Lothar Maier, July 1, 2020, Consumer Protection Collection Law

Lothar Maier

Consumer Protection Collection Law

German Bundestag, July 1, 2020, Plenarprotokoll 19/169, p. 21101

[Lothar Maier is an Alternative für Deutschland Bundestag member from the western German state of Baden-Württemberg. He is an economist and for three decades taught consumer policy at the School for Applied Sciences in Hamburg. He here responds to a draft law proposed by the  government.]

Right honorable Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen.

The “Improvement of Consumer Protection Collection Law” overlaps the draft law but I fear it is only a half-hearted improvement. It was also a difficult birth. Frau Lambrecht, your predecessor in office almost two and a half years ago announced such a draft law. That you have now presented it deserves acknowledgment. Yet I fear you have remained at the half-way mark.

As to the fee rate, it must be said: Clearly, it is a step forward that small claims – demands up to 50 euros –in the future have only a maximum right of collection at a fee of 30 euros. That, concerning cases of demands below 500 euros, it is somewhat higher yet still below the previous value, is also clearly a step forward; yet it is a gradual progress. The whole problem, in my eyes, is not yet solved – nor actually are many of the inconveniences which we find in this branch and of which you have briefly spoken.  

The legal technicalities assessment for which you have voted, we hold to be false. It will equate the fees demanded by the collection worker, who for the most part are scarcely educated people, with those of an attorney-at-law. The attorney should after all undertake a legal examination which the semi-skilled [angelernte] collection worker cannot and indeed should not undertake. This equality of treatment appears to us to be not in order.

And in closing: This draft law does not assure a reduction in the number of collection proceedings. According to statements of the collection industry, there was in the previous year a total of 23 million warnings sent out by the collection agencies. It is agreed that, due to the consequences of the Corona situation, the number of these cases could increase from 23 to 25, 28, perhaps even 30 million. That is a magnitude of scale which properly can no longer be justified. Real relief would apparently only be possible if you had followed our draft law, which was unfortunately rejected in this house and which for small claims completely did away with the right of collection in cases up to the second warning. It should have also prevented the presentation of further accounting costs in addition to the collection fees. The collection industry is exceedingly creative in finding such evidence of costs for data acquisition, credit verification, telephone collection, etc., which can drive the costs considerably above the level provided for in the law for the claims of the collection industry.

I say yet again: I fear you have remained at the half-way mark. If you could at least, Frau Minister, rouse yourself and in regards the small claims, that is, up to 50 or to 100 euros, strike out the right of collection, then you might have our support. Though not yet.

Thanks.

[Translated by Todd Martin]

Mariana Harder-Kühnel, June 18, 2020, Contergan Foundation

Mariana Harder-Kühnel

Contergan Foundation

German Bundestag, June 18, 2020, Plenarprotokoll 19/166, pp. 20796-20797

[Mariana Harder-Kühnel is an Alternative für Deutschland Bundestag member from the western German state of Hessen. She is a lawyer and here responds to a government proposal concerning the foundation set up to support those harmed by the Contergan drug.]

Right honorable Frau President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen.

The Contergan scandal was one of the largest pharmaceutical scandals in the history of the Federal Republic. Contergan was sold by the millions to pregnant women. In newborns, it lead to an accumulation of severe malformations in limbs and organs. Countless stillbirths trace back to Contergan. Here, a crime against humanity was committed.

Some 2,600 of those harmed by Contergan presently still live in Germany. It is a matter of people who deserve our particular respect and our particular care. We rejoice that each one of them exists. Despite the hurdles encountered every day by those harmed by Contergan, frequently they are happy people, people who make other people happy, and each one of them is an argument for life and an argument against the mass manslaughter being driven forward in ever more blatant ways by the apologists of abortion.

            Corinna Rüffer (Greens): You are making a false debate!

Many political groups wish to legalize pregnancy termination up to the ninth month, which is nothing other than child murder.

            Alexander Ulrich (Linke): Wrong topic!

Many demand lifting the ban on advertising for pregnancy termination, while at the same time, ostensibly for health reasons, they get excited over tobacco and alcohol ads,

            Ingrid Pahlman (Greens): Contergan foundation law!

as if smoking a cigarette was worse than an aborted child.

And naturally these milieus also want to further loosen the abortion law which, before all, brings into play the handicapped children as an issue.

            Sören Pellman (Linke): It was your delegation that has made precisely 

            that the topic!

This crowd thereby unwittingly admits that, for them, the handicapped are only second-class people. We reject this culture of death. It is simply wrong and ought to be abhorred.

            Corinna Rüffer (Greens): You haven’t the faintest idea!

            Franziska Brantner (Greens): The topic, please!

Four things are characteristic of every socialist human experiment: The destruction of private property, the destruction of tradition, the destruction of religion and the destruction of the family.

            Anke Domscheit-Berg (Linke): Gender mainstreaming!

The destruction of all of this necessarily ends in poverty, loss of orientation, loss of value and ultimately in death. 100,000 aborted children per year indicate how far creeping socialism has already progressed in this country.

            Franziska Brantner (Greens): The orders of business! The topic, please!

It is desired to build a new world in which the old world is done away with. The culture of a people is discerned in how it deals with death, in how it deals with its unborn children and in how it deals with its handicapped people.  

Michaela Noll (CDU/CSU): In your speech is discerned how you deal with Contergan children! That is a lack of respect!

It is our duty to treat everyone well.

For understandable reasons, it is seldom that we praise the work of the Federal government. We however approve the draft law here introduced because it is right on the facts.

            Corinna Rüffer (Greens): Yes, and what are the facts in your view?

It is good if the Federal means already granted are flowing to the medically competent centers. These centers make possible an improved counseling and treatment of people harmed by Contergan. And it is right that in the draft law the foreseen, justified claims of these people are no longer disallowed. Since they have a life full of hurdles. Let’s not put any more in the way.

Many thanks.

            Alexander Ulrich (Linke): Wrong topic!

[Translated by Todd Martin]