René Aust, April 1, 2025, War Itself is the Enemy

EU Parliament, Strasbourg, P10 CRE-REV(2025)04-01(2-0092-0000). 

Frau President. 

We mourn the victims of the war, and we condemn the aggressive war contrary to international law, just so as the war crimes associated with it. Our view is not allowed to stay with today. We require a long-term peace strategy beyond the Ukraine War. In recent weeks was ever more talk of a major war in four, five years against Russia – a nightmare since in the age of nuclear weapons, war itself is the enemy. Thus is now required a plan for a long-term, future order of peace in Europe. 

First: Many states have reported to NATO on apparent armies – on the paper, but not mission-ready. These states need to make mission-ready their troops reported up to 2020, but not to arm beyond that, if Russia in turn is ready to return to its troop strength after the Ukraine War in any case to the level of 2020. We thus prevent an armaments spiral.   

Second: Europe needs to make unmistakably clear: Not a millimeter of an EU member state may be placed in question. For that, a de-militarized zone in the Russian state territory is required, especially for the defense of the Baltic states; and a clear announcement to Russia: We do not allow ourselves to be put under pressure, and not by nuclear threats in the Russian state television. 

Third: Russia is stuck in a war economy. The entry into one such is easy, the exit difficult. Europe, in return for a de-militarized zone, needs to indicate an economic perspective: End the sanctions, and resume import-export relations, not as a gift, but as an incentive to rise up out of the rearmament, so to to give Russia a chance to get out of the war economy and not be long-term reliant on armaments, so to prevent the economic collapse. 

One thousand hours of negotiating for nothing are better than one, single minute of shooting at one another. We have the obligation to seize every diplomatic initiative so as to secure long-term peace in Europe. 

 

[trans: tem]

Björn Höcke, March 20, 2025, Financial Coup d’État

Thüringer Landtag, Plenarsitzung 8/12, pp. 2-4. 

Right honorable Herr President. Right honorable colleague members. Right honorable visitors in the gallery. 

I want to beforehand admit that I stand before you today with a feeling that represents a mixture of rage and sorrow: Rage and sorrow over what happened two days ago in the German Bundestag. We need to speak of it, that we have a political special situation in Germany these days. On that account, the summoning of this special plenary session has been enormously important, and was a correct decision which we as the AfD delegation have reached. I very much regret that even in regards this important theme that Minister-president Voigt is not in the house. 

Right honorable colleague members, on February 23^rd of this year, the state sovereign of the Federal Republic of Germany with a perfectly clear result voted out of office the Ampel government. The Greens lose massively, the SPD brings in its historically worst result and the FDP left the Bundestag. The message of the voters was clear: We want no further so, we want a fundamentally new direction in the German Politik, we want less multi-culti, we want less climate policy, we want less debt, we want more fiscal solidarity. The was the clear message of the sovereign. 

And what did the CDU do, did Friedrich Merz do, in fellowship with the red-green government? They summoned the old, voted out of office Bundestag, already dissolved by the Federal President, so to go around the new power relation to enforce a debts policy of madness to the harm of the German people. 

            Liebscher (SPD): That is just nonsense, stop spreading lies! So far, the                                    new Bundestag has not yet met…!

What we experience here, right honorable colleague members, what was passed in the Bundestag two days ago and tomorrow in the Bundesrat shall brought to a conclusion, is nothing other than  a financial policy coup d’état. Ice cold, a career-crazed Friedrich Merz slapped the voters in the face. Merz broke a central election promise of the CDU and piled up a debt mountain of a trillion, and that only so as to receive in hand the key to the Chancellor’s office, only so as to make his latest, striven career step. This, right honorable colleague members, this conduct is without character and is one of the low points in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany. 

The pre-history of the financial policy coup d’état well needs enrage every democrat. Still in February, Merz vigorously twittered – just a few days before the Bundestag election, he did this – against the Ampel government’s debt orgy, especially that of the SPD, and posed as a defender of the debt brake. 

Yet it was a central election promise of the CDU to maintain this debt brake and let justice be done for coming generations. And now leading CDU representatives and leading Green representatives disclose that the debts coup was already planned in November 2024 in a CDU committee, and this quarreling with the Greens was pure election campaign noise. The Union simply lied impudently in the face of the Germans. 

Do you know, right honorable colleagues of the SPD and right honorable colleagues of the CDU, that this theater which has now been contrived in the German Bundestag – the Greens are, Gott sei Dank, no longer present in the sovereign house in Thüringen – 

            Liebscher (SPD): What you contrive here is theater!

do you actually know what an injury you have caused? Do you actually know which injury you have inflicted on the German democracy? 

I am much underway in Thüringen, I speak with many of Thüringen’s citizens, and ever more say to me: I no longer have the feeling of living in a democracy; I have the feeling of living in a simulation of democracy. And I cannot contradict these people. 

The changes of the Basic Law and the undermining of the debt brake first in the Bund and then in the States have fatal effects for coming generations. Thüringen, right honorable colleague members, right honorable State government, must set itself in the Bundesrat against this financial policy run amok. An abstention does not suffice for this highly important theme. And your conduct and this circumstance which I have just sketched, it is now to be discussed, and I therein rejoice. 

Many thanks.

[trans: tem] 

 

Anja Arndt, April 1, 2025, Christians in the Congo

EU Parliament, Strasbourg, P10 CRE-REV(2025)04-01(2-0571-0000). 

Frau President. 

On February 12^th occurred in the Congo a horrific massacre: Seventy Christians – men, women and children – were kidnapped by the Islamist ADF militia and in barbaric ways and means murdered with machetes and hammers. This Islamist brutality is no single instance. I thank the Commission that it makes this terror a theme here, and finally commits itself to the religious freedom and security of Christians. 

In the Congo, 95 percent of the population are Christians; in Europe, it is 72 percent. Despite this overwhelming majority, they are selectively eradicated. And with us, Islamist murders as in Aschaffenburg, Mannheim und Solingen are a gruesome reality. My compassion is for all victims and relatives among us, in the Congo and in the entire world. 

The EU needs to come to terms with this violence. It needs to be the advocate of the Christians – with more secure borders, a clearer rigor against Islamists and an authentic protection. Germany needs the AfD, and Europe needs the Europe of Sovereign Nations. 

 

[trans: tem]

Bernd Baumann, March 18, 2025, Debt and Democracy

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/214, p. 27736. 

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen. 

A new great coalition of Union, SPD and Greens had the Budget Committee called in last  Sunday so as to vote on a gigantic debts package of 1,000 billion euros. Yet the final statutory proposal reached the members just one day previously with profound innovations. Suddenly to be taken up is the compulsion for climate neutrality in the Basic Law. Climate neutrality, this central dogma of leftist-green ideologues, destroys the competitiveness of our industry. No other country does something similar to its economy. 

Members of the AfD, SPD and BSW thus demanded an immediate hearing in committee, which the committee chairman would have needed to grant, since the necessary quorum was attained. That was compulsory. Yet the committee chairman, Helge Braun – former chief of the Chancellery Office and intimate of Angela Merkel – refused and forced the immediate waving through of the debts package. What a parliamentary low point, ladies and gentlemen! 

Yet why this flogging through? Because already in the coming week the newly elected Bundestag meets. But it has new majorities which the people want. It would thereby completely reject the mega-debts and Basic Law alterations. And the new Bundestag is the legitimate one, which reflected the majorities, ladies and gentlemen. Yet why does the new Bundestag meet just one month after the election, even though such fundamental decisions should now be passed? The Union and the SPD have rammed this through the seniors council. Against the will of all other delegations, Bundestag President Bas called in the new Bundestag just at the last possible moment. 

The entirety ultimately shows the true spirit, the true character primarily of Friedrich Merz who in this way wants to become Chancellor. 

            Stephan Brandner (AfD): “Whatever it takes!”

With a trillion in debt, approved by a Bundestag long since voted out of office, he wants to buy the Chancellorship with the SPD and Greens – like in a banana republic, ladies and gentlemen. 

And we thereby have still not spoken of the gigantic election fraud. I cite Herr Merz: I will put an end to this politics of leftist and green spin doctors. I cite CDU Secretary-general Linnemann: New debts are not to be made with the CDU; with us, there is no alteration of the debt brake because that is our deepest conviction. 

Ladies and gentlemen, who wants to lead the democracy ad absurdum, needs not falsify the ballots, as Erdoğan and Putin have been accused of. He just so robs democracy of every substance when by such false promises he deceives the voters, thus swindles their votes, and then does the opposite. 

 

[trans: tem]

Hans Neuhoff, April 1, 2025, EU Foreign and Security Policy

EU Parliament, Strasbourg, P10 CRE-REV(2025)04-01(2-0186-0000). 

Frau President. 

The Union’s foreign and security policy is a jumble of distorted perception and moralistic extravagance. Islamism in the reporting of the European Peoples Party is not worth a syllable. In Germany, Christmas markets, carnival rides, train stations need to be defended against Islamist perpetrators of violence, not from Russian infantrymen. What does the EU do? You finance a Taliban emirate in Syria. 

Russia is not the enemy of Europe. Russia is a defensive empire which sees itself existentially threatened by the expansion of NATO into the Donbass and the south Caucasus. Who does not understand that and arms for a holy war against Russia, he leads us into ruin. 

Ceterum censeo, the Europe of Sovereign Nations delegation rejects Ukraine’s membership in NATO and in the EU. The future of the Ukraine can alone consist in its return to neutrality. 

 

[trans: tem]

Michael Espendiller, March 18, 2025, Debt and Defense Spending

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/214, pp. 27767-27768. 

Right honorable Frau President. Right honorable colleagues. Dear viewers in the hall, on YouTube, and on X. 

The election fraudster Friedrich Merz, today in common with SPD and Greens, is having determined in six days as much new debt as the entire Federal Republic of Germany in total took up from 1950 until 2009, thus in 59 years. It will be, in ten years time, between 1.6 and 1.8 trillion euros. Most already surmise that with this money everything possible will happen, yet in the end it will not arrive at the citizens. 

On this there prevails a widespread consensus that the so-called infrastructure special debts are to be refused because infrastructure belongs to the regular state orders which the state has to finance from its current income. Yet there persists the erroneous belief that in the case of the Bundeswehr it would be different. I want for my delegation to here again clarify: Defense expenditures also need be defrayed from the regular budget if we want to economize efficiently and responsibly. 

All economists agree that Germany needs fundamental structural reform, that we need to rein in the bureaucracy and initiate a growth impulse. And all are agreed that in that regard it does not help to simply pour more money over the problem, as has been done without success in the past years. Why should it be different in regards the Bundeswehr? 

I have attended in the last three years as reporter for section 14 the regular expenditures in the defense area as well as the “Special Funds Bundeswehr”, and I can say to you: Our problem here is not primarily the money. Of that, the Defense Ministry now has so much that it routinely affords itself money squandering. Did you know, for example, that we spend each year 654 million euros for the so-called property security [Liegenschaften]? What is that? That is the cost for the private security services which guard [bewachen] our barracks, because that is evidently no longer to be expected of our soldiers. And we yearly pay from the Federal budget around 180,000 soldiers, the fewest of whom are on active duty. It is not known what they do all day long, yet the guarding of our barracks is apparently not a part of it. 

Or let us go to the procurement theme. In regards procurement projects also we routinely pay too much, for one thing because our government simply negotiates poorly, for another because the Federal Ministry of Defense’s requirements are set completely wrong. An example is the infantry’s heavy weapons carrier. Here, we procure the Boxer from Rheinmetall which shall replace the weapons carrier system Wiesel 2 which has been in service for around 30 years. So far, so good. Actually, the Boxer could quite easily be purchased in Germany, because it is also produced by us. Only, Rheinmetall was unfortunately at the time of the order fully booked in its  German production. One would thus need to wait somewhat longer. That besides would have been fully justifiable. But no, the Russians who lose the last two years in the Ukraine, are, ja, next week in Berlin. Thus Pistorius decided to purchase the Boxer at Rheinmetall Australia and from there have it flown in. The result: The originally planned 2 billion euros for the project does not suffice. The finance requirement climbs around 700 million euros to 2.7 billion euros. 

            Alice Weidel (AfD): Madness! Anyone can figure that!

And the flight from Australia is besides not climate neutral. 

I have only four minutes speaking time, yet I could recount for hours additional examples. 

An evaluation in the Federal Ministry of Defense does not routinely occur, neither for the use of funds and for the procurement, nor for our military doctrine. 

            Henning Otte (CDU/CSU): Who then wrote your speech for you?

The Bundeswehr needs to correspond in structure and character to the altered demands of our time. Yet at the Bendlerblock is ever still a mindset of 50 years ago. And we do not change that when we now write into the Basic Law in the defense area an indebtedness possibility completely without upper limit. 

Also in the military area it remains as in the sentence: Germany has an expenditure problem and not an income problem. We will at some time look back on this day and ascertain that it did not bring us much other than debts and inflation. 

Thanks for the attention. 

 

[trans: tem]