Gottfried Curio, October 1, 2020, 2021 Budget – Interior

German Bundestag, October 1, 2020, Plenarprotokoll 19/180, p. 22624. 

Right honorable President. Ladies and gentlemen.

The minister has recently praised the planned EU migration pact with its new, everlasting costs for the budget. The hitherto false policy shall there receive statutory form. By means of fairy-tale social services and the recognition of fantasy refugees, masses of illegal migrants from African and Islamic lands will be attracted by the hundreds of thousands into the country. All key points of this plan have failed, from the unlimited, intra-European asylum tourism to the fundamentals.

Fake news is, the EU is responsible for illegal migrants on its borders. The truth: The wide-spread wars in the east are over. Out of Africa, economic migrants are coming. Those allegedly requiring protection have already been taken in by secure third states and thus are no longer in flight, if that ever was the case.

Fake news: Solidarity with initial entry states is required. The truth: Germany in proportion has already accepted more, yet Merkel’s continuing, law-breaking violation of Dublin III shall be legalized, the way to Germany made automatic.

Fake news: This was humanitarian. The truth: Those suffering no emergency pay much higher smuggler charges. Those really in need of aid never float to the surface. The same money at the local level helps a hundred times more people.

Fake news: European money excursions in the home countries would combat the origins of flight. A theft of 25 billion euros in the next four years. The truth: European social standards will never be attained there, yet more travel means for the smuggler ways will be delivered.

Fake news: The states of origin must be offered something with which they may take back the illegals. The truth: They are obligated. Pressure may be applied with economic aid and visa limitations.

Fake news: The plan would unify the EU. Who is unwilling to accept should consider deportation. The truth: That not succeeding, as in Germany, they shall remain seated on the migrants. A lunatic offer.

Fake news: Migration might help the labor market. The truth: A large portion are not employable and will be fed here until life’s end, ruining the social system.

Fake news: Social problems would be solved by integration. The truth: The foreseeable demographic development indicates to this clientele that integration is not necessary and so they hold back. We are seeing the occupation of public areas by groups of aggressive men, increasing rates of criminality. Women can no longer safely set foot in the public area, Jews certainly not – a disgrace for Germany, ladies and gentlemen.  

            Ulli Nissen (SPD): You are a disgrace for Germany!

Nothing of that is in the interest of Germany, nothing in the interest of any of the European states. The European solution is called: Shut the door – testing in all cases abroad. The problem is called: Germany, with its browbeaten dance of dreams.

We turn to oppose the high-toned terms of deceit, “Responsibility”, “Solidarity”, “Humanity”, which shall garnish the political and financial disenfranchisement of the citizens, against the deification of an exploitative EU super-state, against the drawing-board utopias of a globalized society. What we in Germany do not need are people who continually call out to mankind yet who no longer pay heed to their own people.

Responsibility means the securing of Germany’s values for the future. It would be an act of solidarity not to allow our people to work ever longer for others. Humanity means guarding our citizens from the 300,000 criminal acts committed yearly by immigrants.   

            Ulli Nissen (SPD): Guarding against the AfD, that would be right!

Yet the chair farce in front of the Reichstag, along with the subsequent acts of arson and extortion, was only a beginning. To divert the African population explosion to Europe is a false goal, a madness. The import of the anthropology of Islam and of the clan societies – a notice of combat against our freedom. Democracy is incompatible with Islam. To it, religion and state are a unity. Violence against women and those believing otherwise is a teaching of Islam. Therefore: Away with the government’s resettlement mafia!

            Carsten Schneider (SPD): My goodness!

The way to the future does not lead through the ordained renunciation of previous history. The denial of one’s own nation is a false path. A future requires a heritage. Instead of a continual fawning over the foreign, a self-aware representation of interests is again needed. Instead of your eternal “One heart for Africa”, we say: More smarts for Germany, more commitment to Germany!

 

 

[trans: tem]

 

Joana Cotar, September 30, 2020, 2021 Budget – Digitalization

German Bundestag, September 30, 2020, Plenarprotokoll 19/179, p. 22556.

Herr President. Worthy colleagues.

Today we again have heard in epic breadth how important digitalization is to the government and of all that it has ostensibly learned from Corona. All the slogans have been put to use. Declarations of intent and promises have ensued. Funds have been budgeted. The chapter will be closed until next year. Honestly for once: Who still takes seriously what the Frau Chancellor has said here?

                Harald Weinberg (Linke): It is always so during budget week.

Yet let us look for once at the facts of digital Germany, away from Merkel’s story hour, and at the digital truth! The portion of fiberglass connections to all stationary broadband connections in the OECD countries: South Korea leads with 82.8 percent, followed by Japan, Lithuania and Sweden. Germany lies in the fifth to last place with a ridiculous 4.1 percent. Even Mexico and Colombia are ahead of us.

4-G mobile phone: Germany last year in international comparison was in place 70. The internet area  coverage came to 65.5 percent. The United States, the Benelux countries, Scandinavia and parts of eastern Europe obtain a coverage of more than 80 percent. In the availability of 4-G and LTE, we rank behind countries like Lebanon, Vietnam and Senegal.

Let us remain with mobile telephony: In Switzerland, the median download speed comes to 30 mbits per second, in Austria it is 24 mbs, in Germany 14. Yet, for that, the mobile internet costs us very much more. We in Germany pay an average of 3.60 euros for one gigabyte of data, yet the Austrians only 96 cents. In the IMD Top Ten ranking of countries with the most competitive digitalization, we are far surpassed. We are in place 17. In the 2020 Digital Quality of Life Index, in place 16.

Let us look at the schools – Frau Merkel mentioned them – : Only 26 percent of German schools have a functioning WLAN connection. In Denmark, it is 100 percent; in Kazakhstan, it is 58 percent. The ICILS study shows: A third of young people in Germany can barely open and work with e-mail. Computer knowledge is rudimentary. In the schools in Estonia, ten year olds are learning to program.

In the EU Commission’s current E-Government ranking – that is, for digital administration – in the utilization of these services, Germany has subsided into the 26^th rank of these 28 countries. Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Cyprus – all are ahead of us.

And our country is losing contact with the new technologies. Among the top 50 of the world’s most innovative companies, the first German one is in 21^st place; it is Siemens. At the top are Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, Samsung, Facebook.  

A firm like Apple? In Germany, impossible. The firm’s founding took place in a garage.

For once demonstrate that you are the officials here! The ceiling heights are not right, there is no concept of fire prevention, no parking places and gender-specific toilets are completely lacking. Rejected! Das is Deutschland 2020!

Of the most powerful of the world’s super-computers, 226 are in China, 114 in the U.S.A. and only 16 in Germany.

Investments in artificial intelligence: The Chinese city of Tianjin alone plans 12.8 billion euros for AI promotion, all of China 300 billion, and we are proud of 5 billion, ladies and gentlemen.

Dear Federal government, thus nothing will come of AI and thus nothing will come of digitalization. On the contrary: You have put Germany into a digital coma and thereby put into play the future of our country. We can simply no longer live only on der Substanz. Finally wake up and put some horsepower on the street! Down shift the bureaucratization, put more areas at the disposal of those who experiment, invest more, and please take care that the money can also be recalled. Accelerate the net construction, close the dead zones, unleash the real skilled labor with lower taxes and appropriate salaries, make our kids fit for the future! Finally drive forward the themes of E-Government and E-Health structures, finally take cyber security seriously and bundle up the responsibilities for this!

Corona has made clear how important digital solutions are for Germany. Other countries for years have shown what these could look like. Take an example, copy anything at all from me! But finally do something for this country!

Many thanks.

 

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

Marc Jongen, September 30, 2020, 2021 Budget – Culture

German Bundestag, September 30, 2020, Plenarprotokoll 19/179, pp. 22521-22522.

Herr President. Ladies and gentlemen.

Corona times are not only bad times for culture, but also apparently bad times for the truth.

            Timon Gremmels (SPD): You are stumped by the truth!

Frau State Secretary for Culture Grütters, your press release of last Wednesday on the Culture budget is a parade example of hypocritical polit-prose which obscures reality and turns parts into the opposite.

Hypocrisy number one: You boast that the “New Start Culture” rescue program, weighing in at one billion euros, runs at high speed. What you fail to mention is why this “New Start”, actually not one, was at all necessary; namely, because the government since April of this year has run down cultural life to nothing with the Corona lockdowns; because with your utterly excessive measures, you have imposed a so-to-say occupational ban on artists, organizers, musicians and theatre people. You have thereby destroyed thousands of livelihoods, driven businesses into insolvency and the self-employed onto Hartz-IV. And you still often say: The virus is guilty. – No, the virus is not guilty. The intensive care units are as empty as the concert halls. Your politically false decisions are guilty. Cultural people feel themselves left in the lurch by you; there have already been some suicides. The artists and organizers do not need your alms. They want to finally be able to live again from their work. End these excessive restrictions! That would be the real “New Start Culture”.

Hypocrisy number two: You have written – cite –:

            Certainly in times of crisis, culture is the basis of our social solidarity.

Sounds nice; yet with the Corona regime, a culture of angst, of insecurity and of paralysis has made its entry. That does not signify solidarity, ladies and gentlemen, that signifies the splitting of society. It also signifies a new area of denunciation – who wears no mask must lately pay a penalty – and a poisoned social atmosphere. Each citizen is potentially infectious, and he thus must be surveilled, controlled and guided. Yet that is why this crisis has gained such favor with you, why with you the test numbers always further increase so as to keep artificially alive the pandemic situation: You do not want to lose the power offered to you by this new, exceptional situation, you want to enforce things in the shadows of this crisis, limit civil rights, which would otherwise run into massive resistance and will in the future run into the resistance of the AfD delegation. That is guaranteed, ladies and gentlemen.

And, as if in defiance, you write – Hypocrisy number three: Art, culture and the media always again make us aware of our high privilege of living in a country of freedom of the press, of culture and of opinion, in which controversial debates are possible, are desired and have been sustained.

End citation. – Ja, here in the Bundestag you must for the time being still listen to the only opposition party. In the state and leading media, in the universities, in the subsidized cultural institutions, however, any controversial debate has long since been throttled.

With the Internet Enforcement Law, with the unconstitutional law against hate speech, you wish to criminalize citizens who do not follow the official, leading ideology. That after all is the truth, ladies and gentlemen.

            Timon Gremmels (SPD): Are you now in favor of hate speech?

And what has happened with the 6.6 percent increase in the Culture budget? Primarily, the construction of this statist, leading ideology. The Deutsche Historische Museum and the Haus der Geschichte in Bonn shall – quote – “Further strengthen the democratic understanding as well as the discernment of our society”, as it is called in the newspeak of your press release. Tomorrow, in the Historischen Museum in Frankfurt, opens the exhibition “I see what you do not see. Racism, Resistance and Empowerment”,

            Timon Gremmels (SPD): What do you have against it?

            Erhard Grundl (Greens): Which you could visit!

with the explicit goal of – cite – “Struggling against everyday racism”. Culture as a means of manipulation and propaganda to stigmatize the citizens as everyday racists and render them defenseless against the unlimited immigration of migrants of an alien culture – that is your plan!

A total of around 200 million euros is foreseen for film production, a substantial increase. Will the quality of German films be thereby improved? Hardly, if as heard, the donation of means is to be attached to diversity standards and politically correct measures like women’s quotas.

            Ulli Nissen (SPD): Very good!

            Stefan Schmidt (Greens): Do not speak of matters which you do not understand.

The Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein film production has already gone ahead with a latently totalitarian example. It will there be asked in all seriousness “whether the sexes have been equally represented in history, whether people of color appear and figures with under-privileged socio-economic backgrounds were presented”. Ladies and gentlemen, thus is produced no successful German films, thus is produced social and multicultural kitsch.

And the last of the hypocrisies – I come to an end – : You announce that the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation shall be additionally promoted, and you keep secret that you have just as good as decided upon the destruction of the Foundation by means of elimination of the burdensome name of “Prussian”.

Ladies and gentlemen, who loves art and culture cannot vote for this budget. Quality and Tradition, instead of Ideology – that is the maxim of our amending motions.

Many thanks.

            Ulli Nissen (SPD): Make the table nice and clean!

            Timon Gremmels (SPD): The virus of hatred!

            Alice Weidel (AfD): What idiocy!

 

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alexander Gauland, September 30, 2020, 2021 Budget

German Bundestag, September 30, 2020, Plenarprotokoll 19/179, pp. 22544-22545. 

Herr President. Ladies and gentlemen.

In September, as of the 28^th of the month, 162 people in Germany have died of or with Covid-19. That is a bit less than six per day. Seven people among us die each day in traffic accidents.

            Britta Haßelmann (Greens): Is that the reason why you are not wearing a mask?

I am unaware of any government measures against driving. Besides, 620 people die of cancer each day.

            Ulli Nissen (SPD): Every single death is too many!

Consider for once what is carcinogenic and all that must or could still be forbidden to the citizens.

The infection figures with which the public is bombarded each day are of little meaning. What exactly is missed by the PCR test is disputed. Most of the infected did not at all notice that they were infected. Besides, our colleague Norbert Kleinwacher is doing well. He said that Corona was his lightest case of the flu ever.

            Britta Haßelmann (Greens): I believe there is no help for the man!

As the Bavarian government on September 21 decided to make wearing a mask obligatory in public places, there were to be found in Bavarian hospitals a total of 35 patients with serious symptoms.

            Britta Haßelmann (Greens): How dumb and irresponsible!

If with a flattened increase of new infections, the number of sick and dead remains appreciably low, it can only be inferred that the danger of infection is indeed not especially great.

            Britta Haßelmann (Greens): So speaks one who goes about the floor without                                            a mask!

I do not wish to thereby say, dear colleagues, that the virus is not dangerous and that we should ignore it but it is so that in the measures against it, proportionality is no longer to be discerned. But you seem to have acquired a taste for your bans and proscriptions. Before all, a southern German Minister-president – I leave aside his name for the moment – discovers his authoritarian side. The Federal Chancellor has plainly announced that she wants to proceed with force in heavily affected areas. Sometimes, for all that, the DDR up-bringing breaks through.

            Martin Schulz (SPD): Unbelievable! An impudence!

I have already for weeks said here that the overwhelming majority in our country are dealing very reasonably with the infection danger.

            Britta Haßelmann (Greens): But still not you!

It is becoming time to end the circumscription of the Basic Law and turn over the preventive measures to the private responsibility of the citizens.

            Britta Haßelmann (Greens): You are here in parliament quite without a mask!                                            You are the bad example!

Hold your tongue, Frau Haßelmann. Ladies and gentlemen, we are presently registering – it has been said all day today – the strongest breakdown of the business cycle in the post-war era.

            Britta Haßelmann (Greens): How painful! Uncollegial!

How does the Federal Minister for the Economy react to that?

            Michael Theurer (FDP): Absolutely not!

At the beginning of the month, Herr Altmaier announced with a 20 point paper nothing less than the dawn of the socialist climate planned economy. By 2050, Germany’s economy shall be climate neutral. For that, there are now multi-year plans of un-blessed memory for the reduction of CO₂. Moreover, Herr Altmaier wishes to expand into a European instrument the Renewable Energy Law which has bestowed upon us the world’s highest electricity prices – the German consumer pays 32.10 cents per kilowatt hour, on the international scale it is 12.22 cents.

With Nord Stream 2, we certainly see an example of the insecurities into which leads the green energy policy supported by the Federal government. A political affair endangers the future German energy supply. Yet the actual origin lies in the fact that Germany, – it is today once again to be said –

            Britta Haßelmann (Greens): Then you need not say it!

under the leadership of a physicist, has withdrawn initially from atomic energy and then from coal power. If now even the gas were lacking, then we would experience an unpleasant winter. Yet many believe that jumping may help. We stand quite clearly behind Mecklenburg Minister-president Schwesig and plead for the completion of Nord Stream 2.

A dubious poisoning, which in point of fact is to be clarified, cannot seriously be the reason to endanger the energy supply of our country. And we learn again how senseless and false it was to shut down the world’s safest atomic power plants and deliver us over into a fatal, political dependency.

Ladies and gentlemen, he who wants to reduce the global CO₂ output will not manage it without atomic power. Our Dutch neighbors have recognized that. When will we finally relinquish the energy policy Sonderweg

            Britta Haßelmann (Greens): Address yourself to the reality in Germany!                                                    We have long since withdrawn!

which makes us liable to political and economic extortion? Yes, we have for long been liable to political extortion by means of the so-called Turkey deal. The same migration lobbyist who in 2016 contrived this business may contrive a new edition if demanded by Anne Will. He who today gives money to Herr Erdogan thereby finances nolens volens his wars; first in Syria and now Bergkarabach.

Recently, there have been media reports that Turks living in Germany have been spied upon and threatened by the Turkish secret service. What is the relation to that of the EU, our great community of values? The EU parliamentarian Manfred Weber already in 2019 quite rightly demanded, dear colleagues of he CDU/CSU, a halt to accession negotiations with Turkey. A dictator like Herr Erdogan is not a partner but an opponent of the EU and of Europe.

Apropos community of values: Opposed to almost all other Europeans, the Federal government apparently wishes to draw no lessons from the crisis of 2015 with all its consequences. Astonishingly, the Frau Chancellor has today in that regard said that we must always strongly commit to multilateralism – only, in this question, we do not do that. While the government and the parties in the Bundestag debate how many migrants Germany should accept from the Greek camps, a good 250,000 migrants must actually be deported from Germany because they have no right of residence. There are more people staying here illegally than there are soldiers in the Bundeswehr.

Sweden in 2016 had a good 160,000 refugees and thereby, in relation to size of population, accepted more people than Germany. “My Europe builds no walls”, the social-democratic premier Löfven said. A few days ago, the Swedish vice-chief of police drew a gloomier picture of the imported criminality. He meanwhile designated the foreign clans as a systemic threat. Sweden has made up its mind on a consequential policy against undesired immigrants. The same goes for Herr Kurz and for the Visegrad states as well. To this question, there will be no European solution and, dear friends, das ist gut so!

... He who wants legal immigration must prevent illegal immigration. And he must prosecute smugglers of the crime of aiding and abetting. The association “Gemeinsam Retten e.V.” which in common with the Evangelical Church finances the ship “Sea-Watch-4” was besides lead by the life partner of Frau Göring-Eckardt. Yet she has also characterized these people as a “gift”.

It is right to send ships and to rescue the people from the smuggler boats. Nevertheless, these people ought not be brought to Europe and thereby attract ever more migrants. The EU must establish a maritime blockade in the Mediterranean, stop all boats on the high seas in the vicinity of Libya and Tunisia, take in all women and children and return the rest. Asylum procedures should be conducted exclusively in Africa. So and only so can we prevent that people drown in the Mediterranean and refugee camps burn. I hope that soon more people in this house accompany us in this way.

I am grateful.

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

Alice Weidel, September 30, 2020, 2021 Budget

German Bundestag, September 30, 2020, Plenarprotokoll 19/179, pp. 22519-22521. 

Right honorable Herr President. Right honorable Frau Chancellor. Ladies and gentlemen.

This draft budget is a historic document, a document of irresponsible carelessness in the midst of a crisis, which most profoundly impacts our freedom, the bases of our democratic solidarity and the basis of our prosperity and economic success, and thereby also our social state.

You however stubbornly cling to your ideological errors: A euro rescue, an EU super-state, immigration without borders, energy transformation, auto transformation, an electric auto planned economy which in all the years has not worked – errors with which you have annihilated untold billions in value and produced immeasurable damage.

The Corona crisis has not brought you to your senses. On the contrary, you only use the crisis as a pretext and authorization to run the train even faster over the falsely set switches. And for that you expend, with open hand and without restraint, tax money and borrowed funds created out of nothing for which the citizens of this country must be expropriated and stiffed for generations.  

An entire library could meanwhile be filled with the mistakes of the members of this government:

A Finance Minister and Vice-chancellor who plans new, unconstitutional indebtedness, despite higher reserves, and who wants to increase taxes even further.

A pallid and scarcely visible Foreign Minister who hosts Islamists and even employs them in his house and at the UN Security Council ever again allows votes against Israel.

A Federal Interior Minister who turns faster than his shadow and who, once a temporary critic, has become the willing executioner of the welcome policy of open borders.

A Defense Minister who prefers to concern herself with political cleanliness and gendered service grades rather than the desolate state of armament and mission capability of our Bundeswehr.

A Justice Minister who stands on a war footing with the Constitution and who wishes to drive to the extreme the internet censorship law of her predecessor in office,

            Anton Hofreiter (Greens): What then do you know of the Constitution?                                                    Which you attack?

although it is clearly unconstitutional.

And over all reigns a Chancellor who, in 15 far too long years in government, has made law-breaking a political principle and who has increasingly isolated our country in Europe.

            Dagmar Ziegler (SPD): Quite prudent!

The verdict on your migration policy issued five years ago by a British political analyst, that Germany behaves like a “hippie-state led by emotion”, pertains meanwhile to all essential political fields. One can only shake his head: Over a government which in its hyper-moral self-righteousness blindly repeats the failure of 2015, and with false welcome signals and social services makes itself a magnet for illegal immigration.

            Jan Korte (Linke): Yes, clearly!

The consequences of your irresponsible, borderless asylum policy are borne by the citizens in the form of increasing insecurity and criminality. A current BKA situation report for 2019 records 95,100 serious criminal acts by immigrants. That is over 260 violent crimes by immigrants each day.

We are also long since no longer a rich country. By median assets per private household, by the rate of home ownership and by the pension level, the Germans in EU comparison have fallen far and are at the bottom. In the crisis states of the south, to which we year after year direct transfers of billions, the citizens are on average richer and the pensioners better cared for; in part, by many times over.

Germany on the contrary holds leading places in taxes, duties and the price of electricity, in the acceptance of asylum applicants from all the world, in the rate of children and elderly threatened by poverty. And this is a result of your policy. Those are not the coefficients of a rich country. Those are the numbers of a country threatened with a crash.

            Michael Schrodi (SPD): Yet you want that it goes badly in Germany!

Let it be clearly said: We have no money to give away as long as a portion of our pensioners search trash bins for deposit bottles to make ends meet!

Nevertheless, you pledge the Germans’ tax money and assets to rescue the euro and to the establishment of an utterly undemocratic EU super-state.

            Michael Schrodi (SPD): Do you pay taxes, Frau Weidel?

The open requirements of the Target-2 balances have exceeded the trillion line. These are exported domestic assets which still are only on paper but are in fact irrecoverable. Of the innumerable billions of the rescue programs, there is not a word!

The energy transformation called for by you is likewise the next European joke. Whose idea is it to celebrate that after the simultaneous withdrawal from coal-generated electricity and nuclear power?

            Stefan Schmidt (Greens): Every reasonably thinking person.

Well, clearly: Green eco-socialists and the deep green Union. The rest of Europe will not follow you into this dead end. Wind and solar power are not capable of the base load and the area requirements for the generation of the same service is higher by a factor of 1,000 vis-à-vis coal and nuclear power. In good German: Das kann überhaupt gar nicht funktionieren.

Meanwhile, our neighbors in the Netherlands are planning ten new nuclear power plants for a CO₂-lean future. And here also: You are the wrong-way driver, and not the others, who is driving in the contrary direction.

You put a planned economy and state control in the place of freedom, competition and the power of innovation. The Federal Minister for the Economy , who presents brave plans to re-build the economy, should be so honorable as to replace his Ludwig Erhard bust in his office with a statue of Karl Marx.

            Micahel Grosse-Böhmer (CDU/CSU): That was good!

            Jan Korte (Linke): That was good. To already be on point at 9:07.                                                                That was good!

No state and principally no EU can plan at the green table which energy provider, which power, the coming century may bring us. Please leave the answer to that to the innovative power of our businesses, to the consumers and to free competition! The climate defense plans and the absurd, constantly intensifying EU limit values

            Britta Haßelmann (Greens): For you, it must go badly!

will deal a death blow to the German automobile industry. Instead of resisting, you act as the willing executioners, just as Herr Söder who wishes to forbid the new authorization of combustion engines.

This war against the auto industry is a campaign against well-paid, productive workplaces, against prosperity and against the tax-payer who presently still finances the social state.

            Alexander Dobrindt (CDU/CSU): False!

Daimler: 15,000 jobs gone; ZF Friedrichshafen: An additional 15,000; Continental, 13,000; MAN, 9,000; BMW, 6,000; Schaeffler, 4,500. And that is only the tip of the iceberg. The fates of hundreds of thousands depend thereon, families who are losing their basic livings, hard-working Mittelstand livelihoods which will be dragged down into the abyss. They are the key players who keep this country running and out from under whose feet you are pulling the rug.

You cannot shove off this decline onto the Corona crisis. Your excessive measures are making of the Corona crisis the worst recession in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany. There is a threat of hundreds of thousands of insolvencies this autumn and winter:

            Ulli Nissen (SPD): Yet you want that!

In restaurants and commerce, the tourism and exhibition economy, in the Mittelstand and service industries. Thanks to your Corona policy, ever more people and economic branches are dependent on state aid. And that is the sure way to socialism and misery.

            Jan Korte (Linke): Yes, exactly!

Come away from this false path! Stop spreading panic and strangling one branch of the economy after another with arbitrary and excessive impositions and limitations! Do not treat the citizens of this country like immature children whose reins you pull or whom you break by force! Give again the first priority to the freedom and the responsibility of the citizen! A state socialism and planned economy simply do not work and will never work: Not eco-socialism, not climate socialism and not Corona socialism.

I am grateful.

            Jan Korte (Linke): And Merkel is Rosa Luxemburg!

            Britta Haßelmann (Greens): That was a painful presentation.

 

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

 

 

 

              

 

 

 

 

 

 

Albrecht Glaser, September 18, 2020, Election Law

German Bundestag, September 18, 2020, Plenarprotokoll 19/177, pp. 22326-22327.

Thank you. – Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen.

111 members, thus almost every fifth, sit in this house with an overhang or compensatory [Ausgleichs] mandate. And after 24 reform attempts in 18 legislative periods, an integration of the element of direct election into the leading principle of proportional election has not succeeded.

Much of the talk of election law reform in this legislative period is of a non-binding tenor. It ultimately comes out as feared by the hundred public law scholars: The shirt of the guaranteed vested interests is closer to them than the coat of the commonwealth.

            Carsten Schneider (SPD): Ridiculous!

Now we are one year away from the next election, a point in time at which, with some legal assurance, an authentic reform is scarcely still possible. Therefore, it is not even to be attempted. The government comes around on Tuesday with a print to be deliberated on in the first reading for 40 minutes; as in all other political fields, right honorable ladies and gentlemen, a cobbled up piece of work. There can be no talk whatsoever of reform.

The 299 constituencies shall be reduced to 280. You do not want to do that on the level but sometime later. At the same time, a reform commission shall be set up which hopefully achieves something; since your proposal would not in any way be effective. Given the CSU wins an additional overhang mandate vis-à-vis the 2017 election, the desired effect of a shrinkage would be counteracted by this result alone.

Then there is the irritating rule that up to three overhang mandates per state list are not to be compensated. That means: In the future, overhang mandates again arising, the party which achieves them, diverging from the result of the proportional election, procures additional mandates. This advantage is naturally only for the large parties, thus only those which can achieve overhang mandates. Precisely that was to have been abolished as being unconstitutional by the election law reform of 2013.

And how so this backwards flip? It might be supposed it is about a Lex CSU. Since in 2017, the CSU with its seven overhang mandates, had released 108 compensatory mandates. That was for the participants too many to be left as it was. If three of them are made non-compensatory, the CSU with the same election results as in 2017, would release only 62 compensatory mandates. Ladies and gentlemen, that is a crazy reform result for a smaller future Bundestag.

Finally, overhang direct mandates shall supplant list mandates of the same party in other states. No voter in Germany will ever understand the pertinent calculation.

The proposal of the three small parties was dealt with here in July and is no alternative, although powerfully solicited and appraised as a great deed in the media. 50 fewer constituencies in parallel with an increase of the prescribed number of mandates: That in fact would not remain ineffective but the core problem of overhang and compensatory mandates will generally not be solved.   

There remains the authentic alternative of the AfD. In no Federal state may parties obtain more direct mandates than the list mandates due them after the second vote. By this means is produced the result that only direct candidates with the strongest vote catch the train – a democratic normality which thus certainly cannot be unconstitutional. The inconsiderable number who thereby do not catch the train will not be punished, but only not rewarded.

Think it over: To confer direct mandates with simply a relative majority is unusual. At the local level, no one has the idea of electing an Oberbürgermeister with a relative majority.

            Mahmut Özdemir (SPD): The CDU in Nordrhein-Westfalen!

And further consider: The average holder of a list mandate is clearly backed up by more votes than the average one directly elected. Colleague Amthor in this place in fact asserted the opposite. This was, nevertheless, demonstrably false.

If it had been desired, an orderly reform in the prescribed time might have been agreed upon. It was, nevertheless, not desired and in fact all the other parties did not want it – with the exception of the AfD.

Hearty thanks.

 

[trans: tem]