Enrico Komning, July 5, 2024, Coal

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/182, 23650-23651. 

Right honorable Frau President. My ladies and gentlemen colleagues. Dear Herr State Minister. Right honorable Herr State Secretary. My ladies and gentlemen of the Union. 

Herr State Minister, there is no overall social consensus for a withdrawal from coal. That is an illusion. That is a fairy tale. And it hurts me so: The Union tells these tales in tune with the left-greens. 

This coal withdrawal is a political project by-passing the people, primarily the people in the eastern German coal regions. The structural change, other than in the Ruhr, is not organic, not a result of technological progress, but solely a result of political intent. And the worst of it is: You of the Federal government have no concept. You come with the wrecking ball and then leave the people standing in front of the dump. 

Johannes Ardt (SPD): Och!

The Ampel would even most preferably move up the withdrawal to 2030. What you do here is irresponsible, dear Federal government. The people in the region need security, and not fear of the future. 

The decision for a coal withdrawal was a fatal failure. We need the coal, at least until we again have extensive gas- and, before all, nuclear-power plants. Look for once at how many coal power plants were in the network at the end of 2020, before the final atomic exit. There were 74. And today? Today it is 130. And in 2022 were just three nuclear power plants in the network. Your withdrawal from nuclear power made Germany still more dependent on coal, and now even that shall go. You transform Germany back into the Stone Age. 

In terms of climate technology, the withdrawal is completely superfluous. The total output from the German coal power plants contributed about 40 gigawatts. That is clearly less than China alone in the year 2023 started in new coal power capacity. Germany, with this government, is for no one in this world a model – on the contrary: The other countries just laugh over this energy nonsense. 

To the Union’s motions. Some of it, what is in the motions, – independent of the coal withdrawal – is, ja, reasonable; for example, the construction of the rail infrastructure. Nevertheless, it well needs be asked: Who deconstructed the rail infrastructure? That was the case under the aegis of the Union. 

            Sepp Müller (CDU/CSU): Just look at the record books!

Yet it is right to build up the rail infrastructure. Establishments from research centers: Right. And it is also right to create a highly qualified employment structure. 

The mainstay of the economy in the coal region in Brandenburg, Saxony and Thüringen is however the Mittelstand, especially small and very small business, manufacturing businesses. An attractive trades economy would be an authentic jobs motor. Finally free the trades from the Ampel bureaucracy! That would be more sensible than subvention orgies. 

We can nevertheless not agree to vote in favor of your current motion; since you also hold this unspeakable eco-socialist transformation to be correct; you hold fast to it, dear colleagues of the Union. 

Hydrogen is a wrong way. Hydrogen is not economic and will let the energy prices continue to explode; my colleague Dr. Kraft has directly explained that in the previous debates. The energy value of hydrogen is below par; it is of no use. You cannot simply convert the available gas pipelines to hydrogen. Here, you needed two or three times the pipe capacity. That, my ladies and the gentlemen colleagues, has now already been thoroughly plundered by this government, 

            Johannnes Ardt (SPD): Och!

and for future generations is not a financial expectation. Leave to the people their coal, in a literal and figurative sense. 

And, dear citizens in the eastern German coal regions, be smart, and in autumn vote blue [seid schlau, und wählt im Herbst blau]! 

Many thanks. 

 

[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]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Enrico Komning, October 22, 2021, Coalition and Mittelstand

AfD Kompakt, October 22, 2021.

The future traffic light coalitioners, and before all evidently the FDP, not only want to sacrifice the debt brake for their climate craze but now also bleed the KfW, the Mittelstand bank. The KfW is the most important investor and provider of credit for founders of business start-ups and Mittelstand firms. It administers the Bund’s ERP special facilities and is thereby one of the most important instruments for promotion of the Mittelstand in Germany.

And now even the Mittelstand, the greatest employer and trainer in Germany, the guarantor of prosperity and social stability, shall be sacrificed for this ideological wrong way by which KfW means are diverted. Following the former Federal government’s fateful Corona policy, it would in that regard now be the first priority to again build up the leaking Mittelstand.

Instead, the goal of the future government appears to be the further economic and social weakening of Germany.

 

[trans: tem]

 

Enrico Komning, May 6, 2021, German Maritime Industry

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/227, p. 28879.

Right honorable Herr President. Ladies and gentlemen colleagues.

Dear colleague Kruse, I cannot share your opinion that your motion is good. The grand coalition’s motion is in my view like a show window proposal. Basically, it is nothing other than election campaign noise. In times in which the vaccination prioritization will be cancelled, to demand a prioritization for ship’s crew is surely very transparent.

You let China take away cargo ship construction. You now let China take away the construction of cruise ships. On account of your short-sighted and ideologically driven policy, shipbuilding in Germany is facing ruin.

With your arbitrarily determined climate goals, you destroy the competitivity of German shipbuilding and thus prevent urgently needed investments for more efficient, more economical propulsion systems with consequently reduced emissions. In the Green reality, ladies and gentlemen, German shipbuilding will quite clearly not recover. Either you negotiate uniform standards with the principle shipbuilding nations, or you forbid the entry into German ports of “wicked” Chinese and Korean ships. Alternatively, you could for once try the social market economy and release German shipbuilding into a fair competition.

Ladies and gentlemen, due to the government’s long-term lockdown, the German maritime trade has to write down dramatic declines. The continued closing of retail trade leads the German shipping companies to the edge of ruin. The Russian sanctions go out of the way to idle the great potential of ocean commerce on the Baltic Sea. And while China and Great Britain, thanks to more durable opening strategies, are long since again on a robust course of growth, you are still discussing whether the confinements should apply to the vaccinated.

In your motion you affirm you want to develop a coherent national ports concept and to strengthen the cooperation of the port venues. Ja, Herrschaftszeiten, why have you then not already done that in past decades?  Instead, for twenty years you have occupied yourselves with a deepening of the Elbe, the future viability of which is already in question, and thereby let yourselves dance attendance upon the people with whom you tomorrow would most prefer to lie in a coalition bed, and indeed both of you, CDU/CSU and SPD.

In the lockdown crisis, all German overseas ports, and especially the port of Hamburg, have lost massively vis-à-vis competitors in Rotterdam and Antwerp. With the urgently required reform of the imports turnover tax, you indeed have pushed back the expiration time frame. The settlements model, which the AfD Bundestag delegation has here already many times demanded, and, according to unanimous expert opinion, of which imports are in urgent need, nevertheless still awaits its implementation.  

Ladies and gentlemen, fine words and ideology cannot overcome the crisis into which you have led the maritime economy. Turn back to a policy shaped by the market economy! Throw the ideological ballast overboard! With this motion, ladies and gentlemen, that will quite clearly not happen.

Many thanks.

 

[trans: tem]

 

Enrico Komning, August 27, 2020, Mittelstand and Lockdown

AfD Kompakt, August 27, 2020

[Enrico Komning is an AfD Bundestag member from Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. He is a lawyer and here responds to Bavarian Minister-president Marcus Söder’s call for a second lockdown.]

Herr Söder’s statements are a fatal signal primarily for our Mittelstand economy.

The German Mittelstand now primarily needs stability. The firms must be able to plan their future. That means that the free commerce of goods and services must remain secure, not only but primarily within Europe. The endless threats of new restrictive measures, travel warnings and certainly a second lockdown run counter to every recovery measure for the especially fleeced Mittelstand businesses.

The National Association of the Mittelstand Economy in its recently published urgent memo is expressly agreed that a general workplace infection defense ought not lead to a second lockdown.

We, on the contrary, in the short-term need distinct relaxations of the Corona measures so as to give the air to required breathe to business and the productive industries. A regulatory eradication already now threatens many branches – not just tourism and the restaurant trade. In the mid-term, a targeted Mittelstand strategy is needed which frees the small and mid-sized firms from the choke hold of the concerns and the international speculators. Otherwise, the Mittelstand may die of Corona.   

[trans: tem]