Fabian Jacobi, January 28, 2021, Tax and Insolvency Law

German Bundestag, January 28, 2021, Plenarprotokoll 19/206, pp. 25969-25970. 

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen. 

As per the daily order, we are dealing with the draft for amending the introductory law of the tax code. It foresees an extension of the time period for delivery of tax declarations. Many tax consultants are presently over-burdened by attending to businesses shaken by Corona preventive measures. It is sensible to grant them more time for making out the tax declaration. We therefore actually want to vote for the draft law. 

Our motion [Drucksache 19/26233] for revising the legal interest rate level in the tax law continues to be in the daily order. In the tax code is still to be found a fixed, annual interest rate level of 6 percent on additional tax payments. The Federal Fiscal Court has made clear in many decisions that this interest rate level, against the background of many years of a solidified zero interest rate policy, may indeed be unconstitutional and that the legislature is required to remedy it. That this so far has not been done is referenced to the topic being pending before the Federal Constitutional Court. We however think it well becomes us, the legislator, to take up the Federal Fiscal Court’s warning not to wait until our inactivity betrays us in Karlsruhe. This is the aim of our motion which I readily commend to you for approval.  

It is seen that what is in the daily order is entirely unproblematic. Then we come to what is not there. Namely, you – by “you” is meant both of the present government delegations and the future government delegation of the Greens – 

            Manuela Rottmann (Greens): Now, don’t you give up, Herr Jacobi! 

have just yesterday in the Finance Committee hung something on this draft law on taxation, in fact already once again an extended suspension on insolvency applications obligations and the rules challenging insolvency. This is not even correct at the formal levels. According to our order of business, the Finance Committee might decide only on what the Bundestag has therein assigned – and that was the tax law, not the insolvency law.   

            Stefan Schmidt (Greens): Since you however had not paid attention! 

Exceptions are only permitted for questions which are in proximate connection with the assigned matters. This is, at the latest, no more the case when the subject is entered into by an entirely different committee. If you say that it is anyway all about Corona, then I believe you yourselves do not take that at all seriously. You have simply taken care of the orderly introduction, the first reading in plenary session, and spared the assignment to the standing committee. Ja, now. 

And in fact here we do not go along. You want again, this time until April, to suspend parts of the insolvency law for businesses which have presented or could present applications for state assistance. This is remarkable. First, business is hit with the clumsiest usable club, the so-called lockdown. Then it is noted: “Oops, we, ja, directly ruin tens of thousands of livelihoods”, extol rapid state assistance, and want to paste over the dished out damages with a lot of money at the pump. Then it does not organizationally happen that the corresponding applications are generally able to be presented. And when this again is realized, the club is again taken up and simply smashes a bit of our legal order. 

The insolvency application duty and the rules on challenging insolvency are not an end in themselves. The rules have a meaning. They defend the remaining economic commerce, as well as they can, from damages resulting from insolvent firms. With this law, for many creditors, especially for the treasury and the social funds, there is a motivation to make claims 

            Sebastian Brehm (CDU/CSU): Gott sei dank! 

in which these creditors are privileged in case the crisis nevertheless later ends in insolvency. You thereby perhaps obtain for an indebted firm alleviations for a brief time. What you do however is you shift the insolvency risks onto the remaining, non-privileged creditors who cannot at all defend themselves against that. That is the big gesture of the rescuers, but is at the cost of third parties. That is an ordnungspolitisch failure and on that account we reject this part of your law. 

Many thanks. 

 

[trans: tem]

 

             

Bernd Gögel, January 21, 2021, Corona Pandemic

Baden-Württemberg Landtag, Plenarprotokoll 16/140, pp. 8043-8046. 

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen. 

All that we have heard this morning was more or less statements sounding the same on the decisions and present conditions in the Corona crisis. You will not be surprised that here the AfD naturally has a completely different estimate. 

Actually, I thought that you – primarily the government delegations – might not dare to speak this morning on the topic of vaccination. Since on the topic of vaccination I had already spoken here 14 days ago and had held up to you your general failures with your surrender of responsibility to the EU for the distribution of the vaccine. We hold that up to you as previously, since here you, on a decisive point – namely, your responsibility for the Daseinsvororge [care for the existence] of the people in Germany –, have failed, ladies and gentlemen. 

For vaccination as a whole, we have here heard terms like “greyhound races” or “vaccine Bundesliga”. Here, I must quite honestly say: You perhaps make here a snail’s race and if you keep up the present pace, you will in fact in eight years have managed – this is also again an arithmetic problem – to vaccinate the people of Baden-Württemberg. Yet for eight long years, the people may not participate in your game here, ladies and gentlemen. This you may recognize in many expressions. Even the media at the moment are thereby more or less critically inquiring. What you have neglected in the first two years, I must also hold up to you in this place. 

Herr Reinhart, when you reproach Herr Baron that he with a question evidently remains below his potential, then I say to you: In regards the fight against Corona, you have already surrendered any credibility at all in your potential. It will therefore not surprise you that we, the AfD, demand that you immediately end your unspeakable Corona policy. 

It may not be allowed that the lockdown, in our view introduced without parliamentary-democratic legitimization, will be maintained and even intensified, ladies and gentlemen. The scientifically gathered numbers demonstrate that the lockdown offers no protection to the vulnerable groups of our society. By means of your preventive measures will coming generations be burdened with debts scarcely capable of being repaid and entire branches of industry will be irreparably damaged. Here also, Herr Reinhart, there can be proposed no distinction between restaurants, hotels, retail trade and industry. You after all may not prioritize: Who stands before the exit, and who may continue to work? Who has a future, and who has none? That assuredly is not right in these areas. You disproportionately and arbitrarily interfere in the basic rights and the rights of freedom of the citizens of our State. 

This is your Corona strategy – if one at all wants in this connection to use the term “strategy” – these are your long-term concepts – if one at all wants in this connection to use the words “long-term strategy”; that is to say, we see none. That is absolutely unacceptable. 

The future preventive measures in the fight against Corona nevertheless require a parliamentary-democratic legitimization, ladies and gentlemen. Your Corona experimental policy lacks equilibrium and balance between the necessary protection of health, a guarantee of basic rights and rights of freedom, the citizens’ quality of life and economic stability. This is completely lacking in your actions.  

You favor specific articles of the Basic Law. In an illegitimate body, you decide over which Basic Law articles will have validity and which not. 

            Christina Baum (AfD): Capricious! 

Ladies and gentlemen, our basic rights are not negotiable. This pertains to all the citizens of our country. 

Dep. President Sabine Kurtz: Herr Member Gögel, one moment, please. – Herr Member Dr. Balzer, you know quite exactly that no “demonstrations” may be upheld here  – 

Rainer Balzer (AfD): I have it down again. 

Christina Baum (AfD): Ja, we understand. 

– Yes, but immediately. Herr Member Gögel, please proceed. 

As there are no citizens of first or second class, so also are there no basic rights of first or second class – and not for the vaccinated or not vaccinated, ladies and gentlemen. For this discussion burns quite slowly. One can almost actually be happy that the vaccination still proceeds at a snail’s pace. Otherwise, the discussion would be much further along. If today a vacation paradise like Greece is for a European vaccination pass, and the Herr Foreign Minister pleads that those vaccinated should receive special rights, I say: I forewarn you of this debate. Therefore: Repeal your lockdown measures. Guarantee to all citizens their basic rights.   

Herr President, what do you think, which answers would we have to expect if you today would start a poll on the question, “Freedom or health”? We, the AfD, and with us a great majority of the people, would choose freedom. 

Christina Baum (AfD): Jawohl! It is exactly so! 

A man who lives in bondage [Unfreiheit] can never enjoy his health, neither bodily nor spiritual. 

Ladies and gentlemen, behind bars, honey tastes bitter. On January 17, the “Berliner Zeitung” published a poll on the question, “What do you think: In this crisis, do the Federal government and the Senate do good work?” 94% of the respondents had criticized the government’s crisis management with regards to the fight against the pandemic and the duration of the lockdowns. We are convinced that in Baden-Württemberg a comparable result is to be expected. 

On March 22, 2020, thus scarcely two months after the first detected case of the SARS-COV-2 virus on German soil, the Federal government and the States agreed on the first preventive measures for fighting the Corona virus. Since that time, a hand-made crisis has developed in the Federal Republic of Germany, let loose by your serious political miscalculations. The only recognizable strategy of those bearing responsibility consists of a strung-together series of lockdowns, the scientific effectiveness of which 

            Christina Baum (AfD): Going-out blockades! 

is ever more contested. 

And in other countries, and in Europe, see and recognize that a stringing together of lockdowns is not to the point. You want to reduce incidence numbers. You reduce these, you open, and then what happens? Then comes the third wave followed by a new lockdown, then comes the fourth wave. The economy, the society and our country will not endure that. 

These preventive measures, decreed without scientific evidence, only and alone underline your helplessness, your action for action’s sake, together with the Chancellor’s and your incapacity for serious failure analysis. 

Dep. President Sabine Kurtz: Herr Member Gögel, do you allow an interim question from Herr Member Dr. Fiechtner? 

I have a difficulty with the time. The time already runs on prior to the suspension. If I later have time, gladly. 

There can be no talk here of effective protection of health. 

Let us come to your new Corona decisions which today the parliament simply acknowledges and then with your governing majority will then confirm, according loosely to the motto: The family father buys a car and two days later converses with the family on the equipment. 

            Anton Baron (AfD): It is exactly so! 

By chance, one looks in on the parliament – 

            Nicole Razani (CDU): That’s not true!           

            Anton Baron (AfD): Show politics! 

no democratic relationship, no logic, no sense. The first decision which you have reached is the extension of the lockdown to February 14. In regards to the first lockdown during last year, you had oriented yourselves on the R factor alone, although at the announcement of the first lockdown it already lay below the value of 1.0 desired by you. In regards the present lockdown, it is no more about the the R factor, but about a seven day incidence value of a maximum of 50 tested per 100,000 residents. Where does this number come from? The number resulted from the opportunities of tracking by health officials, and then your argumentation ceased; you are keeping something quiet. 

            Anton Baron (AfD): Mystery figures! 

This number is based on an insufficient technical and personnel investment in the health offices. 

In regards technology, the health officials find themselves in this area to be on the level of a third world state, ladies and gentlemen. The officials are not networked with one another, still work with telefax and land line telephones, and most likely with Excel tables which will be filled out by hand. Here, we are miles – miles! – away from a functioning digitalization. 

You have had a year to improve the situation. I do not purport that in the last 20 years you have undertaken nothing here. Yet after the first lockdown, after the first catastrophe which you have caused, you have neither in education nor in healthcare – in regards the schools and the health offices – undertaken anything, and must come down to the value of 50 because you otherwise cannot track the events. On this basis, you have agreed to an extension of the lockdown and have decreed this despite declining incidence numbers, despite hospitals which are not over-burdened. 

Apropos hospitals: You should perhaps once again mention here in parliament and out there amongst the citizens that you in the last ten years have closed 30 hospitals in Baden-Württemberg, 

            Christina Baum (AfD): Jawohl! 

and indeed predominantly in rural areas. 

            Christina Baum (AfD): Exactly! 

You should on that account for once state the truth as to why we here today perhaps have a discovery in regards the capacities. Here also, a further failure in the Daseinsvororge may be spoken of. 

The second decision which you have reached concerns day-care and schools. My preceding speaker, who as a teacher comes from this professional area, has already occupied himself abundantly with this. These establishments also shall until February 14 remain closed. 

What we have to chalk up against you is: You totally disregard that the children and youth, the over-charged parents and the teachers are suffering. The latter still do not have at their disposal a unified teaching platform, let alone adequate internet connections so as to be able to smoothly carry out instruction or distance instruction. 

Over this neglect we have since – – We have now advocated here in parliament for five years. I ever again have a déjà vu. We ever again speak in circles. Hopefully we do not speak yet again in circles for five years. Here you conceal your failures in the area of digitalization. You neglect your duty to educate and – this is the worst – you approvingly make allowances for the long-term consequences for these children, ladies and gentlemen.  

The third decision which you have reached is a home office duty. When presence in the workplace is required, the employer must first make available medical masks. This will still be the smaller problem. The employers must also submit accounts to the government and establish why they cannot send their employees to a home office. We, the AfD, with the best will, cannot conceive of this bureaucracy monster which you thereby want to create. 

The trades unions and employers reject your home office duty for Baden-Württemberg. Martin Kunzmann, chief of the Southwest German Trade Unions Association, sees such a regulation as counter-productive for many employees. He said to the dpa on Monday in Stuttgart – I cite: 

            It ought not be forgotten that not all employees can without problem                                     work at home, because they have either no suitable workplace or 

– now it comes again – 

            internet access… 

Here again the question comes to you: Do you recall the years of discussion over your neglect of digitalization? The home office presents for many businesses not only a financial and organizational but also a data security burden. You are obliged to be well acquainted with these problems from your own administrative officials. 

Ladies and gentlemen, we now come to the core topic of your disoriented Corona policy, to the nose and mouth protective covering. But first I want to clear up a small error – perhaps also in the dpa report of yesterday morning. Here in the plenary hall there is in place no duty to wear a mouth and nose covering. 

            Nicole Razani (CDU): Exactly. Say that to Herr Sänze! 

At the beginning of the pandemic, you had declared to the citizens that the covering of mouth and nose produced nothing, Frau Razani. You had declared this to the people at the beginning of the pandemic – perhaps not you personally, yet surely your party. The background of your statement was something completely different. You were concerned already at that time about the lack of a stockpile of masks and all other protective equipment items in case of a pandemic. Yet in March, Health Minister Spahn had got underway a hastily knitted together contract in open house proceedings for the procurement of protective equipment. Partners to the contract were any supplier who was in a posititon to deliver at least 25,000 masks by April 30. 

It was probably devoid of result. Astonishingly, 700 suppliers were in a position to fulfill these conditions. Nevertheless, a large portion of these suppliers are now sitting on these masks which they must put into storage because the Health Ministry does not take possession. The suppliers after a year still await payment for these makes. 

Ladies and gentlemen, does your recent decision on the obligatory wearing of medical masks – in Bavaria, it is even FFP2 masks – perhaps indirectly have to do with your renewed logistical failures? From the medical viewpoint, the OP and FFP2 mouth and nose protective masks offer no defense against a viral infection. According to a statement of the DEKRA [vehicle inspection association], the FFP2 masks are unsuitable. I cite: 

The masks are for the purpose, when declared to FFP2 masks or KN95 masks, completely unsuitable 

            Heinrich Fiechtner: Exactly! 

Ladies and gentlemen, the Robert Koch Institute has felt that the use of the FFP2 masks, especially by persons who belong to an at-risk group, should ensue only after individual conference with or individual consultation by a doctor. 

In addition, the FFP2 masks basically should not be made use of multiple times, since it is a matter of a one-time product. Therefore we, the AfD, have from the beginning demanded that in the at-risk groups certified FFP2 masks are to be placed at the disposal of the older people, if you want to protect them; and this at no cost. 

            Heinrich Fiechtner: FFP5, I would say. 

            Christina Baum (AfD): FFP100! 

The State government did not require these masks but still as before favored short shawls and even hobby patches [Kurzem Schals und selbst gebastelte Läppchen]. Now the government has ordered the obligatory wearing of OP or FFP2 masks in the ÖPNV [public transport] and retail business, although they do not protect against viral infection and are only sold at horrendous prices. That is an imposition for families, since for this a family of four shall expend 300 to 400 euros per month. 

Ladies and gentlemen, before you lies the resolution motion of the AfD delegation. This motion demands a complete change of strategy in the policy to fight Corona. I request you support this motion so as to really achieve a turnaround in this policy. 

            Heinrich Fiechtner: Frau President, where is the mask? 

I come to a conclusion, ladies and gentlemen. Freedom, basic rights, federalism, self-determination before foreign rule [Fremdbestimmung] 

            Christina Baum (AfD): Jawohl! 

and subsidiarity are the foundation of our thought and action in the AfD. You could take up some of these points. 

Many thanks.

 

[trans: tem]

 

           

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

           

           

 

 

Joana Cotar, January 28, 2021, IT Security Law

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/206, pp. 25918-25919. 

Frau President. Esteemed colleagues. 

For over two years now we have waited for the IT security law 2.0. The threatening situation in the area of IT security has clearly increased. The defense of the critical infrastructure – energy, water, telecommunications – must be heightened and the newest developments adapted. Ever again we of the opposition have asked about the state of the law, ever again were we put off. Presently, just before Christmas, was it then so far and then all must go quite quickly; for the legislature draws to an end. 

So came what must come. It no more sufficed as a really thought through draft law. I feel myself reminded of the Federal government’s digital strategy. Also here: No clear concept, no definition of protection goals, no real strategy for improving the security situation; only a happy coexistence of the expiring wishes of the authorities, activity purely for its own sake, garnished with a bit of helplessness. 

At the same time it would have been able to be so simple. The most important of all is the evaluation of the IT security law 1.0 which we of the AfD demand. This is prescribed in the first draft of the law, that of 2015, yet you have simply ignored that in the well known way. To examine what has functioned in the first law and what has not, what has made sense and what not, where failures were made which we now in the new edition can prevent, that would have been really significant.   

Yet to reach decisions based on exact data and realities, that apparently is not your thing, esteemed Federal government. You have also demonstrated that in regards the internet enforcement law: That was intensified before it was evaluated. So that the next IT security law cannot again be rubbed under your nose, you have now simply let the evaluation run out entirely. It can thus also be done. 

The second opportunity which you have let slip is the inclusion of civil society organizations. You had given them one day to read the law and react to it – one day for a law which will have considerable effects upon the economy. The Chaos Computer Club called that a purposeful sabotage of democratic procedures. The AG KRITIS goes even further and speaks of a “middle-finger in the face of civil society”. Both are right. This kind of relations is an impossibility, ladies and gentlemen, and may not be thus repeated. 

We come to the BSI. The Federal Office for Security in Information Technology will by means of this law be equipped with wide-ranging powers and develop itself into a kind of police authority including a license to hack, the active intervention into the IT security of businesses, the expansion of storage of protocol data, and the withholding of information with reference to security lapses. All of this we of the AfD regard critically; certainly the latter contains great dangers. Who knowingly leaves unsettled security lapses, so as to provide access to the authorities, endangers the entire IT security, ladies and gentlemen. Such lapses must, as soon as they are discovered, be passed on to the firms so as to guarantee the maximum security of the IT system. 

Last point. You have quite knowingly avoided reaching a clear and conclusive political decision as to whether network equipment providers close to the government in undemocratic countries will be allowed to participate in 5G construction; for example, Huawei. Do we really want to lay our critical infrastructure in the hands of the Chinese when we still have good, European alternatives? You are almost always for the EU! How so not in this case where exceptionally for once it would really make sense, ladies and gentlemen? Does that perhaps therein lie that Huawei sponsors your party days, dear CDU and dear SPD? 

The fact is: The draft law put forward endangers a rapid and legally secure construction of the networks. Here finally a clear decision must be reached. Still look around a bit. Perhaps you may in some way yet receive, ja, the courage to reach a clear decision prior to the passage of this law. 

Conclusion: The law is Ein Kessel Buntes. The speed with which it has been cobbled together is to be distinctly noted. We see a considerable need for repair and thus will not agree to it. 

Many thanks. 

 

[trans: tem]

 

Hanno Bachmann, January 28, 2021, Migrant Quotas in the Public Service

Berlin Abgeordnetenhaus, Plenarprotokoll 18/71, pp. 8455-8456. 

Right honorable Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen. 

The political left simply cannot get loose from their quota fixation. Scarcely has the unconstitutional parity law come down around their ears and there follows an even more absurd project: Migrant quotas in the public service. They thereby show that they have plainly not understood the function of the public services. 

The public service by no means has to illustrate the population true to scale, but it has to serve the community with the greatest possible efficiency, and thereof most of all the citizens, with or without a migration background.  Therefore, Article 33, ¶2 provides the established principle of the best selection [Bestenauslese] – I cite with permission of the President and especially in the presence of the appropriate Senator: 

Every German shall be equally eligible for any public office according to his aptitude, qualifications and professional achievements. 

We have this principle to thank that we have in international comparison a relatively good functioning public service, despite all the mismanagement at the political leadership level. It would be fatal if we turn this fundamental pillar of our community into a performance piece of your ideologically driven quotas project. 

You occupy yourselves with an allegedly discriminatory hiring practice whereby you, as already with the LADG [State anti-discrimination law], discredit as a whole the public employees of our city. In fact, there exists no basis for such a discrimination. Quite the opposite: For over 14 years, the general equal treatment law [AGG] also applies to the public services, which forbids, amongst other things, discrimination on account of ethnic origin and religion. On account of violations of the AGG, there has been in the last six years merely 36 complaints against the State of Berlin, of which so far just three complaints were successful – three complaints in relation to 123,000 employees in the public service. This number says it all: Of discrimination, there is not a trace. 

Frank-Christian Hansel (AfD): Right! 

Because a concrete discrimination cannot begin to be proven, as a supplement you take refuge in the generalization of a structural prejudice. Yet it is simply a clumsier error of reasoning to necessarily conclude a prejudice from a statistical under-representation. The real origins lie elsewhere, namely in a completely failed education and migration policy. Naturally, it is also the migrants who are those suffering from a decades-long failed SPD education policy. Yet nevertheless to say: We make such a miserable education policy that we now compensate with a migrant quota –, is, for all that, completely misguided. 

            Frank-Christian Hansel (AfD): Right! 

Who, with the best of will, admits people of a foreign culture and of far from educated classes, in a number not to be integrated, cannot seriously complain that these people find no employment in the public service. 

A new education and migration policy – that is the long-term and difficult and yet only way promising success; along which you do not want to walk, and instead lapse into a hollow symbol politics. 

            Stefanie Remlinger (Greens): As if you want to walk it! 

            Frank-Christian Hansel (AfD): We are doing it! 

            Stefanie Remlinger (Greens): Though you want to throw out all! 

In the direction of the Linke delegation, I say: Just for once implement your quotas for yourselves, before you fall upon the public service with that. 

When looking around me, I recognize in your regard exactly one member with a migration background. That is of 27 members a quota of less than 4 percent. Your delegation is biodeutsch, through and through. And you now present yourselves here and reproach the public service, that it discriminates, with its migrant of quota of 12 percent. 

Stefanie Remlinger (Greens): That is no reproach of discrimination in the administration! 

Here we have yet again: Leftist double morality pure. 

We know that in an election year primarily the Greens and Linke have migrant lobby groups breathing down their neck, those who have made it their life- and business-model to always and everywhere feel themselves to be discriminated against. The existence of these people cannot however now definitively be a reason for setting the entire public service on its head. 

I thus maintain: The Berlin Linke party and delegation are, measured by their own standard, a focal point of structural prejudice. The public service of our city is – particularly in Corona times – much too important for it to need bear the brunt as an experimental field for your even so absurd as unconstitutional quota experiments. 

The reproach that the hiring practice of the public service was discriminatory is false and is in its own way discriminatory. 

The origins of the statistical under-representation of migrants lie in a failed education and migration policy. We of the AfD stand for equal opportunity – Yes, exactly: For women, for migrants, for whomever, and we therefore directly reject any quotas rule. 

– Many thanks.   

[trans: tem]

 

 

           

 

 

 

 

           

Markus Frohnmaier, January 28, 2021, Supply Chain Law

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/206, pp. 26015-26016. 

Herr President. Ladies and gentlemen. 

The German economy suffers under your lockdown measures. The proposed November assistance has still not yet been paid to half the firms in need. Hundreds of thousands of citizens no more know how they shall pay accounts or rent. Parents toiling in a home office are at the same time tutor and teacher, and in my home of Baden-Württemberg, may not again leave the house after 8 pm. 

And as if all that were not enough, you still adhere to your supply chain law. You sell the supply chain law to the citizens as a good deed. The supply chain law – it must ever again be said to the people out there – is an attempt to request payment from a German business for what is produced not according to German standards in developing countries. In an extreme case, that means: If a Schwabish tradesman in Sindelfingen drives into cabinet a nail manufactured in China, and cannot demonstrate that the manufacture followed certain social and ecological standards, then in the future he may pay. The Federal government’s draft legislation states that penalties in the millions can then be due. 

Ladies and gentlemen, not only in Corona times would this be an unbearable imposition for many citizens. It is also completely ill-advised to privatize the making and enforcement of laws. We cannot expect German businesses to assume duties which are the inherent responsibility of governments and authorities everywhere on this Earth. You shift the competence of the state onto German business. Certainly by the larger firms, the supply chain, already in the second and third stage with its thousands of parts from suppliers and subcontractors, cannot be surveyed. Your law would pertain only to German firms. That would be in international comparison an absurd competitive disadvantage. We know, ja: You ever again present yourselves as advocate for the global south. In truth, for the sake of Marketing and Wellness, you destroy workplaces in these countries. When in the U.S.A. a kind of “supply chain law light”, the Dodd-Frank Act,  was introduced which foresaw a documentation obligation for conflict minerals in the Congo basins, the consequence was plainly not that the American firms had begun to uninterruptedly document the supply chain. No, they simply withdrew themselves from the developing countries. That costs workplaces, that damages developing countries and, in the end, China comes and buys up everything. 

If you are really concerned that people in developing countries will not be exploited, then there are in my opinion two clearly more reasonable charges: End the cooperation with highly corrupt governments and end your political correctness. Who today still seriously believes and ponders to thereby overcome the donor-recipient relationship, he has understood nothing. Do you actually believe that, outside your development assistance bubble, we can go to the local bank and say: “Dear banker, thus, with the credit we now make as equals, I now decide when the next re-payment is due”? That is just utterly absurd, ladies and gentlemen. That is just utterly contrary to reality. 

A donor always ties his assistance to conditions. That is correct, that is good, and that is primarily one thing: A self-evident fact, ladies and gentlemen. The supply chain law is a law for the plundering of the German economy and not one trade association has not critically monitored it. Yet you, again as always, know better. I therefore say to you quite clearly: Finally renounce this law, once and for all. 

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

Mariana Harder-Kühnel, January 28, 2021, Defense of Women and Children

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/206, pp. 25976-25978. 

Right honorable Frau President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen. 

We today occupy ourselves with three motions which shall defend women and children from disrespect, coercion and violence; from polygamy, child marriage and genital mutilation. 

Let us begin with the problematic of polygamy in Germany. As you know, in Islam men may take up to four wives. Such polygamous marriages are meanwhile widespread in Germany. Polygamy is nevertheless foreign to our legal order. It neglects the rights of the religiously married second and third wives. These have no claim to support and equalization of gains and no claim to inheritance. Most do not work, will be dealt with as “mother, single parent” and live on social benefits. That means that men who cannot support more than one wife in their native countries can do that in Germany. That ought not be. It occurs at the cost of the taxpayer. 

What do we want to do to oppose this? We first of all demand [Drucksache 19/22705] of the Federal government to ascertain the number of polygamous marriages in Germany. There are in fact estimates that 30 percent of the Arab men in Berlin have multiple wives, yet no one actually knows what that exactly is. There is no public survey for that. It is just not wanted to openly state the extent of the problem. 

As a further measure, the civil status law must be changed and the ban on religious prior weddings [Voraustrauung] be re-introduced. Earlier, one might only be religiously married if previously married by a civil office. Especially must culpability according to §172 of the StGB [criminal code], thus the ban on double marriages, also be extended to religious marriages. That will have the consequence that in the future only one, single religious marriage can take place after one, single civil marriage; for we still live in Germany and not in the Orient. With us, double, triple and quadruple marriages have nothing to lose, forced marriages even less so. 

The second motion [Drucksache 19/22706] includes the demand to the Federal government to finally effectively oppose child marriage. This for long has not been done. In 2017, a law to oppose child marriage did in fact come into force; it nevertheless for long remains ineffective. A study of the Terre de Femmes has shown that, in the first two years since the law’s coming into force, merely 813 cases will have been registered nationwide, and all of 10 child marriages were annulled. It is unbearable that, four years after this law’s coming into force, the factual number of child marriages is, as before, unknown. In some Federal States, statistics were not once conducted. 

The massive discrepancy between the numbers from Berlin and Bavaria shows how deficiently the practical implementation of the law will have been handled in the States. While in Berlin within one year only 3 child marriages were ascertained, in Bavaria in the same time frame 370 child marriages were registered. Here is plainly lacking any political will to enforce the law with the necessary consequence. For the minors concerned, that is a catastrophe. 

We therefore demand the nationwide statistical ascertainment of, among others, child marriage. The state must staff the advisory board so that they can identify those concerned and in fact help them. Ladies and gentlemen, each of us has in mind the marriage pictures of 70 year-old, bearded old men with 9 year-old little brides. Such alien cultural traditions may not be allowed to begin to gain a foothold here in this country. 

            Gökay Akbulut (Linke): That is your fantasies! That is your parallel world!

Child marriages are to be outlawed and opposed; for we still live in Germany and not in Afghanistan. 

A third motion [Drucksache 19/22704] is about the defense of women and children against genital mutilation. The number of female genital mutilations in the last three years explodes; it has increased by 44 percent. Almost 70,000 women are already affected and almost 15,000 girls acutely endangered. 

            Bernd Baumann (AfD): In Germany!

– In Germany. Female genital mutilation is a bestial abuse which in Germany is a crime under the law. Current abuses have been routinely undertaken amidst catastrophic hygiene conditions without anaesthetic, with shards of glass and razor blades. It is bestial, it is primitive, and it is most profoundly misogynist. Many of the little girls concerned die as a proximate consequence of the operations; yet for the survivors there also remains massive physical and spirtitual damages. We are experiencing Stone Age methods in the 21st Century. 

            Vice-president Claudia Roth: Please come to a conclusion.

A number of cases of female genital mutilation however unfortunately remain unrecognized and cannot be prosecuted according to criminal law. 

            Vice-president Claudia Roth: Please come to a conclusion.

We thus demand identification campaigns and prevention such as the introduction of a legal obligation to report. France already does this. Young girls must finally and consequentially be defended against such bestial traditions. 

            Vice-president Claudia Roth: Please come to a conclusion.

Anything like it has no place in Germany.

Many thanks. 

            Gökay Akbulut (Linke): You too have no place in Germany! 

 

[trans: tem]