European Election Program, 9th European Parliament 2019, Finance and Economy

European Election Program

Program of the Alternative für Deutschland for Election

     of the 9th European Parliament 2019

4. Finance and Economy

…According to the established judgment of the Federal Constitutional Court, the EU is not a state. Thus neither the Basic Law [Grundgesetz] (Budget Reservation of the Parliament, GG Art. 110) nor the EU treaties (with constitutional order) permit EU taxes: As a loose union of states, the EU presently has no tax authority of its own and therefore may raise no “EU-taxes”. The AfD gives a decisive refusal to efforts, especially from the French side, to alter this. This would sap the budget authority of the national parliaments and clearly over-exerts the EU’s legitimacy.

We especially reject taxes which serve exclusively to finance the EU budget. The EU should finance itself like a club, simply out of contributions from its member states according to their economic power. The tariffs shall be raised by the member states and should also flow into their budgets. Any EU taxation competence stokes the pressure for the EU to become a self-standing state. We therefore decisively reject the proposal to reform the EU resource system so that the EU obtains access to financial sources independent of the contributions of the member states. As such financial sources will be presently mentioned plastic taxes, diesel taxes, proceeds from the emissions’ management, business taxes, financial transaction taxes or even the EZB’s coinage profit. The EU can never be allowed to raise taxes. The AfD demands extensive expenditure cuts instead of a superfluous EU finance ministry.

The EU’s usual practice of issuing a seven year budget plan, and thus with de facto binding effect for the national parliaments over a [5 year] EU election period, undermines the national budget authority. Thus budget planning will be limited to the respective election period of the EU parliament. The AfD demands that the German portion of EU expenditure and income be yearly adjusted in the federal budget.

[Translated by Todd Martin]

Jörg Meuthen, April 28, 2019, EU Unanimity Principle

Jörg Meuthen

EU Unanimity Principle

Facebook, Prof. Dr. Jörg Meuthen, April 28, 2019

[Jörg Meuthen is a national chairman of the Alternative für Deutschland and is the AfD’s lead candidate in this month’s European Parliament elections.]

Dear reader, many political events are fairly unspectacular, yet have for us citizens wide-ranging consequences – and indeed nothing good.

What is presently planned by the EU Commission in Brussels – and indeed widely unnoticed by the public, especially by the German public – is unfortunately once again precisely such as event.

And this time it’s really in a pickle. It’s especially about the question whether in the future other states are to be allowed to make decisions concerning money earned in Germany and other stability-oriented states. Yet it proceeds without further ado. Namely, there was until now in the EU concerning tax and social issues the principle of unanimity. This defends Germany from other countries being able to make, without Germany’s agreement, determinations which are detrimental to our country and thereby to the wealth of we, the citizens. This unanimity principle is the last bulwark within the EU against the redistributory wishes of the economically weak states. Germany in the past could block with a veto all that did not seem sensible (like every other state!).

Thus, there will now be a decision when it is according to the EU Commission. Henceforth, given the figures of this body, questions in the future shall be considered according to a definite majority principle which, after Brexit, will weaken the northern countries vis-à-vis the southern countries, to which France also belongs. The result makes it possible for the self-styled rescue Europeans à la Juncker to smooth the way for still much more redistribution from north to south within the EU. A further left-green dream becomes true.

Redistribution, that means nothing other than the money which you, dear reader, have hard-earned here in Germany shall be received somewhere else in the EU and there be expended.

An example of what will very quickly follow upon the doing away with the unanimity principle is the overt financing of the prevailing unemployment in the southern EU states – only one calls this offspring something other, namely, “European unemployment insurance”. Thus is no way to come to grips with the roots of the problem, the completely false design of the euro, of which the absence of a devaluation possibility between participating states leaves the economically weaker countries ever less competitive, cements the present unemployment and allows it to increase even further. What is ultimately wanted for other countries is the diligence of the worker in Germany. Precisely so, however, is the European project destroyed, since the more these redistribution-tormented people in the northern EU states see through this wretched trick, and then feel it in their own purse, just so will the discontent with this EU become the greater.

It is precisely that which we of the Alternative for Germany do not want. We want an EU of strong nations [Vaterländer] which solve in their own sovereignty all that is not actually better taken up in Brussels – with all the positive and negative consequences for the respective country.

This unity of decision and liability must be valid throughout the EU so as to avoid unrest between the individual countries. Unfortunately, this Juncker-Merkel-Macron EU continues in exactly the opposite direction, a fatal wrong way, which is to be stopped on May 26th.

It is time to stop this wrong way on May 26th. It is time for the AfD.

[Translated by Todd Martin]