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

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

Frau President. 

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

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

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

 

[trans: tem]

René Aust, April 1, 2025, War Itself is the Enemy

EU Parliament, Strasbourg, P10 CRE-REV(2025)04-01(2-0092-0000). 

Frau President. 

We mourn the victims of the war, and we condemn the aggressive war contrary to international law, just so as the war crimes associated with it. Our view is not allowed to stay with today. We require a long-term peace strategy beyond the Ukraine War. In recent weeks was ever more talk of a major war in four, five years against Russia – a nightmare since in the age of nuclear weapons, war itself is the enemy. Thus is now required a plan for a long-term, future order of peace in Europe. 

First: Many states have reported to NATO on apparent armies – on the paper, but not mission-ready. These states need to make mission-ready their troops reported up to 2020, but not to arm beyond that, if Russia in turn is ready to return to its troop strength after the Ukraine War in any case to the level of 2020. We thus prevent an armaments spiral.   

Second: Europe needs to make unmistakably clear: Not a millimeter of an EU member state may be placed in question. For that, a de-militarized zone in the Russian state territory is required, especially for the defense of the Baltic states; and a clear announcement to Russia: We do not allow ourselves to be put under pressure, and not by nuclear threats in the Russian state television. 

Third: Russia is stuck in a war economy. The entry into one such is easy, the exit difficult. Europe, in return for a de-militarized zone, needs to indicate an economic perspective: End the sanctions, and resume import-export relations, not as a gift, but as an incentive to rise up out of the rearmament, so to to give Russia a chance to get out of the war economy and not be long-term reliant on armaments, so to prevent the economic collapse. 

One thousand hours of negotiating for nothing are better than one, single minute of shooting at one another. We have the obligation to seize every diplomatic initiative so as to secure long-term peace in Europe. 

 

[trans: tem]

René Aust, March 12, 2025, The Will of the People

EU Parliament, Strasbourg, P10 CRE-REV(2025)03-12(3-0020-0000). 

Herr President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen. 

The European Semester should be concerned with producing stability in Europe. In fact, it would be necessary for us in Europe to again find stability, though what we are planning in the European Union, in the European Commission, is the further disempowerment of the parliament, is a further setting aside of the will of the people. 

We want that austerity does not continue to occur in Europe. We do not want that the European Parliament be further disempowered. We want that the people’s will is really, fully respected. What we presently see in Europe is: The people’s disempowerment itself destabilizes. Look at what just occurs in Roumania: A candidate wanted by the people, who is ahead in all surveys, will be excluded from being a candidate. Look at what has happened in Bulgaria: A referendum for an introduction of the euro is rejected. Look at what has happened in Germany, where is discussed whether a party should be banned, or where a re-count of the results of the German Bundestag election is rejected, even though the entry into the Bundestag of a party will thus possibly be prevented.   

We need to again find in all Europe that the people’s will is brought to bear. We thereby provide for stability, not by additional centralization through the European Commission. 

 

[trans: tem]

René Aust, December 18, 2024, Economic Policy

EU Parliament, Strasbourg, P10 CRE-REV(2024)12-18(3-0028-0000.) 

Frau President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen. 

The world changes. Demographic proportions shift to the disadvantage of Europe in the direction of population growth of Asia and Africa. And the knowledge advantage of Europe in the natural sciences and technology has shrunk in the past 30 years; we were in part overhauled. In addition, Europe by means of a moralizing foreign policy, by all too careless sanctions, closes itself off from access to the world’s resources, especially energy, coal, nuclear power and gas. 

The world changes, yet the establishment, the established political parties, do politics as always. That is displayed in the ambitionless economic policy of the new president of the European Council, Herr Costa. In the invitation to his first session on Thursday with the heads of state and government, not a single time was there the term competitiveness, not once the term economic growth. On the daily order, the themes of innovation and investment played no role at all – and this in a time in which France and Germany are stuck in an economic crisis, and growth in the EU is slower than in any other large economic region of the world. 

The EU establishment still has not understood the dramatic economic situation of Europe and its citizens. Economic policy needs to be a top priority! Instead, economic policy is worth not a word for the heads of state and government; patriotic governments place at mid-point the everyday life of our citizens, not feminist foreign policy. As a reminder: It is the duty of the European Council of the European Union to give the required impulse for the development of Europe. Let us then look in the world for which economic impulse is necessary. 

One wanted to make additional competition for the farmers in Europe by means of Mercosur. Yet then one needs also prepare them for the competition by relieving them through bureaucracy and from bureaucracy in the European Union. 

Artificial Intelligence: In the European Union there is no business of relevance in the area of artificial intelligence, yet the EU has already concluded comprehensive prescriptions for that. Our continent requires freedom and desire for innovation, not fear of the new. 

Automobile Industry: In the coming 50 years, more autos will be sold in the world than in the past 100 years. The markets however are in Latin America, in Africa, in India, and there will be no complete electrification strategy. Thus also here is the clear demand: An end to the combustion engine ban! 

Steel Industry: The ton of so-called green steel costs 30 to 40% more than conventionally manufactured steel. We need an end of the leftist-green transformation dreaming. 

Bitcoin: While the entire world prepares itself for that here there is a new way, there is from the European Union regulation and prescriptions. MiCA decree afuera! 

You see, another economic policy would be possible. Instead, the EU establishment continues as previously. Under your leadership, Europe becomes poorer, more insecure, and dependent on other regions of the world. 

Therefore, Europe needs to vote for change in the year 2025, and that the citizens of Europe can do: For example in Czechia in which they vote for Svoboda, for example in Poland in which they vote for Konfederacja in the presidential election, for example in Germany when they vote for the Alternative für Deutschland in the Bundestag election. 

 

[trans: tem]

René Aust, November 14, 2024, European Defense

EU Parliament, Brussels, P10 CRE-PROV(2024)11-14(2-0018-0000). 

Frau President. 

In the past decades, the European Union has neglected to coordinate the member states’ security policy so that a maximum standard is guaranteed for our citizens. Whether it be the defense of the air space, the ending of mass migration or the protection of our raw material or commercial routes on the world seas, we are generally dependent on the structures of the United States of America. In none of these areas are we currently in the position to independently defend our security interests. 

Yet the EU itself is guilty of this dependence. It invests much money in ideological projects – from gender questions to climate protection – it worries about all possible things, but does not correctly worry about what is important. It is therefore necessary to dismantle [zurückzubauen] the European Union: Fewer competences, fewer duties, fewer expenditures. The European level should concentrate on fewer, yet decisive, duties for all; one of which would be a coordinated defense and security policy at the European level; for example, fewer weapons systems instead of 150 in the European Union today, few of which are comprehensively compatible for the armies. 

Yet it needs be clear: More security policy cooperation does not mean the creation of a common European army. It would be a nightmare if the EU bureaucrats and Frau von der Leyen were allowed to decide on the mission of German, French, Polish and other European soldiers. The further distant from the citizens are the decisions over war and  peace, the greater is the danger that decision makers thoughtlessly undertake a war – and nothing is further from normal life, from we citizens, than Ursula von der Leyen. To summarize: We say yes to more cooperation in defense and security questions, but a clear Nein to any phantasms of a European army. 

 

[trans: tem]