German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 21/31, pp. 3285-3286.
Right honorable Frau President. Honorable members.
I am proud of what we have done this week.
Konrad Körner (CSU/CSU): You have done nothing!
For in common with the critics of the planned EU chat control, we have so built up a massive pressure that the Federal government has given way. They now want to vote no in Council at the vote for a possible baseless mass surveillance. I say one thing quite clearly: Yesterday was a great victory for the citizens, a great victory for the AfD, and a great victory for the freedom – You there laugh, I know.
Siegfried
Walch (CDU/CSU): That is a joke!
The theater – and now listen closely, colleagues of the Union – up to this week on the theme of EU chat control is a disaster for the Federal government. It shows how disunited you are, as before, on the question of baseless mass surveillance. For long, the Federal government held itself to be covered on the theme of chat control so as to be able, in an expected clandestine ballot in the EU Council, to vote for chat control.
Siegfried
Walch (CDU/CSU): What rubbish!
Otherwise, why for weeks have you not been concerned for clarification? You would have been able to do that. How so just now, shortly before the vote, a no of the Justice Minister? Where is the Chancellor’s no? That, I miss in place.
Götz Frömming
(AfD): He’s not at all here!
No, you let it run, managed it up to the close in secrecy. And even in the Digital Committee yesterday, you refused to discuss this point publicly. We know quite precisely why: Because all the world would have seen how divided this Federal government is on this question.
Konrad Körner (CSU/CSU): That is just not right!
Armand Zorn
(SPD): That is not at all right!
Since while the Justice Minister in council openly expressed herself for a no, Chancellor Merz clarified yesterday on X – I cite:
“The police protect us all. For that, they require the use of drones and a preventive telecommunications surveillance.”
Quite obviously Chancellor Merz himself wants this mass surveillance of citizens, just so as the Interior Ministry.
I say one thing to you: If it is not so as I here say, then
position yourself here as Federal government – the Chancellor and his
Vice-chancellor – and clearly declare that in the entire legislative period it
will never come to a vote of this government on chat control!
If you want to do it honestly, do it now and here! We will therein measure you. And of course Chancellor Merz and the Vice-chancellor are again not in the hall.
I say to you: It scares the citizens – me too – to know that the Chancellor personally and the Interior Ministry continue to want this chat control.
Konrad Körner
(CSU/CSU): That’s not right!
And it is foreseeable that you will again start such an attempt when the time is ripe. Should you again take a run at this initiative – this I say to you – and dare the first great step for an authoritarian state which, utterly without basis, surveilles the citizens, then you will encounter bitter resistance from the side of the AfD delegation. We will exhaust to the maximum all political and judicial means so as to prevent the surveillance state. You can be sure of that.
Günter Kirings (CSU/CSU): Does Putin see it so?
Peter
Boehringer (AfD): That is so embarrassing! Violations of basic rights!
Siegfried Walch (CDU/CSU, indicating speaker): He is embarrassing!
And no, the baseless mass surveillance does not effectively protect our children from disgusting pedophile perpetrators, from child pornography and child abuse. Since even the German child protection union rejects this EU madness as disproportionate and ineffective. And you quite precisely know: The AfD is sometimes the toughest when it is about the fight against child abuse.
While the leftist bloc up to parts of the Union preferably wants to re-socialize the perpetrators, we want deterrence.
Siegfried
Walch (CDU/CSU): Yes, madness!
We declare war on cuddling with the perpetrators, for our motto is “protection of victims, instead of protection of perpetrators.”
Yet for you here in any case it is not about that. Since in regards the EU chat control, it is as with the Digital Services Act: As a reason advanced for a show window. You’ve even said: “We want to block illegal digital content” – okay – and: “The digital area is not allowed to be lawless” – okay. Yet then it was again expanded to disinformation, hate and agitation, and now the EU censors the free opinion. No, we want no state censorship apparat and no baseless surveillance. Exactly therefore needs be again abolished even so the Digital Services Act. The citizens’ freedom is not negotiable.
[trans: tem]
