Jochen Haug, May 25, 2023, EU Election Law

 

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/106, pp. 12811-12812.

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen.

The EU Parliament’s proposal debated today for a change of the EU election law is an attack on the national states of Europe. The planned changes are alien to the citizens and fundamentally undemocratic.

Of this are first of all the trans-national lists which certainly have been often spoken of. The EU parliament shall be further enlarged, initially by 28 seats. These shall then be filled by the  European parties instead of by the national lists of the recognized parties. This is a particular act of alienation of the citizens. The European parties are largely unknown in Germany and in other member states. Their positions on concrete political questions are unknown. The citizen shall vote for persons whom he does not know and of whom he in many cases simply cannot inform himself; since there is no EU-wide media public. Information is here not routinely available in each man’s mother tongue. Yet that fits the picture. You want uninformed voters who simply nod to your personnel and positions. You want an EU central state with politicians who owe accountability to no one. Transnational lists are in this way a momentous step which we of the AfD oppose.

            Christian Petry (SPD): What nonsense!

            Götz Frömming (AfD): Super speech! Listen to what you can learn!

            Jörg Nürnberger (SPD): No idea of Europe!

No less do we oppose the attempt to introduce compulsory gender quotas for election lists. The EU Parliament’s proposal foresees precisely this in the form of a zipper procedure [Reissvershclussverfahren]. That means that men and women are to be alternatively installed. This is obviously unconstitutional. The Constitutional Courts in Brandenburg and Thüringen have already decided corresponding regulations. Among others, here is put forward a violation of the fundamental principles of the freedom and equality of the vote.

            Götz Frömming (AfD): The SPD is not interested.

To what unbelievable bleeding such gender quotas can lead may be observed in regards, among others, the Greens of NRW [Nordrhein-Westfalen] who in their statutes have consequently further developed the zipper procedure and call it a “minimum quota”.

            Lamya Kaddor (Greens): And now?

I cite with permission of the President from §1 of the Women’s Status of the NRW Greens:         

Election lists fundamentally are to be filled by at least half women whereby the odd places are reserved for women. The election procedures are to be so arranged that, separated, positions for women and positions for all candidates will be elected. All women lists are possible.

            Lamya Kaddor (Greens): Well cited!

This needs to be looked at clearly: With the Greens, for odd places may only women be candidates, for the even, everyone.

            Lamya Kaddor (Greens): With you, even fascists can be candidates!

If this should be democratic, then democracy in our country is truly at an end.

            Götz Frömming (AfD): Discrimination against men!

Not least is there today a restrictive clause in regards the suffrage for the European election. What you here propose – the introduction of a two percent hurdle – is a shameless circumvention of the legal ruling of the Federal Constitutional Court. This had twice, in 2011 and 2014, declared restrictive clauses for the European election to be unconstitutional. Now shall one such be introduced by the avoidance of EU law. There is no sustainable foundation for it. It is solely about building up the large parties’ sinecures at the cost of the small parties. It is simply the arrogance of power.

In conclusion, we maintain: The plans of the EU election law reform are undemocratic and in part violate the German constitutional law. It remains to hope – it was certainly already pointed out – that across Europe considerable resistance arises against it. It remains to hope that it never becomes reality.

Thank you.

            Götz Frömming (AfD): Very good speech! 

 

[trans: tem]

           

Jörg Urban, June 5, 2023, Leftist Violence in Saxony

AfD Kompakt, June 5, 2023.

We see also an urgent need for a special sitting of the Interior Committee. When for many days there, stones are thrown at police, autos are set afire and police precincts are attacked, that is a situation similar to civil war.

It makes matter more difficult that the Greens with Jürgen Kasek have taken a key role in regards the militant protests. A governing party has the duty to prevent violence. Instead, the Greens have ever again verbally legitimated the Anitfa’s violence. Minister-president Michael Kretschmer thus sits in a boat with quasi Antifa powers. In that regard, he has an extremism problem in his own government.

Especially his Green Justice Minister Katja Meier enlists as a political arm of the Antifa. Just a few years ago, she herself demonstrated side by side with leftist extremists. To this day, she has not credibly distanced herself from the protagonists of leftist violence.

Kretschmer’s government coddles leftist extremists in regards whom the Federal Criminal Office sees parallels with the RAF. CDU Interior Minister Armin Schuster now in retrospect announces himself for implementing a concept against leftist extremism. The government of Saxony must allow the question why already for years such a concept was not drawn up.

 

[trans: tem]

 

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]