Tino Chrupalla, September 7, 2021, Merkel Government

German Bundestag, September 7, 2021, Plenarprotokoll 19/239, pp. 31136-31137.

Right honorable Herr President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen.

In the last, regular plenary debate of the 19^th German Bundestag, it becomes time to draw up a balance. I begin the review with a peculiarity in contemporary German history. Just four years after its founding, the first party formed in the new Federal Republic of Germany entered the German Bundestag in the year 2017. For four years, we of the Alternative für Deutschland attend the fortunes and misfortunes of the Federal government under Chancellor Angela Merkel. Ladies and gentlemen, it was high time.

How does Germany now appear after 16 years of the CDU/CSU or 12 years of grand coalition with the SPD? What were the cornerstones and anchor points of your policy, worthy colleagues on the government bench? When I look at our country and our citizens, I ascertain that we may thank you for a crippling, unimaginative policy – in any case, for the division and the loss of trust in the population. To you was presented a country with relatively good possibilities of  formation. You decided to sell the core elements of our social prosperity in the yearly market of politics.

Your politics, right honorable Frau Chancellor, was shaped by angst and maneuvering – or should I say tipping points? – ; for example, by means of the abrupt detour from the secure energy supply following the nuclear power accident at Fukushima in March 2011. Since then, the clean form of energy generation by means of nuclear reactors is presented as a frightening specter. That all culminates in a form of energy transition which will soon drive additional regions of Germany into poverty;  for example, my home of Lausitz. Frau Chancellor, you here speak of the social consensus of this region. And Herr Laschet has ever again stressed that. Here, you have spoken to lobby associations, green associations, environmental organizations. Yet it is typical of your policy whom you have thereby forgotten. Those are the local people who did not take part in this consensus. The local people, the small Mittelstand operations, the tradesmen, do not want this withdrawal. They can now still scarcely pay the price of electricity, and you, Herr Laschet, will receive their receipt for that come September 26. For precisely these reasons, they will not change sides.

Frau Baerbock, who demands a withdrawal from coal by 2030, acts asozial. It is an asozial policy which you are demanding. Completely succumbing to a mis-estimate, you believe that the shutdown of German brown coal power plants of the most modern stage of development would reduce the portion of CO₂ in the atmosphere. Precisely this wrong decision will make it difficult for future generations to create.

Ladies and gentlemen, I personally adhere to that we in our policy create offers for the younger generations. With an intact Nature, they should ultimately continue to successfully lead this country themselves. We should also in that regard let the older generation’s knowledge of experience have a say. It does not suffice to let oneself be photocopied with protesting youth in the social media. A perspective for the future needs be negotiated and one may not let himself be driven by stormy ideas into a political and social dead end.

Frau Chancellor, it is your reward that in only 16 years with your guarantees for the future of our country, you have hypothetically ever further alienated the young generations from Germany. Instead of identifying with the Heimat, new ideologies like climate change shall do for the founding of our society. And instead of for once asking whether the citizens understand the enduring change and, before all, whether they at all want this, for more than a decade you extort from us agreement to new moral ideologies, meddle in the domestic policy or even the autonomy of sovereign countries, and sell this as the securing of world peace and the expansion of democracy. The whole you present to our citizens under the slogan of humanity. Yet how human is it when you, with an absurd immigration policy, put into play the security and peace in Germany as well as the security and cooperation in Europe? And how human is it vis-à-vis those really in need of asylum, the persecuted or those already migrated to Germany, when your policy in part opens the door to known offenders?  What in general do you have on offer for these people besides social benefits at the cost of the German payer? We will thus neither eliminate our skilled labor shortage nor will we be able to offer these people a home far from their cultural sphere. The whole house of cards of a positive migration policy is scarcely longer to be maintained.

You and your allies in the changing government have thereby rendered to Germany and we Germans, at the minimum, a disservice. And your black-white thinking has paved the way for the splitting of our society during the lockdown crisis. Who does not show obedience, asks too many questions and makes use of his basic rights, is automatically radical, opposed to the community and is at least right-wing. This unbecoming pot of ideologies is seasoned with a pinch of Wanderwitz. Dear colleagues, rarely has a commissioner – your commissioner for the new Federal States, Frau Chancellor – at anytime expressed himself with such contempt for those entrusted to him. It is an unworthy and profoundly shameful attitude. I therefore call upon all voters in Saxony: Who in Saxony votes CDU, votes Wanderwitz.

The result is that the de-coupling of the people from politics, from democratic parliamentary government, proceeds ever further. That plainly lies, Herr Laschet, in the responsibility of those in government. They have contributed to the division in this country, ladies and gentlemen. That is you and the Federal government.

You, worthy coalition parties, now routinely speak of the electorate’s desire for change. Change – wherein actually? What do you actually have presently on offer, Herr Laschet? That just now was nothing promising for the future, what you have proposed here. You have no more answers to the questions of our time. It is only a further so. In a reasonable way of proceeding, impending questions of conviction will be advanced; for example, concerning the vaccination status. Yet the right to privacy in that regard is still only a secondary matter. That is the most profoundly undemocratic feature a state can exhibit [Das sind zutiefst undemokratsiche Züge, die ein Staat aufweisen kann]. We of the AfD refuse that.

Dear colleagues and countrymen, I can very well understand anyone of those in Germany who is resigned to this situation. Nevertheless, I also know that it is worth fighting for our Heimat, for Germany, for our basic rights and for our citizens. Personally, that motivates me every day. I am happy that, after years of political stagnation, there is the Alternative für Deutschland

            Ulli Nissen (SPD): Not us!

which week after week in plenary session in the Reichstag in Berlin precisely lays the finger in the wound. The people are fed up with the unity brew.

            Carsten Schneider (SPD-Erfurt): I find it quite lively today!

Our plan for a Europe of the future is called Deutschland. Our future has national roots; whereas you speak of progress and change, yet nevertheless scarcely put the question: It is of use to whom, actually? We have the great fortune to live in a land which offers the reliable prerequisites for a fortunate future. That is namely the people who day by day contribute, have contributed and will contribute to the creation of value in Germany. So as to also secure this prosperity in the future, an audit is finally needed in our country. We need to divert the continual gaze – this I have constantly heard here today – from the income side – whenever there are a little pair of set screws to turn, taxes and duties need be raised – and concentrate ourselves on the expenditure side. The indebtedness climbs into the immeasurable. CDU/CSU and SPD here make promises of relief – besides the FDP also – which will never be kept. It is always in the end the citizens who must pay, and who will no longer have themselves deceived.

            Christian Dürr (FDP): How embarrassing need it be? Inconceivable!

Ladies and gentlemen, we of the Alternative für Deutschland want to form a politics for our future. Our demand for an Afghanistan investigating committee thereby stands at the center, just as does an audit so as to make possible an honest reform of the pension and tax systems. So that the citizens again more vigorously share in the decisions of the state, there is needed in Germany many more elements of direct democracy. And further: The principle of incentives and demands [Föderns und Forderns] just so needs again to become a part of our consciousness, like – dear CDU/CSU delegation, now do not cringe – the German virtues: Diligence, discipline, perseverance. These we need to impart to our children in school and in training so that the Germany of the future remains the land of Dichter und Denker. The 16 crippling years are now past.

            Carsten Schneider (SPD-Erfurt): It was not so bad!

Worthy government coalition, I can imagine how your future speaking contributions will be fashioned – we certainly have already heard it – : Little reflection, yet for that the usual portion of self-flattery. What you have really done is make yourselves superfluous; see the latest polls for the impending Bundestag election. You leave behind insecurity, discontent, angst. The only hope that many citizens may yet gather from that is that the Merkel system will have an end. Herr Laschet, that is the single positive point I see in regards Frau Merkel. I am happy that Frau Merkel finally retires.

I come to conclusion. – I want at the end to call upon the colleagues of all delegations in the 19^th German Bundestag: The Alternative für Deutschland is the only party in parliament which constructively represents the German and national interests.We stand for an open, transparent and goal-oriented politics for Germany and for our citizens. 

Many thanks.

 

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

 

 

Alice Weidel, September 7, 2021, Merkel Government

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/239. pp. 31109-31111.

Right honorable Herr President. Right honorable Frau Chancellor. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen.

That certainly was a phenomenal show!

            Michael Grosse-Brömer (CDU/CSU): A phenomenal appearance, that was!

I do not know. Does Angela Merkel still belong to the CDU/CSU? I anyhow have not heard it. And I may therein remind you that it has been the CDU, Angela Merkel, who has permitted a Linke Minister-president in Thüringen. That is your dessert, and on precisely that account you thus stand in the polls as you presently do.

Your last term in office, Frau Merkel, was for Germany a period of accelerated decline. To your successor is left a reconstruction job, an insecure and divided country the representatives of which are pleased with the role of moral headmasters, yet in a serious case with concrete challenges founder and fail like dilettantes, a country the wealth of which erodes and which in unexampled ways squanders and gives away its resources.

With the Corona reconstruction funds, you have conclusively delivered the German taxpayers into a debt and transfer union. The ECB’s money glut has arrived at the climbing inflation of consumer prices. Together with the manipulated zero and negative interest rates, that means the organized mass expropriation of the citizens with a yearly loss of wealth in the hundreds of billions. The individual feels that in his account which no longer yields interest and in his loss of purchasing power. In regards private assets, even so as with the pension level, Germany takes a loser’s place in the EU.

Instead of reforming the pension system, fortified for the demography, you make uncovered promises of payments. How it shall continue after 2030 when the cohort of the high birthrate years goes into retirement, for that you have no plan. For that, we have the highest mountain of debt in our postwar history. After a year and a half of a Corona debts policy, the public state debt has increased a full 10 percentage points from 60 to 70 percent of the GDP. Together with the implicit state debt, the sustainability gap is 440 percent of the gross domestic product or 14.7 trillion euros. Olaf Scholz, your Vice-Chancellor and coalition partner, as Finance Minister has to definitively answer for this debt mountain. Herr Scholz speaks much of respect, yet has little respect for the hard-working, normal people who get up each day, drive to work, raise their children and for that are continually penalized. Your government has no respect for the people and none for the Mittelstand businesses and family operations which employ millions of people and which, if it subsequently goes red-green-left, shall be expropriated by an asozial wealth and inheritance tax.

On the other hand is the regression into the sub-standard in almost all areas. So as to name just two examples: The education system and digitalization. In mathematics and natural sciences, the performances of German students have fallen below the EU average. In an international comparative test, Germany since 2007 has fallen from 12^th to 25^th place. In a digitalization ranking, Germany meanwhile stands in third to last place among the G-20 states, left behind even by France and Italy, to which we provide dozens of billions in so-called Corona reconstruction assistance.

An additional unresolved problem of this government is the migration crisis.

            Ulli Nissen (SPD): That had to come!

As before, each year a major city immigrates into our country and directly into the social system. That you find that to be super, we know. It obviously is not enough, what you have brought upon this country and its people with your intentional violation of the law in 2015. Now this government mis-uses the Ortskräfte who have served the Bundeswehr in Afghanistan so as to unleash the next wave of immigration to Germany.

Of the around 4,000 evacuated Afghans so far in our country, all of 168 were Ortskräfte, yet more than 250 persons quite without papers among whom are previously deported offenders, criminals known to the police, rapists, child molesters, Islamists, who were brought in at state cost and, as a consequence of the recent halt to deportation, will remain for an unforeseeable time. While other states focus on the security and the raw materials in the region, the German policy interests itself primarily in the evacuation of Afghans willing to exit.

This breakdown in the asylum and migration policy will enter into the history books as the greatest failure of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s time in office.

The future financial burden for our country totals over one trillion euros. Still worse weigh the damages which the loss of control means for the domestic peace, the citizens’ security, the trust in institutions  and the inner cohesion of our country.

And your misguided climate protection and energy transition policy will come to be expensive for us. Billions upon billions burnt year after year to fill the pockets of the windpower and eco-electricity lobby, while Germany muddles through a planned economy thicket of E-auto subvention and CO₂ taxation.

The irrational idea of simultaneously shutting down coal and nuclear power plants robs an industrial country like Germany of its mainspring, a secure and affordable energy supply. With the same furor, you want to subsidize electro-mobility without troubling yourself over the questionable environmental balance and the limited availability of the raw materials for the requisite battery production. From where besides shall come the additional electricity for all the electro-autos which you want to bring into the streets? On that, you have obviously done no thinking. Or do you seriously believe you could convert German industry to wind and solar electricity and green hydrogen? Do you know what is needed for that? For that, you need multiply tenfold the number of windmills to 330,000 and cement a quarter of the surface area with rotor towers. And if then the wind does not blow, then these nevertheless do not turn. Does a sustainable policy appear thus? We quite clearly say, Nein. With such half-baked ideas you make our country the laughing-stock of the world and the Germans the losers in global competition.

No one in Europe or elsewhere in the world seriously thinks of copying the German energy transition. We are the only hippie state – this needs to be quite clearly said here – which seriously wants to implement these crackpot ideas, cost what it will, “Whatever it takes”, as Draghi cares to say.

In the last two decades the price of electricity in Germany has doubled and the EEG [Renewable Energy Law] assessment increased tenfold. As a consequence of this coalition’s unreal [weltfremden] climate goals, in the next year by means of the increase in the so-called CO₂ pricing, the rise in fuel costs threatens to be up to 70 cents per litre. That means prices far beyond the 2 euro mark, even if the Transportation Minister promises otherwise. That neither protects the climate nor saves the planet, but it does impoverish commuters and families dependent on the automobile. It ruins those in the Mittelstand and drives from this country productive industries and hundreds of thousands of workplaces.

Beside all these financial burdens, one number in the government’s balance is especially disturbing: Of all EU citizens, the Germans feel themselves to be the least free. Only 11 percent still see themselves free in their everyday life. This Federal government’s Corona policy, without orientation and measure, therein has a considerable part. By turns, ever more of our European neighbors seek the way back to normality. You however enclose this country together with its people in a permanent state of exception, and instead of with reason and a good eye rebounding from preventive measures becoming obsolete, you trick school children and youths, even in the new school year, with masks and testing regimens, the utility of which has not been proved.

And you yet again break the promises you have given to the citizens, namely: If an offer of vaccination was made to everyone who is ready for it, the preventive measures need end. – It now lies in the responsibility of each individual and his personal risk assessment whether he himself decides for a vaccination or other precautions for his own protection or not. It is an individual decision. And you divide the country and the society when, based on this personal decision, you play off people one against the other and exclude from social life the non-vaccinated as second-class citizens. Every alarm bell must shrill when out of the mouths of politicians the non-vaccinated are defamed as “social disgraces” and a Vice-Chancellor even designates the vaccinated as “test rabbits”.

And you practice a de facto forced vaccination – without thus naming it – so as to steal away from your responsibility for the consequences of your wrong decisions. For a year and a half you conduct, under the name of the fight against the pandemic, a policy of broken promises and excessive restrictions of basic rights: From travel restrictions, lockdown and occupation bans, through confinements and emergency preventive measures, defamation and demonstration bans against critics, to forced vaccination and drastic interventions in the rights of parents and children.

You say you listen to the science when you now once again speculate as to which new withdrawal of the basic rights you could again implement following the election, and thereby always mean those scientists who flatter you. Thus finally take notice of other points of view; for example, the opinion of 100 doctors, jurists and businessmen who in an open letter demand clear and binding statements for the end of the pandemic policy. Stop diverting the citizens with angst talk and panic-making from the many urgent themes. Finally reinstate the basic rights comprehensively and for all so that this country can return to normality and devote itself to an unsparing and honest inventory of the entirety of its problems and challenges.

I am grateful.

 

[trans: tem]