment is addressed, and you promise the new, the healed world. Yet, thought through to the end, your assessment means the zero harm strategy, that the safest workplace is no workplace, and that the most environmentally friendly production is to be a production outside of Germany. 

Chemistry, ladies and gentlemen, chemistry is life; life which you gladly wish to comprehensively control and regulate. Your planned economy shall thereby be in reality implemented by legions of self-named consultants, institutes and agents. You create entirely new job descriptions without any productive activity – to the harm of the entire nation and its citizens who everyday stand at the value-creation front.    

I know, you can only with difficulty imagine; solvents in industry are indispensable. They make possible the manufacture of chemicals, undertake cleaning chores, support the production fabrication, and assist in the optimization of the surface area; in regards corrosion protection, phosphating, chromating, anodization, etching, painting, and in regards to thousands of additional uses which you want to restrict and make more expensive. 

You assert that an intensification of the emissions protection would have no effect on the consumer prices. That – and it needs be said quite clearly – is a lie, and a bad one at that. For of course added certifications cost money. Of course additional expertise costs money. Of course additional bureaucratic positions in Brussels cost money. And of course the unnecessary re-equipment of industrial installations costs money. 

It is the taxpayers’ money which you here, with your dream of an eco-socialist Utopia, throw out the window by the handful. Many, many small and mid-sized businesses require in one form or another simple solvents. What else remains for these businesses as a result of your price hustling than to shift the costs onto their customers? 

As if that were not enough, the product quality will also suffer. The quality of paints and colors will diminish. Metals will rust sooner; woods will more quickly rot. Your reducing plan is the way back to the Dark Ages. That has something to do neither with sustainability nor with environmental protection. It will simply cost money and workplaces. 

We of the AfD say no; no to your irrational fear of everything which human ingenuity and the urge to create has brought forward; no to your agenda hostile to economy and freedom, and no to measures which serve environmental protection only on paper. The Federal emissions protection decree should serve the German people and not put together an additional stimulus program for India or China. We, the AfD, want to export goods, not workplaces. We reject the decree.

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

  

 

 

Klaus Stöber, July 6, 2023, Business Tax Reform

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/115, pp. 14107-14108. 

Right honorable Frau President. Valued colleagues. Dear guests in the gallery. 

I first want to express my gratitude to the CDU/CSU, that they have brought this theme into plenary session. Yet the fact is that we on the Finance Committee have concerned ourselves far too little with the theme of taxes. 

Some have thereby appeared to forget that without tax revenues simply nothing here could get underway: Frau Baerbock could not give away millions in foreign countries; for the EU, we would fail to be the most important payer of contributions; and even the grandiose subventions and ostensible grants, which you here in connection with the heating law wanted to distribute, would simply be impossible. Yet the heating law has,  ja, just now been taken down from the daily order by the Federal Constitutional Court. I think that was a good decision. 

The question is naturally: Do the citizens perceive the present tax system as just, and does the high tax burden restrict the competitiveness of our country? I find interesting in this connection a look at the tax rates in international comparison: Bulgaria, 10 percent; Hungary, nine percent; Lithuania, 15 percent; Roumania, 16 percent; Czechia and Poland, 19 percent; and Greece, 22 percent. 

When one looks in comparison at who are the principal receiver countries within the EU, one sees: They are precisely the same countries which are on this list. It is thus interesting that the countries which exact the least taxes from their citizens are those receiving the most money from the EU. That means we are in principle financing the tax programs of the European countries. And that, I think, is not the purpose [Sinn] of the EU. 

It is thus not to be wondered that Germany as principal payer with around 22 billion euros net has comparatively the highest tax burden. And here also, in answer to the big question, is referral to the minimum tax of 15 percent not helpful; for if you have comprehended the tax rates which I have just read out, you may see: Most already lie well nigh at or above the limit of 15 percent. Which corresponds exactly to this corporation tax which we have in Germany. 

Only, what you always ignore: In Germany – which is unique in Europe – besides the corporation tax, we even pay an excise tax [Gewerbsteuer], and the excise tax of course clearly drives the total tax rate of businesses to the heights. We are then overall at around 30 percent, and that is the highest value in Europe. It especially most harshly affects the Mittelstand economy. 

While France last year clearly reduced its business tax rate, we here in Germany are far distant from that. The excise tax is a foreign body in international tax comparison. If we want to reconstruct the competitiveness, we need to reform or even abolish this. I know, the excise tax is the principal source of budget income for many local governments. On that account, we of course need to find adequate instruments; for example, a higher participation of the local governments in the income tax and in the sales tax [Umsatzsteuer]. That would essentially help in local governments; for we have just seen in regards Corona that even the business tax has a high variability, and therefore the local governments have naturally met with greater difficulties.   

Now of course Schlaumeier could say: Each businessman can himself freely choose whether he founds a GmbH [limited liability company] or a sole proprietorship. Right, yes. Yet a sole proprietorship of 63,000 euros income is already at the top tax rate of 42 percent, and that again in the European mean is the top value. 

We thus require no continual poking around in whichever existing system; we require a unified business tax [Unternehmenssteuer], independent of legal form, which relieves especially small- and mid-sized businesses. We require a distinct increase in the basic allowance, a distinct extension of the rates table in which the top tax rate is very much later implemented, and we require, before all things, a simplification in tax law and the abolition of many special cases. Here, I gladly invite you to get underway in common with us a real business tax reform. 

Many thanks.

            Kay Gottschalk (AfD): A very good speech! 

 

[trans: tem]

Barbara Lenk, July 6, 2023, Artificial Intelligence

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/115, p. 14257. 

Right honorable Frau President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen. Valued colleagues. 

We today discuss a motion of the Linke delegation for the debate on the EU legislation for generative artificial intelligence. As usual, the Linke’s petitioners hunt after the phantom of an alleged discrimination by means of algorithms. As usual, they see the cure for saving the situation in an unbounded regulation of AI which is adapted to nip in the bud every creative impulse in regards start-ups as well as small and Mittlestand businesses. Their motion is thereby not approvable; since it prevents a future-oriented alignment of Germany’s policy with the goal of a digital sovereignty. 

As examples of generative AI, you name ChatGPT, Dall-E and Midjourney. These generators for pictures and text of U.S. American businesses determine the perception of larger AI models for the end user. 

Right honorable ladies and gentlemen, we should not forget: There are also generative AI made in Germany; for instance, the open source software Stable Diffusion or the chatbot Luminous of Aleph Alpha. 

The demands in the motion put forward by the Linke delegation hide the danger of throttling the creative dynamic of the German AI landscape in research and business. It is senseless to categorize generative AI per se as high-risk and thereby force it under the yoke of examinations and obligations. An AI is a neutral tool. Its potential for use or harm evolves as a result of the intentions of its users. A drone-borne camera can, for example, take spectacular photos of climbers on a cliff. Yet such a camera can also pursue a citizen in a city and brand his behavior as “socially undesirable”. 

In brief: The motion put forward by the Linke delegation we can only reject. The actual risk which threatens Germany in the matter of AI is the growing economic divide between Germany and the U.S.A. or China. So that the digital divide does not deepen into an AI canyon, Germany needs to finally invest in AI suitable data centers. This should also be intelligible to the Herr Federal Finance Minister! The door of digital sovereignty in regards AI is still open. The Linke’s motion however leads into an impassable labyrinth without return. This way we do not follow. 

Many thanks for the attention. Shortly before the close, I wish all colleagues a nice time off. 

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

Ulrike Schielke-Zeising, July 17, 2023, Old Age Pensions and Poverty

AfD Kompakt, July 17, 2023. 

An increase of 15 percent in one, single year: Such figures do not fall from heaven, they are the result of a total failure of pensions policy. All the talk of a “rich” Germany alters nothing of the facts: Now already every third pensioner receives a pension below the basic security (2021: 853 euros); a large portion of the old age pensioners are scarcely above that. 

So far today, more than a quarter of all pensioners are considered “officially” as poor – that in the future will be the rule rather than the exception. It is becoming more difficult: Germany is the laggard in Europe as is it pertains to real property and asset formation. That means: For whom the statutory pension no more suffices, he falls unchecked into poverty. Precisely that is happening now. Exploding living standard costs, rising rents, all the – avoidable – consequences of wrong political decisions, impact unchecked on the seniors’ living situation. 

Of a 3,000 euro inflation premium, as the ministers and state secretaries receive, the pensioners can only dream. And, thus far, they are still poor, even with a pension increase (most recently, 4.39 percent or 5.86 percent in respectively western or eastern Germany). Since this, as is known, is accounted for in the basic security. In other words: He who has, to him will be given; who cannot defend himself, goes away empty. That is the outcome of the “progressive coalition” in Germany. 

How it may otherwise, we have already indicated in our key points paper on old age security, and presently with our motion (Drs. 20/7461). 

 

[trans: tem]

Alice Weidel, July 7, 2023, Heating Law

German Bundestag, July 7, 2023, Plenarprotokoll 20/116, pp. 14329-14330. 

Right honorable Frau President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen. 

The Federal Constitutional Court’s decision has spared us the disgrace of an ignorant, half-baked and bungled law, cobbled together with the crowbar, being enforced. 

You wanted to flog through this green ideological project, with disdain for the citizens’ concerns and the rights of the parliament, and arrogantly wipe away the reasoned objections of an entire host of experts. You obviously still have not heard the shot; for you stubbornly cling to this project. And you of the CDU also do not really want to prevent the heating law; you also have said yes to it. 

Thorsten Frei (CSU/CSU): Then you have not listened to the speech of the delegation chairman! 

A heating law in two months is just as wrong as now. Nothing therein is to be repaired. For the entire proposal by which you want to prescribe to the people how they have to heat their dwellings and houses is not only wrong, it is also unconstitutional.   

You speak of respect. Yet you seize hold of the citizens’ private property, without shame. Constitutional law defends this private property. 

            Konstantin Kuhle (FDP): And human dignity!

Your impoverishment and expropriation law forces owners of private property to sacrifice their reserves and resources for expensive, inefficient and in many cases unsuitable electric heating. You drive them into indebtedness. Many will not be able to maintain their property. International investors stand by, ready for the great sell-out. 

            Johannes Fechner (SPD): That is just rubbish!

Millions of renters will need to pay the bill as a result of rising rents. 

The world laughs at Germany because its government needlessly destroys the nation’s wealth, ruins the middle class and drives industry out of the country. For the reduction of CO₂ emissions and the influencing of the world climate, the heating law is completely useless. You have tinkered with it for months. Yet you still cannot say how great the CO₂ savings generally shall be. 

Over the true costs, you leave the citizens in obscurities, and deceive them with promises of subventions which you cannot pay. You do not tell the truth to the people of the additional attacks on the national wealth which threaten by way of the EU’s subterfuges, moreover pushed by CDU/Commission President Ursula von der Leyen: An intensified renewable energy law, the forced reconstruction by means of the impending EU building guidelines, and the introduction of the monstrous EU CO₂ certificate trade in the construction sector, threaten entire population classes with an annihilation of prosperity and expropriation. And herein is seen once again the double-standard and the hypocrisy of the CDU. 

A heating law of use to no one other than the international investors and the heating pump lobby which, even without clan chief Graichen, here have a tight grip on the Economy Ministry. And which is used by climate ideologues who thereby want to realize their dream of an eco-socialist, planned- and scarcity-economy, with its freight bicycles and candles, in which prescriptions and compulsion take the place of private property, of prosperity, reason and fair competition. 

It is completely clear why you wanted to so hectically enforce this: You are afraid of the citizens, of your own voters; since they very well understand that they will be lied to, cheated, expropriated and made poorer [belogen, betrogen, enteignet und ärmer gemacht]. Your calculation nevertheless will not proceed. Four-fifths of this country’s people are against the heating law. Four-fifths! That you cannot do fractions and math is fully clear. Have it explained to you what four fifths actually means. 

            Marianne Schieder (SPD): By you, simply nothing is to be explained!

Be that as it may. The best heating law is no heating law. Use the hiatus which the Federal Constitutional Court has graciously given you to completely pulp this unspeakable law. 

I am grateful.

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

Thomas Ehrhorn, July 6, 2023, War on One’s Own People

German Bundestag, July 6, 2023, Plenarprotokoll 20/115, pp. 14205-14206. 

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen. 

The draft law put forward deals primarily with the acceleration of the approval procedures for windpower installations and facilities for production of so-called green hydrogen. So as to forestall the same: The speeches on green hydrogen, this alleged wonder technology of the future, which in reality is a stillbirth, is an additional green chimera. Yet this is marginal. 

How shall permitting procedures now be thus accelerated? The answer reads: a) While almost all possibilities of protest and influence are taken from the public, b) while the States’ power of decision is undermined, c) while examinations of environmental compatibility are simply abolished, d) so that in the future protection of species and agriculture no more play a role. But anyway – the main thing is, Germany saves the world climate! 

How absurd this supposition in fact is, the following figures show: Germany, which has a two percent portion of worldwide CO₂ emissions, has since 1990 cut back some one-third of its emissions. The rest of the world, which is responsible for 98 percent of CO₂ output, has in the same time increased its CO₂ emissions by two-thirds. In other words: What we in Germany do or allow is absolutely irrelevant for the world climate. 

            Marianne Schieder (SPD): That is an absurd theory!

The ideologically motivated and artificially generated climate hysteria thus alone serves as a justification for the planned radical change in our society, the radical change into an authoritarian socialist planned economy 

            Marianne Schieder (SPD): Uijuijui! 

Jan Niclas Gesenhues (Greens): Conspiracy theory! Again a false turn on the internet, or what? 

in which the state prescribes to the people how they are to live, how they are to eat, with what they are to heat. It serves as a justification for the rainbow coalition’s war against our industry, against the automobile, against our private property, a war which meanwhile has become a war of those who govern against one’s own people. 

            Marianne Schieder (SPD): That is the wrong word!

And I say to you: The people there outside, they know this and they are fed up with it. 

            Axel Echeverria (SPD): Yes, with you!

Since the only sustainability goal which you are in a position to attain is to drive this country straight into the wall and to annihilate our sustained prosperity. Thus Professor Dr. Knut Löschke, 

            Carsten Träger (SPD): How is he called?

member of the college council of the University of Leipzig and member of the board of trustees of the Max Planck Institute, speaks to the citizens from the deepest soul 

            Petra Sitte (Linke): He is for long no more a member. I have taken care of that!

when he says – I cite with permission of the President: 

I have enough of it…I have a nose full of permanent and ever more religious climate talk, of energy transition fantasies, of electro-auto worship, through horror stories of world downfall scenarios…to world catastrophes. 

I can no more bear the people who daily scream this in microphones and cameras or publish it in newspapers. I suffer first-hand how natural science is made a whore of politics. 

            Marianne Schieder (SPD): Eijeijei!

Ladies and gentlemen of the CDU/CSU, I can thus give to you just the good advice: Send the firewall fetishists and BlackRock orders-takers as quickly as possible into the wasteland. Become again a party which is ready, in common with the AfD, to turn things upside down 

Daniel Rinkert (SPD): Do you then want to change the Federal Emissions Protection Law? What are your proposals? Of that, nothing is heard!

and to make reason-oriented policy for Germany. If you do not do that, you will, quicker than you suppose, dwindle into meaninglessness. 

Thank you. 

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

 

 

Marcus Buchheit, July 11, 2023, European Semiconductor Industry

AfD Kompakt, July 11, 2023. 

So that the European Chips Law does not become the next flop of megalomaniac EU policy, the EU should respect the subsidiarity principle and leave industrial policy in the hands of the national states. Semiconductor manufacturing is a key industry. Yet the promotion of same is empirically far better boosted by the member states than in an EU competence. EU projects are often announced with great tam-tam so to be subsequently buried the more secretively, silently and gently. The EU member states can do industrial policy better, more successfully and more profitably. 

 

[trans: tem]

 

Kay Gottschalk, June 23, 2023, Local Banking and Banking Union

German Bundestag, June 23, 2023, Plenarprotokoll 20/113, p. 13908. 

Right honorable President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen. 

Right honorable colleague Müller, we here in fact are in conformity in many things – that is good so. Yet I cannot here understand the optimism of colleague Oehl in so far as on the delegation trip – on May 31, I saw no one from the SPD there – your colleagues in the European Parliament said something entirely different.   

I believe, we all here have learned, that on the altar of political desire lofty principles have quite often been sacrificed. On that account, it is good that we with you submit a motion [Drucksache 20/7355] – our motion is of course better than that of the CDU/CSU, yet not a word was mentioned. Savings accounts in fact provide for the Mittelstand and for the regional economy at hand. Yet there exists in the area – and that is good so – relatively strong, affiliated networks so that you, ladies and gentlemen in the galleries, certainly still have corresponding, interested partners on site in credit matters, yet also in other financial business.    

The savings bank association, the public and Raffeisen banks as well as the cooperative banks, distinguish themselves throughout – that is little mentioned here – in that they have at their disposal paid-up deposit guaranty funds beyond that of the so-called institute guaranty system, IPS, so that in fact all deposits, ladies and gentlemen in the galleries, even the deposits not legally covered, have been insured, and that is a distinct difference to many other European financial centers. 

The EU Commission now puts forward the so-called CMDI statutory initiative with which they pursue many sub-topics. In the system proposed by the statutory initiative, it would thereby lead to that there would be an accelerated liquidation [beschleunigte Abwicklung] of the banks – as it is now – and thereby the IPS, the institutions’ internal guaranty, would no longer take effect, ladies and gentlemen. We therefore demand of you, like the banking associations – the Italian, the Polish and also the Spanish associations do so – to take up a clear positioning so as to maintain this functional capability.   

Right honorable colleagues of the CDU, well meant – and what you pass over in silence here – is frequently badly done, especially when it comes from the Commission. The question thus presents itself, how well is meant the financial center of Germany by the Commission President by the name of Frau von der Leyen who comes from the CDU? It was also mentioned in this place; since by means of the existing proposal – I have plainly said it – the well-earned strengths of our guaranty network, certainly for the small and mid-sized banks and at the cost of the regional financial economic stability – it needs be said so brutally – would be flattened to a European level [europäisch eingeebnet], ladies and gentlemen. 

Here one may in fact – in so far as both our motions are reasonable – overhear that the EU Commission directly and obtrusively points to that, even if the statutory proposal does not contain it, it is held to be urgently necessary and considered as a best solution, that the deposit guaranty funds, which plainly by all standards have been well fulfilled, which for our savers and investors is good, are to be communitarized [zu vergemeinschaften] and thereby is finally to be completed the banking union. In this purpose, ladies and gentlemen of the debts coalition, you are now for once united, and you should show your colors. 

To communitarize the deposit guaranty system at this moment, as is gladly desired by the Commission, – permit the comparison – would be like enrolling in a fire insurance which is on the brink of bankruptcy – for some states, that is certainly so – because, in regards other customers, uncontrolled smolderings already burn in the balances and the central fire department – here, the ECB – we have again and again spoken of the European Budget Authority’s report – refuses to introduce measures to extinguish.     

            Filiz Polat (Greens): How can one as a Social Democrat change to the AfD?

That is of course concretely the other background why we need to speak of this motion. 

            Vice-president Katrin Göring-Eckardt: Come please to an end. 

I come to a conclusion. The AfD delegation therefore demands of Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner – he is unfortunately not here – to let acts follow his words and to secure the functional capability of the IPS 

            Vice-president Katrin Göring-Eckardt: Herr colleague.

and to prevent the communitarization of the deposit guaranty funds. 

Many thanks.

  

[trans: tem]

Alice Weidel, June 22, 2023, Scholz Government

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/112, pp. 13642-13644.

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

You have made of Germany a country which takes leave from the ranks of nations to be taken seriously and which abolishes itself as an industrial country. Your energy, economic and migration policy is seen by the rest of the world as just a frightening example. Even for our nominal allies, we are primarily a money automat and a provider of weapons to a war zone, while our own army has lost the capability for national defense.

 Why should others have respect for a government in front of whose nose vital infrastructure like the Nord Stream natural gas pipeline is blown up without remonstrance? And if soon the Russian natural gas no longer comes via the land route, because the Ukraine no longer wants to extend the current transit contract, then – explains to us the Federal Minister for De-industrialization and Destruction of the Economy – we just need to shut down our industry so that no one in neighboring countries need freeze. 

Herr Habeck, who in regards the national anthem shuts tight the mouth, clearly and distinctly signals to us that his policy serves neither this country nor its citizens. He himself said it: He can – I cite – “of Germany make” nothing, and finds love of this country, the citizens of which are besides paying him, – quote – “nauseating”. And so his policy appears thus.

For that, the heating law concocted by Herr Habeck’s gang of lobbyists is the best evidence. And with a couple of re-decorations, this law remains a frontal attack on the property of the citizens. Your great plan, your great leap forward, the Great De-carbonization, would cost our economy, according to thermal physicist André Thess, 10 trillion euros by 2045 – billion, mit “B” – around 500 billion per year.

You compel the energy-intensive, productive business into emigration or directly into insolvency – a term of which Herr Habeck knows not what to make. And you drive the automobile industry to suicide by means of your e-auto planned economy. From where shall come the additional electricity for the heating pumps and e-autos, no one knows.

And all of this for a green, grotesque ideology without connection back to reality. Since for neither the worldwide CO₂ emissions nor the heating ban law will the German de-industrialization driven forward by you make a difference. Thus, talk nothing of climate defense! For otherwise you need to build and not disconnect the nuclear power plants. For the electricity which is lacking due to the disconnection of the last three modern German nuclear power plants, you now import from old, French clunker works. What an absurdity!

Your green transformation is no use to the citizens nor does it save the climate or the planet. Yet surely profit from this re-distribution from below to above the lobbyists who have a tight grip on this government. For the nepotism in the Economy Ministry, Herr Habeck would have long since needed to take his leave in any normal government.

You thereby manage the splitting of society, which you still intensify by means of the current out-of-control poverty migration which this government further incites. Even if on the EU level a satisfactory [bescheidener] compromise is found to at least somewhat check the asylum storm, your ministers have nothing better to do, Herr Scholz, than to sabotage this minimal solution.

You send further invitation signals for access into the social system: Who comes will be cared for, need fear no deportation and is allowed to speculate on a quick naturalization. The Federal Interior Minister refuses effective border controls despite all the cries for help from the overburdened local governments. And thus this government makes Germany an outsider in Europe.

The citizens bear the costs. They pay the price when the public space becomes a no-go area and brutal knife violence and sexual crime become everyday phenomena. Summing up the State statistics, there were in last year alone over 21,000 knife attacks, at least 60 every, single day.

– I can well understand why you here bellow.

            Jan Korte (Linke): We certainly do not!

The fact is: This government leaves the home population with this perverse – you scream, ja.

            Till Steffen (Greens): We laugh!

That you now laugh, speaks volumes. You leave in the lurch ice-cold the home population with this perverse, imported criminality. A total failure of this government and the foregoing government, lead besides by the CDU.

Yet it primarily affects the normal citizens when the housing market is picked clean – you laugh, that I know – because the public hand pays any price for the sheltering of migrants, tosses seniors out of their residences and new construction, due to political  manipulation,

            Saskia Esken (SPD): Pathetic populism!

            Anke Henning (SPD): That’s just not right! What are you saying?

– look, you are nonetheless screaming –

            Dunja Kreiser (SPD): Tell the truth for once! No fake news!

simply does not at all take place. The citizens – Can you please intervene, Frau President. I would anyway gladly continue my speech.

President Bärbel Bas: Colleagues, quiet now here again in the hall! Everyone quiet down a bit! Frau Weidel has the word.

            Katharina Dröge (Greens): She started it!

Many hearty thanks, Frau President. The citizens of this country are the ones suffering when they no longer receive doctors’ appointments, when medicines become scarce, yet the account contributions nevertheless increase because your irresponsible policy drives benefits recipients into the social system to which they generally make no contribution. The job centers report that more than half of the citizens’ wage [Bürgergeld] recipients have no German passport. Who actually gave you the right to so unrestrainedly distribute the citizens’ hard-earned money to economic refugees from all the world? This money does not belong to you.

This policy we ourselves can longer pursue. Germany for long is no more a rich country. You are making it a candidate for decline. We must do that for which we still have the means and power, to concentrate on averting the crash, and that means: A parting from the the green ship of fools and the madness of saving the world; instead, to bury the energy transition, to secure the energy supply, a re-entry into nuclear energy, to close the borders, to prevent social migration, to finally deport those obliged to depart and criminals – yes, of course –

            Katharina Dröge (Greens): A nightmare, what you are saying here!

            Saskia Esken (SPD): When the criminals from your own ranks are also deported!

to lower taxes, to de-construct bureaucracy, to reduce state expenditures, to end checkbook politics, to toss out unqualified government officials, to strengthen Made in Germany [Standort Deutschland], instead of deliberately weakening it – back to normality!

Yet a word to the CDU. While this government runs this country into the ground, you squander resources and time on anti-democratic firewall debates. You are no opposition power; you are those who refuse to oppose!

The only firewall that we need

            President Bärbel Bas: Come please to a conclusion.

is the firewall against the Green policy which ruins our country and deprives [umbringt] the citizens of their prosperity and their freedom.

Many hearty thanks.

            Thorsten Frei (CDU/CSU): A superfluous excess speaking time!

 

[trans: tem]