Udo Theodor Hemmelgarn, October 8, 2020, Housing and Property Rights

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/183, pp. 23074-23075.

Right honorable Frau President. Right honorable colleagues. Right honorable spectators in the galleries and at the screens.

A few days ago, leftist activists here in Berlin demonstrated under the motto “We Have a Place” in favor of the admission of all refugees from Moria. The Linke presented a corresponding motion dated September 10, 2020, for the admission of refugees. With the date of September 16 – all of six days later – the Linke presented the motion over which we today debate and they therein complain of rent increases and evictions in the cities. So then we indeed do not have many places, dear Linke.

            Matthias W. Birkwald (Linke): That was just a not especially good computation.

Instead of being concerned with the real problems of the housing market, like domestic migration, rural flight, migration within the EU, the unlimited increase of economic migrants,

            Ulli Nissen (SPD): That must now again happen!

too little housing construction in the urban centers and the ECB’s interest policy, the Linke naturally make unrealistic proposals which – as desired – shall unleash grudge debates.

The local governments’ right of first refusal [Vorkaufsrecht] shall be exercised to limit prices.

            Ulli Nissen (SPD): It is still a super idea!

In other words, the right of first refusal shall be exercised at below market prices, understandably at the cost of the seller. And the conversion of rental to owner occupied housing shall, according to the opinion of the local government, be forbidden.

            Ulli Nissen (SPD): Right!

In clear text: From some will ownership be taken away, and others will be prevented from acquiring ownership – that is precisely the world view of the Linke.

Instead of thinking over how housing can be generated, the Linke wish to thereby palliate the scarcity of the housing which they more or less openly expropriate. The mask of the righteous falls, leaving the evil to be feared.

Thirty years after the end of the DDR, socialism in the motions of the Linke joyfully celebrates a resurrection.

            Gesine Lötzsch (Linke): What rubbish!

That the Linke do not really trust the laws of the market, they in the past have ever again impressively demonstrated. One example of that: In the year 2004, the red-red Berlin Senate sold more than 64,000 dwellings to private investors – readily named by you as “locusts”. The purchase price amounted to 405 million euros with the assumption of 1.56 billion euros in debts by the purchasers. Thus, an average price per dwelling of around 30,000 euros was paid. Of that, I can only say: A dream price for profit-oriented investors!

Today in Berlin, housing is sought to be purchased at the highest price. If the dwellings are cheap, they are sold; and if they are expensive, they are bought back – all with tax money and without a single, new dwelling having been created. That is a Dummheit scarcely to be surpassed.

Dear Linke, we have a few serious and well-meant suggestions for you.

Finally stop with the thoughts of plunder. To take something away from others solves no problems. If the thing is scarce, then more of it must be produced. If it is simply taken from others, it still remains as scarce as ever.

            Caren Lay (Linke): Then who here takes what from whom?

Second. Finally attempt to understand the principal of the market economy. If nothing else, look it up in Marx, but stop always wanting to only solve problems selectively.

Third. Put aside your pride. Thou are not to be the better and braver of men.

            Gesine Lötzsch (Linke): I did not know that we are on familiar terms.

Your prescription did not work thirty years ago and it does not work today.

            Caren Lay (Linke): Für Sie immer noch “Sie”.

Where leftist policy in the past has led, we in 1989 have seen. Where leftist policy today leads, we were able early one morning to see with astonishment when in Berlin an occupied house at Liebigstraße 34 was evacuated. Thousands of police from many Federal states were required to evacuate with word and writ 40 inhabitants and again obtain respect for the state of law.

            Caren Lay (Linke): Then let us leave it to the best!

Ladies and gentlemen, that is also ultimately a symbol of how many resources it costs our country to correct the failures of a few, which would have been avoided with a bit of expense and understanding.

Many thanks.

            Ulli Nissen (SPD): Many thanks your speech is over!

 

[trans: tem]

           

 

Sylvia Limmer, October 20, 2020, Common Agricultural Policy

European Parliament, Brussels, P9 CRE PROV (2020) 10-20 (2-069-0000).

After a year and a half of inactivity, it is utterly incomprehensible to me that it is now reckoned to set the voting on the Common Agricultural Policy in the midst of the COVID-19 lockdown. Over two thousand motions to amend lay on the table. There is persuasive evidence that acceptable compromises cannot be worked out in the committees. And so my speech today is not for the members in this ostensible debate, but rather for the citizens and farmers…since there is – as always – scarcely anyone present with whom to debate.

Who wishes to know how successful the EU’s mismanagement of agriculture has hitherto been need only look at the extinction of farms. In the last twenty years, the number of farms in Germany has been halved. Many work in a branch industry because it is not a sufficient living, because one cannot support the investment in the ever more numerous requirements. Family farm operations, allegedly to be defended, may soon belong to the past.

The new CAP – one need only look at the Commission’s brief summary to understand where it is headed. In nineteen pages will be explained how the farmer shall improve the environment and climate. According to the Commission, of highest priority were the ever more ambitious goals of climate defense which, contrary to differing statements, intend to govern national agriculture policy ever more strongly and demand of the member states strategy plans which are to be approved.

The farmer of the future: He may lay out hedges, plant trees, sow flowers and create nesting grounds. Only one thing he shall no longer do: Produce food, because that in the Commission’s view might be responsible for species extinction and dirtying the environment. Meanwhile, food is imported and thus consumer protection is annulled. For example, China: There, 27,000 pesticides are permitted which find their way to us in the form of processed food. In comparison: In Germany, only a thousand are permitted.

And the German farmer, beset with inactive unions and a similar government of which the only priority is the Council presidency, pays the bill for the EU’s distortions of competition – the latest victims are the German sugar beet farmers – and with German tax money thereby finances his own abolition.

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

Jörg Meuthen, October 21, 2020, COVID -19

European Parliament, Brussels, P9 CRE-PROV (2020) 10-21 (3-128-0000).

Frau President. Honorable colleagues.

Today we speak on the EU’s possibilities of softening the social and economic consequences of the COVID-19 crisis. Such a desire proceeds from a superficial, presumably high-minded viewpoint. Yet the question which must be posed here is: Why at all should this duty [Aufgabe] be a duty of the EU?

The social and economic consequences of the COVID-19 crisis in the individual member states are, in the first place, very distinct. Second – and still more important – social policy is certainly no duty of the EU, but social policy is a national state duty and there it belongs. Each state can and must give its own answer to social-political challenges.

What you are in fact pushing here is something quite different and is, with permission, strikingly  contrary to national state sovereignty. You present yourselves here as generous rescuers only so as to acquire the power of disposition over additional financial means and thereby build up your own power. In this way, you ultimately only strive to pave the path to the EU’s own statehood and, for that, quite purposefully use the COVID-19 crisis.   

Yet the problems of this crisis must and can be solved by and in the national states themselves. If the member states make use of different preventative measures, then that is all to the good. Competition for the best solution is always better than a falsely centralized strategy for all.

You could recognize in exemplary fashion your false assessment in that you frankly impose a gigantic 750 billion euro general Recovery Fund without first letting slip scarcely a single word as to what at all shall be concretely done with the 750 billion. The whole of this, so as to finance a reconstruction which is neither your duty nor will – despite all your Cassandra cries – in fact be necessary on this scale.

In that regard, you are certainly lively to add an additional chapter to the history of the downfall of your assumption of power. I say it to you yet again, quite unmistakably: This duty is present solely in the national states.

 

[trans: tem]

Rainer Kraft, October 8, 2020, Nuclear Disposal

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/183, pp. 23105-23106.

Before us lies a draft law of the Federal government on the adaptation of cost provisions in the area of nuclear disposal. Many of the alterations are sensible – yes, you are right there, Herr Möring – yet plainly not all. We now speak on those which are not.

Those for the presently designated zones no longer allowed use of §21 paragraph 2 of the site selection law interfere with the business freedom of those which are there already actively excavating. These so far might extend excavations in a possibly select zone if similar projects were already extant underground. This is now prohibited to them. We are dealing with an underground expropriation.

We would thus be at the topic of underground exploitation. In many Federal states, projects to depths of less than 100 meters are not subject to authorization. These projects shall now in any case be subjected to the safety provisions of §21 of the site selection law. The responsible state authorities will thus be obliged to notify the federal office for nuclear disposal security of these projects. That is not only an interference in federalism, that is also an obviously bureaucratic added expense.

It is then even more astonishing when it is communicated to us in the draft law that a financial relief is to be expected. 175,00 euros shall be saved by the alteration of §21 of the site selection law, even though an administrative action will be created – dear government, that does not even begin to be plausible.

We are thereby at the interim report of the federal society for final storage. Final storage is now possible in almost half of Germany. The quarreling began immediately. It is generally indicated by the false manner of approaching the ways and means of dealing with the nuclear reusable material [Wertstoffen]. In fact, Herr Möring, the finality, namely in §1 of the site selection law, will be first be demanded in 500 years. Until then, the possibility of an excavation is legally proscribed. The topic shall be kept cooking for 500 years. You wish to artificially increase the price of nuclear technology with the eternal search for the perfect site which will then never be found. You thereby create an artificial social stigmatization.

What we need – there, you are right – is a secure interim storage until solid nuclear technological methods have been tested in practice so as to solve the final storage problem once and for all. And, yes, this technology presently does not exist in Germany. It is, among others, your fault that in the past 35 years every research project was shut down and Germany has forfeited its technological leadership.

The Russia example, of which you have spoken: Yes, Russia already uses this technology for dis-armed plutonium warheads and thereby generates electricity. And plutonium is also present in the German remainder material, disapprovingly designated as “waste”. This could be converted to electricity instead of being buried in the earth. Instead of producing costs and quarrels, added value could be pursued. This would then be – I say it because it is extremely important to some of you – nearly CO₂-free.

And even if you are in want of the vision of an enclosed combustion fuel cycle, this is guaranteed to be developed somewhere in the world in the coming 500 years. If you do not believe that, then look at the technological developments and technological quantum leaps of the past 500 years.  

            Ralph Lenkert (Linke): That means, you are speculating that it will be 

                    500 years until there is a solution!

Look, for once, Herr Lenkert: The Bundestag’s plenary area is about 20, 25 years old, and we everywhere have telephone booths. After 25 years, are they still used by anyone? No.

You are splitting the society with your expensive effort to find a hole into which you wish to throw reusable nuclear material. Your childish, green spite to hide this value from the continually developing technology is a false path.  

Use the immense time period of 500 years, which you besides have given yourselves, so as to develop the technological possibilities which may make completely superfluous a final storage in the orders of magnitude of space and time which you have always established for the people. Remove your ideological blinkers and set for yourselves the social responsibility to develop this country technologically forward and not backwards.

Besides, I am in favor of an immediate end to the esoteric mask obligation in Germany on account of a lack of efficacy.

            Oliver Krischer (Greens): Inconceivable!

 

 

Jens Maier, October 8, 2020, Rental Law

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/183, pp. 23090-23091.

Right honorable Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen.

The draft law of the Greens, which will be deliberated here today in the first reading, to be sure originates with Frau Canan Bayram.

            Ulli Nissen (SPD): She has made it super!

Frau Bayram arrived in the Bundestag with a direct mandate, having obtained her direct mandate in constituency 83. It consists of Berlin-Friedrichshain, Kreuzberg and Prenzlauer Berg Ost. There, the Linke candidate landed in second place. And it is precisely to this clientele that Frau Bayram has directed her draft. The left-green urban sub-culture wishes to aid those by whom it was elected.

Franziska Brantner (Greens): That one enters office for the people by whom one has been elected is a basic understanding of democracy – or?

It would be noted of Berlin-Friedrichshain that there occurred early one morning the evacuation of an occupied house at Liebigstraße 34. Many thousands – thousands – of police were present in an effort to enforce the eviction notice. Street barriers were erected. It appeared that a civil war would break out. The question thus presents itself, Frau Bayram: Do these people need, whom you with your draft wish to support, with after all your help, do they need a law? Your friends, these robber knights in red-green clothing, take what they want and care not at all for the state of law.

And among the Greens, Frau Bayram is not uncontroversial. According to one edition of the “Der Freitag” from the year 2017, Frau Bayram on the basis of her rent policy was designated by some of the friends of the Green Party as alternatively a “left-populist talking head”, “an imputation” or as “unelectable”. As a non-Green, as an outsider, after a reading of the draft law put forward, one can only agree with this evaluation.

At the mid-point of the draft law is the rent regulation and the extension of dismissals protection for the leasing of commercial space. It is desired in all seriousness to no longer leave the level of commercial space rent to the condition of the market, as before, but to introduce, as for dwelling space rent, a kind of social rent law for small businesses. The draft takes up the matter which already in the year 2018 was brought by the State of Berlin before the Bundesrat. To that, I can only say: A regulation of the market for the lease of commercial space, we of the AfD strictly reject; we take no part in that.

We hold it to be factually unjustified, to be simply impractical and it would lead to unjustified consequences. According to the draft law, the State government shall be empowered to designate zones having a constrained commercial rental market.

            Ulli Nissen (SPD): Very good!

A constrained market is present when it

is no longer possible for small businesses deemed worthy of protection or for institutions    pursuing social-cultural purposes to rent commercial rental space on fair terms.

All is clear, all is understood? That is only puffed up by indefinite legal terms. With that, the doors are opened to the arbitrary selection of the zones ostensibly to be protected. It is to be recognized that, for the Greens, it is not about – as heretofore depicted – Aunt Emma’s Store on the corner, but only about conserving the migrantifa sub-culture in the big cities – a culture which brings forth something like Liebigstraße 34 in Friedrichshain. We do not want that.

The proposed alterations in the area of dwelling space rental law, the intensification of rent control [Mietpreisbremse] and an extension of the foreseen dismissals protection are almost without exception to be rejected. It is interesting that a draft law, for the first time brought into plenary session on July 2 of this year by the AfD, was evidently taken up by the Greens: Thus, according to the presentations of the Greens, a Schonfristzahlung [two months period for payment of all back rent] with proper notification will be possible for renters of dwelling space. That is to be welcomed.

The motion of the Linke is to be rejected.

            Matthias W. Birkwald (Linke): What?

It describes a further attempt to exploit the Corona crisis at the cost of the lessor so as to reform the dwelling space rental law according to socialist rules. Who wants anything like that? Not us.

Many thanks.

            Matthias W. Birkwald (Linke): You have no idea as it is of socialism!

 

 

[trans: tem]

 

           

Albrecht Glaser, October 8, 2020, International Tax Convention

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/183, 23036-23037.

Herr President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen.

The Convention spoken of was reached in November 2016 by 100 states and by June 2017 finally signed by Germany and 67 other states. It contains important points of an action plan of the OECD and the G-20 states to prevent the displacement of profits between states for tax purposes.

What now shall have been achieved by this Convention? The declared goal is the prevention of the purposeful exploitation of existing treaty regulations by multinational corporations. Was this goal achieved? Unfortunately not. Why then does the Convention, which after all consists of around 80 pages, remain ineffective, despite all the praise of the finance ministers?  

First. The Convention increases the complexity of international tax law and to a considerable extent removes legal security, a circumstance which has been clearly confirmed by experts. In that regard, only very insufficiently regulated is dispute resolution, which especially for Germans is extraordinarily complicated and unsatisfactory.

Second. The agreement should lead to the numerous double taxation agreements – which for Germany alone are around 100 in all – in a briefer time being able to be efficiently adapted into the framework of a treaty network. Unfortunately, also here there is no success: For three years we await the implementation. Remaining are only 14 treaty states to be included in the Convention. All other states must be negotiated with bilaterally, as previously.  

One reason for this meagre return is the fact that only those treaty states which themselves select Germany as a treaty state fall under the agreement. The result will be even more insufficient when it is considered that each treaty state must recognize the identical clauses of the state with which it is contracting.

Third and most important: The Convention ignores the core of the problem; since there are states which, to increase their economic attraction, offer special tax incentives so that firms may establish themselves there, frequently in the form of so-called patent boxes. Thereby can large firms, for example, American concerns, minimize their tax burden. That is a matter of intense activity – with and within the EU. Here to some extent will be offered adventurously low tax rates which make a mockery of the media-hyped expressions of European unity and solidarity.

France offers patent box firms a tax rate of 10 percent, Spain 8 percent, the Netherlands 7, Ireland 6 and Belgium 4 percent. And what is Germany’s relation to this? For us, it is certainly not a solution. It has to do, after all, with research-intensive firms. We generally have no comparable landscape.   

Yet, binding arrangements with local tax authorities, so-called tax rulings, which generally do not occur here, are also a problem. As in Ireland: There, Apple, as you all know, according to a tax ruling pays .005 percent tax on its profits and thereby, in relation to the regular tax rate, is spared 13 billion euros in taxes. For years, this problem has been acknowledged within the EU; a solution is not in sight.

We thus come to the conclusion that many repeals will be made of measures which promote legal insecurity and complexity while problems capable of solution in the vicinity of and within the EU will generally not be approached. Therefore, right honorable ladies and gentlemen, with all acknowledgment of the good intentions but in regards the bad implementation, we abstain from voting.

Hearty thanks.

 

[trans: tem]