Götz Frömming, July 8, 2022, Biotechnology Subvention

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/48, pp. 5115-5116.

Frau President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen.

Frau Werner, I really must say: That was just a typical political speech. One hears, everything rushes past, and afterwards one asks:  What then did she actually say? Since what therein was concrete?

            Lena Werner (SPD): Then you need to listen!

            Johannes Fechner (SPD): Yet that can lie with you!

So there was nothing concrete there. To that extent, colleague Jarzombek is quite right: We urgently need a new start. The government – we have heard it today – has here apparently done no forward thinking.

Ladies and gentlemen, it has already been said: Germany formerly was the world’s pharmacy. It could be re-filled with Nobel prizes. Not far from here at the Humboldt Universität – formerly called the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität – it rained Nobel prizes. Today, the Humboldt Universität shines – “shines’ in quotes – in left-wing organizations’ hindering of natural science lectures. You for once need to clarify that, ladies and gentlemen. And that is only the tip of the iceberg. We unfortunately need to confirm: In Germany, there no longer prevails a good climate for free science and research.

Now to the CDU/CSU’s motion. You have, ja, many times said what we also find to be correct, that we need to strengthen Germany as a venue. The instrument which you now put forward is however a special European one which is not only for the areas of biotechnology or health research but with which we have already had experience in other areas. Perhaps you have also taken note of the criticism made of this European distribution mechanism. For example, the German chamber of industry and commerce warns of – I cite – a “subventions squandering”. In that regard, we should reconsider when tax money should flow into an area in which in a previous time gigantic profits were nevertheless made.

Nevertheless, let us take a look: You have just now rightly made mention of the firm BioNTech – which belongs to Pfizer. How then does it look? In 2021 for BioNTech alone, the net profit was 10.3 billion euros. Ladies and gentlemen, was that not also money which should flow into research? It also needs to be asked: Can it be right that the taxpayer steadily promotes such businesses when they are in formation, yet then will forget to conclude the corresponding contract so something of this risk capital also again flows back? No private risk capital investor would do that. Unfortunately, with our tax money it will so proceed. This is precisely a form of subvention which cannot be right, ladies and gentlemen.

Thomas Jarzombek (CDU/CSU): That’s not right! We have participated in venture   capital. Herr colleague, in the Lufthansa we have earned one billion for the taxpayer!

Let us also cast a glance at the German promotion practice. I sometime ago placed an inquiry and the result was interesting. The Federal government confirmed and conceded that 90 percent of research money levied from the German taxpayer flows to foreign or international firms and projects. Those are mostly larger firms. The smaller, here nationally anchored firms, the KMU, generally go away empty-handed. For them, the application procedure alone is too complicated. Here also we urgently need to reconsider our promotion practice so as to only promote that which needs a promotion, ladies and gentlemen.

Let me in concluding say one thing: Certainly the pandemic has shown that, when it becomes serious, each is closest to himself. We have seen that in regards the masks. We have seen that in regards the vaccine distribution. One thing I believe is also important for us in times which perhaps are somewhat relaxed: We need to again learn to think and to act nationally. All other countries do that, and we also should do that, ladies and gentlemen.

Many thanks.

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

Gerrit Huy, July 8, 2022, Poverty in Germany

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/48, 5184-5185.

Right honorable chairman. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen.

            Rasha Nasr (SPD): Präsidentin!

Right honorable Frau President. Excuse me.

The reality in our country is no longer to be passed by. In the allegedly best Germany of all time are there more poor people than ever before; the poverty report of the Paritätischen Wohlfahrtverbandes says so: The poverty becomes greater.

Almost 14 million people in our country are affected by poverty; the poverty rate is thus at almost 17 percent. If the EU statistics are peeked at, then is seen that is over 20 percent. That means: Approximately one-fifth here are poor. And the consequences of the current inflation and the looming gas emergency are still not figured in. That means: With greater likelihood we will become still more poor. The trade balance surplus turned negative confirms this decline in a horrifying way. There thus results a completely different picture than which those in government hitherto always wanted to arrange for us.

And the media have diligently taken part in that. A well known journalist just recently objected to me that for us in Germany it no longer goes so good. The media must put up with the reproach of having propped up the Potemkin village of a rich Germany. For this development is nothing new; indeed it only accelerates. Yet for over 15 years it was hid by the prosperity.

The reproach needs to be made exactly so of the present Federal government as before of the unfortunate Merkel governments: They did not want to acknowledge the problem. In their megalomania, they have preferred to devote themselves to saving the world instead of applying themselves to the needs of the German citizens. That no longer goes; now not even the Ampel can shut its eyes to the suffering in our own country.

The gas emergency – over 50 percent of our heating depends on gas – is doubtless an extreme, additional aggravation which will increase poverty in this country. Many people in today’s situation can no more make their heating payment. Many now already omit meal times – which was already stated; many freeze. Real hunger will follow – and then great mental depression.

Depression meantime has become one of the most frequent illnesses of older people. Their suicide rate is by far the highest of the population groups. And the increase of the suicide rate has developed considerably in parallel to the increase of old age poverty.

According to the EU statistics, almost 30 percent of our elders are poor, most of them pensioners. Our pensioners are poor because their pensions are so low; they are among the lowest in western Europe. On that account, we urgently require an effective pension reform which is not content with holding lines but which again allows to our pensioners a worthy old age, as is already a self-evident given in Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands, Italy, even in France, and of course first of all in Switzerland.

Yet if the government would simply use all the money which you put into saving climate and planet, our old people could again participate in social life, again drink a cup of coffee outside the home, perhaps even sometime again be able to go to the movies or the theater – that would be something. Participation besides is for them so important – not only for marginal groups, participation must also be intended for the large group of people who built our country, whose resources you now so blithely squander.

For long is it known that also many children among us grow up in poverty. Many of our single households are poor, even so as almost 10 percent of our employees who work part or even full time who are not able to live thereon.

Migration also has increased poverty here. It has in two perspectives become a great burden. On one side, it leaves behind many migrants in poverty who hoped to find their fortune here; on the other side, it increases the wage pressure in the low wage sector of our economy and thus also increases poverty in other population segments. Immigration in an economic perspective can only function if the incoming people are well qualified and migrate directly to a presently available job.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is thus time, high time, to newly order the priorities and again place the citizens at the center of politics. That works by shaping up the economy, by strengthening the economy; since it is the economy and not the politics which creates prosperity.

And a little tip: The announced gas emergency would very well be avoidable. You have two opportunities: Either you turn on Nord Stream 2, or you take back the missing turbine for Nord Stream 1, despite the objections of the Ukrainians.

            Beate Müller-Gemmeke (Greens): We already know your record. That is nothing                    new!

Then we all have gas again.

Thank you.

 

 

[trans: tem]

 

Petr Bystron, July 21, 2022, Ukraine and the EU

AfD Kompakt, July 21, 2022.

Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg’s declaration that the Ukraine may be ready for the EU, although opposition parties were forbidden in the country in which opposition politicians were arrested or need go into exile and the opposition leader Viktor Medvedtschuk initially was held illegally in house arrest for over six months and later was imprisoned, is a new low point in the destruction of all previous legal standards in regards the observance of accession conditions in the EU.

Schallenberg’s statement that the Ukraine “in regards institutional stability as a guarantee for a democratic and legal order, the protection of human rights, as well as the respect and defense of minorities has on the whole progressed far”, can, in view of the massive human rights violations in the country, only be categorized as bare cynicism.

If the EU certifies a corrupt and decayed state the likes of the Ukraine as being compatible with the present composition of the EU, it thereby makes out its own declaration of bankruptcy. In the Ukraine, the erstwhile European values are being trampled under foot. Yet these are obviously no longer the values for which the EU vouches. Representatives of the EU should no longer presume to lay claim to European values.

The AfD delegation is for the strict maintenance of the accession criteria in regards all countries desiring entrance. The EU now already finds itself in a difficult crisis threatening its existence. It urgently requires an internal consolidation instead of a hurried expansion including additional countries in crisis.

 

[trans: tem]