Marc Bernhard, June 24, 2021, CO2 and Economy

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/236, p. 30719.

Herr President. Ladies and gentlemen.

In my first speech in the German Bundestag on November 21, 2021, there was a concern that ever more steel firms and other businesses need to shift their production to foreign countries because it becomes ever more difficult to produce competitively in Germany. In their motion, the SPD then demanded the securing of workplaces in Germany.  

Here it is almost four years – four years in which you of the SPD have co-governed. And what have you in fact done to prevent the shifting of workplaces to foreign countries? You have introduced a CO₂ tax, since which the benzine prices have climbed 40 cents per liter. You have taken care that we in Germany have the world’s highest electricity prices. You have instituted an agitation hunt [Hetzjagd] of German lead technologies which in the end has led to bans on diesel transport.

            Gabriele Katzmarek (SPD): That is just stupidity! Cheap populism!

With the enforcement of the dirtiest type of drive, namely the battery auto, you have thereby directly annihilated every second workplace in the automobile industry. Due to your climate law, the cost for an average dwelling will climb around 200 euros per month in the coming years. You thus in fact have done all that is humanly possible to destroy the competitiveness of our country.

With the Green Deal, you set the crown on the whole. You want unilaterally as one nation – ostensibly – to save the world and for that have undersigned a climate agreement in Paris which permits all rising and developing countries – like China and India, which together emit more than 65 percent of man-made CO₂ – to further raise without any limit their CO₂ output until 2030, while we – with a portion of just 1.8 percent of worldwide CO₂ emissions – shall further reduce our output around 50 percent by 2030.

To what that leads, every kindergarten child now understands: The production centers in Germany will be serially closed, the co-workers let go. In China, the production newly opens, with co-workers who cost one-fourth. The final result is that, there, exactly as much CO₂ – or even much more – will be blown into the air.

Many businesses display exactly this approach; for example, Daimler and BMW. They have already announced to no more produce in the future their engines in Germany, but in England or China.

In four years in government, you have achieved nothing other than to continue to rip off the citizens and so have taken care that ever more workplaces will be abolished and shifted to foreign countries. You have given away hundreds of millions of euros in foreign countries and issued driving bans. You have thereby taken care that our competitors in the world market, like China, laugh over us.

If the rest of the world, according to your own climate agreement, still has ten years before these countries need to restrict their CO₂ output, then we should take these ten years and use them to invest in new technologies like synthetic fuels and new power plants, instead of destroying our children’s future in a blind climate hysteria.

Many thanks.

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

Götz Frömming, June 24, 2021, Employment in the Universities

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/236, pp. 30624-30625.

Right honorable Frau President. Right honorable Frau Minister. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen.

Frau Minister Karliczek, I am grateful to you that you have brought more reality to the debate; to be in opposition does not mean to be on principle opposed. We are opposed if we hold something to be false, and I must admit: I have been able to gather in your speech more of what is right than in the speech of colleague Gohlke.

Let us come to the matter. The law on scholarly fixed-term contracts [Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz], ladies and gentlemen, regulates the terms of employment contracts for scientific and artistic personnel in the post-secondary schools and research institutes. It should especially take into account the particularities of the academic world of work. For example, doctoral candidates in the time in which they prepare their doctoral work should naturally have the free time required for that. Unfortunately, many doctoral candidates will be exploited by their professors; that however is a problem which cannot be regulated by Federal law. We presently have in the States 16 distinct constructs of the regulation. They in part are not sufficiently in agreement with the law of scholarly fixed-term contracts – some even contradict it.  

Ladies and gentlemen, to the truth however also belongs that the high number of fixed-terms therein lies that the universities in recent years have been enormously inflated by politically false course settings and have become mass production plants. During these processes, the number of scientific co-workers alone grew over-proportionately in relation to the number of professors; from 2004 to 2018, from 2,900 to 14,300, thus almost a quintupling in 14 years. In the year 2000, the portion of fixed-terms – it now becomes interesting if we look at the States – was in Bremen with 87 percent the highest, and in Sachsen-Anhalt with 56 percent the lowest. Bremen is for years, as is known, governed by rather leftist parties, Sachsen-Anhalt by rather conservative. Ladies and gentlemen of the leftist coalition, here just for once you need to sweep your own front door before you here demand such current affairs hours.

Ladies and gentlemen, in our opinion the Linke view the problem one-sidedly and from nearly a trades union perspective. We think other perspectives need to be considered; for example, the perspective of the college rectors who, as is known, see the problem quite otherwise. I recall the so-called Bayreuth Declaration.

Ladies and gentlemen, dear colleagues of the Linke, I prophesy to you: If the possibility of a fixed-term were so restricted as you want it, then many who today are still employed at term would in the future no longer be employed at all. That cannot be the wish of our future scientists.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Linke in addition – you have not said it, Frau Gohlke, but I have inferred it from one of your motions – want to abolish stipends, and for that institute long-term positions. Here also I ask myself whether that is in fact a proposal with which our students would strike an agreement. I scarcely believe so.

Let me briefly cite the Vice-president of the college rectors conference, Kerstin Krieglstein. She said quite correctly: “If a project runs only five years, no lifetime position can be offered.” She is the rector of the University of Freiburg. Naturally she is right.

            Ralph Lenkert (Linke): Every industrial plant can do it!

When external funds run only for an agreed time, you can from that make no long-term position. And to understand that suffices the small multiplication table; but you perhaps are not yet as far as that.

Ladies and gentlemen, the vernacular says correctly: “Teaching years are not master years”, and that also pertains to the university. Therefore, qualifying positions can be no long-term positions. The term is here sensible and necessary so as to make possible a qualifying for subsequent generations of students. I want however to say where you are right: We of the AfD also for long already demand that the basic financing be strengthened, perhaps also admitting external funds which still today flow through the DFG [German Research Foundation]. We require a strengthening of the basic financing. We also require a solid Mittelbau [non-professional teaching staff] at the universities. These however are not the qualifying positions. These are for example – earlier, we had many more of them – academic lecturers, senior lecturers, directors, etc., those who naturally can give introductory courses, language courses, perhaps just as well or even better than the professors. This Mittelbau self-evidently needs to be strengthened. Here, we quite go along with you, if you then in this place want to.

Ladies and gentlemen, let me say in closing that the entire problem pertains in common to Bund and States.It is an illusion to delude the citizens or your audience members in the universities that the Bund alone could regulate something. We can only do this in common. Your motion, your proposals hitherto presented, are to that extent populist. Disarm yourselves a bit.

Many thanks.

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

 

 

Joana Cotar, June 25, 2021, Digital Policy

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/237, pp. 30884-30885.

Herr President. Valued colleagues.

Four years of digital policy now lie behind us, or what the Federal government has held to be digital policy. Time to draw up a balance. Where stands digital Germany after an additional four years of the Grand Coalition?

Let us initially give the scientific council at the Ministry for the Economy a chance to speak, thus your own house, valued government. In its opinion commissioned by Herr Altmaier, it comes to the conclusion – I quote:

In regards construction of the digital infrastructure, as well as in regards investment [Einsatz] in digital technologies and services, Germany has fallen behind many other OECD states.

We have not even been able to hold onto our modest norm. We have fallen back. And no evil opposition party certifies that to you, your own house certifies that to you, valued government. A shameful failure in digital policy. Setzen, sechs [To the back of the class], ladies and gentlemen!

What absurd promises have we heard! In every government declaration of Frau Merkel was especial attention given to digital policy.  No wonder, therein lies the future, it determines our country’s ability to compete. Yet no acts have followed the words.

Let us look for once at some facts:

According to the Federal network agency, 14 percent of German households presently have at their disposal a fibreglass connection. It is on average in the EU more than double as many, namely 33.5 percent, in Latvia 90 percent.

Scheurer’s newly founded “dead zone office” [Funklochamt] which shall concern itself with area-wide mobile phone coverage in Germany has, with the exception of two managers, still not a single co-worker. The dead zones thus, for the present, remain.

In the IMD [Institute for Management Development] ranking of countries most able to compete in digitalization, we in the last year have lost a place and stand just at place 18.

15 months after the first lockdown, only 57 percent of the schools have at their disposal an ordinary digital equipment. In half of the schools, there is no WLAN for students.

Among the top 50 of the world’s most innovative businesses, we still had in 2018 eight German firms on the list; in 2021, it is only four.

In 2017, Herr Altmaier promised us the most user-friendly administration in Europe by 2021. Now we have 2021 and the opinion from the Ministry for the Economy speaks of a – I quote – general “failure of organization”:

In public administration, Germany avails itself of structures, processes and ways of thinking which in part appear archaic.

GAIA-X threatens to be stuck in its bureaucracy. If it does not soon come up with a timely success, then the same fate as the De-mail threatens the entire project.

Mein Lieblingspunkt: The modernization of the nation’s IT should have been concluded by 2025. Now it in fact lasts until 2032. The Federal Audit Authority warns that the Bundesclient [computer workplace] could be technologically obsolete before the Federal government in eleven years will have rolled it out in the last of the authorities. This is inconceivable. One could laugh if the theme were not so serious.

There are however two areas in which Germany is just great: One is the censorship on the internet and the other is the digital surveillance of the citizens. What our government just in the last four years had done is, for the one, sharpened the NetzDG and, for the other, introduced the up-load filter. You have issued the IT Security Law 2.0 which the professional people themselves have designated as an anti-security law.

And because it is so nice, you have then expanded the operation of Staatstrojanern: All 19 offices of the Constitution Defense now can use it, even when no suspicion against a person was submitted. The SPD has agreed with that – despite Saskia Esken’s promises that it in no case comes to that. Who still believes one word from you, valued comrades, he really is no longer to be helped.

Let us summarize: Instead of overhauling digital, Germany in the last four years continues to be dependent. This government could not do it. This government has not even attempted it. There remains only the hope that in the next legislative period this indeed seriously changes. For if we continue to sleep, Germany's digital future appears black.

Many thanks. We may meet in the next legislative period.

 

[trans: tem]