Michael Espendiller, September 16, 2025, Fiscal Policy, II

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 21/23, pp. 2316-2317. 

…We here in Germany need to do our household chores, and we require the money, much too much of which at the moment is being transferred to the European Union, in our own country. We therefore reduce our contribution to the EU by about 18 billion euros. And now one may call  me out, that it does not go, there are binding treaties. Then good, it agrees with the treaties. 

            Johannes Fechner (SPD): Ach!

Yet treaties are not laws of nature and can be changed. Best example: Margaret Thatcher, the “Iron Lady” of Great Britain. When it was very bad in her country, she negotiated with the EU and extracted the so-called “British rebate”. Great Britain thus every year saved billions in contributions to the EU. Why should that not also work for Germany? Germany is ultimately the largest net payer to the EU and the stability anchor in the euro area. When Germany falls, the euro also falls. And against this background, we are very optimistic that the EU would prefer to agree with Germany rather than lose us completely. It thus may go, if one really wants to. 

Where do we save? The Federal government provides a large portion of its new debts for military expenditures. As you know, we have ever criticized the bad equipment of the Bundeswehr and committed ourselves in recent years to corresponding budget increases. Yet the present Federal government here exceeds every reasonable measure and schedules for this year debt-financed increases which, in fact, it simply cannot expend this year. For this reason, we in an AfD budget expend 10.7 billion euros less for military spending and thereby come to a total outlay in the defense area of 76.9 billion euros. And that is again very much money. Yet also in the following years, the Federal government in the military area simply wants to expend too much and too quickly. Decades-long shortcomings plainly cannot be compensated with a wave of the hand. 

Yet you not only thereby worsen Germany’s position, but also with delivery of military material to the Ukraine. In 2025, you want to spend all of 8.7 billion euros for the weapons deliveries to the Ukraine. And these costs we eliminate completely. You only prolong the unnecessary dying in the Ukraine. Besides, the Ukrainians themselves have meanwhile grasped this, which is why the number of deserters ever further increases. Yet that interests no one in the government, because reason is on vacation. 

Less reasonable besides are the exorbitant costs for a misguided climate policy. We do not at all save the climate with the deconstruction of industry in Germany. Here too, the red pencil. And we therefore can save with the elimination of the senseless climate projects of the climate and transformation funds around 37.6 billion euros, and indeed completely. 

Still what? The Sozial budget of Bärbel Bas is next, which blows up in our faces. It is absolutely right that we support the pension account with tax monies. That, our pensioners after a life of hard work have honestly earned. Yet it is wrong that we extend it, at the cost of the working middle, to millions of Bürgergeld recipients who are fully capable of earning. 

            Johannes Fechner (SPD): That’s just not right! What nonsense                                                are you then telling?

Moreover, it thus comes to that around 50 percent of the Bürgergeld recipients have a foreign citizenship. That is further evidence for the uncontrolled mass immigration into our social system. By means of a corresponding adjustment of our laws, we may end this social injustice, and here save an additional 14.6 billion euros. 

And still more money is to be found in the Federal budget: One billion euros as a “reconciliation payment” to Namibia can, for various reasons, go. 

In regards the political foundations, we eliminate means to the sum of 444 million euros. In addition, the Federal government plans to expend one billion euros for the performance of integration courses. The driver’s license in Germany needs to be paid by oneself; we can thus expect a German course will be paid by oneself if then one wants to have the German citizenship. 

The Union-led Federal government in addition herein continues to breed its own political opponents and carry on the financing of the leftist “Democracy Lives” programs. With its abolition, we save an additional 200 million euros. 

This and much more we can eliminate and, except for a few lobby groups, no one in Germany would notice. 

Yet what millions of people in Germany would notice in the purse are the reliefs of our AfD budget, the key points of which I want to here go into. 

We are of the opinion that the present climate policy damages the economic position and burdens the consumers with charges. The CO₂ price and the CO₂ emissions trade we therefore eliminate completely. 

And the trucking fee we cut by around 2.25 billion euros so as to lower the transportation costs in Germany. Everyone who drives to work with an auto, or who plans the next large purchase for the family, will notice that in the supermarket balance. These alone are 23 billion euros of relief for the consumers in Germany. 

And while we’re especially on the families: When both parent spouses are earning so as to feed the family and somehow pay for their own home, the budget account also suffers under the enormously high non-wage costs [Lohnnebenkosten]. This money does not at all land in one’s own account, but goes directly to the state. In our finance planning, enough money is available so that we can stabilize the social security system with 7.7 billion euros. This would prevent that in this year the contribution rate and with it the non-wage costs increase, and that keeps workplaces in Germany. 

Yet not only duties, but also taxes we in our AfD budget can properly save. Alone in regards the wages tax, that is one billion euros. With the income tax, we come to around two billion euros on top of that.  And the enormous burden on our Mittelstand we can reduce with three billion euros in the corporate tax. And the solidarity surtax with 12.45 billion euros we can completely eliminate. Work shall again pay. 

And we also want that good earners continue to remain in the country and plainly not – as presently – in large numbers of around 200,000 men and women each year leave our country, and thereby as contribution- and tax-payers permanently fall out of our social system. 

By means of the lowering of the CO₂ duty and the wage tax, together with the other measures, the small earners at the same time will be relieved by us, so that they can again live from their own income. 

All together, we relieve the citizens with 66.1 billion euros in our draft budget. That is impressive! 

In sum: Saving is something for the advanced. We have shown there is an alternative to limitless debt creation, and put forward a reform budget which we will also still further construct. We are convinced: This is the draft which Germany now needs, and which has what it takes to kindle a dynamic and again bring our economy into the running. 

The AfD is ready, and we hope the Union soon gives up its failed experiment with the SPD so as to include itself in the rescue mission for our country. We can, simply and profoundly, no longer afford this firewall. 

 

[trans: tem]

Michael Espendiller, September 16, 2025, Fiscal Policy, I

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 21/23, pp. 2314-2316. 

Right honorable Frau President. Right honorable colleagues. Dear spectators in the hall and at the screens. 

The budget consultations for the 2025 Federal budget lay behind us, and for us in the AfD Bundestag delegation, in regards these consultations, was precisely one, single question decisive: How can we financially relieve the citizens and the economy. For this of all is exactly the decisive question: What can we do for the citizens and the economy so as to finally relieve them from the high taxes and duties. This question we need to answer. And for my delegation, I can say: We have answered this question. 

Seen fiscally, the essence of our state, simply said, rests on two pillars. That is for one, the demography; and that is for the other, a functioning economy with sufficient jobs. 

As everyone in the country knows, the demographic development has for us as a state long since slipped away. The birthrate in the year 2024 has again fallen, and currently lies at 1.35 children which a woman has on average in Germany. That means for our levy-financed pension system, sufficient contribution payers are no longer available. And that, in turn, means that at some time sufficient people will no longer be there who generate for our people their pensions. 

For the pension is plainly no credit, but one pays with his contributions the pensions of others, and indeed in the hope that later, when one is himself at pension age, the younger may generate the pension for oneself. That this at some time for Germany becomes a problem is for long recognized. And for just as long was nothing actually done about it. Yet the day of the Big Bang is meanwhile no longer at a far distance, but one can now already very well see it. 

The 2025 Federal budget pension grant runs to, believe it or not, 134.4 billion euros. That corresponds to 25.8 percent of expenditures from the core budget; thus, an entire quarter. Taken from the total tax revenue of the Federal government, the quota for the pension grant contributes even 34.7 percent. That is to say, that from the entire tax revenue of the Bund, every third euro flows as an added contribution into the Pension Insurance. And we speak not of an upper, luxury pension, but of a pension level of 48 percent. 

In that the demography has long since slipped away from us, we are therein reliant on that the second pillar of our system functions: The economy. Without a properly running economy which offers enough jobs, I also have no more contribution payers who finance the pensions of our seniors, and I also have no more tax revenue from which every third euro can be stuck in the pension. 

In regards the health contribution, there is besides exactly the same basic problem; which is namely financed also by contribution payers. When we in Germany have fewer jobs, then we have fewer contributions for our sickness insurance, and then arise also the financing gaps. Since the number of insured and of treatments do not, ja, decrease. On the contrary, also here, everything becomes more expensive. Alone in the statutory sickness insurance in the coming year, 6.3 billion euros are lacking. In the year after, 12 billion are lacking, the year after 18 billion, and at the end of the legislature it is 24 billion euros. 

These holes I can either fill by which I increase the contribution amount for the insured. That would however make more expensive the labor factor which now already is no longer at a competitive price. Or I need also here again to go with tax money. 

The situation is in any case dramatic, and we are directly in a rapidly intensifying fiscal crisis. For us as the AfD delegation is it thereby clear as sunshine that a reasonable Politik needs now set everything, without compromise, on the stimulation of the economy, since that which in no case may happen is that still more jobs are lost to us which would have a consequence that we have still fewer contribution payers for our pension and sickness insurance systems. 

We in the AfD have told you all of this in the last ten years here, and said what you need do so as to prevent this downfall. Yet you did not want to listen. I have still well before my eyes the statements of the political competitors and of the mainstream press that the evil AfD paints the devil on the wall and with fear-mongering hunts for votes. That would certainly not at all agree with the bad economic situation. – Yet we knew that we were right. You needed to concede that this summer, since the Federal Statistics Office has subjected its numbers since 2008 to a “reappraisal”, and – hoopla! – it at once came out that we since 2023 are not in a situation of economic stagnation, but are stuck knee-deep in a recession. That which was plainly just Fake News has thus now become reality. 

During this phase of statistical denial of reality, valuable time has been lost in our country. The last three years, thus the time of the Ampel  government, was the time that the rudder in Germany would have been able, and needed to be, turned about. It needs be said quite clearly: Now for some comes any help too late; and from now on, it becomes really unpleasant; since the money is gone. It is gone, and it does not come again. 

The country’s citizens are fully right to rage over that. Yet the hard reality is: It helps not at all. We need to so deal with this situation as it now is, and here we all again sit in the same boat, whether one wants that or not. 

With our programmatic approaches we could in the last budget years still achieve savings relatively easily. Yet for us now will it become more difficult. Precisely here besides, the good, old debt brake would now come strongly to bear. Since it forces politicians who simply cannot say no to nevertheless give consideration to where one could then save, and what of all could then be structurally changed. 

            Markus Frohnmaier (AfD): So it is!

This Federal government freed itself from this constraint, as you know, with its debt putsch and unashamedly piled up the most crass indebtedness which this country has ever seen. Yet we of the AfD delegation have ourselves further enjoined this same restraint and maintain in our budget plan the original debt brake. 

And despite that, we would relieve the citizens and the economy. How do we do this? We have presented a total of 1,000 motions to amend the Federal budget: In Herr Klingbeil’s draft budget, we can dispense with 111 billion euros from his state expenditures in this year. 

Where then do we see the greatest savings potential? Let us begin with the payments to the European Union. In the 2025 draft budget, the Federal government plans payments in the sum of 33.7 billion euros to Brussels. This EU payment shall next year rise a further 14 billion euros to 47.7 billion euros – quite as if money here in Germany simply grows on trees. Yet each year there flows back to Germany just some 12 billion euros. And thus we finance every year with two-figure billions in contributions to whichever bureaucrat who regulates our cucumbers and deposit bottle caps. And from that, we have purely nothing. 

Far worse is that the EU in addition also wants to destroy our automobile sector with a combustion engine Verbot. 3.2 million jobs are here in play. What that means for our country, I have plainly explained to you. 

While the German economy thus shrinks, we in addition subsidize with our EU contributions our EU neighboring countries to which our firms now emigrate. Inquire for once at Schöneck in the Vogtland how one finds it that the firm TechniSat closes its plant there, all co-workers are laid off, and the production will now be shifted to Poland – and that, after the co-workers there for 33 long years have performed truly good work. 

That may no longer continue...

[trans: tem]

Michael Espendiller, July 8, 2025, Fiscal Policy

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 21/16, pp. 1449-1451. 

Right honorable Frau President. Right honorable colleagues. Dear audience in the hall and at the screens. 

Governments can be voted out, but not debts. Alone in this year, the black-red Federal government plans with its budget new debts in the sum of 143.1 billion euros. That means that every fourth euro which is over-spent from this Federal budget comes from new debts, thus from money which we certainly do not have, and also to which no income is matched [gegenüberstehen]; since to the planned total budget in a sum of 564.3 billion euros, there is matched a total income of only 421.4 billion euros. Serious appears otherwise, Herr Klingbeil. 

In the mid-term finance planning to 2029, thus in the next four years, it appears worse. Black-red will here take up overall new debts in a sum of 846.9 billion euros, almost one trillion euros in just four years. Herren Merz and Klingbeil will thereby increase the current indebtedness within one election cycle by a whopping 50 percent. They have thereby even topped all the horror calculations which we here have queued-up, following your coup d’état of a Basic Law alteration with the voted-out Bundestag. Were the Union in the opposition, an outcry would go through the country. Axel Springer would fire from all barrels and the downfall of this country within the briefest time would be prophesied. 

Yet Friedrich Merz is Chancellor, he who longed to be a Chancellor of change, who however unfortunately wants only to be an extern Chancellor. Thus everything remains quiet as a mouse. All look away, stick the head in the sand. Many think: He hopefully will know what he is doing. Others are simply paralyzed and doubt the reality. It is the monstrosity of this indebtedness which basically nips in the bud every criticism. Who willingly places himself against such a huge tsunami? Now, to that, there is an answer. We do it, once more the only ones in this country. We, the AfD Bundestag delegation, decisively oppose this madness, are against this financial policy run amok. This mountain of debt is not without an alternative. 

Yes, the problems in this country are great: A decaying infrastructure, a healthcare system on the verge of collapse, ever further climbing costs of the social security system. And the economy finds itself, despite well-tempered, kiss-kiss summer selfies, ever still in decline. Yet all of this need be no permanent situation. What we now require is a clear analysis of our spending policy. For what do we spend money? Which purpose does this thus pursue? Do we thereby at all achieve this purpose? Is there not also another way? We need thus to ask ourselves in regards each, single budget item: Is it required? Need that really be? And then we of course need the courage to say: That can go, that we no longer do; since we are simply no longer able to manage that. We can thus arrive at an authentic budget consolidation and thus again enable the state to effectively concentrate itself on its core duties. 

We require fundamental structural reforms, and need to finally stop just talking about deconstruction of bureaucracy, and finally do it. Our economy, our doctors, our teachers, all are oppressed by a flood of prescripts which take from them the joy in their work. The work ethic [Arbeitsmoral] in Germany is grounded. 

            Kathrin Michel (SPD): By you!

It is aground due to the daily, massive, bureaucratic tutelage with which the people need to struggle, and which costs our economy billions, and brings purely nothing. 

Although everyone knows this, continually come new prescripts and regulations. Why actually did not the government for once get started with that before it started the debts torpedo? Instead, Friedrich Merz travels through world history and devotes himself to the pet projects of all the other parties: Give away billions in tax money to foreign countries and the EU. And the finishing touch on that is the Chancellor wants to buy with the new mega-debts 43 billion euros worth of weapons for the Ukraine, while in this country the promised electricity tax reduction still does not yet come for the citizens. That is an absolute insolence against the working middle of this country, and it is evidence of an incapability that you here again have broken your word. 

Still more: It is a fatal signal that the seriousness of the situation in Germany and the signs of the time are ever still not acknowledged. If we want to get our economy underway, then we need to really unchain it. We need to reduce the taxes for citizens and business, and that permanently. Every euro which the state loosens from the citizen in excess taxes reduces the motivation [Leitsungsbereitschaft] of every, single individual. Why should one strain himself if from his own work so little remains; that one asks himself whether work at all still pays? And should one do overtime when the state withholds half the pay, and then spends it for dubious NGOs, or the clothing worn by Georgine Kellermann? 

The worst is: A large part of the Union quite precisely knows all of this. Presumably, many even agree with me – secretly, of course. Yet as a result of the decision to enter into a coalition with the SPD, Germany now receives a red-red-green Politik. That looks very nice to the Greens’ present lack of concepts. All that they have imagined in their most daring dreams will now be implemented by black-red. 

They certainly no longer know what they still should say all day long. Yet this red-red-green socialism, the people in the country have voted out. The German have voted for a fundamental change of course. They have voted for financial policy stability, and issued a refusal to the further-so of the downfall. 

The Union basically misplayed it. Yet we will well set it right. We rejoice at the pending budget consultations, and once again stand ready with many good proposals for making Germany better. 

Many thanks for the attention. 

 

[trans: tem]

Michael Espendiller, March 18, 2025, Debt and Defense Spending

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/214, pp. 27767-27768. 

Right honorable Frau President. Right honorable colleagues. Dear viewers in the hall, on YouTube, and on X. 

The election fraudster Friedrich Merz, today in common with SPD and Greens, is having determined in six days as much new debt as the entire Federal Republic of Germany in total took up from 1950 until 2009, thus in 59 years. It will be, in ten years time, between 1.6 and 1.8 trillion euros. Most already surmise that with this money everything possible will happen, yet in the end it will not arrive at the citizens. 

On this there prevails a widespread consensus that the so-called infrastructure special debts are to be refused because infrastructure belongs to the regular state orders which the state has to finance from its current income. Yet there persists the erroneous belief that in the case of the Bundeswehr it would be different. I want for my delegation to here again clarify: Defense expenditures also need be defrayed from the regular budget if we want to economize efficiently and responsibly. 

All economists agree that Germany needs fundamental structural reform, that we need to rein in the bureaucracy and initiate a growth impulse. And all are agreed that in that regard it does not help to simply pour more money over the problem, as has been done without success in the past years. Why should it be different in regards the Bundeswehr? 

I have attended in the last three years as reporter for section 14 the regular expenditures in the defense area as well as the “Special Funds Bundeswehr”, and I can say to you: Our problem here is not primarily the money. Of that, the Defense Ministry now has so much that it routinely affords itself money squandering. Did you know, for example, that we spend each year 654 million euros for the so-called property security [Liegenschaften]? What is that? That is the cost for the private security services which guard [bewachen] our barracks, because that is evidently no longer to be expected of our soldiers. And we yearly pay from the Federal budget around 180,000 soldiers, the fewest of whom are on active duty. It is not known what they do all day long, yet the guarding of our barracks is apparently not a part of it. 

Or let us go to the procurement theme. In regards procurement projects also we routinely pay too much, for one thing because our government simply negotiates poorly, for another because the Federal Ministry of Defense’s requirements are set completely wrong. An example is the infantry’s heavy weapons carrier. Here, we procure the Boxer from Rheinmetall which shall replace the weapons carrier system Wiesel 2 which has been in service for around 30 years. So far, so good. Actually, the Boxer could quite easily be purchased in Germany, because it is also produced by us. Only, Rheinmetall was unfortunately at the time of the order fully booked in its  German production. One would thus need to wait somewhat longer. That besides would have been fully justifiable. But no, the Russians who lose the last two years in the Ukraine, are, ja, next week in Berlin. Thus Pistorius decided to purchase the Boxer at Rheinmetall Australia and from there have it flown in. The result: The originally planned 2 billion euros for the project does not suffice. The finance requirement climbs around 700 million euros to 2.7 billion euros. 

            Alice Weidel (AfD): Madness! Anyone can figure that!

And the flight from Australia is besides not climate neutral. 

I have only four minutes speaking time, yet I could recount for hours additional examples. 

An evaluation in the Federal Ministry of Defense does not routinely occur, neither for the use of funds and for the procurement, nor for our military doctrine. 

            Henning Otte (CDU/CSU): Who then wrote your speech for you?

The Bundeswehr needs to correspond in structure and character to the altered demands of our time. Yet at the Bendlerblock is ever still a mindset of 50 years ago. And we do not change that when we now write into the Basic Law in the defense area an indebtedness possibility completely without upper limit. 

Also in the military area it remains as in the sentence: Germany has an expenditure problem and not an income problem. We will at some time look back on this day and ascertain that it did not bring us much other than debts and inflation. 

Thanks for the attention. 

 

[trans: tem]

Michael Espendiller, November 23, 2022, Foreign Minister Baerbock

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/69, pp. 8058-8059.

Right honorable Herr President. Right honorable colleagues. Dear spectators in the hall                        and on YouTube.

For 2023, the Foreign Office may rejoice over 7.5 billion euros for expenditures. The Ampel is thus really busting out and others here in the hall applaud. Only we say: It is too much, and before all in regards to the fascinating questions: What actually happens with the money? To where does it flow and does it do what it should? In the coalition contract, the Ampel parties are understood to have a “result-oriented budget management” [„wirkungsorientierte Haushaltsführung“]. Yet we have seen very little of that. When the budget title somehow sounds good and “climate“ or “sustainability“ are therein, then the billions fly out the window to foreign countries.

Let us for once be definite – we have already spoken of it in the deliberations. There is the so-called Federal Office for Foreign Affairs. That is a chic, new authority in the portfolio of the Foreign Office in beautiful Brandenburg on the Havel, and there work any number of motivated experts. We could once inspect it together with the Minister and it was really very interesting. One of the department leaders explained to us that in his department in this year 62 co-workers were at work on 1,900 projects, projects in 130 countries of the world with a value equivalent to 2 billion euros.  

If we reckon that up, we see: Every single expert is responsible for worldwide projects of a total value of 32.3 million euros – one co-worker, 32 million euros. Here, we naturally asked: How can a single expert comprehend and examine such a large sum, whether the money really matters and effects something? The answer ran: It will be kursorisch [cursorily] examined. We take a peek in Duden, which says:

Kursorisch: …continuous, quickly proceeding from one to another, not exacting                            in details…

Simply stated: When you  propose money for a project, it will be briefly examined, stamped; the money will be allotted, afterwards a brief report written – “all was super fine” – done, into the files. – Following our criticism, the Minister amplified that the Foreign Office’s projects were pre-tested, primarily however by the project partners. Nevertheless, Frau Baerbock also said – cite: “We do not control each, single invoice. We do not control each, single bill. We simply cannot do that”. End citation.

Look, precisely there lies the snag; since it is by no means that you cannot control each, single bill but that you simply do not want to. The funding sections [Förderabteilungen] of the Foreign Office see to the expending of money. Were it important to you, Frau Minister – wherever in fact you are – you would reconstruct the section; you would expend no money without controls. Yet you do precisely the opposite.

And in which countries then will the money generally be expended? For example, yesterday you approved an additional 33 million euros for the Republic of Moldavia, for the most part in the area of energy security. A glance at the corruption index of Transparency International shows no good picture for this country. There, the Republic of Moldavia lands in place 105, the same as Panama, and thereby is at the fore in matters of corruption, even though still slightly behind the Ukraine.  

I think, Frau Hagedorn, many people can thoroughly comprehend the government’s disposition to help that country.

            Ulrich Lechte (FDP): Frau Hagedorn has much more an idea than you!

The country is heavily affected by the war. Yet certainly in regards to the corruption, it should nevertheless be an especial concern for you to here enforce an ordinary control – a control whereby the money really produces something. Yet you simply do not do it, and you also will not do it merely because you say that here. Trust is good, control is better. In case someone here now says, “Yes, man, for that we have the Federal Audit Authority“ – that is a mistake. It of course controls no projects. It simply does not have the capacities for that.

How thus precisely the taxpayers‘ money will be dealt with is thus a switching point which you need to take in hand., Frau Minister. Yet you and your house control, ja, not any single invoice and not any single bill.

Yet do you know who needs to do that? The taxpayers in Germany who generate the money that you grandiosely distribute. The citizens need to precisely watch every euro; since normal people can expend the money only once. The citizens also need to preserve every, single invoice; for their tax statement, for example. If you conduct a business in Germany, you even need to do that for ten years. If then one fine day the tax audit arrives – it arrives as surely as the amen in church – then will the tax examiner inspect every, single bill and every, single invoice. May God have mercy on you if then something is thereby not right. Thus when you so lightly speak of that, that you simply cannot so precisely examine all of that, then you thereby reject for yourself a standard which is an obligation for millions of Germans. – Frau Minister, no head shaking helps here. This is just a fact.

Aside from distinctive foreign policy concepts, we here demand from you more effective controls. For that, you are more than obliged to the taxpayers in this country.

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

 

 

Michael Espendiller, June 1, 2022, Foreign Office

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/40, p. 3952.

Right honorable Frau President. Right honorable colleagues. Dear spectators in the hall and on YouTube.

On the pediment of this building in which we find ourselves is written: „Dem deutschen Volke“ [To the German People]. It thus must be self-evident that German foreign policy is to be aligned with this guiding principle. Yet unfortunately in many cases, we see the opposite. It would be in the German interest to deal frugally with the German tax money and be considerate of how this money is used. It would be in the German interest to reduce debts and work on solid finances.

We nevertheless have experienced at the conclusion of the budget deliberations how an optimistic tax estimate for the year 2022 has led to that the estimate for the Foreign Office was raised over the seven billion euro threshold.

The additional tax expenditures of around half a billion euros flow almost exclusively in the direction of Ukraine, in addition to what, note well, was already foreseen and which also comes from other estimates. Thereby flows the money into a country the people of which everyone who has a heart is in solidarity with; yet where at the same time the question must be put what actually happens with this money and whether it in fact arrives where it is needed and does not seep into any non-transparent channels.  

            Frank Schwabe (SPD): How offensive!

That no one at the moment wants to hear Herr Selenskyi emerges in the Pandora Papers and that just last autumn he was accused of corruption is however in fact for me as a budget member unimportant. Since the decisive point in the expenditures policy in the Foreign Office is the deficient evaluation. There is not any balance, not any evaluation, not any results control in which the use of hard earned German tax money in foreign countries is actually made tangible.

            Ralf Stegner (SPD): Offensive!

In fact, valued colleagues, the Foreign Office is not in the position to say to an inquiry what exactly, in which country, with which share, to which purpose it will be promoted. No one has an overall view over the impenetrable wild growth of projects which is financed worldwide with German tax money. Yet in committee, all other delegations are agreed that in any case more money is needed. This is absolutely insane.

Nevertheless, Frau Minister Baerbock in the deliberations has promised that by autumn will have been developed a system by which at the touch of a button data on the Foreign Office‘s worldwide projects can be summoned up. That meets not only with our approval but we also demand it. Since only when we receive for once an overall view can we also begin with an authentic evaluation and fully dedicate ourselves to the question of where we can save money. Yet until then I want to impart to the government a few brief remarks as to what does and does not serve the interests of our country.  

A gas embargo against Russia is not in the German interest; since it threatens a large number of workplaces and leads to new fiscal burdens in the areas of labor, social and economy. It leads to incalculable risks in regards our energy security. The question of with what   Germany shall be heated next autumn cannot simply be left unanswered. Germany’s dependence on energy imports created over decades can also not be ignored so to act as if it did not exist. With all appreciation of the present situation, the solidarity with the Ukraine may not go so far that we endanger our economic venue and freeze our people next winter. And for a good finale: Weapons deliveries to the Ukraine are also not in the German interest, which is what a growing majority in the population also sees.

Against this background, it is certainly ironic that the inscription „Dem deutschen Volke“ here outside on the House was made out of melted down cannons. The Federal government should perhaps ponder over the deeper meaning of this choice of material and come to its senses.

Many thanks for your attention.

 

[trans: tem]