European Election Program, 9th European Parliament 2019, Europe of Nations

European Election Program

Program of the Alternative für Deutschland for the Election

     of the 9^th European Parliament 2019

2.1 A Europe of Nations, 2.2 Reform of the European Union

2.1 A Europe of Nations

The variety of national cultures and traditions is the foundation for the political, economic and social strength of Europe. We reject the transformation of the EU into a state with its own government and legislative authority as well as the idea of a “United States of Europe”. Instead, the AfD stands for a Europe as an economic and interests community of sovereign states. We want to live together in friendship and as good neighbors.

The principle of national sovereignty was hollowed out by the treaties of Schengen, Maastricht and Lisbon. The attempt to undo functioning, democratic national states and replace them with a kind of European super-state cannot succeed. It is an illusion that the national identities could be by and by unloosened by a European one. There is no European population that would conform to such a project and it is not possible to identify one such that could be constructed in the foreseeable future. Cultures, languages and national identities arise through centuries of enduring historical development. Only in national states with a democratic constitution can the sovereignty and fundamental rights of the citizen as the centerpiece of democracy be pledged and preserved.

2.2 Reform of the European Union

The European community has evolved into an undemocratic structure which is occupied by the political players of Europe and shaped by opaque, uncontrolled bureaucracies. The principles, posited in the European treaties, of subsidiarity and the prohibition of state liability for the debts of other states are being ignored. The politics of the EU branches, especially the European Council and the European Commission, is dominated by the special interests bargaining of individual states and the lobby cliques. Competition is increasingly throttled by a European regulatory mania. Democratic control of the EU branches is utterly insufficient; not even the European Court of Justice observes this role but persistently expands the EU competencies,  burdening the sovereignty of national states.



[Translated by Todd Martin]

European Election Program, 9th European Parliament 2019, Preamble

European Election Program
Program of the Alternative für Deutschland for the Election 
     of the 9th European Parliament 2019

Preamble

Preamble

Conscious of historic responsibility for Germany’s future, the Alternative für Deutschland has issued the following program for the 9th European Parliament election in May 2019.

The AfD stands firmly for the idea of a Europe of nations, a European community of sovereign states which for the welfare of their citizens work together in all those matters that can be better settled in common. That includes especially an internal market, unhindered as possible, and with fair competition.

We hold the quasi-state of the “European Union” to be a contradiction in itself. A group of neighboring states can constructively and peacefully very well cooperate on the basis of international law. But the attempt to construct a forever-elaborated, overall state out of the present 28 or yet more states, each with its own language, culture and historical experience, must fail. Such a construction has at its disposal neither a national population nor the required minimum of cultural identity which are the prerequisites of successful states. The words of warning from the preamble to our election program for the 2014 European election hold good for the future, having been confirmed by the exit of Great Britain and the erstwhile and no longer presentable entry of Turkey.

“Thus without consent of the citizens is instituted a citizen-distant, artificial state originating in the breaking of treaties and laws. Together with powerful social and economic repudiations in the southern countries, the stealthy expropriation of savers and the unjust burdens of taxpayers in the economically stable countries, this leads to an increasing rejection of the EU…In several states, exit from this EU has been demanded.”

A union of European states will only have a future when it succeeds in breaking the ever accelerating cycle of de-democratization and centralization and before today’s EU destroys itself through the perversion of its fundamental ideas.

The unusual economic-historical idea of a single currency for states which are of a completely distinct economic development has failed. It concerns itself with a political wish-making which did not harmonize with economic law and with which it cannot be brought into harmony in the future. Therefore, the already much tested and further re-designed transfer union is leading to the decline of the European economy and to unbridgeable conflicts among the states.

A comparable failure of the EU has been made evident in the migration crisis. Although in the founding treaties the internal and external border regime of the EU states, as well as the asylum and immigration policy, were transferred to the EU, no provision was made for the foreseeable migration problems; in addition to which, the EU’s crisis management totally failed. The citizens have thus additionally lost trust in European institutions.

The climate and energy policy constitutes a further, basic mis-development, based on the hypothesis of man-made climate change, one which effects all areas of society. We want an end to this policy since it, without any emergency, reduces the people’s access to cheaper energy which is the prerequisite for any prosperity. Only a few have a use for the forced redistribution of billions.

It is therefore high time to re-think the EU’s future development.

The banking and social union presently being put forward by important European players, with its all-European collectivization of liabilities and support functions of unlimited quantity, completely destroys the commercial basis of the Maastricht and Lisbon treaties. It is already plainly discernible that the people of Europe are rebelling against this. Thus the great haste of the “European Institutions” to manufacture facts prior to the EU election. We warn of these additional false declarations and will do all in our present power to hinder them. To that end, we support the demand that fundamental EU issues be decided by national popular referendum.

The EU election for the 9th European Parliament will send signals which can no longer be ignored.


 [Translated by Todd Martin]

Bruno Hollnagel, March 1, 2019, Eurozone

Bruno Hollnagel

Eurozone

AfD Kompakt, March 1, 2019

[Bruno Hollnagel is an Alternative für Deutschland Bundestag member from the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein. He is an investment manager and author and is currently a member of the Bundestag finance committee. He here responds to recent proposals for a more centralized management of the European economy. Ludwig Erhard was a post-war German chancellor and finance minister.]

… It is dangerous and treacherous when liability regulations are to be softened. Evidently the Frenchwoman Christine LaGarde in her character as chief of the IWF stands by the side of Macron to enforce French interests against Germany. France vehemently demands in the name of a “general coordination” a Eurozone budget and a European fiscal union. These would however violate the Maastricht Treaty which expressly excludes a general European liability. The assertion that a monetary system with a robust super-structure would be more stable is fundamentally false. The exact opposite is correct. Not the political “super-structure” but rather a more solid “sub-structure”, consisting of the tried and true principles of Erhard’s social market economy, is what is decisive. The leveling harmonization destroys the “multi-colored variety” which, according to Erhard, was Europe’s strength, not its weakness. France should remain with its centralized economic management and not force us into this corset which in our view robs a free economy of the air it needs to breathe.

In the Europe of the future, each country should be happy according to its own fashion instead of prescribing to other countries how they are to live. In such a Europe that breathes freedom, each state should be able to fulfill its characteristics to the good of all and thus offer to all members an added value.

{Translated by Todd Martin]