Tobias Rausch, March 11, 2021, Broadcasting Contribution

Sachsen-Anhalt Landtag, Plenarprotokoll 7/21, p. 24.

Right honorable Frau President. Right honorable colleague members.

Today we discuss the presented motions. Herr Sturm has directly pursued this. Each will still have in memory the discussions concerning the broadcasting contribution [Rundfunkbeiträge]; they were conducted with much controversy in the last December plenary session and in the preceding half year. There were therein discussions on the increased salaries of the directors, on non-scale payment and other various things. At that time, the SPD, Greens and Linke expressed themselves in the feature pages as being in favor of an increase of the broadcasting contribution. The CDU was of the opinion that the contribution should be kept stable; since – as Herr Kurze always so nicely says it – stable means stable. There were discussions to this extent.  

We have made clear that with us there will be no increase; for we want the Grundfunk and not the Rundfunk.

We want that the companies and independents need not continue to pay this compulsory charge. We primarily want that a reformation takes place, that it be narrowed and that one pays only for what one consumes and uses. We want to concern ourselves with these questions in connection with the next State contract. These are meanwhile put forward, namely in the MDR [Mitteldesutscher Rundfunk] State contract, which is about diverse things. We have held hearings on this and much was discussed. The hearing actually yielded that this State contract should not be agreed to because there were discrepancies therein. This is to be pursued but it would go beyond the area of the daily order’s topics.

It remains to be stated that the opinion in committee is emphatic to declare for the discharge of this motion of the Linke as well as of the AfD delegation’s motion, that is, of my delegation. The aim of our motion [Drucksache 7/6987] , that there is to be no increase, has been successfully implemented. On that, the parliament to be sure passed no resolution because the CDU has shirked from – what? Na ja – and Herr Minister-president Haseloff again had quasi withdrawn the draft. I think that is still not to be in Sachsen-Anhalt. This is a small success for us.

In principle I do not want to make it too long. There remains to say: In the mid-term, we for once attained that there is no increase. We will now await what the Administrative Court says. The public law institutions will initially continue to observe their duties; that was announced in the first decision. That must now be decided on. When that has been decided on, then we will likely discuss it in a similar context. We are eager for that. We will self-evidently vote for the resolution recommendation. – In this sense, I end my speech.

 

[trans: tem]

 

Marc Bernhard, March 5, 2021, CO2 Tax

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/216, p. 27308.

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen.

The illogic of red-green policy once again manifests itself in all its distinctiveness in both of your motions. You first let your Fridays for Future advance organization demonstrate for months for a CO₂ tax, and obligingly you have then also naturally introduced this CO₂ tax of the Federal government.

Despite your protests, Herr Beutin, it persists: For you of the Linke and the Greens, the CO₂ tax cannot be high enough. Instead of the now introduced 25 euros per ton, you actually want 180 euros! That you should please for once say to the voters out there.

Now you suddenly ascertain – and what a surprise – that the climate hysteria fired up by you quite simply can no more be paid for by many people. Ja, damn it all, whether the citizens can afford a tax or not needs to be considered before the introduction of the tax, and one may not out of ideological delusion rip off the citizens with one duty after another without regard for the loss.

Since January 1 alone, you take in an additional 6 euros in tax for every full tank.

            Klaus Mindrup (SPD): Not a tax!

The CO₂ tax will be more than doubled by the year 2025. With the 180 euros demanded by you, it would then even be 35 euros for every full tank.

Yet that is only the tip of the iceberg. The effects of your measures upon housing costs are much worse. By means of your rip off package, heating costs increase about 20 percent and the renters’ union is figuring on an additional rent increase of 200 euros per month for an average household.

All of this was known before you introduced these burdens and now you of the Greens and the Linke want to conceal this government bungling with your motions – what I name really a service opposition, right honorable ladies and gentlemen.

Have you even once thought through which effects it would have if your motions would actually be decided on? The great majority of landlords are of course small landlords. Of an average age of 60 years, who with the rent improve their pensions. With your motions, you now want that these pensioners must pay the CO₂ tax with their rents, without that having influence on the renters’ heating condition or to be able to expect that the additional burden owing to the CO₂ tax could decline.

Model calculations show quite clearly and distinctly that a typical required investment of 40,000 euros for insulation and heating comes to a savings in heating costs of exactly 800 euros per year. The amortization thus lasts 50 years,

            Timon Gremmels (SPD): Such rubbish!

and that is only if the entire savings in heating costs was taken as a basis.

            Timon Gremmels (SPD): What, is that too complex for you?

Mark well: the average small landlord would then already be 110 years old, and your motion alters nothing of these facts.

            Timon Gremmels (SPD): Milkmaid math!

The climate package and the CO₂ tax included therein is and remains what the Federal Audit Authority since already a year has ascertained: Unfair and unsozial. It therefore must immediately be abolished.

 

 [trans: tem]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tobias Peterka, March 5, 2021, Consumer Loans

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/215, p. 27182.

Generally in the first instance, we are sceptical in regards guidelines from Brussels. This is meanwhile simply a matter of experience. That these as a requirement are less decisive than are the EU’s decrees, yields for us in Germany mighty little; since by means of the so-called gold-plating, that is, the excess fulfillment of requirements, we as a rule happily restrict ourselves to above what is due.

In regards the previous implementation of the consumer credit guidelines presently here in focus, the legislature however wants, exceptionally for once, to save itself, and perhaps even the consumer, a little work. Information concerning consumer loans can of course in reality assume a volume which in the best case will be filed away by the borrower, yet is scarcely read through. The so-called cascade reproof in the law should really save text and paper. It is, according to a decision of March of last year of the EuGH [European Court of Justice], inadmissible.

The clarity of the information in my opinion also speaks to that. Not every citizen gladly reads in the evening over a glass of wine or a cup of coffee prohibition boxes in the legal formulation conveyed by the EU. Here, the first judgment’s implementation, so far as the the EuGH  is authoritative for us, is clearly to be agreed to.

The tradition of model [mustergültigen] information surrounding consumer law, and thus this appendix with models, is to be expressly welcomed; a possible European legal cancellation is to be rejected.

The questions of state liability or a new basis for restitution according to the ZPO [code of civil procedure] will certainly not be taken up here by the Federal government. Yet this is always fungible: Every kowtow before the EuGH which is not made, is good exercise for strengthening the backbone.

            Stefan Schmidt (Greens): Hui!

Furthermore, as is known, a judgment from 2019 should be implemented to explicitly extend to special costs not dependent on term within §501 of the BGB [civil code] – to the benefit of consumers, at least in regards to previous repayment. Clearly, the banks and the savings banks are shooting at this regulation. They want a limitation to the so-called costs directly connected to the issue of the loans.

I also find it at least interesting that the Ministry has certainly not packed up all comments on this on its home page. There, of course, banks and savings banks bring up the example that a borrower’s building insurance must be repaid by one-third as a contractual obligation of the bank; thus, around the corner if occasion arises, proportionally. Admittedly, this would be questionable. The insurance coverage is on an entirely different level of performance and has already furnished an objective use to the borrower.

Otherwise, one formulation of §501 would have been, in my opinion, more clear; the Federal government in regards the factual circumstance for a revocation instruction, has retreated…Yet consistency is perhaps too much to ask for in the simultaneous implementation of two equivalent judgments.

For all that, a differentiated development of the law in connection with a new §501 of the BGB can then certainly be relied upon. German courts of course can clearly do that better than the EuGH. Absolutely illogical costs, the quasi-contract, and thus combined contracts, would be feigned – as in the aforementioned example – and ought then be refused by means of case law [Rechtsprechung]. Clarity as a service performance: This is apparently necessary.

Many thanks.

 

[trans: tem]