Peter Boehringer, March 25, 2021, EU Debt

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/218, pp. 27481-27482.

Frau President. Honorable colleagues.

The draft law put forward is, in a negative sense, historic. It marks the last step to the illegal EU fiscal union which breaks all promises to the contrary since the 1990s. There was and is no legal basis for this EU indebtedness, moreover at so extreme a level.

            Alexander Lambsdorff (FDP): Read Article 122!

– We come to that as well. Herr Lambsdorff, you should read that. – According to its treaties, the EU is fundamentally forbidden to finance its expenditures with credit.

An additional business basis of the euro since Maastricht in 1992 was: Never a liability community! We now have this and even almost without limit: By taking up debts of a sum honestly reckoned at over 800 billion euros, with repayment until 2058, the assertion that this was nevertheless “limited” is a bad joke – and a break in the dam. Once this dam is broken, then will Brussels ever again take up giant “limited” specific sums at the cost of German solvency and grandiosely redistribute them.The no-bailout rule of Article 125 AEUV [Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union] has constitutional status. The European financial system is to be re-built as an illegal debts and transfer union.

“Next Generation EU” needs to be translated as “EU Debts for the Next Generations”. In this regard, the Constitutional Court already in 2012 accordingly stated: The Bundestag may approve no mechanism which terminates in an assumption of liability for the deliberate decisions [Willensentscheidungen] of other states. Yet Minister Scholz – and Herr Roth also was plainly of this opinion – sets this aside with the disarming, terse and yet constitutionally dubious sentence:

            It is the way to the fiscal union and it is a good way…

Legal, illegal, it’s all the same [völlig egal]: The street talk of the 68ers, negligent of the law, is today chiseled into marble above the Ministries.

At 800 billion euros, it is absurd when the government seriously maintains the budget integrity [hoheit] of future German Bundestags cannot be affected by a decision for one’s own means [Eigenmittel]. And this integrity, according to the Constitutional Court, is an inalienable, core asset [Bestand] of our national sovereignty.  

Here, it is not about Corona, it is about an alteration of the EU’s character into a highly budgeted state. A large portion of the reconstruction funds will be committed to purposes entirely other than the elimination of the consequences of Corona, and this is no secret. At Monday’s hearing, it was quite openly conceded by the experts that practically anything can be done with the money: The earmarking [Zweckbindung] of the expenditures for the elimination of the Corona consequences was in no way guaranteed, which would be compulsory for an emergency program according to Article 122 AEUV – Herr Lambsdorff, listen up!

            Christian Petry (SPD): In which hearing was that then? You also for once need to                    listen up in the hearing!

Herr Roth, the program is called Corona Construction Program. It is not about digitalization, but refers – as the name “Corona Construction Program” says – to the consequences of Corona. Only for that may this money be used. This however is not the case.

From CO₂ moon projects to the payment of the Italians’ debts, there are the wildest ideas for the Corona funds. And the Federal government still agrees to such ideas. No wonder, since it is quite openly discernible that even Germany itself wants and will commit over 80 percent of the Corona credits to non-Corona purposes. The appearance of an earmarking is no longer maintained. The 800 billion euros have long since been planned for throughout EUropa. Control mechanisms? Nil! In the hearing, the experts of the Greens made merry over the demand for national control and said national control simply might not apply.   

Besides, from the gifts of money only 28 billion euros flow back to Germany, although we pay out four times that and are liable for thirty times that. It is entirely absurd.

The Eigenmittel decision put forward leads us to an illegal situation of an EU state with its own mega-budget. Here, unequivocally, will be relinquished the ground of the free-democratic basic order.

Only states may take up debts because only states can also again pay them back out of future tax revenues. The EU however, according to the highest jurisdiction, is no state. According to the Lisbon judgment, it also may not become one without a referendum – and that would be a referendum on the surrender of German statehood. All of this is no trifle, but the abandonment of Germany’s ability to form itself as a democratic constitutional state.

Upon the issuing of this law, we will immediately submit a constitutional complaint. I call upon the Federal President not to sign this law.

Hearty thanks.

            Alexander Gauland (AfD): Bravo!

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alexander Gauland, March 25, 2021, Corona Crisis

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/218, p. 27447.

Herr President. Ladies and gentlemen.

It was a multi-colored potpourri of themes that the Chancellor wanted to set before us in what is actually a mono-thematic time. But then comes the day in which all became other. Yes, Frau Chancellor, you have apologized and taken responsibility for that.

Yet that, ladies and gentlemen, is only the half-truth. 16 Minister-presidents in a night session revealed how far distant they are from the opinions and feelings of those they govern.

Since, ladies and gentlemen, what they inflicted with this Easter lockdown would necessarily have struck at least one of them. I do not thereby entirely speak of the legal problems. Yet, at the latest since people may fly to Mallorca yet cannot drive to Scharbeutz, it must be clear which echo they let loose. That even the congregations are denied by them to the otherwise so tame churches, only yet again demonstrates how far they are from the people.

And now on all channels an improvement is promised. Yet an improvement must mean that you inform and participate with the Bundestag before and not after. You nevertheless do that when here you deliver a government declaration prior to a European Council – why thus not in regards decisions which quite directly intervene in the life of the people? What the eastern Mediterranean means to Europe – so was the announcement – is, previously by far and still afterwards, left to be communicated, ladies and gentlemen.

German policy for many years reliably follows one pattern: A wish will be formulated, an attempt made to in fact implement it, that it is not fulfilled is routinely confirmed, and then one is amazed and denigrates the critics. Frau Chancellor, the European policy also follows this pattern; on that account, it hurries from failure to failure. A European fiscal union is not in our interest – we are not the only ones who see this so – for it will be a debts union.

The EU is incapable of procuring vaccine and organizing the vaccination in member states; the former British Prime Minister Blair recently very wisely expounded on that. Why should the EU also be entrusted with the far more complex administration of European finances? The lesson of the Corona crisis signifies: Centralism is clumsy, inflexible and works chaotically. Decentralization is the order of the hour and this order refers to the national state, on which account the vaccination is functioning better in Great Britain, Israel and even in Russia.

It does lie in the German interest that first the citizens of this country be vaccinated, naturally on a voluntary basis. We reject every kind of forced vaccination, even the indirect. The Federal government is to concern itself with that and indeed not out of vaccine nationalism, as immediately runs a more foolish reproof, but out of the same self-awareness with which one thinks first of the health of his family, for the same reasons that the Bürgermeister of Kassel plainly must first concern himself with Kassel and not with Bielefeld. Joe Biden himself in regards vaccination immediately adhered to the motto of Donald Trump: “America First”. And that is right, ladies and gentlemen.

And in regards the Corona preventive measures, we will in the end again stand there and state that all the wishing has not helped. Let us slowly acquaint ourselves with the ideas that lockdowns produce little to nothing, intelligent hygiene concepts produce something, large events can be refused, yet that people lead a social life cannot be prevented.

There are presently put forward three international studies on the effectiveness of a lockdown on the lowering of the infection numbers. Not one comes to the conclusion that there has been a distinct, measurable effect. The epidemiologist John Ioannidis, a professor at Stanford, has evaluated the effects of lockdowns of various severity in 14 European countries and in the U.S.A. His conclusion: The preventive measures have affected the infection curve little or not at all. The curve in Sweden runs parallel to ours. That is to say, the dynamic of the pandemic evidently does not trim itself according to whether the public life is shut down or not.

Yet there are no studies on the collateral damages of the Corona preventive measures. These damages do not affect the economy alone. Isolation, deficiencies of contact and movement, lack of supervision, the continual togetherness of families – all of this damages the health of untold thousands of citizens. The effects upon the psyche, education and intelligence of children are massive.

The Bundestag should therefore set up a committee of inquiry to investigate these damages. Certainly in view of coming pandemics, we should know for what stakes we are playing. Since in the long run, ladies and gentlemen, the citizens plainly do not forgive a government which has done almost everything wrong. We could also learn from what has happened.

I am grateful.

 

 

[trans: tem]

 

Jörg Urban, March 3, 2021, Endless Lockdown

Saxon Landtag, Plenarprotokoll 7/24, pp. 1597-1599.

Right honorable Herr President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen members.

The AfD delegation has called together the Saxon Landtag for a special session so that this parliament of the Saxon State government be commissioned to end the lockdown of economy and education and the disempowerment of the citizens’ basic rights. This special session is necessary; for while the lockdown policy’s irreparable damages increase with each day, the Chancellor and the Minister-presidents this afternoon are consulting on an extension of the lockdown and in the Bundestag already on the day after tomorrow shall additional facts be created. The epidemic situation of national scope shall, without scientific basis, be perpetuated.

While the irreparable damages of the lockdown policy increase with each day, the criticism from economy, science and medicine becomes ever louder. These are your critics, Herr Kretschmer! It is not only the AfD politicians. Listen to the economy, to the science and to the medicine!

Already in the summer of last year, critical scientists had expressed doubt as to the sensibility of driving down public life and the economy. The Federal and State governments have ignored or excluded these voices. “Conspiracy theorists”, “Corona deniers”, “Covidiots” – these were the verbal instruments to bring the critics to silence.

Meanwhile, statistical data are however put forward which verify the sceptics and make clear how false was your policy of the past months.

First, adjusted to the demography, that is, in view of the increasing aging of our society, there is in Germany in 2020 no excess rate of mortality.

That Saxony is an abject exception needs to be ascribed to you and your policy. The so-called Corona pandemic has led to no increase at all in the rate of fatalities except in poorly led Federal states.

Second, according to the German Hospital Society – a quite populist association – at no time was there a real overburdening of the intensive care capacities, even if that was specifically the case in some clinics. The comparison with countries with or without a hard lockdown – Sweden and Switzerland, which like us have a similarly over-aged society, various U.S. states – indicates no conspicuous distinction in regards the numbers of deaths and in regards the hospitals’ utilization of capacity. States without a hard lockdown, which had concentrated on the strengthened protection of at-risk groups, have come through the Corona year better than Germany.

The decision to fight Corona with prohibitions was a political one. Other countries have sought other ways. Every week now are new studies published which show: Your Corona preventive measures, your occupation bans, your events prohibitions, your visiting and going-out bans, were at no time necessary and had no significant influence on the occurrences of infection. They have caused only damages.

The restrictive attitude of the Federal government and of the State governments at the beginning of the Corona epidemic is excusable; no one conclusively knew how hazardous to health or indeed how deadly the virus is. Yet today, in view of the receding infection numbers – which have nothing to do with your prohibitions, Herr Kretschmer – in view of the worldwide receding infection numbers, the ever decreasing utilization of intensive care, in view of the part-time employment in non-utilized hospitals, your policy is just irresponsible.  

If the destruction of occupational livelihoods, the destruction of schooling, the destruction of the psychic health of many citizens, are apposite to no clearly acknowledgable uses, then the question must be put: What is the purpose of your obstinate maintenance of the prohibitions? Is it so difficult to say: We have overestimated Corona? Or: The Swedish way was the better? Is that so difficult? Or is it still only about the face-saving of the politicians responsible for this disaster?

If it is only about the political result, I say: Proceed just so! Make the AfD the lone voice of reason which takes seriously the care of the economy and of the citizens. Yet here it is not about the success of the AfD. Here it is about the future of our children and grandchildren. It is about the future of our healthcare system and about the rapid as possible reconstruction of bürgerlichen basic rights.

We therefore urge a rapid end to the state of exception and therefore the Saxon Landtag comes together here today in special session. Here and today, it is about averting further damages from our State.

Meanwhile, the medical profession quite openly criticizes the negative effects of your Corona policy: Depression and suicide of older people due to job loss, due to a lack of social contacts and through loneliness; increasing numbers of deaths due to spreading heart attacks, seizures, cases of cancer recognized too late; and increasing cases of domestic violence, primarily against children. Already in the past year have pediatricians presented a clear increase in such cases. Meanwhile, around 70% of doctors report of Corona-conditioned traumas amongst youths.

We therefore demand: A situation in which schools and day-care facilities are closed for weeks and months may no longer be in Saxony, not only for the people’s health but also for the Saxon economy. The consequences of your Corona policy, driven by the gavel, are meanwhile catastrophic. The German Retail Federation warned in January that six of ten businesses in the hotel and lodgings industry stand before insolvency. With the extension of the lockdown over Easter announced by Herr Kretschmer, the prospects for these businesses could not have been improved.

The payment of the pretentiously announced Corona assistance proceeds so sluggishly that many companies and businessmen still today await the November assistance. We therefore demand with our motion [Drucksache 7/5673] today that Corona-conditioned economic aid meanwhile finally be paid, automatically and without delays. The unemployment amongst youths and young adults has increased about 22% due to your Corona policy. Since November, Saxon businesses have reported 150,000 cases of part-time work for employees. These are people who are not allowed to work and whose pay replacement by the state is financed for months by tax money and debts. These are people who no longer can pay back a portion of their credits, who have been forced into poverty, who do not know whether their company after Corona will still continue at all to work.

Who actually pays for the indirect damages to the economy of your Corona policy, for the lack of work due to quarantines – even for employees without symptoms – and the lack of work for mothers and fathers who must care for their children at home? How many orders are lost to firms because the supply chains have been broken or because personal contact with business partners or with customers has been severely restricted? Each further week of your lockdown policy causes economic damages to a sum of 3.5 billion euros. This nonsense must be most quickly ended.

As the most important yet false instrument of your Corona policy, you have chosen the so-called incidence value. This value meanwhile is under massive criticism from medical and scientific experts and the WHO. All public health doctors in Berlin just recently declared that the incidence value does not portray the real occurrence of infection. Have the public health doctors suddenly become Corona deniers? –Surely not.

The incidence value is the number of positive PCR tests per 100,000 persons. It includes infected persons yet also such as those for whom only fragments of virus have been detectable and it also includes false positive tests of persons completely free of the virus. The incidence value is not suitable for describing the occurrence of infection and it is exactly so little suitable to make prognoses on the utilization of intensive care.

With our motion we want that in the future the evaluation of the Corona situation be oriented to reliable criteria. Thus, as meanwhile demanded by many doctors and scientists, this should in medical practice be, first, the utilization of intensive care situations and, second, the number of patients with viral infections.

In addition, we demand that all possibilities be exhausted for the improvement of the protection of at-risk groups: Better financing of care-giving, required taxi fares for the ÖPNV [public transport] tariff, free rapid tests in all relevant areas as well as free postal delivery of masks for these persons. When this is implemented, then can the CDU also save itself minutes of silence for the victims of your health policy. Then is also possible an immediate end to all restrictions of freedom and a return to normality.

Right honorable ladies and gentlemen of the governing parties. Right honorable ministers of the Saxon State government. In the last twelve months you have lost much of the citizens’ trust; be it by unkept promises or “with today’s knowledge, no more retail trade would be closed” – Herr Spahn – be it by means of ignoring ones own proscriptions – Frau Köpping and Herr Kretschmer – be it due to the meanwhile broken promises that there would be no direct or indirect compulsory vaccination, notably for a new vaccine, the duration and compatibility of which are still not known.

Today, with this special session, you have the opportunity to recover a portion of the citizens’ trust. Let us in common end the months-long standstill! Let us again have a social, economic and cultural life! Let us in common create the parameters which make our healthcare system fit, not only for Corona but also for similar, future stressful situations. Vote for our motion. Don’t do it for us, do it for the welfare of our State and its people.

Many thanks.

 

[trans: tem]