Kay Gottschalk, November 20, 2020, Financial Supervision

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/193, pp. 24448-24449.

Right honorable Herr President. Honored colleagues. Dear fellow citizens.

Dear colleague Matthias Hauer, brevity is the soul of wit, and not interminable pages.

The topic “Financial Fraud, Financial Criminality” – the colleagues mentioned it – is unfortunately these days again in vogue. The Wirecard case here however indicates – a colleague has said it – a multiple system failure of a particular kind.

The enlightenment – as it was named here – is well underway. Das is gut so, and I am also happy that I can take part in this enlightenment in the corresponding committee.

Unfortunately, some of the delegations here in the sovereign house appear to set false crucial points. Besides, I also thought as I heard Frau Paus: Mein Gott, she has listened to me in many hearings on the topic of the BaFin [Federal Office for Finance]; since, much of it I have already said; I have also gone into it in my speeches.

            Fritz Güntzler (CDU/CSU): What?

Ja, that comes forward. But I am grateful that you here re-cite much of what I in the past two years – we had many hearings on the topic of the BaFin – had said.

             Matthias Hauer (CDU/CSU): I deem that to be a rumor! That cannot be!

The Greens as well as we of the AfD delegation have thus put forward here motions [Drucksache 19/24396, 24398] on a complex of topics which include the areas of corporate governance, formation of supervisory boards, the BaFin’s personnel and competence provisions, – to which I will come – reduction of the time for the obligatory succession, colleague Hauer, of auditors and an increase of the liability limits. The last has been converted, we have written a bit more of same in the motion.

So you see: A bunch of topics. I want to so far only go into our own motions. Unfortunately, these topics are only worth 30 minutes to the sovereign house. Perhaps we should have had here an hour to discuss.

 Matthias Hauer (CDU/CSU): In the time, you would have been able to present the entire motion!

For one, we move – into which I wanted to go – that the future proficiency test [Sachkundeprufung] – an acknowledged topic, colleague Hauer – and the supervision of financial investment brokerage [Finanzanlagenvermittlung] and of fee and financial advising for all Federal states, shall be overtaken by the chambers of industry and commerce and at the same time – at the same time – by the Federal institute for financial services supervision, resulting in: The BaFin shall issue and correspondingly examine a unified standard for the supervision of a proficiency test.

Why do I say that? I had the impression that especially the SPD and the Greens – you had even said it: We are not in accord – want to once again inflate the BaFin. Colleague Hauer, I take you and the CDU/CSU delegation at your word: To concentrate on the core competences.

            Matthias Hauer (CDU/CSU): Yet for that, we do not need your motion!

That means: In some positions, to cleanse the BaFin. For what they cannot do, they shall not receive additional positions to be commissioned, right honorable ladies and gentlemen.

And the failures of the P&R and of the green so-to-say Investors Prokon – as the colleagues have named it – must be blamed on the BaFin. Once again: We follow the experts opinion. With this experts opinion, we have thus cast so-to-say experts opinion in the form of a motion.

            Fabio De Masi (Linke): But which experts?

Something better actually cannot occur.

Yet we come to our second motion, “Reduction of the Time for the Obligatory Succession of Auditors and an Increase of the Liability Limits”. It is known to us that these four years clearly present an obstacle and are difficult. On the other side, that induces: In the first two or three years of examination, one learns to know the business…I believe, in regards so much expertise and benchmarketing in this area, that I can expect that E&Y or other business auditing companies can here climb without a rope and understand the business model.

On that account: A four year rotation, bring the liability limit to 10 million and not to the utopian 20 million euros and otherwise 1 percent of the yearly turnover of the examining firm. And to intercept you: We have clearly demanded what for years has been said directly in regards personal service firms; namely, the separation of tax consultancy and auditing; read the pertinent paragraphs. The science very clearly affirms this, ladies and gentlemen.

It sounds – I turn to the the unfortunately not present Olaf Scholz – : What are necessary are not only laws but a change in the ethic of these officials, a change of mentality, as well as of a government and of a Finance Minister who might do the BaFin proud and simply to therein show where the fire is. How is it so nicely said? Where there is fire, there is also smoke.

            Danyal Bayaz (Greens): Other way around!

On that account, we will vote for a constructive debate. We move, like the colleagues, for a transfer to the Finance Committee and will here constructively accompany the debate with brief but very good motions and measures.

Thank you.

             Matthias Hauer (CDU/CSU): “Brief”, agreed.

             Fabio De Masi (Linke): For once explain “benchmarketing”!

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

Uwe Schulz, November 19, 2020, Identification Number

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/192, pp. 24338-24339.

Herr President. Ladies and gentlemen.

The AfD supports every measure for the introduction of sensible digital solutions for authorities and administrators. For us, only one thing is important: Everything must be tailored for the customer [Kunden], for the citizen – I do not understand why you laugh at the word “customer”. With the planned registration modernization law, the citizens’ basic data shall be centralized and it is quite clear that such a project makes sense. If, however, it is conceivable that the transparent citizen [gläserne Bürger] results from this move, then for us of the AfD the threshold of pain is exceeded. For it is precisely these transparent citizens which the Federal government appears to want. And if the draft is implemented, there are yet only a few steps and the state obtains, on the head of a pin, a comprehensive profile of every citizen.

The principle weak point of the draft is the introduction of a unified identification number. For with such a number, relations records will be possible. Despite that, now – and Herr Krings said it – the tax ID has been selected, introduced in the year 2007, although it was assured at the time it had nothing to do with exactly that on constitutional grounds. And naturally the Federal Constitutional Court and the Federal commission for data protection again warn against the use of this number. The Federal government, however, ignores this warning, even so as does the scientific service of the German Bundestag.

And the Austrian prospect is of no interest, although there, and without conflict with the constitution, data management based on a recognition number [kennnummer] has been centralized. And what does Herr Seehofer’s ministry say to the Austrian model? The procedure was too expensive and lasts too long. Ja, ladies and gentlemen, the Federal government gladly submits itself to all possible international authorities and NGOs; yet in matters of data security, to learn for once from the neighbor Austria, that is evidently too costly.

In this connection, it is amusing that yesterday Minister Seehofer called to me in this room that he now for 50 years works for the security of Germany. Yet, Herr Minister Seehofer, – he is not there – the years do not count, but only the success. And certainly when it concerns the data security of our citizens, not “quick and dirty” but only and alone care counts, and which may even be somewhat more expensive.

Ladies and gentlemen, the draft law put forward is the next step to transparent citizens and it is presently happening. We have yesterday experienced how far the Federal government is willing to go in the patronizing of the people. And meanwhile must each recognize that state surveillance and regimentation shall reach deep into the private sphere. Ladies and gentlemen, with the planned law, it will be possible to gather together and use personal data from many corners – data which Corona detectives can also use for their dirty business; since Herr Lauterbach of the SPD is quite openly thinking of introducing such a spy organization – not to be called back, ladies and gentlemen.

Yet allow it to be said: With the AfD, there will be no modern block leader; data of our citizens shall come into the hands of no private and no state snooper, and no Federal commissioner may invade the deepest private sphere of our citizens.

The draft law shall evidently again be driven through the committees at a pig’s trot – and that we know already – and clearly also will our Federal President and Chief Magistrate Steinmeier again fill up his fountain pen and stand at the ready for a quick signing. It is all as always.

Many thanks.

 

[trans: tem]

Mariana Harder-Kühnel, November 19, 2020, Violence against Women

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/192, pp. 24300-24301.

Every third day in Germany a woman is murdered and in fact for one, single reason: Because she is a woman. Femicide is the name for this crime and Germany has become one of the focal points of this purposeful killing of women. Now it could naturally be wondered what are the reasons for this contempt of women. Clearly it could concern, as the Linke continually and in the presented motion assert, a hierarchical relationship of the sexes, a patriarchal dominance. This leads to an oppression of women and not seldom to directly applied violence and many times to death.

There are societies in which women are respected. Germany was once such a society. And there are societies in which women are treated like dirt, like disposable slaves, like second class people, who in childhood can be compelled to marry, who may be murdered for reasons of honor.  

            Steffi Lemke (Greens): You should read the criminal statistics before you                                speak here!

These are societies which can be come across in North Africa and in the Near and Middle East. Germany is well on the way to become such a society. You make Berlin into Baghdad.

             Marianne Schieder (SPD): Let’s be aware it lasts only for a brief time!

             Steffi Lemke (Greens): That is a pure agitation speech!

That is straightaway the consequence of your policy of unchecked migration. You rightly complain of patriarchal dominance, yet at the same time import masses of aggressive machos, for the most part from patriarchal societies. How, please, does that go together?

Many migrants from these societies, who have been merkeled into Germany, do not at all wish to integrate into our society, let alone in that case assimilate.

Why? Because, due to your policy, they certainly do not have to. Because they, due to our lack of identity,

Vice-president Hans-Peter Friedrich: Frau colleague, do you consent to an interim question?

 – no – lack of self-esteem, and lack of strength, do not respect us or see us as a model worthy of emulation. And so these machos hold onto their imported picture of women and continue to treat women as second class people, people who can be molested, beaten and murdered at will.  

Simply look for once at the numbers. The number of victims of crimes of domestic violence steadily increases since 2015. Over 140,000 people meanwhile are each year victims of domestic violence, 80 percent of them women. What is striking: With a foreign portion of 12 percent of the total population, 33 percent of the perpetrators of domestic violence are migrants. And yet German citizens with a migrant background are not even included in that.

The women's homes burst at the seams. Almost 70 percent of the residents of women's homes besides have a migration background. Seven years ago, it was not even half.

Who, for reasons of devout cultural sensibility, political correctness or plain ideological cowardice, ignores entire groups of perpetrators and shields their cultural and religious background, promotes a culture of violence against women.

             Steffi Lemke (Greens): You promote racism! You promote pure racism!

So finally stop with your mendacious multicultural romance!

Certainly some on the left side of the house, who so readily designate themselves as women's rights advocates, pursue a policy which, millions of times, summons up archaic prejudices and the oppression of women in Germany. Yet there is no talk of that in the motion, not a word on multiculturalism, nil.

 Ulle Schauws (Greens): Because every woman has a right to be protected from violence, regardless of origin!

Ja, ladies and gentlemen, you close your eyes to that. You ultimately wish to be sufficiently cultural-sensitive merely not to irritate. Yet who here does not name horse and rider, he conducts at last a phantom debate, he does not seriously mean it, he does really want to help women. It is the consequences of the drunken utopia of your multicultural policy which for many women become a real nightmare.

Inquire into the circumstances which lead to femicides. Yet do that, please, completely and, before all, honestly. Who wishes to protect women must himself analyze, free from ideology, the origins of the increasing violence against women in Germany. Who does not want to see evident connections makes himself an accessory, an accessory to the oppression of women, an accessory to the battering of women, an accessory to the murder of women, an accessory to femicide.

Many thanks.

             Steffi Lemke (Greens): Write that on the mirror!

 

 [trans: tem]

 

 

 

           

 

 

Fabian Jacobi, November 18, 2020, Restructuring and Insolvency Law

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/191, pp. 24117-24118.

Many thanks. – Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen.

The bill for the re-development of restructuring and insolvency law, the draft of which the Federal government presents here for a first reading, shall on one hand be the big shot which opens to us the entirely new universe of the pre-insolvency restructuring of businesses. On the other hand, everything having to do with this law shall once again proceed all too quickly. In the coming weeks, for all that, we will be able to conduct an experts hearing. For its evaluation there will nevertheless scarcely be time, since this law shall unquestionably be passed this year and enter into effect January 1.

Now then, what is in the draft? Essentially, an entirely new, creative bill for the stabilization and restructuring framework for businesses; in brief, StaRUG; besides which, however, is also the alteration of numerous other laws, not least of which is the order of insolvency. To be brief in regards the areas here put forward, I must limit myself to three short remarks: One on the fundamentals, one on the StaRUG and one on the order of insolvency.

On the fundamentals: Unfortunately, I must again this time come to speak of my Carthage which lies in Brussels. For this draft law contains, like so many, the note “Tina”: “There is no alternative”, or in German: “To the implementation of the guidelines’ requirements, there is no alternative.”

The material law of insolvency, which for long underlay our own legislation, has meanwhile been taken in by the EU – so far, only in the form of a guideline which still allows us some large-scale leeway for design. Yet the increase of the EU’s regulatory dicta, and thereby the shrinking of our self-determined legislation, is foreseeable.

If a criticism of the Herr Bundestag-president expressed here by one of the AfD members in the Bundestag was “destructive of the state”, as was recently advertised by the Federal Interior Minister, then it is no doubt a question of projection. Since the destruction of the state is not done by us of the AfD, but indeed rather by the majority delegations of this house who joyfully applaud any EU grab of the legislative competences of the German Bundestag and thereby transform the German Republic into a kind of Potemkinesque play parliament.

            Canan Bayram (Greens): This is a political insolvency which you put                                    forward here!

            Sebastian Steineke (CDU/CSU): It would have been better not to speak here!

So much for the fundamentals. What now shall the StaRUG produce? It shall furnish a framework for the attempt to refrain from initially commencing the insolvency of a business which is already in the preliminary stage of a restructuring of the business’s obligations. The aim is thus clearly a sensible one. Restructuring is thereby according to all precepts a re-writing [Umschreibung] so that the creditors renounce a portion of their demands. Where that is agreed to by all those affected, after a weighing of their interests, that is not problem. That, however, is not always the case and therefore shall only be possible by the majority acceptance of the creditors.

The rights of a single creditor…will thus be infringed. In certain cases, that might need to be justified. Yet at the least, it requires that the individual concerned be able to sensibly protect his rights in this procedure.

In regards, for example, the acceptance period in §21 of the StaRUG draft which at a minimum shall amount to only 14 days, there by all means can be doubt. To this and to additional points, the hearing will hopefully bring additional attention.   

On the insolvency order. The presented draft law shall not in fact, as was to be feared following remarks by the CDU/CSU delegation, entirely abolish the basis of insolvency of the over-indebted. Yet it still weakens it an additional time. We reject this. The avoidance of a business insolvency is – where possible – clearly desirable. It is not, on the other hand, sensible to only postpone it for as long as possible. By means of a further weakening of the insolvency basis of over-indebtedness, the number of zombie firms will only increase – which in the end, if the insolvency then finally occurs, only inflicts even so greater damages. Here, we should not pursue the previous mal-development, but instead take counter-measures.

Many thanks and until next week.

 

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

Armin-Paulus Hampel, November 19, 2020, National Security Council

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/192, pp. 24313-24314.

Herr President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen. Dear colleagues.

If our country had a national security council, as demanded by the AfD, then we likely would have been spared fatalities on this scale in the Corona crisis.

                Fritz Felgentreu (SPD): Like the U.S.A.!

A national security council would not, like the Federal government, have tossed the comprehensive Robert Koch Institute study of 2012 into some corner in the archive, but would have converted this blueprint for combating the viral illness into a practical plan of action in agreement with all areas of expertise.

A national security council would likely have recommended to the Federal government what I had already demanded at the beginning of the Corona crisis; namely, – which is what no expert doubts – the acknowledgment that 85 percent of those infected with this illness notice either light or indeed no symptoms, only the 15 percent seriously or very seriously ill must be intensively treated or are threatened in life and limb. There then would have been a national strategy to first of all professionally protect these at-risk groups and thus avoid a total lockdown at a cost of hundreds of billions of euros.

The same applies to a concept of the Interior Ministry from the year 2016 under the title “Konzeption Zivile Verteidigung”. There, the weak points in this area were minutely exhibited. The Interior experts already warned at that time, for example, of a blackout induced by your energy transformation – catastrophic in its effects, and in fact on such a scale as, until now, cannot be imagined by the citizens out there in the states.  

Although the study describes in detail a comprehensive catastrophe scenario, offers solution assessments and also says who should implement it, nothing has happened in our states – simply because there is no national, inter-disciplinary point of coordination at which all knowledge comes together, resulting in the required implementation of proposed solutions. And just as I here deplore this do-nothing government and its non-existent strategy in regards the domestic policy challenges of past years, I see this exact same same deficiency in our foreign policy relations. Like a little dog staring at the snake, so now for years the Merkel cabinet stares at the rapid political, economic and technological developments in China.

Long-term strategy? Nil, Herr colleague. Instead of looking out for appropriate allies, in this case the United States and Russia, to be able to ward off the immense challenges from the Middle Kingdom, we have successfully alienated both possible strategic partners. We have on the other hand permitted the most modern high-tech firms like KUKA to pass into Chinese hands, and we still pay – I believe until the year 2021 – hundreds of millions for development projects in China. You for once must explain that to the citizens out there, ladies and gentlemen.

Every other country thinks we are crazy. On one side, we cannot keep up with the G-5 states, and on the other side we still pay out development money.

These examples can be pursued: How in the long-term do we deal with an altered American world-view? Which values actually still unite us, even with a Biden government? Achtung, ladies and gentlemen! Where must we look for new partners, and where do the old ties still bind as before?

How do we wish to deal with a Russia which, after centuries of Tsardom and nearly 70 years of Soviet dictatorship, hesitantly develops in the direction of democracy? What ignorance and what a lack of understanding to believe that this process can be concluded within one generation! You however, ladies and gentlemen, cannot remove Russia to South America. It will always remain our great neighbor in the east. Who here formulates the German long-term strategy?

Who has a durable concept of how the Ottoman, great man dreams of Herr Erdogan are to be dealt with? Where must we restrain [in den Arm fallen] the Turkish government when, for example, Herr Erdogan seeks to influence German policy by means of his countrymen in Germany? Where and with whom can we regain influence in Turkish policy?

Who in the Chancellory or in the Foreign Office has a strategy for a peaceful solution in the Near and Middle East? Herr Kushner, that non-diplomat from the U.S.A., has shown us how to do it. Who here in Berlin has the concept? No one. We muddle along from one crisis to another and think we Germans are still an important player in world events. Does this house not notice that we have lost this role years ago, that we, by our completely unnecessary positioning in inter-state conflicts – far from us – , have been driven out of the classical role of mediator?

A national security council, which in terms of personnel and concepts is in a position to plan strategies in the German interest throughout the duration of a legislative period, is therefore long since overdue. We need this standing and structured institution, organized and staffed, for the inter-disciplinary development of a long view of the pressing domestic and foreign policy questions.

Otherwise, Germany may turn into what our neighbors continue to fear: That we, an economic giant, will politically degrade into a dwarf.

I therefore request your support for our motion [Drucksache 19/24393] and vote for a German national security council.

I thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

 

[trans: tem]