Ulrike Schielke-Ziesing, May 25, 2023, Low Wages and Small Business

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/106, p. 12834.

Right honorable Frau President. Dear colleagues. Honored citizens.

We have quite often heard it today: Employees, who have the good fortune to be paid according to scale in a business with a works council at its disposal and where there is a an employee representation worthy of the name, have not only higher incomes but in general also essentially better working conditions. Wage dumping and precarious work conditions are found especially where there is simply no representation of interests which can strengthen employee rights, So far, so good.

Yes, we of the AfD wish that as many employees as possible profit from the advantages of having a voice, and to that also plainly belong binding wage contracts. Higher wages – that is long since no more a luxury but a sheer necessity. In a country where so many citizens can no more afford daily living, in which the state squeezes the citizens with so many taxes and contributions that for many it would be more profitable to stay home with a citizen’s wage [Bürgergeld],

            Annika Klose (SPD): Ach, rubbish!

it is quite especially important that work be appropriately respected; that is to say, honored.

For too long was our country a low wage country. What we now complain of as old age poverty, and will still suffer in the future, is also the result of an abusive form of a precarious low wage sector. A third of those employed full-time today will receive a pension of not even 1,200 euros, but less – for 45 years full-time, as is well known. That is a scandal.

Here, good wage scale parameters [tarifliche Rahmenbedingungen] help and therefore we of the AfD are also for the promotion of these.

Yet what surely does not work is to write your ideal into a motion and then to believe it works out in the implementation. That is wishful thinking. And what happens when a socialist dream meets reality can you certainly experience in the heating transition debacle of your green comrades.

For us in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern soon threatens the care collapse – because ambulatory care service was recently placed under the wage contracts law and soon its employees can simply no longer perform. That is the reason why the first Federal states again already say goodbye to their own wage contracts laws – must say goodbye. That means: Please, some more honesty! And so it appears that we find ourselves in a crisis, and that we have many small businesses which only with difficulty can keep themselves above water. Those employed and the businesses would thereby be better served if their work was not daily hindered.

A Left party which gets chummy in the climate chaos so to win recruits, and on its website brags

            Pascal Meiser (Linke): Remain with the motion! Or have you again not read it?

of going into the street with the youth climate movement, is part of the problem and not the solution. Here then the pious wish for a collective agreement is of no additional help.

Many thanks.

            Pascal Meiser (Linke): You’ve sniffed too much adhesive!

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

Joachim Wundrak, May 10, 2023, Bundeswehr in Mali

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/102, p. 12306.

Right honorable Herr President. Ladies and gentlemen.

Already for more than a year, we of the AfD delegation clearly named the failure of the Bundeswehr’s mission in Mali and demanded the orderly withdrawal of our soldiers. I may refrain from citing to you and myself the reaction at that time from the ranks of the self-declared middle of this house. On the other hand, all European contributors of troops meanwhile have consequently converted these failures into the decision for a departure. And the large African contributors of troops have already left MINUSMA. The departure of the French, British, Swedish, Dutch, Canadians and others leaves behind on the ground considerable capability gaps which cannot be closed. The risks for our contingent thereby increase drastically.

The acknowledgment of the failures of the mission in Mali has for weeks permeated all delegations of this parliament. That is to be welcomed.

I wish to emphasize that here it is a question of a political, strategic failure for which the Bundeswehr soldiers assigned to Mali may not be reproached. These failures derive from the entire Western policy in the Sahel and especially that of the former colonial power France. Nevertheless, instead of immediately applying the logical consequence of this acknowledgment, namely to start the forthwith departure of our troops from Mali, the Federal government in the past year has further increased the size of the contingent and prepared additional capabilities for MINUSMA. On the other hand, the task fulfillment of the German MINUSMA contribution, measured by the mandate, has further receded. The relation with the Mali government has further worsened. The ruling military junta under the putschist Assimi Goita, who has named himself interim president of Mali, has meanwhile taken a clear geopolitical position on the side of Russia. The general security situation has in any case thereby worsened. Onto one side falls the pressure of the Islamist terrorists following the departure of the French and the halt proceeding therefrom of Operation Barkhane and Taskforce Takuba. On the other side, the Russian Wagner mercenary troops meanwhile with brutal means overtake the fight on the side of the Mali army and drive the people of Northern Mali into the hands of the Islamists.

In this increasingly uncontrollable and dangerous situation, the government now puts before us this singular motion which speaks of a continued task fulfillment with a simultaneous melting away of capability contributions. The previously expounded reason for the delayed departure was to make available helicopters for the rescue chain and other capabilities until the spring of 2024 for coverage of the planned elections in Mali. In the motion put forward by the Federal government, these elections as a basis for the mandate are only very vaguely mentioned; for good reason. Since no one any longer seriously believes in elections in Mali next spring.

The presented motion nevertheless leaves open when in fact begins the contingent’s transfer back and when the task fulfillment shall be discontinued. In the worst case, this means maintaining the presence of the German participation in MINUSMA until May 2024 and just then to begin the transfer back of the forces.

For this, an additional half billion euros shall be thrown after the previous costs of the Mali mission of approximately four billion euros, without being able to expect an added value or sustainable uses from this mission.

Consequently, we reject the motion put forward by the Federal government for a continuation of the Bundeswehr's participation in MINUSMA and demand the immediate beginning of a rapid, controlled departure of all German forces from Mali.

I am grateful.

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

Marc Bernhard, May 24, 2023, Heating Policy

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/105, pp. 12701-12702.

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen.

“We have erred in regards the energy transition”.

            Jürgen Coße (SPD): You have erred in regards Putin!

Who said that ten years ago already? No climate denier, no conspiracy theorist and no AfD politician. No, it was Habeck’s dismissed State Secretary Graichen, whom he last week dismissed as one of those who ran the energy transition. Graichen ten years ago verbatim:

We have erred in regards the energy transition. Not in a few details, but in a central point. The many…windmills and solar installations which Germany is building do not do what we have promised for them. It was hoped that they would replace the dirty coal power plants…Yet they do not do that…

 

If Graichen thus knew ten years ago that the energy transition does not work, why then has it been with all power forced through? Why was agriculture and species protection annulled by emergency decree, the fought-for minimum distance between dwellings eliminated, the environmental compatibility testing disempowered and the consultation rights of citizens eliminated so as to make possible the construction of an additional 90,000 wind industry installations, and thereby maximize the damages of the self-confessed errors, Herr Habeck?

Although Graichen knew exactly that the energy transition does not at all work, he wanted, in your motion, Herr Habeck, with the heating hammer to force more than 60 million people in the future to heat only with electricity. He nevertheless quite clearly knew that there was not sufficient electricity for that due to the shutdown of nuclear and coal power plants. Thus for example Germany’s largest housing company cannot operate countless electric heating pumps because of the lack of electricity. He nevertheless quite knowingly wrote the draft law that, for most people, only the installation of a heating pump is possible – and that, even though heating with electricity is around 30 percent more expensive than with gas. It’s good that such a person is gone!

Yet now this heating hammer must also go, and indeed completely. Since it is completely absurd that people shall be forbidden to heat with gas while the government at the same time wants to build 50 gas power plants with which it is desired, with dirty fracking gas, to generate electricity which will in the future warm the people. What an absurdity!

            Bernhard Herrmann (Greens): That is nonsense!

As I calculated for you in April that this heating hammer would cost people 2,000 billion euros, you here in the German Bundestag looked at me in disbelief and shook your heads. Now you yourselves of the FDP quite obviously have re-considered and even come to 2,500 billion euros, thus 30,000 euros per capita. Scientists confirm that with that it still comes not once to a savings of CO₂. The imbecility was nevertheless confirmed by your FDP colleagues – who have reconsidered: 2,500 billion euros.

Yet one thing is clear: The heating transition is not doable; since we do not have sufficient heating pumps, we do not have sufficient tradesmen, we do not have sufficient electricity and the people certainly do not have sufficient money so as to pay for this craziness.

Now come you of the CDU to play at being the nation’s saviours and ostensibly want a socially acceptable re-start of the heating transition. As to what you understand as “social”, have you clearly and distinctly indicated with your motion in the last sitting. You therein set out to make the Brussels CO₂ certificate for oil and gas so expensive that the people practically can no longer afford oil and gas. Experts proceed therefrom to that by 2027 it comes to a tenfold increase of CO₂ prices and up to 300 euros per ton. For a liter of diesel, that means a price increase of almost one euro. That is what you of the CDU understand as “socially acceptable”.

The only thing that is really socially acceptable and which protects people from old age poverty and a de facto expropriation is to dispose of this entire heating transition on the dung heap of history.

 

[trans: tem]