Marc Bernhard, May 21, 2026, Heating Law and CDU

German Bundestag, May 21, 2026, Plenarprotokoll 2/80, pp. 9558-9560. 

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen. 

Hurrah, the heating law will be abolished, and everyone can again install what he wants – that is the fairy tale which you of the Federal government want to tell us. Your proposal of a so-called modernization law [Gebäudemodernisierungsgesetzes] is nothing other than Habeck’s heating hammer through the backdoor. 

With your Biotreppe [Bio-stair] you obligate the people to operate new construction oil and gas heating with initially 10 percent, later 60 percent bio-gas or bio-oil. Ja, where then shall all the bio-gas and bio-oil at all come from? According to your own statements, you yourselves do not know. The green energy minister from Baden-Württemberg confirms that initially there is not enough of this bio-manure. 

You also do not know what this madness will cost, yet proceed on, according to your own testimony, it will be so expensive that, practically, the people will simply no longer be able to afford operating an oil or gas heating. The people thereby remain – 

     Vice-president Andrea Lindholz: Herr colleague, there is a wish for an interim                         question from the Union delegation. Do you want to permit it? 

Gladly. 

     Vice-president Andrea Lindholz: Herr colleague Koller, please.

    Hans Koller (CDU/CSU): Many thanks, Herr colleague, that you have permitted the interim question.     You indeed have said we ourselves did not know where all the bio-manure shall come from. Have you     actually, really spoken with the branch? In this week, the bio-gas council came together, the bio-gas         technical associations met and on all sides is clearly confirmed: We have this potential. We have here     structures, and we can also service this. Do you not want to know, or does this not suit your ideology? 

You should perhaps preferably know your government better. I have put precisely this question to State Secretary Bartel yesterday in the Building Committee. I put to him the question: Where will all of this bio-manure come from? And he then correspondingly said to me: That, we do not know. 

    Klaus Wiener (CDU/CSU): The branch! Perhaps not him, but the branch! 

In the summer there will be a commission which will be occupied with this theme. This is completely irresponsible, what you are doing here. You introduce a bio-stair, and do not know where all the fuel shall come from. That is the reality.

And the green Energy Minister in Baden-Württemberg has exactly confirmed it: This bio-manure is not on the market. You coax the people and introduce some kind of stairway into nothing. You will not thereby come to grips. Stop lying to the people! 

         Hans Koller (CDU/CSU): I’ld recommend that to you!

Finally make reasonable Politik for the people out there, that they then can again pay their heating costs! 

There is besides: You do not know what this madness will cost, yet thence end in the people will no longer have sufficient money to operate this heating. Thereby remains for the people only the warm pump or distance heating, exactly so as with Habeck. 

Not only Habeck’s heating hammer remains practically in force, you worsen the situation for not already today installed oil and gas heating to the point of inability to pay; namely, through the certificate trade in 2028, decided in common by you, CDU/CSU, SPD and Greens, already in the German Bundestag. That is in fact in one and a half years. All experts thence proceed on that the CO₂ tax will thus at least be quadrupled to quintupled. 

            Andreas Lenz (CDU/CSU): Rubbish! AfD experts council, apparently! 

            Lisa Badum (Greens): You have the source of the numbers? Nonsense!

In regards gas heating, that leads to a price increase of around 60 percent – just by the CO₂ tax. And in regards heating oil, we are speaking of a costs explosion of around 100 percent. Here, the CO₂ tax portion will climb from the present 21 cents to then almost 1 euro per litre of heating oil. 

            Andreas Lenz (CDU/CSU): That’s just not right!

That means added yearly costs of around 1,200 euros for gas and 1,800 euros for oil. 

That is to say: You are worse than Habeck, who simply verboten the people from newly installing oil and gas heating, while you act as if you would leave to the people themselves the free choice to decide which heating they install. At the same time you, however, make oil and gas so expensive that no one can afford it as well, thereby drive the people in fact to the warm pump and thereby force them to expend 100,000 to 150,000 euros for the installation and the necessary reconstruction and insulation measures. Most of all owners and landlords will simply not be able to pay that, and thereby they will have no other choice than either to need to sell their dwelling at far under value, or again install a gas or oil heating. 

Because you quite precisely know that many renters can no longer pay the heating costs on account of your CO₂ cascade of increases, you now want to defend the renters from your own Politik in which you leave it to the landlord to pay. The landlord in the future shall pay 50 percent of the CO₂ tax of their renters, even though they have no influence on the heating consumption. This is nothing other than a bad, immoral contract at the cost of a third  party. 

And is thereby long since fully clear that the heating hammer is fully ineffective, absolutely ineffective. Since the optimistic accounting of the former Habeck ministry itself proceeds on a yearly savings of just one, single percent of the entire German CO₂ emissions, thus the CO₂ quantity which China blasts into the air in just five hours. And, for that, you destroy the savings,  the old age provision and the prosperity of the people in our country. How insane are you, actually? Had you simply let just the last three nuclear power plants continue to run, we would each year save double as much CO₂ as through your entire heating hammer. 

Heating law becomes modernization law. Raider is now called Twix, but changes nix! 

            Lisa Badum (Greens): Children’s talk by the AfD!

  

[trans: tem]

 

Kay Gottschalk, April 16, 2026, Commuter Allowance

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 21/71, pp. 8519-8520. 

Thank you, Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen. Dear taxpayers, before all things. 

It unfortunately has first required the blockade of a sea strait so that movement comes in the discussion on the financial relief of our occupational commuters. 

For long my delegation demands that we correspondingly relieve the employees – those are, as a reminder, the people who feed us members and the entire ministerial bureaucracy – in regards the costs of the practice of their occupational activity. Many times, ladies and gentlemen, have you rejected in the last couple of years our corresponding motion [Drucksache 21/2363] here in the sovereign house. With the increase of the commuter allowance, we are still by far not there where we should be. 

I want to make clear as an example a classic “corner commuter”. The commuter allowance has namely just as little to do with the tax reality and the inflation in Germany as do the income tax and other tax-relevant rates. 

The commuter allowance which you in 2025 increased to 38 cents, regardless of the situation in 2021, you since 2001 have de facto reduced by 18 percent. Again for you there in the galleries: The commuter allowance since 2001 has been reduced about 18 percent. The official rise in the inflation since 2001 – hear and marvel! – is at 59 percent. That is a cold expropriation of the diligent people in this country, ladies and gentlemen. Shame on you for that. 

            Michael Thews (SPD): Herr Gottschalk, figuring is not your strength!                                    That needs be said.

It thus can be stated: The increase of the commuter allowance is by far under half the rise in the inflation rate. 

Frau Esdar, it is a mockery when you say: It finally becomes time to again relieve the hard-working employees. That is the factual example of why in Germany Bürgergeld pays more than honest work, ladies and gentlemen. And of that, you are all guilty! 

I want to make it clear with an example. A man who commutes 25 kilometers and rather lives in the country will only be correspondingly compensated for the simple distance, thus as he arrives at work. How he comes home, or perhaps as per the coalition’s dictation spends the night there, is all the same to you. For such a man, at the present prices, costs per workday come to 9.50 euros. There presently incur fuel costs of 8.80 euros. According to an AfA Standard, with purchase costs of 36,000 euros for an automobile which he uses 225 workdays, insurance on top of that, and with half private use, he thus has additional expenses of 22 euros per workday. 

A self-employed man can always compensate this at full cost and, if he keeps a driving book, make applicable these corresponding costs. That, the employee cannot do, ladies and gentlemen. The employee remains sitting, according to your figuring, at 12.50 euros per workday. And, on account of that, you should actually be in sackcloth and ashes, ladies and gentlemen.   

Renowned institutes, and the ADAC, two years ago prepared a study and have recommended raising the commuter allowance at a minimum to 50 cents per driven kilometer. For two years we demanded that, and you rejected it. That belongs to the truth. 

Yet it goes still further. Let us look for once at the composition of the benzine price: 49 percent of the price are procurement costs, the portion of the 19 percent sales tax comes to 16 percent, a 6 percent portion for your CO₂ tax, 29 percent for the energy tax. The result is: You collect more than half at the tank, ladies and gentlemen. No product in Germany is taxed higher. 

On that account, fully right, my delegation demands: Now finally lower the energy tax to the European minimum. Please stop the erroneous business concept of wanting to tax the air. Abolish the CO₂ tax, ladies and gentlemen. Lower the sales tax for mineral oil to 7 percent! Then, you really relieve the people! 

            Katharina Beck (Greens): Putin will rejoice!

And you protect, before all things, the logistics and the people from inflation. We now again have an inflation of 2.7 percent. Who shall still be able to actually benefit from living in Germany with your Politik? 

To again reduce the speed is then a Green proposal. Frau Beck, I see again you are running warm. It is nevertheless grotesque, your Politik drives the country to attrition. Ultimately, our desolate infrastructure is the greatest hindrance. One is happy if one can drive on the autobahn at 90 km/hr [55 mph]. Thus freely according to Kelsen’s Pure Theory of Law: It is the normative power of the factual. 

Your 12 hour regulation contributes to a price explosion. And in addition comes the leftist-socialist idea of skimming off excess profits – analogous to 2022. Herr Merz, I see that you now with Frau Reiche again want to defend yourself, yet so far you’ve shown yourself in the last year and a half as the Chancellor who here really lets himself be led through the arena by the nose-ring of the socialists. You are no longer a representative of the market economy. You are a representative of power because you cling to that seat. And Herr Klingbeil – he is not there, Herr Schrodi performed competently yesterday – how would it then be if you skim off the excess profit which you aim at by means of the value-added tax on mineral oil products, and give it back to the poor automobile drivers? Ladies and gentlemen, the truth is: The greatest profiteer of this price crisis sits there on the government bench! The sole glue of this coalition is really just the pure maintenance of power. 

Ladies and gentlemen in the galleries, you truly no longer play a role in this Politik of the SPD and CDU/CSU. The Finance Minister schert sich doch einen Dreck um das, what you say. With the Austrians, the Portuguese and the Italians, Herr Merz already tinkers at an excess profits tax. 

            President Julia Klöckner: Your speaking time is over.

In the end, you will again knuckle under as always, ladies and gentlemen. 

            President Julia Klöckner: Your speaking time is over.

If you want a change, 

            President Julia Klöckner: Nein, your time is over!

vote for the AfD! Join in our motion [Drucksache 21/2363].           

Many thanks. 

 

[trans: tem]

Rainer Kraft, March 18, 2026, Nuclear Power

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 21/65, pp. 7836-7837. 

Right honorable President. Valued colleagues. 

When I draw the comparison between the panic which presently prevails in that part of the room, and the utterly complacent arrogance in the 19^th and 20^th legislative periods, I need say: Yes, we of the AfD, we are on the right way; in this question, we do everything right. We take on this difficult task [Wir bohren diese dicken Bretter]. 

Let us start with an experiment. We ask an AI. Question to the AI: What happens when one does not correct a serious strategic mistake? Answer: A serious strategic mistake not corrected leads, as a rule, to wide-ranging, negative consequences which can extend from financial losses up to long-term failures of an organization or of a project. 

            Nina Scheer (SPD): That should give thought to you!

The most important consequences are destruction of resources, disadvantage of competitiveness, loss of reputation, and irreversibility in regards too late action. 

Let us leave the AI. Let us put another thought experiment. What if in 2002, instead of the atomic withdrawal, we had reached a decision which was no serious strategic mistake but a genial investment in the future, namely the massive entry into nuclear power. What would we have? 

First. The 2026 Federal budget need not designate 30 billion euros so as to subsidize inefficient electricity producers and compensate for their high electricity prices. 

Second. The question of Economy ministers Altmaier, Habeck and Reiche, “How many gas power plants and where?” will not be presented because we do not require these power plants. 

Third. 60 billion euros for a hydrogen network in Germany we can do without; it will not be needed. 

Fourth. 250 billion euros for the massive network construction parallel to wind and solar installations will not be needed. The money can be spent otherwise, or will be remitted to the taxpayers. 

Fifth. Around 180 billion euros for large storage batteries will not be required, since there are no more generation fluctuations which need be compensated. 

Sixth. Since the electricity costs just about half, a family of four saves around 750 euros per year in electricity costs. 

Seventh. The previous costs of around 600 billion euros for the energy transition remain with the electricity consumers and taxpayers. The asozial redistribution from below to above does not occur. 

Eighth. A subsidized industrial electricity price is not needed. The electricity is already well priced. Energy-intensive business does not abolish positions and does not emigrate to foreign lands. A recession does not occur. 

Ninth. The brown coal mining is ended. A structural change nevertheless does not occur; the workers switch to the nuclear power sector. 

Tenth. German nature parks on land and on water are not industrialized. Environmental protection in forests and tidelands continues.                                                                                                                         

Eleventh. Since electricity is available at a good price and in large quantities, electric autos and heat pumps enjoy a broad social acceptance. Subventions and laws to force these on the market are not necessary. 

Twelfth. The great availability of inexpensive electricity in Germany leads to a settlement of AI and tech concerns. Germany would in fact have one of the top ten global tech concerns. 

Thirteenth. An EU money penalty for non-fulfillment of climate goals of up to 34 billion euros need not be paid; the proceedings will simply not take place.

Fourteenth. Sweden with its withdrawal will not threaten the European electricity market, since Germany’s solid electricity network does not destabilize the electricity price in southern Sweden, as is presently the case. 

Fifteenth. Large gas pipelines and LNG terminals will not be needed because the gas requirement is much less. 

Sixteenth. Autocratic countries earn less with the sales of gas. War chests for support of terror and invasion remain empty and the world is a more peaceful place. 

I could name still additional reasons; but my time runs out. On that account, ladies and gentlemen: That the Chancellor can use majorities in this house, if he wants, was made evident last year regarding the intensification of the migration question. You thus do not have an excuse, all the same how very much you need it. 

As a result: The re-entry into nuclear power is for Germany’s future more important and more significant than the continued existence of this governing coalition. 

 

[trans: tem]

René Aust, March 25, 2026, Fuel Prices

EU Parliament, Brussels, P10 CRE-REV(2026)03-25(1-0141-0000). 

Frau President. 

Benzine and diesel over 2 euros, here and today. All say: On account of the Iran war. That’s partially right. Yet it is only half the truth. What no one says to them: Brussels has already concluded – in black on white – that the CO₂ price from 2028 will further rise. Citizens and business will need to grasp still deeper in the pocket for energy. Experts then figure 40 cents on top per liter – in addition. 3 euros per liter for fuel is then soon in range – 3 euros per liter for diesel and benzine [$13.29 per gallon, approx.]! 

And which does not fall from heaven! That is politically made and desired by the mainstream parties. All speak of Iran, while von der Leyen, the Greens, the SPD, the CDU, quiet and gentle, prepare the next price explosion. We say: Nein, the citizens have paid enough. Any CO₂ pricing needs to be abolished, and indeed now. That needed to be a theme at the European Council. Not the flight into world Politik, but the citizens’ everyday concerns need finally to be at the center. 

 

[trans: tem]

Paul Schmidt, March 19, 2026, New Nuclear Power Plants

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 21/65, pp. 7820-7821. 

Right honorable Herr President. Dear colleagues. 

The withdrawal from nuclear power was “a strategic mistake”, said Ursula von der Leyen as President of the European Commission. And Chancellor Friedrich Merz had previously on January 14 designated the withdrawal from nuclear power a great mistake.  Now he says, the withdrawal is irreversible. Yet that in fact is false, and we demonstrate that with our motion [Drucksache 21/4749]. 

We want that our nuclear power stations be examined, just as the CDU/CSU demanded in the Bundestag election campaign and in the coalition negotiations. The last three nuclear power plants disconnected in April 2023, Emsland, Isar 2 and Neckarwestheim II, we want in any case to again be put into operation, and also Brokdorf because there the dismantling has scarcely ensued. Measured by the branch association KernD, that is possible anytime within three years for one to three billion euros. 

In regards other stations, there are for us two different categories: For one, those which in view of their restart of operation need to be examined, and for the others, those where the construction of a new nuclear power plant is sensible. Of the latter, in our view, are two nuclear power stations in the east, namely Greifswald/Lumin and Stendal/Arneburg, and in the west, Obrigheim, Philippsburg 1, Neckarwestheim I, Isar 1, Stade, Würgassen, Unterweser and Gundremmingen B and Mülheim-Kärlich. 

Nuclear power plants which we want to newly build would be, for example, the European Evolutionary Pressurized-water Reactor EPR, 

            Harald Ebner (Greens): Yes, exactly.

a German-French development which has already been built in many countries, as in Great Britain, France, Finland and also China, or the American reactor AP 1000, which will be built in Poland directly on the German border in three blocks and permitted according to German safety guidelines. Both of these types are of relatively simple availability. There are however additional which may come into question. 

We need nuclear energy not 

            Harald Ebner (Greens): “We need nuclear energy not”, that’s right!

only because it is advantageous, robust and reliable, and makes unnecessary the further completion of the energy transition, for which we are certainly not paid, but also because it makes us independent of foreign countries. 

            Alaa Alhamwi (Greens): From Russia, yes!

 – Now listen! – Uranium we receive from Canada, Africa, Australia and Kazachstan. Yet in case of emergency, we still have it available in our own country as raw material, for example, in the Erzgebirge or in Schwarzwald. 

Following the oil crisis of 1973-1974, it was the government of Helmut Schmidt which quite decisively drove forward the build up of nuclear power in Germany: Nuclear power as freedom’s energy! 

            Harald Ebner (Greens): The renewables are the energies of freedom!

You should reflect on that, on Helmut Schmidt and his political reason. 

And please, Frau Scheer, do not come to me again with your “alternative facts”. You are the SPD’s energy policy spokesman, and with your “alternative facts” you have already two weeks ago in the debate in the professional world made a furor; that, I can say to you.   

In fact, our nuclear power plants can be daily reduced in performance by a third, and again ramped up, and that for months. Worldwide, in fact 66 nuclear power works plants will be built. We have produced the electricity in our blocks for 2.5 to 3 cents per kilowatt-hour. 

            Harald Ebner (Greens): 80 to 40 cents per kilowatt-hour!

And a basic load from nuclear power which is always available cannot be compared with photo-voltaic, which is available only 2,000 to 3,000 hours per year, and in autumn and winter as good as not. You can believe me. I myself have worked as plant physicist in steam reactors and pressurized-water reactors.  

Dear SPD, finally give up your blockade stance, since it is you who are permanently blocking the re-entry into the nuclear power. Vote for our motion! 

 

[trans: tem]

Markus Frohnmaier, January 29, 2026, Germany, Ukraine, Nordstream

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 21/56, pp. 6745-6746. 

Herr President. Ladies and gentlemen. 

Chancellor Merz speaks of an age of “Great Power Politics”. The truth is: The power Politik was never gone. That, we see in the Ukraine, in Venezuela, in Greenland. New is not the reality of the power Politik. New is a persistent, chronic weakness of Germany which encounters an increasingly multipolar world in which the interests are again openly carried out. In such a world, Germany then is only capable of acting when it combines its powers, sets priorities, and finally learns to stand up for itself. 

Before all is the CDU responsible, through decades of government failures, for almost all major political mistaken decisions which have made our country vulnerable. The completely wrong mass migration, a threat to security since 2015, the anti-economic [Wirtschaftfeindliche] withdrawal from nuclear and coal energy which drove us to dependency on gas imports and de-industrialized Germany, with dramatic consequences for welfare, public finances and sozial peace. Germany cannot afford to give away its resources to the Ukraine while we here at home are vulnerable. 

Our capitol city Berlin has just experienced how vulnerable critical infrastructure is, and can be quickly omitted by sabotage. Tens of thousands of households, following a leftist extremist attack, sat in darkness and in cold. Diesel generators were lacking, diesel generators which were in the Ukraine. 

            Claudia Roth (Greens): Oh nee! 

            Kay Gottschalk (AfD): Listen!

Germany shall pay in the next ten years for the reconstruction of the Ukraine with sums which lie beyond any serious ability to plan. 

            Claudia Roth (Greens): Ja, serious!

The CDU combines that with the formula: “So long it is necessary”. Ladies and gentlemen, that is a blank check, and blank checks are in the Politik always the beginning of the end of any control. 

Every cent of the so far around 1,000 billion euros of the Ukraine aid is debt-financed – financed with debts which in the form of principal and interest cost will afflict all future Federal budget charges. 

            Stefan Keuter (AfD): The next generations!

Debts are tomorrow’s taxes, ladies and gentlemen. We forfeit the future of our children for a country the hand of which is outstretched for our money, and to thank us apparently blows up our own German infrastructure. 

            Knut Abraham (CDU/CSU): That is shabby!

Shabby is that you of the CDU permit such a thing. Shabby is that to this day you have not sought to clarify the Nordstream explosion, Herr colleague of the CDU. 

            Thomas Rachel (CDU/CSU): Shabby is that you still haven’t said a word                                         for the civilian population in the Ukraine which is attacked daily from                                      Russia!

What do we want to actually have happen? 

First: Corruption and lack of transparency. A corruption scandal again shakes the Ukraine up to the highest circles, with effects on the energy and defense infrastructure. When a state is at war, and at the same time billions seep away, then that is not only morally unbearable but is also extremely dangerous for security policy. Since money, weapons and material do not simply disappear. They again emerge elsewhere, in dark channels, in black markets, in criminal networks. 

            Stefan Keuter (AfD): Darknets! 

            Robin Wagener (CDU/CSU): Those are the things with which you are familiar.

Second: Demands without end. It is always the same process – more weapons, more money, more guaranties, more appeals. Yet where actually is the clear accounting, what happened with the donated benefits? 

Third: We as Germans can no longer afford this. While our local governments are at limit, while families and Mittelstand note every month how expensive everything has become, while the Bundeswehr cannot even secure it own basic equipment, we shall play the role of long-term paymaster in a foreign conflict thanks to the CDU Politik. 

            Claudia Roth (Greens): Thank Putin!

Ladies and gentlemen, there needs finally be an end to that! 

            Thomas Rachel (CDU/CSU): For that, the Russian Putin is responsible.

            What do you then say to a war of aggression counter to international law?

            What do you say to Russia’s aggressive war counter to international law? 

Listen for once! You are elected as a representative of the German people, and not as a member of the Ukrainian Rada! This, the CDU’s Politik needs finally to understand. 

            Thomas Rachel (CDU/CSU): That is,  ja, embarrassing!

Fourth, and this is the point which altered everything: How do we deal with the apparent  Ukrainian attack on our infrastructure, on the sovereignty of Germany? The Federal Court of Justice in its ruling of December 10, 2025, on the Nordstream sabotage, proceeded on the basis that the attacks on the Nordstream pipelines resulted from a “highly likely […] foreign state order”. It was accepted that the act was initiated and controlled by a foreign state. The defense of the Ukrainian suspects wanted to attain immunity for these, in which – listen well, dear colleagues of the CDU – it is argued the act is a part of the war between the Ukraine and Russia. 

            Knut Abraham (CDU/CSU): Who gave the order?

Everything, really everything indicates that this attack was ordered with knowledge of the Ukrainian government. The Federal government cannot simply so continue as if this was not acknowledged. I today quite clearly demand of you: Finally examine this! 

            Knut Abraham (CDU/CSU): Yes, yes! For months!

Billions of German tax money were invested in this infrastructure project, and you did not attempt to manage a clarification. That is harmful for Germany and our citizens. 

We therefore want that now an investigative and tracking staff for the clarification of corruption, money laundering, arms trafficking, and finance of terrorism be established [Drucksache 21/3839]. We also want that complete transparency be established vis-à-vis Bundestag and public by a website following the model of the American Ukraine oversight structures. One matter needs finally be clarified: Who expends the taxpayers’ money, he has no right to non-transparency. 

            Claudia Roth (Green): The AfD says that!

That, the CDU needs finally learn and understand, ladies and gentlemen. 

We say today quite clearly: No more weapons deliveries, no additional armaments. Yes, humanitarian aid is possible. But all that effects a prolongation of the war, we no longer want. 

            Stefan Schmidt (Greens):  Putin has written that for you, or?

We want that German tax money finally remains here in Germany, and does not flow to whichever oligarchs. We want to take care that this money benefits our schools, our streets, our German infrastructure, our citizens – something which these gentlemen have long since forgotten. For that, we were elected to make Politik for German citizens – and not for the Ukraine! 

            Thomas Rachel (CSU/CSU): We make Politik for all peoples. That is the distinction. 

 

[trans: tem]

Alice Weidel, January 29, 2026, Merz Government

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 21/56, pp. 6651-6653. 

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

You assert in your speech you would strengthen our ability to compete. Yet of that, our economy still has noted nothing. The bankruptcy tsunami sweeps unbraked over our country, and will in this year, on the basis of chain insolvencies, exceed a record mark of 30,000. The Mittelstand suffers the worst. The backbone of our prosperity is breaking. Our economy is threatened with collapse. 

Your self-praise in matters of tax reduction sounds like bare-faced scorn for citizens and businesses. In fact, your coalition, driven by the SPD hostile to performance, discusses a confiscatory and anti-Mittelstand intensification of the inheritance tax. You thereby want to conclusively cash-out the Mittelstand.   

And you have just hiked yet again the taxes for all by means of the rise of the CO₂ duty by a full 20 percent. You have thus already in past years with this special cost fleeced citizens and businesses of 22 billion euros. That is a pillaging of our economy. 

You spoke at Davos. You boast of the modernization of the decaying infrastructure. Of that is true only that you have agreed to a gigantic mountain of special debts which you here disguise as special funds. Half of these infrastructure special debts flow illegally into consumption spending. Your transportation minister on the other hand now again lacks the money for the construction start of urgent railway projects. 

A similar load of hot air is your bureaucracy deconstruction. So far, you’ve only built up new bureaucracy 

            Alexander Hoffmann (CSU/CSU): You actually always make the same speech.                                        Can that be?

as through the supply chain law and a massive growth of positions in the public sector. 

And as to the reform of the social system which you ever again have promised and announced to the citizens, you have there so far in any case only further raised the costs, and shamefully caved in to the demands of your 14 percent coalition partner, enacting still more tax- and debt-financed redistribution. That which you needed to do – namely, to lower the expenditures and put a stop to the abuse – you will never manage with the SPD. 

The labor minister’s Sozialstaat concept even wants to simplify the access to social benefits; savings in regards the benefits are expressly excluded. All of this will cost the taxpayer still more. 

            Sepp Müller (SPD): Rubbish! 

It shall thus simply so continue with the exploding rise of the Kindergeld transfer payments to foreign countries. Over 5 billion euros since 2010, a half billion euros in last year alone. The social duties reach a record value. 

You plunder the working people, rob their willingness to work, the future, and the trust in the Sozialstaat, and still say to them they should work longer. That is an infamy. 

Yet that unfortunately also shows that you have certainly not understood the actual problems in this country. It lies not in the working time, but in the politically fashioned, much too high costs due to the green energy transition which you continue to manage, in the much too high taxes and duties for business, and in the excessive bureaucracy. 

            Götz Frömming (AfD): Exactly!

You yourself designate the nuclear power withdrawal as a mistake, yet all the same blow up nuclear power plants, as in CSU-governed Bavaria last October. Thus appears double morality. You lie to your voters. That shows that you bend before the Diktat of the SPD and Greens. There is a majority for the re-entry into the nuclear power – in the society and, if you want it, also in this house, in this parliament. Yet you do not want it. 

You explain windpower as a transition technology; yet at the same time, you want to complete Habeck’s green madness plan, to continue to sink billions in subventions for wind parks in the North Sea without a return, and, after the home forests, to seriously damage this susceptible eco-system. 

            Götz Frömming (AfD): Schweinerei!

As a last rescue anchor, you cling to new gas power plants. With what do you want to operate them? And how do you explain to the people that at the same time the German gas network should be destroyed and they should tear out their gas heating? You want to wreck and destroy an infrastructure which was erected by an immense expenditure of earlier generations. That can be explained by no one with a healthy, human understanding. 

Your government supports the fateful EU decision to forbid imports of advantageous natural gas from Russia and for the future. The new, one-sided dependency on expensive American liquified gas proves to be extremely inefficient and dangerous. 

            Frauke Heiligenstadt (SPD): Here is what is quite differently dangerous!

And without additional gas power, the storage certainly runs empty. 

            Ralf Stegner (SPD): Your intellectual storage runs quite empty!

A gas shortage with grave, compulsory shut-offs threatens. 

All of these grotesque contradictions, false assertions and fantasies are responsible for that Germany and this Federal government are no longer taken seriously in the world. And that is fatal, certainly in this geo-political situation. 

The U.S.A. is an important ally; yet they represent their own interests. And we need to finally define and self-consciously represent our own national, German interests, certainly when they diverge from those of our allies and partners. To send a dozen soldiers to Greenland, and next day order them back is – with permission – a hullabaloo, and no serious, solution-oriented foreign policy guided by interests. 

            Franziska Kersten (SPD): What?

It is a mistake that you reject the peace council initiated by Donald Trump. 

            Britta Haßelmann (Greens): Rip off a couple of billion dollars, ne? 

            Katrin Göring-Eckardt (Greens): You yourself need laugh!

The board is an opportunity to unravel the multiple blockades of an ineffective UN. 

            Katharina Dröge (Greens): That is ridiculous!

It lies on the other hand in the German interest to quickly end the Ukraine war. Germany needs to cooperate in the peace process and realize its own interests. To that belongs averting an EU and NATO membership of the Ukraine, and further transfer payments from Germany. Much more, we require compensation for the state terrorist attacks on the Nord Stream gas pipeline infrastructure, vital for Germany, for which Kiev is obviously co-responsible. 

            Britta Haßelmann (Greens): Do so further peacefully!

The EU, the cohesion of which you stereotypically swear by, also here is part of the problem, and not of the solution. 

For Germany to win back its economic strength and its political weight, we need to set aside the mistaken developments which weaken us. 

            Irene Mihalic (Greens): Kremlin or MAGA? 

            Britta Haßelmann (Greens): It’s difficult to have to decide between                                                           Kremlin or MAGA!

We need to end the mass migration and, as far as it goes, reverse it. This way requires a restrictive immigration policy, with invariable border controls, rejections, and rigorous deportations, 

            Ralf Stegner (SPD): Perhaps you should remain in Switzerland.

as well as a shut-off of the social and financial migration magnets, and we in addition require an immigration and naturalization moratorium. 

            Frauke Heiligenstadt (SPD): And you also want to have ICE, ne?

We need to rescind the ruinous energy transition and climb up out of the climate protection policy. 

            Katrin Fey (Linke): My goodness!

It is a German and EU solo approach [Alleingang] which destroys our economy. 

Only when we depart from this wrong way can we deconstruct the financial excess cost, and overcome the paralyzing bureaucratic manipulation and over-regulation. 

            Ralf Stegner (SPD): That is the result of your irradiation [Verstrahlung]!

The way to the resurgence leads through the re-entry into the nuclear power, the abolition of the CO₂ duties, and the immediate elimination of the combustion engine ban and heating law. An AfD government will get these reforms underway, for which this government is not ready and in position. 

I am grateful. 

            Jens Spahn (CSU/CSU): That was all? That was just nothing!

 

[trans: tem]

Leif-Erik Holm, November 13, 2025, De-industrialization and Energy

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 21/40, pp. 4554-4555. 

Frau President. Right honorable citizens. Ladies and gentlemen. 

Yesterday, the new economic opinion of the experts council came out. The council expects a growth of 0.9 percent in the coming year; once again a shrunken prognosis; initially, it was 1.3 percent. If we then adjust the whole for the holidays – in the next year, many holidays unfortunately fall on the weekends – then we are at only 0.6 percent. Thus sick man Germany slogs further on. Yet you here now want with this present hour to celebrate yourselves for your economic success. This success simply does not exist. 

I was this morning with the expert, Frau Professor Grimm. She put the naked numbers on the wall: The industrial production breaks down, and indeed on a broad front. In all sectors, it recedes. There is no reason to celebrate anything. Germany unfortunately is abolishing itself as an industrial country if it so continues. And you present no solutions. You only daub a bit of plaster, and administer the downfall – nothing more. 

            Nicklas Kappe (CDU/CSU): Which solutions do you have?

You want to speak in this present hour on your reliefs: On the lowering of the grid fees and the introduction of an industrial electricity price. Yes, in the near term we need to do something to get away from the dramatically high electricity prices. Only, why then don’t you do what benefits all businesses and budgets? Where remains the reduction of the electricity tax for all? That would be a correct step. 

This, what you are doing – I already said it last week – is “left pocket, right pocket”. I want to tell it again: The surcharge for the grid fees, 6.5 million euros, the taxpayer now pays; the costs of the industrial electricity prices, 1.5 billion euros, the taxpayer now pays; the costs for the EEG assessment, 16 billion euros, the taxpayer already pays; the electricity price compensation, 3 billion euros, will be paid by the taxpayer; and the gas storage assessment, 3 billion euros, the taxpayer pays. That is 30 billion euros. You hide the costs of the dead energy transition in the budget. It’s simply not noted that the entire climate racket doesn’t work. 

Without these billions in subventions, nothing more would be left of this seemingly pretty fairy tale castle. The budget meanwhile also correspondingly appears. Only by your special indebtedness can you still camouflage something. The problem remains: Energy is scarce and is much too expensive. Only an expansion of the supply and a reduction of the state impact on the energy costs – for all, note well – can change something therein. We require secure power plant performance. We allow no demolition of cooling towers. Much more, we need to re-activate nuclear power plants and build anew.   

            Tarek Al-Wazir (Greens): And which cost nothing, or what?

As long as you don’t pick up and as long as you don’t prepare a lower energy price in the market, and in fact without subventions, so is there here, God knows, nothing to celebrate. 

Frau Minister – she is unfortunately gone –

            Catharina dos Santos-Wintz (CDU/CSU): She is at the Budget Committee.                                               You know that!

it is nice that the bust of Ludwig Erhard is again in the Ministry. That is good. Yet I also want to say, Frau Reiche: If you really want to be the government’s ordnungspolitische wise man, then more than an overcoming of symptoms, more than short-term plaster, is required. Your draft budget laws, which now come in series to the plenary session, are basically, as before, Habeck laws. Here and there, a bit was slimmed down, yet where are the promised changes in policy? They occur only after the comma. Your subventions orgy which now continues through the budget will soon no longer function. The cost of debts rises dramatically, and of that also the economic wise man Veronika Grimm has written to you in a register – cite: 

            “From 2029, we expend the entire intake of the state for Soziales, defense and                                           interest payments.”

End citation. And – another cite: 

            “This finance planning is a declaration of bankruptcy.”

Frau Grimm is right. Herr Finance Minister, since you speak similarly – he is now here – say readily something on that. This finance planning is a declaration of bankruptcy. Truly! 

2029 is for us also as the AfD an important year’s number. Then we will here in this sovereign house be the governing delegation. 

            Sandra Stein (Green): Do we perhaps still have elections, or what?

We will form the government. We will then need to regulate that. That will become a show of strength. Yet I promise: We will take care that this expensive wrong way ends. It does not work. 

One thing still to promise: First we start in the States. It begins in 2026 in Sachsen-Anhalt and in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. I therein rejoice. 

Thank you. 

 

[trans: tem]

Alice Weidel, November 26, 2025, Deutschland Plan

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 21/43, pp. 4947-4951. 

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

This end-stage coalition ever more recalls the bridge of the Titanic: Germany lists, the bulkheads break open. Yet you have the ship’s band play on with the same soothing melodies. 

            Katharina Dröge (Greens): The country is thus bad-mouthed!

The Captain has nothing more to say and simply looks on because the First Mate has snatched from him the Captain’s cap. 

            Ralf Stegner (SPD): And the ordinary seaman stands at the speaker’s podium.

Germany can no longer continue to afford this clowns theater which you here allow for half a year. The crisis is here and it is not only one iceberg, it is at least five which rip open the hull of our ship of state. 

Crisis site number one: The social state. The social security system is out of control and becomes unaffordable. A third of the Bund’s total tax income in the coming year alone will need to be expended for stabilizing the pension account. In that regard, the demographic costs resulting from the retirement of the high birthrate cohorts have been acknowledged for decades. 

            Britta Haßelmann (Greens): Explain for once to the citizens how you want to                                          finance your pensions package! 70 percent!

42.3 percent of non-wage costs. That is a record and warning sign. Instead, when it is much too late to reform the system and form reserves for the future, you still pulverize the at hand financial scope of action so as to gain time. 

The social state crisis is inseparable from the migration crisis. Millions of people have in the last ten years streamed uncontrolled into the country. They have in large part immigrated directly into the social system. The consequent costs one-sidedly burden the working population – the tax-payers and those who pay contributions. They shall stabilize, with renunciation of benefits and higher contributions, the unaffordable healthcare system and they need bear the costs of the Bürgergeld, long since become migrant money which continues out of control. Every second recipient is a foreign citizen and is provided for without cost and contribution. What of that is sozial justice? 

Your SPD coalition partner braces itself against even symbolic policy corrections. To merely remove the Ukrainians sustained by the benefits terms in the last half-year is not even a drop on the hot stone. In Germany, there are one million rejected asylum applicants; yet of your grandiosely announced deportation offensive nothing continues to be seen. Despite receding asylum numbers, each year a large city immigrates by abuse of the asylum law, and an additional large city comes after by way of the family reunification. 

The citizens who need pay for this moreover lose their Heimat. In 275 Bavarian school classes sits not a single native German-speaking child. That is a declaration of bankruptcy. 

The migration crisis kills the right of entire generations to an orderly education. And while the borders remain open, our Christmas markets are transformed into fortresses or will even be entirely cancelled. 

Needing to bear these burdens is a country which for over three years is stuck deep in a recession. The industrial core erodes at a breath-taking speed. The German automobile industry has lost 50,000 jobs within one year. Down-sizing and exodus take hold of the entire production industry. 41 percent of the operations plan in 2026 a further down-sizing. A never before seen wave of bankruptcy sweeps across the country and decimates the Mittelstand. Credit insurers fear the number of insolvencies could climb in the coming year to 30,000. 

What drives the businesses and workplaces out of the country is primarily the homemade energy crisis; the industrial chiefs, who unfortunately were silent for much too long, now say this to you.

The artificially increased expense of energy by means of the so-called CO₂ pricing will still further accelerate the de-industrialization. You raise an arbitrarily imposed tax on the air, artificially drive it further to the heights, and still call that a market economy instrument, Herr Merz. The green nonsense can scarcely be further driven to the extreme. 

The dogmas of open borders and climate protection drive our country, our beloved Germany, to ruin. Instead of coming about, your coalition steps on the gas along this wrong way, and wants with a “new boost” for the international climate protection bless the entire world with the downfall. 

And because you do not want to acknowledge all of that, but toss around money which does not belong to you as if there was no tomorrow, Germany is also stuck in a binding finance and state indebtedness crisis. 

With the financial coup d’état, euphemistically called “special funds” [Sondervermögen], you have burdened Germany with the largest mountain of debt in post-war history. Of that will remain only the interest and tax costs for the tax and contribution payers. Every second euro of the special funds supposedly foreseen for investment will, according to your planning, be mis-appropriated for consumption expenditures. That quite clearly does not conform to the constitution. Your budget does not conform to the constitution. 

            Sven Lehmann (Green): Your party does not conform to the constitution!

Instead of, as promised, eliminating superfluous spending and consolidating the budget, you toss the money by the handful out the window. A billion for a dubious tropical forest, six billion  moreover for an international climate protection, 11.5 billion for the Ukraine without knowing whether or not the money yet again lands at corrupt war profiteers. Gott sei Dank – Gott sei Dank! – we have with Donald Trump a real chance of peace, to which you have contributed no part. Quite the contrary. 

The fivefold crisis is not a fatal destiny but a direct consequence of false political decisions. It cannot so continue; you also quite precisely know that, and I do not want to again do the math for you, for you of the SPD just so not. 

            Jürgen Cosse (SPD): You do the math!

You are stuck so deep in the morass of the socialist superstition of redistribution that you cannot grasp what you, with your ideological wrong way, have generally done to our country. 

            Dirk Wiese (SPD): What do you say of your members’ Russia travel?

Primitive Antifa screaming 

            Britta Haßelmann (Greens): Which was good! 

            Alexander Hoffmann (CSU/CSU): Why? The Antifa is pleased to be in Russia!

and mindless, anti-democratic Verbot fantasies for you replace the competition of political ideas. The stereotypical cry for more and still higher taxes and for more and higher debt for you take the place of economic expertise. 

            President Julia Klöckner: Frau member, do you permit an interim question from                                        member Wiese of the SPD delegation?

No, that is unusual in the budget debate; you know that. 

            Katharina Dröge (Greens): That is not at all unusual. You simply do not dare! 

            Alexander Hoffmann (CSU/CSU): You are scared, Frau Weidel! You are scared!                                         Nothing other! You are scared of the interim question!

No, I am not scared, anyway of you. You are scared. Might I please continue? 

            Alexander Hoffmann (CSU/CSU): The answer is not in the speaking                                                         notes, ne?

             President Julia Klöckner: Excuse me. She or the member herself decides                                                whether he or she permits an interim question. 

            Sven Lehmann (Green): Yes, but not with the reasoning. 

            Götz Frömming (AfD): It is nevertheless possible for all to speak. What is this?

            President Julia Klöckner: We need not now comment on that here.                                        Please continue.

How you here smirk! That, the voters will exactly note before all things at the impending State legislative elections! 

            Frauke Heiligenstadt (SPD): You don’t smirk, ne? 

            Sören Pellmann (Green): That’s certainly a level in the early morning!

You, dear colleagues of the Union, know quite precisely what you do. Some of you even speak ever again of what actually needs to be done. Yet you do exactly the opposite. 

And you, Herr Merz, have in the election campaign announced and promised all possible things, what is of bitter necessity and needs be urgently done. You thereby grandiosely helped yourself to our election program. 

            Jens Spahn (CDU/CS): Oh mann, oh mann, oh mann!

Yet then – since otherwise Herr Merz would not be Herr Merz – you broke every single one of your election promises. You left the citizens in the lurch and wore yourself out with slander and insult of the opposition, instead of addressing the problems in our country. 

            Ralf Stegner (SPD): Get a handkerchief!

You have thereby wasted valuable time and intensified the crisis, and all of that because you make yourself a prisoner of the leftist unity front as a result of your firewall. 

            Günter Krings (CDU/CSU): Do you come to the content?

 You let yourself be led about one time after another by the SPD. The SPD’s favor, upon which your chancellorship depends, is more important to you than the good of our country and of your own party. 

This tactic has failed. Germany requires an immediate program for reform of the state, economy and society. It is time for the Deutschland Plan of the Alternative für Deutschland. 

It is a twelve point plan to again get Germany on its feet. 

First, we require advantageous and secure energy. That is the basis for economic impetus and prosperity. We therefore need to immediately end the failed experiment of the energy transformation. We need to immediately end the destruction of nuclear power, the demolition of nuclear power plants, and push the re-entry into nuclear power and we need to buy natural gas and oil where it is most advantageous, and that is in Russia. 

            Reinhard Brandl (CDU/CSU): Now it comes out! 

            Alexander Hoffmann (CSU/CSU): Ah!

And that is in our national interest, and the Americans want that, too. And that is why there are these peace negotiations: Because the Americans represent their national interests, which you for Germany have forgotten, dear CDU. 

            Steffen Bilger (CDU/CSU): Here, it’s about Russian interests! 

            Reinhard Brandl (CDU/CSU): Which interests do you represent?                                            The mask has fallen!

Second. We need to end the wind and solar electricity subventions and, without replacement, eliminate the ruinous CO₂ pricing and the emissions trade. And we need to immediately abolish  the unhappy heating law which cold expropriates countless owners of real property. 

Third. In economic policy, the fundamentals need again apply: Market economy Ordnungspolitik instead of eco-socialist planned economy. 

            Claudia Roth (Greens): Oah!

That means the abolition of the combustion engine Verbot and all supply chain laws at the national as well as the EU level. We will end the Politik of Verbot and manipulation. 

            Katharina Dröge (Greens): Because human rights for you simply play not role at all!

Fourth. Our economy requires an unleashing program for setting free market economic powers which liberate them from bureaucratic regulations and drastically lowers the cost of taxes and duties. 

Fifth. In Sozialpolitik, we need to return consistently to the solidarity principle. Full social benefits only for members of the solidarity community who also make their contributions to the social security systems. I certainly do not know what you have against the solidarity principle. That, I find interesting. 

            Jürgen Cosse (SPD): Do you actually pay taxes in Germany? 

            Sven Lehmann (Greens): Against you we have something.

In place of the unfortunately baptised by you Bürgergeld, an activating basic security needs to enter which in fact drastically sinks the costs. 

Sixth. So that the statutory Pension Insurance remains affordable, it needs to be completely relieved of all non-insurance benefits and be supported by means of additional funded pillars. 

            Ines Schwerdtner (Linke): Neo-liberal!

To that also belongs a pension state fund, a so-called equalization [Ausgleich] fund for a stabilization of the statutory pension of the first pillar. The officials pension needs to be reformed, the civil service status strictly limited to a few sovereign areas of responsibility. Politicians, officials and holders of mandates need to be included in the statutory Pensions Insurance. 

Seventh. The absent migration change needs to be introduced by a Politik of the closed door. That means in clear text: Seamless border controls, turning back all illegals without exception, finally a rigorous deportation which the law besides prescribes, and an end to the multi-million violations of the law. 

Eighth. The migration magnets will be turned off. For asylum applicants, there is only benefits in kind instead of cash. Naturalized will be only those who, according to strong criteria and at earliest after ten years, are standing on their feet and fully at work. Naturalization by claim will be abolished. 

Ninth. State spending needs to be decisively slashed. Instead of unlimited new indebtedness, the public hand needs to get by with the tax intake. The state needs to keep itself out of the economy and out of the private life of the citizens, and confine itself to its core duties: Domestic and external security, maintenance of the state of law and public order. 

Tenth. Clientele policy subventions will be eliminated. The public financing of pseudo non-political organizations will be forbidden. The Antifa as a terrorist organization will be forbidden. The public broadcasting fees will be abolished. The squandering of tax money in all the world  ends. We require our remaining resources for our own country, for our own citizens. 

Eleventh. Urgently necessary is a structural reform which deconstructs the bureaucracy, clears away the funding jungle and leaves tax money in economic circulation with the citizens and business. 

Twelfth and last. A Tax Reform 25 with uniformly lowered tax rates, family splitting and a high allowance relieves the large majority of citizens, families, and before all the middle class. The solidarity surcharge will finally be completely abolished. 

That is our Deutschland Plan, that is our immediate program for Germany. 

            Götz Frömming (AfD): Bravo!

The most important and urgent measures to correct the damages we could in common immediately decide. Immediately! The majorities for that would be at hand in this house if the bürgerlichen powers of reason come together 

            Britta Haßelmann (Greens): You are not bürgerliche! 

            Derya Turk-Nachbaur (SPD): Extreme right is other than bürgerliche!

and finally fulfill the will of the voters, the majority of whom voted for a bürgerliche center-right Politik. 

            Michael Schrodi (SPD): Extreme right! 

            Claudia Roth (Greens): You are not bürgerliche!

It is thus about namely a center-right Politik, 

            Ralf Stegner (SPD): Extreme right!

a bürgerliche Politik and no progressive leftist-green Politik. You here have walled yourselves in. Make reasonable Politik for the citizens and business. 

It thus lies with you, right honorable colleagues of the Union, whether you want to continue to allow yourselves to be led by leftist apron strings and green losers, or 

            Britta Haßelmann (Greens): …whether you continue to surround yourself                                                 with right-wing extremists!

whether you are ready to place the good of the country above personal vanities and ideological prejudices. We are ready for that, out of love and responsibility for Germany. 

I am grateful. 

            Ralf Stegner (SPD): So simple-minded!

  

[trans: tem]