Speeches

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen! It would probably not have required any clairvoyant skills in the past to foresee that in today's world we are in a predicament when it comes to the supply of critical raw materials and materials. And instead, we find ourselves today and only doctrinate around the symptoms, as in the past. The symptoms, that is what we are seeing right now, but the real causes, they are quite different, namely in ideologically overloaded trade agreements, as we have had in the past. That's why we should be so honest with our managers and employees, employees and workers and all those who work in the industry and say: Here in this House, there is still ideology before industry.

Madam President, Finally, finally, one might think, politics is doing its job: Reducing red tape, simplifying permitting procedures and speeding up market access. That's what our companies are thirsty for, especially in today's world. But far from it: Only the chosen come into these pleasures. This report creates measures for niche sectors, which should be a matter of course for all industrial and economic sectors. And then, while reading all these benefits, one comes to a conclusion between the lines, namely that the UK may have made the right decision with Brexit. There, apart from the Brussels impediments, politics is actually reorientated to one's own needs. Climate targets are being postponed, the ban on combustion engines and heating dictates are also being postponed. Nobody cares about this. Here, it continues to be diligently subsidized, controlled and planned. The fates of SolarWorld and Conergy are a long time ago. We, the continental Europeans, may actually end up with our net-zero industry – just differently than described in this report.

Madam President, and all the key words were just back in the game. Ladies and gentlemen, when the European Union, which is usually so fond of international organisations, leaves such an organisation or such a body, all alarm lamps should actually be tackled. For me, the exit from the Energy Charter Treaty now means the visible expression that we are also moving into a dead end internationally with the Green Deal. One element of the Energy Charter Treaty was also free trade in the energy sector, and free trade is no more important to our colleagues here on the left of the House than to our colleagues in the Commission when we look at the current planned economic approaches in the context of the Green Deal. That's why it sticks with what we've said so many times: The Green Deal must die so that we can live!

Madam President, Yes, Mr. Timmermans, you won't know, but I'm a human friend, and I like to give free voting tips. I think I saw your survey results today. We are currently standing at 22% in Germany, you are around six, for example. I'm happy to give you my tip. And we are now talking about what problems the Green Deal could have in its implementation now. Mr López has just fabulated that it would be up to us rights that are causing problems in the implementation of the Green Deal. No, that's not it! It is the reality of life! Ladies and gentlemen, we have been promised a programme of pink dreams here in the evening, and people have woken up in the morning in hell – in the hell of inflation, planned economy, unfreedom, price increases and now also with a further reduction in agricultural land, which will of course lead to further inflation in the food sector. Ladies and gentlemen, we must face these realities. It is time to challenge the Green Deal as a whole. Let go of it, and get back to high percentages. I just want to help you.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen! The outstanding importance of small and medium-sized enterprises has already come out excellently here today. In fact, if you read the agenda item on the situation of the European SME Union here on the agenda, you might think that we also want to do justice to this importance here. But in the preparation of this speech I have already stumbled upon the first little faux pas. Because if I am looking for the SME envoy or the SME envoy in the specific case on the Commission’s side, then it says ‘page not found’. The same applies to the e-mail address of the data subject. In this respect, the importance of SMEs is not taken into account at all. Instead of always wanting to put together new packages here like a SME package, I might ask for one thing: to put the existing packages together once and for all and to end those documentation and certification obligations, as we now have, for example, with the Supply Chain Act, but also with the Green Deal as a whole, once and for all, in order to finally give our SMEs the freedom they really need.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen! My very first congratulations today go to the Republic of France for the construction of six new nuclear power plants, which has been decided. And of course you will find yourself in good company, because we have at least 30 to 45 new nuclear power plants to be built in the EU. Now I do not belong to the climate cult, as we find it here on the left, but I find that again quite appropriate as a CO2 reduction measure. The French are therefore in good company, I am in a slightly worse position here in the House, because I am surrounded by colleagues who are already failing to change the time, but at the same time think that they can change the world climate here from the Chamber. My request is a very simple one: Let's leave this hubris behind and use a part of the capital of over €1 trillion - earmarked for the Green Deal - now for water management. This applies not only to the fight against droughts, which are already occurring today, but of course also flood events and flood protection measures. The money is needed now. We don't have to fight climate change in 100 years, we have to fight extreme weather events today.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, Make Europe the place to invest! I had originally thought of this as a small humorous introduction this afternoon, especially when I look at the recent statements of our German Minister for Economic Affairs, Mr Habeck, regarding possible gas shortages, who said that before people froze, we would throttle or even shut down our industry. He referred to a European appointment; It would also be interesting to know exactly what it was about. The question I ask myself is: How do you want to make it clear to future companies what a great place the EU is for investment, when they only talk to those who have already invested here once? They have given our companies a corset of fines and subsidies that leaves them no room to breathe! With your Green Deal, you are not only responsible for Flatterstrom, but also for the Flatterpolitik of recent months. And you've long since said goodbye to technology neutrality. Foreclosure policies and protectionism are no longer taboo topics. Then be so honest and finally remove market economy from your phrase vocabulary. They don't want investors in the sense of free entrepreneurs. You want vicarious agents for the plan – say it, combinates and state-owned companies offer themselves! The Commission representatives here on my right are therefore completely wrong. They would be far better off here on the left, far to the left. Ladies and gentlemen, "the Ursula in her run stops neither ox nor donkey." So it could sound again soon, except perhaps for one, and that is the voter. If I look at the survey results in Germany today, especially for my party, then the wind could soon turn again. Then, in the foreseeable future, we could again see mature consumers and courageous entrepreneurs taking the reins. Makers and shepherds and not the made and crafted of the climate craze and the know-it-all, as they are currently at home in Berlaymont.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen! The green NGO Clean Air Task Force, which weighs in at a good $11 million, seems to have co-written the basis for the compromise amendments to this report, despite denial on the part of the green rapporteur Paul. This is also supported by a meeting between the MEP and the lobby organisation in question, by corresponding reports by Politico and the magazine The European Conservative and, last but not least, by the entries in the metatext of the compromise proposals themselves. Ladies and gentlemen, the lobbying and non-transparent influence of NGOs on the legislative process must finally come to an end. The Greens, who are otherwise so jovially close to the citizens, are not close to the citizens or even to the people, they are in fact pupils and philistines of an opaque NGO industry – by the way, the only industry that is really close to their hearts. They do not represent the interests of those who elected them. They represent the interests of a small, well-paid, but hardly transparently paid elite and define goals with these well-established world improvers to which they want to subjugate entire peoples and industries until the last penny has been sucked out of our pocket. This hypocrisy must end here once and for all! Inevitably, as part of the methane strategy, agriculture will also be taken in the crosshairs and thus further harassed. So if you've been thinking about the methane strategy, electromobility, in short: the Green Deal would be part of a deindustrialisation campaign as part of a Morgenthau Plan 2.0, then you are completely wrong. At least this plan would have left us with agriculture.

Madam President, Yesterday we had a rather mixed sentiment about the Building Efficiency Directive and that is why I would have a request under Rule 59 of the Rules of Procedure. We have seen the chaos that is now spreading in the Council with regard to the abolition of the internal combustion engine. We already see the opposition of two Member States to the Building Efficiency Directive, and we also see the considerable opposition here in the House, across political groups, to the coercive nature of the measures in question. I therefore request that this proposal be referred back to committee.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, The proposal on the energy efficiency of buildings proves that there is no retreat from the ideas of Brussels' world changers. So now the home, the last refuge from the gender and climate craze, must believe in it. From 2028, the EU-wide obligation for the installation of photovoltaic systems in all new buildings, from 2032 in all houses. Public buildings should be emission-free as early as 2027. 15% of parking spaces will be reserved for bicycles, and one charging point for battery carriages will be built per five parking spaces. In the next ten years, 16 million houses in Germany alone will have to be equipped with new facade insulation, roofs, windows and heating systems. Long live the emission-free living in the thermos - mould and fire protection problems included! In addition to the state's compulsion to implement it, the whole thing is to be garnished with grants of EUR 150 billion, after all, EUR 330 per inhabitant. That should at least be enough for an isolated toilet window.

Madam President, The automotive supplier Schaeffler has cut 1,300 jobs due to the switch to electromobility. Borgers went bankrupt and is currently in bankruptcy. This list could be continued as desired, because according to a study by the consulting firm Horváth, three quarters of our suppliers suffer from the massive increase in energy, raw material and production costs. In Germany alone, the entire automotive industry is responsible for 400 billion euros in annual sales and employs more than one million people. In this entire problem and despite the importance that the automotive supply industry has, especially for our business location, we are throwing even more sticks between the legs of this industry by swinging mercilessly, meaninglessly and uselessly into e-mobility right now and committing ourselves to getting involved here. This leads to massive problems, and we can say that this will cause massive problems not only for my own region and Ingolstadt, but for Germany as a business location as a whole.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, Exactly three years ago, I was in front of the factory gates of the Audi company in my home region of Ingolstadt and already pointed out at that time that the 200,000 jobs in the automotive sector in Germany were at stake, especially in the supplier sector. At that time it was not at all foreseeable that today, three years later, we could face the most serious industrial and economic crisis of our generation. We are confronted with colleagues like Mrs Hahn here who are seriously striving and say that companies do not have to go into insolvency, they just have to stop working. That's what a German minister of economics says. These people are now working to exacerbate the problems that have just led to our crisis. Ladies and gentlemen, it is logical, and it is very good, that we take care to make our value chains more resilient, that we want to reduce dependencies, that we also want to diversify raw materials. This was a discussion that was also held in the United States a few years ago. At the time, there was still laughter here. Now let's try the exact same example. We'll see if it succeeds in the end. But the crucial question, as most of the previous speakers have rightly mentioned here, is energy prices. The German economy clearly says that energy prices are to be lowered by the fact that we are positioning ourselves more broadly in electricity production and that we are finally carrying the merit-order principle to the grave. Nobody mentioned that here today. We need to bury the merit order principle, and that is, of course, an essential part of the Green Deal. That is why, of course, the question arises: Does the Green Deal have a future? I mean, ladies and gentlemen, even before we fail at reality, which is inevitably imminent, we should end the Green Deal now. We should end the merit-order principle now. We should be more broadly positioned in electricity production, maintain technology neutrality, including towards nuclear energy.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, It is sometimes shocking to see how the reality of life is being talked about here today, also in this report. We have had a 30% increase in electricity prices over the past decade, 50% more than last year. We now have advance payments that are 200 to 600% higher than last year in the energy sector. The problem of inflation, which was just brought about by the misguided energy transition, which was just brought about by too much green energy, which just burdens our networks, which just means flatter current in the end. We are not addressing this problem right now by pushing for even more green energy. Therefore, my request and invitation to you: It is not the lobbies of the solar energy companies, it is not the lobbies of the wind energy companies that you have chosen here. It is people at home, voters who have to heat their homes, who have to cook their children something to eat on the stove and who simply want to inform themselves about it and create to pay their bills. These are the people you brought here, stand up for them.

Mr President! Ladies and gentlemen, I can hardly understand this positive criticism. When I look at the text of the law, I often see the wet dream, the wet dream that has come true for so many fetishists of the sovereign state. We may not have succeeded in digitising public administration. The digitalization of block maintenance in the form of Trusted Flagrs However, we seem to be able to do so in the present case. In times of crisis, they want to restrict public discourse, restrict democratic rights. I ask you, what are these times of crisis? Was such a crisis the refugee crisis of 2015? Was such a crisis the legitimate criticism of thousands upon thousands of people of vaccines thrown onto the market too early? Ladies and gentlemen, the present draft is largely unworthy of responsible citizens. You may even go as far as this: This is Mielke's late revenge on Western freedom of expression. Ladies and gentlemen, anyone who is a true democrat does not agree with this text in this form.

Madam President, Good evening, ladies and gentlemen! Well, based on target groups, the present proposal was also sold as a possible instrument against the increasing activity of our global competitors from Russia, Turkey and, of course, also from China, and we have just heard that, to the exclusion of any neo-colonial or even colonial hints. Well, the question is: Greta Thunberg and Carola Rackete are swinging their knuts where grim-looking colonial lords used to swing their knuts – in the same words that we have heard enough of them today. And it threatens even more: It threatens to become a boomerang for us, and of course it also threatens to become a daunting business for the European Union itself, if we look at the fact that mass migration will just be opened here and that the text does not speak in any word of returning migrants who have become criminals. In this sense – as is so often the case: The opposite of well done is well meant.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen! If the last new building is paved with solar modules of Chinese production and the 10H regulation has finally fallen in Bavaria and elsewhere, then we may also notice here that all this is of no use to us. Ladies and gentlemen in the Commission, perhaps you will finally get down from your ivory tower. We do not need constant expansions of competence in your favour under the guise of ever new crisis management. The President of the Commission admits quite frankly: Even the current situation, the gas boycott in Poland and Bulgaria, is nothing more than an initial spark for the Green Deal – and the ignition spark, by the way, for 300 billion euros in tax money. We don't need man-on-the-moon projects and initial sparks for projects that are doomed to fail at launch and, at best, flush money into the pockets of our Chinese competitors. We need affordable, secure energy, and that is ultimately only possible with less ideology and a diversified, technology-open energy mix for the benefit of all countries and citizens across Europe. We do not have to replace one dependency with another, as is the case. Genuine solidarity, ladies and gentlemen, also means calling for a comprehensive and immediate energy security transition.

Madam President, Mrs Paul, in your words: We need a strong solar industry in Europe. What that led to, we saw last time. It was a billion-dollar grave. It didn't work the way you imagined it. Ladies and gentlemen, it already takes a lot of audacity – many here in the room would say courage – to build ideological airlocks like the Green Deal here as a special sign of special foresight, to be caught up by reality and then to row back and sell all this actionism again as foresight. A small example: The Moorburg coal-fired power plant near Hamburg cost us 3 billion euros, was inaugurated in 2015, has produced exactly five years and is now to be shut down again and is still in reserve at best. I think it would have been more important to have an open ear for the critics of this whole state in the past rather than open time slots for selfies with any influencers. I would like to see this happen in the future as well. Do you understand the critics, have an open ear for what has happened here so far, and row back from this failed Green Deal.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, There is no doubt that we must also provide assistance to those states that are providing unselfish humanitarian aid here. Nevertheless, I should also like to point out the signs we are sending out with macro-financial assistance. At the very least, this is also about giving the impression of future EU membership - and this has already emerged today. I just want to warn you about that. I believe that we should target the funds that we are now sending to Moldova, also in the context of the current refugee crisis, which we would like to be able to increase from my side, and not as part of macro-financial assistance. After all, this also bears fruit that we are sending out the wrong signals towards Moldova. And that doesn't make any sense at all, since we say: This country is still ranked 105th in the world on the Corruption Index and has had no improvement in this ranking since 2012. In this respect: Let's give help! Let us also take into account the humanitarian situation, but please be targeted and not in the context of macro-financial assistance.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, I believe that we should also acknowledge – and it is a very multifaceted debate today – that we should also look at the fact that we are in global displacement competition, that our decisions here in the House, as well as in the Commission, are too often alien to the world and stand out. The fact that we are in a global competition is rarely as clear as the example of Africa. If the approaches of other states are more pragmatic, appear more attractive, then we do not get involved, but our competitors. Because the discussion about changing values all too often obscures our view, some do not understand here that the problems in many African countries – and this has already emerged – lie precisely in the area of simple services of general interest, in the area of infrastructure, and that other powers therefore make development, the expansion of trade and raw materials their top priorities. For us, on the other hand, the green transition is at the forefront. That's bizarre. Take hydrogen as a good example. By including Africa in this new dreaming, you are ready to misuse space for the production of locally needed electricity for the production of hydrogen, and risk exactly what lies around our necks like a millstone here, namely the cost explosion of electricity. We should therefore acknowledge that a bumbling into unworldly value dreams only leads us to the sidelines. We must move towards a policy that is also guided by our interests, in our favour and that of Africa.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, Contrary to my many previous speakers here, I have serious concerns about the further expansion of offshore wind energy, not only with regard to fisheries and environmental protection, as has already been mentioned, but also with regard to the development of energy prices. The costs are also not competitive in offshore wind energy and must be supported by expensively paid subsidies, which only further distorts the market. Let's look at the concrete figures: In the package Fit for 55 There is talk of 60 gigawatts by 2030 alone. Currently, we have a production of 12 gigawatts. The investments for a single gigawatt are, favorably calculated, 2.5 billion euros, in the practical, realistic case about 4 billion euros. Enlargement by 2030 would thus require 120 to 192 billion euros of additional investment - 120 to 192 billion euros, which we want to hum up for our citizens, who are already groaning under electricity prices, because you are basically not interested in affordable energy, but in megaprojects of a small lobby, which is getting smaller every day.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen. The Kimberley process is certainly a process of success, as you can already see. We now have 85 states that are committed here and that want to help ensure that diamonds are free of blood in the future and that they are also mined under decent conditions. In this respect, of course, it is a process that we must monitor carefully, which the Commission must also keep a careful eye on in order to help it become effective and efficient and to ensure that the relevant requirements are complied with. Now we already had other points, how the corresponding process can also be extended. And I just want to argue that we should also look at other products, other raw materials. If the Forbes magazine 2018 about Blood Batteries - Cobalt And The Congo We have a similar problem there. Of course, we have cobalt funding, on the one hand also from local warlords, we have a child labour problem, and we also have forced labour. This means that we have a regionally delimitable raw material, which also comes to a large extent from the Congo. The Kimberley trial actually started in the Congo, so it originally started. We have a similar problem, and we have a limitable raw material. In this respect, I would like to argue that if we now take care of the Kimberley process and make sure that the Kimberley process will really work, we will also see where we can implement this recipe for success on other raw materials.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen. You may be surprised, but both my party and my group are in principle in favour of humanitarian aid as well as development aid as aid for self-help. We therefore differ more in the ‘how’ than in the ‘if’ in this specific question. Development aid can never be a vehicle for clientele policy. However, this report is also a drumbeat of the Zeitgeist vocabulary and a creative ‘more’ in the ‘continue as before’. Actually, it would be appropriate to question whether money in Afghan gender projects really makes sense, instead of only bluntly demanding an increase in funding for development aid. Instead of questioning whether development aid is also based on mutual trust between donor and recipient states and whether it would therefore not actually be appropriate to rely on cooperation in the area of the return of, for example, illegal or criminal migrants, there is now a blanket call for the implementation of the above-mentioned initiative. In the long term, this means the introduction of disasters and climate causes as an additional spongy ground for asylum. Ladies and gentlemen, this report is a well-being zeitgeist wash. In any case, he does not address the real problems of humanitarian aid, namely aid money that the disaster victims do not reach at all, excessive bureaucracy and money seeped into the swamp of aid organisations.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, In the opinion of the German Medical Association, the present proposal is particularly welcomed by one, namely industry. She says the proposal would increase the risk of external interference in the future. It is, of course, about lobbying, and this lobby, which is of course very, very active here in Brussels, is pleased with what is happening here. He is pleased with centralization. It needs to spend significantly less money to operate in Brussels. And I believe that health policy, whether at national level or here in Brussels, depends primarily on one thing: trust. Can we trust one thing? Can we trust the Commission in this matter, whose president has exchanged mass chats with the Pfizer CEO, all of which have now disappeared? Can we really trust Ursula von der Leyen here, whose husband is medical director of the company Orgenesis in the USA? I think it's about trust. And whether trust can really be given here, that is questionable for me.

Madam President, Well, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, one could almost be surprised to find this item on the agenda here today. After all, the perpetrators of precisely these high electricity prices are also sitting here, among other things. So we're trying to cure a disease we've caused ourselves. Look, one or the other colleague has now speculated about it, we have found reasons abroad. We suspect the evil Putin, of course again in Russia and many other stories. We even suspect the economic recovery right now, especially after Corona, of being responsible here. However, in the last ten years between 2010 and 2020, taxes, levies and levies on electricity in Germany alone have risen by a good 70 percent. They now account for almost 50 percent of the electricity price. Against this background, it is downright ridiculous to want to blame all sorts of exogenous causes for this. When the scenario of rising energy costs and blackout danger actually became tangible when we could see it, all those who drew attention to it were called black painters. Well, if it goes on like this, we'll all be allowed to paint in black soon. This will be the result of various dreams here in the room. In this respect, the heart is now being weighed, ladies and gentlemen. It is now a matter of lowering taxes, as has already been mentioned today. Yes, of course, but also to follow the good example of one country or another and introduce an electricity price cap and finally implement the tax cuts that have already been promised by many colleagues here today.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, The Commission said earlier: Active and practical solidarity is characteristic of Europe. This sentence becomes an empty promise when one hears that the financial means for mutual help have already been used up. What kind of demands would come, that was already clear when reading the corresponding articles: In turn, the entire EU budget is now inflating due to climate change. Ladies and gentlemen, this demand is wrong. Firstly, it is not only anonymous climate change that is responsible for many of the damage that has occurred, but also very concrete personal ignorance on the part of individual decision-makers. Secondly, we should further strengthen the existing Solidarity Fund under the existing budget, for example by redirecting funds from environmentally harmful programmes such as the promotion of e-mobility to where they actually have an active and practical benefit. If we fail to do so, if we do not have sufficient resources at our disposal to help local citizens, the EU risks completely dismantling it. Then it's no longer just Too little too late, but Too little and never.