Sebastian Münzenmaier, April 16, 2021, Travel Insurance and Insolvency

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/222, pp. 28165-28166. 

Right honorable Herr President. Ladies and gentlemen.

According to applicable law, insolvency insurers, who offer and provide package tour insolvency protection, can limit liability to 110 million euros per fiscal year. We all know that this regulation was relevant in September and October of 2019 when the German affiliates of Thomas Cook moved to open insolvency proceedings and the liability for that ultimately provided that the taxpayer need answer for a sum of approximately 160 million euros. For this reason is it already long urgently necessary that finally a new draft law be put forward and we expressly welcome that the Federal government now finally follows up.

We in the Tourism Committee, in good time and, before all, across delegations, had demanded a new regulation and had already debated on the draft presented, and in that regard conversed with many experts. I therefore find it quite particularly unfortunate that the Federal government plain and simple tossed to the wind the relevant information and suggestions of the industry representatives and of many experts.

The federal association of the mittlestandische economy indicated in its comments thereto that, with a giving of security of 7 percent of turnover and a remuneration of 1 percent of turnover, many firms in the future must pay twice as high a contribution to the travel insurance fund as previously was to be paid for the insolvency insurance. With the new regulation, the strived-for improvement of the insolvency insurance for customers of the larger travel firms could thereby lead to an increased cost for small and mid-sized travel firms.

The international bus tours association, the RBA, sees it similarly and in its comments for the draft papers spoke of the accident risks of large international concerns which, by means of the mechanisms of the travel insurance fund, would in fact be shifted onto the mittlestandische and, before all, family-led travel firms. With this draft are thus once again the small and mittlestandische firms encumbered and their considerations ignored. These proceedings would even in normal times be feeble of the Federal government, yet in one of the greatest crises of the tourism industry, in which many diligent businessmen and employees are plain and simple at an end, the government’s behavior is a scandal, ladies and gentlemen.

I would have gladly spoken personally with Herr State Secretary Bareiss – he at least is the Federal government’s tourism commissioner – yet he once again is not here.

            Paul Lehrieder (CDU/CSU): He is here! He is sitting in the back!

It may be, he sits somewhere in the back. – Ach, Herr Bareiss, I greet you! You after all know the situation of the branch. It is your duty that the Federal government stands up for those in the tourism industry. Perhaps today you take an extra backward place, because you no longer fight at the front, Herr Bareiss.

            Volker Ullrich (CDU/CSU): That is an awful thing to say!

– Yes, but apparently on point. Since Herr Bareiss is part of the government and should himself stand up for the government, but apparently he does not ordinarily do that.

Let us come back to the draft law. The apportion limit of 3 million euros of turnover, under which there is the possibility to separate oneself from the compulsory membership in the fund and in another way insure oneself, is held by many experts to clearly have impinged too deeply. We should finally for once discuss whether we could not raise that 10 to 15 million euros.

Yet it truly lies in the rush, and the many open questions, and, before all, the ignoring of the experts’ complaints, that the Federal government for very long has done nothing and now suddenly takes note that urgent action is needed because otherwise by the end of the year we may have a giant problem.

In many other places is indicated that the draft law has been knit with the hot needle and shall now be quick whipped through the parliament. The GmbH [limited liability company] which shall manage the fund remains vague. No one know quite exactly how the arrangement of details will function. Has then the ominous adviser some possibility of influence or will one or another figurehead be installed there, who only advises and in the end costs money? How does the BMJV [justice ministry], for instance the Federal Office for Justice, actually undertake the supervision? And, before all: How so is it figured in the draft that, with only half a position, the supervision of a fund with 750 million euros shall be conducted? And here I am very anxious as to how you will explain this disproportion to us in the further consultations.

On the whole, you see, ladies and gentlemen: The draft leaves open important questions, ignores essential complaints of the tourism people concerned and appears to me to be not yet fully thought through. I am therefore glad of further consultations in committee and hope that in the future you let sensible suggestions influence your work.

I thank you for your attention.

 

[trans: tem]

 

Alexander Gauland, April 21, 2021, Infection Defense Law

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/223, pp. 28212-28213.

Herr President. Ladies and gentlemen.

I do not imagine to alter with a speech the majority for this law in this house. And if up to now I had a doubt of it, Herr Brinkhaus’s speech has made clear to me that those governing are not ready in any way to reconsider. It is bound to be, Herr Brinkhaus, the will of those governing to fight the pandemic with useless means, than that objections of the opposition, which come not only from us, be able to still stop your attack on the rights of freedom, on federalism, as well as on a healthy human understanding.

When colleague Brinkhaus, as occurred on Friday, designates the counter-arguments of colleague Lindner as “Political profiling at the cost of the sick and the dead”, any objective discussion is at an end and moralization takes the place of politics, Herr Brinkhaus. Please remember yourself.

You are stuck in your trenches and accuse the opposition of destruction. Yet this destruction proceeds from those who have failed at the vaccine procurement, who take their multilateral Europa ideology to be more important than the defense of the life of the many who had trusted in the Chancellor’s oath to avert harm from this people, Frau Chancellor.

Instead of procuring vaccine, wherever there is some to procure, regardless of the associated geopolitical condemnations – thereby staff doctors, house doctors, and whoever is in the position to vaccinate patients –, for the first time in the history of the Federal Republic, you want to restrict the basic law’s rights of freedom.  

No, that is not rubbish! That is fact! – And instead of making possible as much movement as possible in the fresh air, as immunologists and aerosol researchers recommend, public life will be halted on the basis of an incidence which at any time is liable to be manipulated.

What you from the beginning have neglected shall now set up restrictions at the cost of the people. What that means in collateral damages for the society, my colleague Weidel has presented at the introduction of this law. It only remains to me to caution that here an experiment is being tried out which many hope can be repeated at other opportunities. When the Chancellor states that the virus is not to be negotiated, so will we soon hear that the climate is not to be negotiated and today’s restrictions are also of value for the beautiful, new world of tomorrow.

Ladies and gentlemen, the publicist Heribert Prantl – God knows, no friend of the AfD – says he fears that the current restrictions of the basic rights will be made use of as a blueprint for the next virus, for the next case of catastrophe. Since where there can be no negotiating, there is only one language of determination. It is always ultimately about the whole; about the world health, the world climate, even the survival of mankind. Then one can finally stop discussing social goals and the political ways there in the parliaments, in public, and instead similarly proceed to an act in which you take part with this law.

Basically, in almost any area of politics are allowed to be laid down incidences, quotas or target values, the attaining of which make necessary determined and before all non-negotiable preventive measures. We meet again the climate policy.

In the place of the tedious formation of political intent on the small scale, enters the objective necessity of determinative action on the grand scale. And the outmoded separation of government and opposition transforms into the sharp conflict of the reasonable and the quarrelsome. You cannot make out half the people to be the quarrelsome, ladies and gentlemen.

Yet precisely this –  the restriction of our basic rights based as always on lofty political aims – we no longer want to allow after the experiences of two dictatorships in German history.

Ladies and gentlemen, the basic rights are the citizens’ defense against the state. The state always encroaches; that is its nature. On that account, basic rights are not – still not! – under proviso of pandemic or climate.

Barbara Hendricks (SPD): Yet freedom of the press is restricted by the Querdenker, not by the state!

I hope that it remains so. If I perceive your argumentation, I know that it will not remain so. Therefore this law breaks a taboo when you have sought to file down the point of the poison fang a little, and to not quite leave the Bundestag on the outside.

Ladies and gentlemen, the burdening and over-burdening of the healthcare system would be a more correct standard of political management than the only ostensibly objective incidence. Nevertheless: As to the question of in which order we want to live, it is of as little value as the magical number of 100, 165 or 200 of your law – on that account, we reject that law.

And, Herr Brinkhaus, this is a political statement. With the word “mug” [„Fratze“], you have uncovered yourself. When such debates are conducted as you conduct them, it has nothing more to do with politics. It is only moral frippery.

            Alice Weidel (AfD): Right!

I am grateful.

            Claudia Roth (Greens-Augsburg): Mask!

 

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

Christian Wirth, April 15, 2021, Foreigner Central Registry

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/221, pp. 28070-28071.

Herr President. Worthy colleagues.

I am an optimistic man

            Marc Henrichmann (CDU/CSU): What? But this is new! Optimism?

and quite gladly begin with a bit of praise – even for the Federal government; I am happy when even the Federal government learns – on the whole, this law is not bad at security.

Unfortunately, it has been much too long at the learning. The massive forms of social and asylum fraud which overburden our public accounts and immigration system were already for long recognized as, in the year 2015, our borders were overrun. You have just now arrived at the innovative idea that authority X and authority Y, which have to do with the same person, should draw on the same store of data. It gladdens us that you too have recognized that here you could have worked not only more efficiently, but also the massive fraud with multiple identities could be fought. “Could”, but just; since your entire bombastic plan of data centralization depends on one word: “can”.

I cite §8a: “The registry authority can arrange reconciliation in automatic form” – and this naturally only in regards a concrete suspicion. Ja, yet exactly such an automatic data reconciliation would of course be generally appropriate to initially establish a case of suspicion. It is thus all the same whether someone of fraudulent intent is registered in four different Federal States or whether someone by assuming a name – perhaps an Arabic one – has made a typing error. A regular automatic data reconciliation on a purely machine level, in regards which the compared data will again immediately be deleted after the proceeding, must here actually be self-evident and would be fungible per data protection law.

This discretionary provision saps a quite crucial purpose of the law. Certainly if §8a remains as you want it, you play into the hands of all NGOs, trafficker bands and still worse, who have made it their job to make it possible for fraudsters to attain much tax money.

Consultations in regards the assertion of grounds for asylum, for the delaying of processes and for the prevention of deportations, would at least become more difficult if all of these preventive measures had the often decisive, best as possible documentary store as a basis.  

In regards all of this precaution, it is naturally asked why you reckoned to make freely disposable something as sensible as the basis of asylum within this system. In the matter of an asylum decision, what most interests the authorities is simply whether asylum was warranted or not. Asylum for one reason is not less worthy than that for another reason.

Thanks to a short-sighted policy which makes possible the hauling service in the Mediterranean and the waving through to the border, in our country those truly in need of protection routinely meet their torturers and persecutors. To this also belongs the persecution in our country for religious or personal reasons which makes those affected at a minimum less welcome among other refugees from the same country; for example, a Christian belief or homosexuality.

The bases of asylum should be stored centrally, but with a special hurdle for data recall which will be discharged granted a concrete suspicion. This would do this law good and make the proceedings more secure – for all participants.

Many thanks.

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

Wolfgang Wiehle, April 15, 2021, Railroad Policy

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/221, pp. 27945-27946.

Right honorable Frau President. Colleagues.

“The railroad will get it right” [„Die Bahn soll’s richten”], that is the homely title of this debate. In an over-bidding competition of self-praise and wish-what-you-will talk, the AfD will nevertheless not participate.

            Detlef Müller (SPD-Chemnitz): You have no plan!

We know that the Bahn is good if it is about large transportation quantities or urban connections. The AfD however energetically rejects all ideas of a planned economy transportation transformation which will take mobility from very many people, because primarily for them it makes driving a car unaffordable.

It is right to boldly haul the Bahn into the 21st Century with digitalization and a good infrastructure. It will however not replace but can only supplement road transportation. Here, you are right, Herr Minister Scheuer, when you presume the AfD to be the last realists who recognize the significance of road transportation. Where the Bahn makes a good offer, the people will gladly transfer. A political compulsion hereto, the AfD rejects with complete distinction.

The coalition dishes up to us a celebratory motion for immediate approval. Thus you, with the majority in this house, want to greet all that you in any case exactly do and to demand of the government all that it in any case exactly plans. Not that all of this would be completely false, but its reach is plainly much too short. For example, there lacks any perspective of how the business structure of the German Bahn shall be reformed. Here, the immediate approval is only consistent, since the substance is simply lacking for a consultation in the committees.

In opposition to this fair weather motion, we of the AfD are occupying ourselves literally with how just for once the Bahn can be made weather-proof. Customers will only trust the Bahn when it really runs reliably. Thus the disaster of winter’s impact in February may not be repeated.

Naturally can the winter become so harsh that all trains no more run. Yet it may not from the outset simply be that important stretches of the Bahn will for days not be cleared, with all consequences for transportation of persons and goods. Therefore the AfD demands a very high priority for the availability of the railway infrastructure and penalties if this is not met.

Where the coalition speaks of “ambitious climate protection goals”, the Greens in their motion throw in a shovel and demand with these same words an “ambitious implementation”.

            Matthias Gastel (Greens): Ach! Unbelievable!           

            Steffi Lemke (Greens): Madness!

For the Deutschlandtakt you demand the state economy, even for long-distance transportation. And to your ideological control of transportation is added: Increase of the trucking fee, price increases for diesel fuels, massive cuts in the roads infrastructure and much more.

That also goes for travel if in any case this party takes part in the next Federal government. I say this quite clearly from the side of the AfD, since we are truly the only ones who have no coalition plans with the Greens for the time after the Bundestag election.

            Steffi Lemke ( Greens): That would also not be tolerated by us!

The FDP motion which today is up for approval, in regards Bahn reform, construction and infrastructure availability, goes in the right direction and also meets with the approval of the AfD delegation.

The Bahn is no cure-all. But with digitalization and a targeted construction of its strengths, it is the right alternative for many. Then by free decision it will be gladly used. The AfD aims at exactly that.

           Steffi Lemke ( Greens): You may be surprised. Absolutely no one wants a                               coalition with you.

 

[trans: tem]