Birgit Bessin, August 27, 2019, Family Care Funding

Birgit Bessin

Family Care Funding

AfD Kompakt, August 27, 2019

[Birgit Bessin is an Alternative für Deutschland member of the Brandenburg state legislature and an AfD assistant state party chairman. The current German family minister Franziska Giffey is a member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD). Elections for the Brandenburg state legislature will be held September 1.]

The nearer the end of the election campaign, the more a deep blue mixes into the rhetorical proposals of the reds. Already in January of this year, the AfD delegation in a motion (Drucksache 6/10434) in the Brandenburg state legislature demanded the introduction of family care funding [Pflegefamiliengeldes] – this motion was defeated with the votes of Giffey’s SPD.

There is without a doubt a present necessity for family care funding. The number of those needing care in Brandenburg due to the population evolution in the past decades has in fact increased explosively and will in the coming years and decades increase still further. The need cannot be met by trained care givers alone. We therefore must value the work of caring family members and also be concerned so that this activity be socially recognized exactly like employment. Instead of just making one in a series of announcements, the SPD could long ago have addressed this question – they however do not do it.

[Translated by Todd Martin]

Karin Wilke, August 22, 2019, Election in Saxony

Karin Wilke

Election in Saxony

AfD Kompakt, August 22, 2019

[Karin Wilke is an Alternative für Deutschland member of the legislature of the eastern German state of Saxony where elections will be held September 1. She is the AfD’s spokesman for media policy in the legislature and here responds to a local newspaper story which noted that the AfD was the only political party to make a complaint concerning the vandalism of its election campaign signs.]

It is utterly repellent how the Morgenpost again tosses overboard every journalistic care and custom and one-sidedly agitates against the AfD. With this distorted reporting, the boulevardblatt, which belongs mostly to the SPD, sparks the general political-media peeve and does democracy a disservice.

In addition, the AfD is notably the only party whose election campaigners have been physically assaulted. The brutal fist attack of a leftist radical on the assistant AfD chairman Dr. Keiler was documented in a video and shared thousands of times in the social networks. At the beginning of this week, an AfD member was pushed off a ladder while putting up signs, another was wounded in the eye, presumably by leftist extremists. It has been known for years that of all the parties it is the AfD which is most attacked. Thus, during this legislative period in Saxony, there have been twice as many attacks on AfD offices as those on all the other parties combined. As indicated by a present inquiry of the AfD Bundestag delegation, exactly the same picture is presented by attacks on politicians nationwide. Of 589 attacked, 295 were AfD representatives. On all this, the Morgenpost has nothing to contribute or it knowingly suppresses it. That I call political omission journalism [politische Lückenpresse].

[Translated by Todd Martin]

Jörg Meuthen, August 14, 2019, EU Unemployment Insurance

Jörg Meuthen

EU Unemployment Insurance

AfD Kompakt, August 14, 2019

[Jörg Meuthen is a national chairman of the Alternative für Deutschland and he 

leads the AfD’s delegation in the European Parliament.]

It is fully in order that the German employers reject a European unemployment insurance. Such a common unemployment insurance as Ursula von der Leyen and Emmanuel Macron are planning for the EU would penalize those countries which have set up competitive labor markets. That would concretely mean that Germany must pay for the entire EU’s unemployment. No one who represents Germany’s interests can want that. The AfD is therefore committed in the EU Parliament and in the German Bundestag for the maintenance of a national unemployment insurance and against the creation of an EU unemployment insurance. We are optimistic that we will be successful since the EU Treaty states that the relevant competence belongs to the member states.

The German employers forewarn of surrendering the principle of unanimity. In that they are also fully in order since Brussels is urging that in the future the [EU] Council should decide social policy with a qualified majority instead of unanimously. What sounds good and harmless means that the profiteers of a common social system could in any given situation outvote Germany. A bottomless barrel would thus be opened and the financial consequences for Germany would be unforeseeable.

[Translated by Todd Martin]