René Springer, May 29, 2020, European Dispatched Employees

René Springer

European Dispatched Employees

German Bundestag, May 29, 2020, Plenarprotokoll 19/164, pp. 20408-20409

[René Springer is an Alternative für Deutschland Bundestag member from the eastern German state of Brandenburg. He is an electrician and navy veteran and here responds to the government’s introduction of a draft law concerning trans-national employment in the European Union.]

Herr President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen.

If two bricklayers work on the same wall for two different wages, one for 4 DM, the other for 23 DM, then either one will be cheated out of his fair wage or the other…will be out of a job.

And, Herr Schummer, you said it well. Those words come from a time when this country still had a realistic labor minister. Those are the words of Norbert Blum. He spoke them in 1995 at the time of the reading of the first Dispatched Employees Law [Arbeitnehmer Entsendegestzes], and he had a clear purpose: To defend employees against wage and social dumping.

We have also heard it here today: When it comes to this demand, the FDP catches its breath. It is even in the title of your motion: “Simplify Foreign Dispatching and Oppose Protectionism”.

Thus, for you, the defense against wage and social dumping is protectionism,

            Christian Dürr (FDP): That is rubbish, what you are saying!

which you want to oppose; yet, basically, you are opposing the rights of employees.

We of the AfD delegation are certainly not against this protectionism

            Christian Dürr (FDP): You fight side by side with the Linke party!

but we are for a healthy social protectionism – which we need. We want the employees in Germany to receive equal pay for equal work when they are active in the same location; that is obvious and basically that also by far appears to be the consensus.  

Yet let us look at the reality. In 2008, standing beside one another at the work bench, a German and a Romanian employee earned pretty much the same. The difference was about 21 euros. Today the Romanian employee earns 1,000 euros less than his German colleague, not in a year but in a month.

In the last ten years, the number of EU employees in the low-wage sector climbed from 25 to 40 percent, and that is the result of an uncontrolled freedom of movement in the EU, and from that arises an injustice crying to heaven which harms our domestic employees and yet also the colleagues from other countries as well.

            Christian Dürr (FDP): National Socialists!

How, please, “National Socialists”? Was that a reference to me or the AfD?

            Christian Dürr (FDP): National Socialists!

Herr President, I hope you have taken note of that. Thank you.

            Carsten Schneider (SPD-Erfurt): He’s right about that!

Good. Then please take note of that also.

With the draft law presented by the government, the problem is basically acknowledged, yet managed as always –

Carsten Schneider (SPD-Erfurt): He does not always speak correctly about everything, but he was right about that!

Oh, good. He confirms that again. Thanks.

            Carsten Schneider (SPD-Erfurt): Take a look at your program!

I come again to the law. The draft law takes notice of the problem but does not solve this problem because basically the EU guidelines which are the subject of the draft law advance Brussels’s rather our national interests, which would steadily defend our employees here. – Thank you, Norbert.

I want in this place to come to speak perhaps on one point, because we recently spoke a great deal about working conditions in the meatpacking industry, as well as last year – we remember the Christmas debate – over the situation in the packaging industry. And then here stand a minister and politicians – politicians from the SPD, politicians from the CDU – who criticize that as a whole. And it must be simply stated for once, that the SPD in the last 22 years, 18 years, for long provided the minister responsible for that. I ask myself, how can it actually be, that after 18 years of government responsibility, there was nothing to solve the problem? It must for once be stated that it is not only the EU that has a structural deficit. It must also be plainly said that the SPD has a structural deficit. You are fundamentally not in a position to manage social policy.

With that, I am grateful. We are listening.

[Translated by Todd Martin]

           

             

Jörg Meuthen, May 27, 2020, EU Reconstruction Funds

Jörg Meuthen

EU Reconstruction Funds

EU Parliament, Brussels, May 27, 2020, P9 CRE-PROV (2020) 05-27 (1-022-0000)

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

leads the AfD’s delegation in the European Parliament where the AfD is part of the 

Identity and Democracy party.]

Herr President. Frau Commission President.

Chancellor Merkel’s promise was unmistakable: There will be neither euro bonds nor Corona bonds. Now? Now you assent to a so-called Reconstruction Fund with a volume of 500 billion euros; the super-sized, initially on credit, then to be tax-refinanced, gift watering can for the European Commission, without present basis in the law, since the EU on good grounds for long has been denied doing its own borrowing – which however in the general nonsense of these days appears to bother no one anymore.

And now you come, Frau Commission President, in here today and make demands. This complete madness was for you insufficient; you now want a scoop more of 250 billion euros to dispose of. That is, I say it quite clearly, complete madness. The price to be paid by the citizens of the [European] Union for this madness will be gigantic.

You throw the money about – not yours, but that of the taxpayer – simply as if there was no tomorrow. What you are doing is entirely irresponsible. It is a knowledge-free, voodoo economics with which you here are oppressing the citizens. It is monetary as well as fiscal hara-kiri.

Yet most men do not understand that because they are plagued with quite different concerns and because they are not accustomed to think in the categories of such large numbers. You make use of that with your absurd designs which you so hypocritically and falsely commend. There will be a wicked awakening.

I implore the governments of Austria, the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden to reject this madness.   

[Translated by Todd Martin]

Peter Boehringer, May 28, 2020, EU Reconstruction Funds

Peter Boehringer

EU Reconstruction Funds

German Bundestag, May 28, 2020, Plenarprotokoll 19/163, pp. 20309-20310

[Peter Boehringer is an Alternative für Deutschland Bundestag member from Bavaria. He is currently chairman of the Bundestag budget committee.]

Herr President. Honored colleagues.

Let us attempt, after this staccato of planned-economy, EU-speak, to yet again dip into reality and the state of law.

            Falko Mohrs (SPD): For that, we need however another speaker, and not you!

Macron wants to become more powerful. For that, he needs the EU and a Paymaster Germany. It is absurd that we here today in any way discuss the Merkel/Macron proposal, since, according to Article 311 AEUV, a credit financing of expenditures is forbidden to the EU – period! At this point, this debate could and must come to an end!

As a non-state, the EU demonstrably has no taxation or indebtedness right of its own; the EU as  a union of states lives exclusively on the budget allotments of the member states. Borrowing by the EU cannot be simply re-defined by a conjuring trick into a new form of resources, as is evidently being planned here.

Older colleagues might now object: But we did that already in 1975. Yes, there was then in fact a crisis instrument by the name of the Community Loan Mechanism – Gemeinschaftsanleihen der EWG – by means which was in fact paid out over 20 years a few billions to the then, as now, usual bankrupts: Italy, France, Greece. “Balance of payments aid” as it was then euphemistically called, when Rome and Paris yet again made the beggars’ pilgrimage to Brussels to receive some millions.

It was simply dumb that this option terminated in 1999. With the euro monetary union, the no-bailout clause of Masstricht entered into effect; today, Article 125 AEUV, with constitutional authority; it is so now.

            Alexander Lambsdorff (FDP): You still do not understand it!

Balance of payments aid to the benefit of EU member states, financed by EU credit, was then explicitly forbidden.

            Alexander Lambsdorff (FDP): No!

And it is, ja, quite logical: What shall then happen with the planned EU loans if some Italian at sometime is bankrupt or unwilling to pay? Shall the EU, itself incapable of amortization, apply for insolvency, because the Italian cannot make his amortization payment? No, naturally would Germany pay the Italian portion. The government’s assertion of a partial indebtedness liability is pure theory.

That is euro bonds through the back door; or is it the front door? Did not Frau Merkel say in 2012: “No euro bonds, as long as I live”?

The proposal is a nightmare, not only in legal terms but also in regards the budget. The reconstruction funds will be a new shadow budget in no man’s land, for which however Germany will be fully liable. You can say partially liable – anyway, we are liable.

Statistically, the initial 500, since yesterday now already 750 billion euros, will be credited to no one, neither to the EU nor Germany, although the billions of credit will, ja, actually be taken up. Angela and Ursula in Wonderland! The 750 billion euros will be poured out over the beloved for all possible Green/left ideological projects – which will occur with security – yet naturally first after the withdrawal of such usual sums as the billions for administrative costs and corruption seepage.

In such a circumstance, budget clarity and national budget law are only a distant memory. A reference to a formal participation by the Bundestag as per the so-called limited individual authorization [Einzelermächtigung] is of no help; we have already plainly heard that. With an indebtedness of 750 billion euros, with payments to 2058, certainly nothing is anymore limited, neither in quantity nor in time.

            Franziska Brantner (Greens): We have named the payments exactly!

The budget law, as the Bundestag’s prerogative and perhaps the last bastion of German sovereignty, is anchored in Article 110 of the Basic Law [Grundgesetz]. The Merkel/Macron proposal disposes of that. A limited individual authorization of 750 billion euros is a bad joke and like a dam breaking. Once this dam is broken, then will Brussels ever again receive giant limited individual sums, to the burden of German solvency, and grandiosely distribute it in southern Europe and France. Be it in the realm of trillions, that is for Herr Jung, who follows the Jung Doctrine, still a limited individual authorization. That is absurd.

Ladies and gentlemen, only states are allowed to raise taxes, only states can incur debts, because only states can also again pay them back out of future tax revenues. The EU is however, according to the highest legal pronouncement, not a state – still not. According to the Lisbon decision of the Constitutional Court in 2009, it can never become one without a referendum on the surrender of German statehood. For years and decades, this referendum is however withheld from the Germans.

The presented proposal presumes [präjudiziert] the highly illegal situation of an EU state, for which there would never be a democratic majority in Germany.

            Franziska Brantner (Greens): Certainly not agreed.

With this proposal, Merkel and Macron clearly depart from the grounds of the free, democratic fundamental order. 

It is the duty of this Bundestag to stop the march, in full frustration of the law, to the benefit of an illegal, federal EUropa state. We ought not again leave that to the Constitutional Court.

Hearty thanks.

[Translated by Todd Martin]