Wolfgang Wiehle, September 21, 2023, Railways Administration

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/122, pp. 15143-15144. 

Right honorable Frau President. Valued colleagues. 

There are almost 200 ways how the Bund finances the Bahn. That was computed for us in the last months. I have understood that as a warning, that this complexity is a problem. A good Bahn reform should drastically simplify that. And now the government lays on the table before us a law which makes of these 200 ways probably 250 or 300. If you want to demonstrate that you cannot do Bahn reform, then you have thereby really succeeded. 

Yes, all of that will be later improved, you will say. Yet on a bad foundation you can build no good house and this fatal failure you clearly make again – colleague Donth just now used the same image. The analysis thus needs to agree. Decisive for an effective and transparent direction of the Bahn is the legal form of the Bahn undertakings. The new infrastructure company shall now again be a joint-stock company. That is a legacy from the time of the Bahn stock market plan, and that is the worst of all possibilities for control by the owners. 

Today the Federal railways construction law is on the daily order. By means of this law, the Bahn shall in the future receive money not only for the construction of the Bahn sections but also for their maintenance and repair. Yet that does not always apply, but only when there is an extra contract between Bund and Bahn. Otherwise, you apparently do not manage control of the Bahn. If you now make a new contract for each new measure, then we are soon at 300 ways of financing. 

The Audit Authority moreover sounds the alarm because the Transportation Ministry in another contract proposes hectic changes which could result in a disadvantage to the Bund. Here, it is about the performance and financing agreement which with an authentic Bahn reform will necessarily be, plain and simply, superfluous. 

A couple of new Bahn billions in the Transportation budget, then still a couple of billions from the shadow budget “climate and transformation fund”, additional billions as equity of the Deutschen Bahn: What you tie up here crowns the financial chaos. 

Because the money still does not suffice, you get it from the citizens, all the same whether the trains run or not. Yes, from the citizens; since we all must pay for the billions of your brutal increase of the trucking fee. Everything that we buy in the supermarket ultimately comes by truck. 

            Matthais Gastel (Greens): What?

One already reads in the media how thereby the prices of foodstuffs climb. The inflation will be still higher and the citizens still poorer. 

We require an authentic Bahn reform and that is something other than your bungled job. Who does it fundamentally, gives the Bahn and its subsidiaries a new legal form. Yet you need to enforce it against the great red union at the Bahn. The Bund as owner needs to take in hand the direction of the railway networks. The Politik is responsible for the infrastructure. Period. And for that, the Bund needs to clearly command the firms’ rail network, not by umpteen contracts, but by one, unequivocal structure. 

The Federal railways construction law now goes to committee. The AfD delegation clearly names the problem. Because the wrangling in the Ampel is not less than the chaos at the Bahn, hopes for an improvement are however limited. We will in no case vote for your adventurous cobbling [abenteuerlichen Flickschusterei] as it now stands in the draft law.

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

Wolfgang Wiehle, August 10, 2021, Locomotive Drivers’ Strike

AfD Kompakt, August 10, 2021.

The demands of the Union of German Locomotive Drivers [GDL] have a realistic core. The adjustment to the inflation rate would threaten the railroad men with a real loss of income should the GDL accept the compensation contract, running until 2023 and negotiated by the DB [Deutsche Bahn, German Railways] company union, the EVG [Railway and Transport Union], which foresees for 2022 an income increase of just 1.5 percent. If the GDL thus argues for its members’ purchasing power, that cannot be rejected out of hand.

It is however indirectly about the efforts of the DB management and the EVG company union to destroy a smaller industrial union [Spartengewerkschaft]. The means of assistance for that is the single compensation law [Tarifeinhietsgesetz], enforced by the Labor Ministry which is lead by the SPD. The personal associations of the SPD and the EVG are in that regard no secret. The single compensation law apparently will be abused by the DB so to end a competition between unions and to dry up an effective union, one before all independent of employers. If the GDL thus sees itself forced to struggle for its justification of existence with hard compensation demands, that is understandable. The impending labor dispute is therefore also connected with the single compensation law and is thus a direct consequence of the SPD’s failed labor market policy.

It is not otherwise to understand that the DB has agreed with the EVG to a special right of cancellation in its already concluded compensation contract in case the GDL gets a better result. The DB management has thereby brought the entire undertaking to a dangerous imbalance: The GDL will be all but driven to a labor dispute so as to at all be able to further substantiate a claim to represent. Should the GDL fail,  the EVG would be the beneficiaries of the lost labor dispute. Should the GDL be able to enforce a portion of its demands, the EVG might obtain an identical compensation contract – the GDL would have then hauled the proverbial potatoes out of the fire even for the EVG.

With all understanding for the position of the GDL, the AfD Bundestag delegation once more appeals to its overriding responsibility, to make possible for vacationers a train trip in die Heimat. Labor dispute measures should therefore be initiated only after the end of the summer holidays; that is, after September 13^th. The time till then should be used especially by the DB to submit an acceptable offer to the GDL and defuse the fight over labor union existence.

 

[trans: tem]

 

Wolfgang Wiehle, April 15, 2021, Railroad Policy

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/221, pp. 27945-27946.

Right honorable Frau President. Colleagues.

“The railroad will get it right” [„Die Bahn soll’s richten”], that is the homely title of this debate. In an over-bidding competition of self-praise and wish-what-you-will talk, the AfD will nevertheless not participate.

            Detlef Müller (SPD-Chemnitz): You have no plan!

We know that the Bahn is good if it is about large transportation quantities or urban connections. The AfD however energetically rejects all ideas of a planned economy transportation transformation which will take mobility from very many people, because primarily for them it makes driving a car unaffordable.

It is right to boldly haul the Bahn into the 21st Century with digitalization and a good infrastructure. It will however not replace but can only supplement road transportation. Here, you are right, Herr Minister Scheuer, when you presume the AfD to be the last realists who recognize the significance of road transportation. Where the Bahn makes a good offer, the people will gladly transfer. A political compulsion hereto, the AfD rejects with complete distinction.

The coalition dishes up to us a celebratory motion for immediate approval. Thus you, with the majority in this house, want to greet all that you in any case exactly do and to demand of the government all that it in any case exactly plans. Not that all of this would be completely false, but its reach is plainly much too short. For example, there lacks any perspective of how the business structure of the German Bahn shall be reformed. Here, the immediate approval is only consistent, since the substance is simply lacking for a consultation in the committees.

In opposition to this fair weather motion, we of the AfD are occupying ourselves literally with how just for once the Bahn can be made weather-proof. Customers will only trust the Bahn when it really runs reliably. Thus the disaster of winter’s impact in February may not be repeated.

Naturally can the winter become so harsh that all trains no more run. Yet it may not from the outset simply be that important stretches of the Bahn will for days not be cleared, with all consequences for transportation of persons and goods. Therefore the AfD demands a very high priority for the availability of the railway infrastructure and penalties if this is not met.

Where the coalition speaks of “ambitious climate protection goals”, the Greens in their motion throw in a shovel and demand with these same words an “ambitious implementation”.

            Matthias Gastel (Greens): Ach! Unbelievable!           

            Steffi Lemke (Greens): Madness!

For the Deutschlandtakt you demand the state economy, even for long-distance transportation. And to your ideological control of transportation is added: Increase of the trucking fee, price increases for diesel fuels, massive cuts in the roads infrastructure and much more.

That also goes for travel if in any case this party takes part in the next Federal government. I say this quite clearly from the side of the AfD, since we are truly the only ones who have no coalition plans with the Greens for the time after the Bundestag election.

            Steffi Lemke ( Greens): That would also not be tolerated by us!

The FDP motion which today is up for approval, in regards Bahn reform, construction and infrastructure availability, goes in the right direction and also meets with the approval of the AfD delegation.

The Bahn is no cure-all. But with digitalization and a targeted construction of its strengths, it is the right alternative for many. Then by free decision it will be gladly used. The AfD aims at exactly that.

           Steffi Lemke ( Greens): You may be surprised. Absolutely no one wants a                               coalition with you.

 

[trans: tem]