Speeches

Madam President, Since 2010, the EU has been falling further and further behind North America, Australia and the Far East. Obviously, the EU responds to any crisis – be it COVID, Ukraine, energy or the so-called global climate crisis – with more excitement but less success than the rest of the world. What are your priorities until the European elections? Firstly: By the end of 2023, almost one million asylum applications will have been lodged in the EU. Nevertheless, you are planning a new EU migration pact that will bring even more unqualified migrants from Africa and the Orient here. Secondly: The war in Ukraine and our sanctions have plunged the EU into stagflation. Nevertheless, you want to continue to invest tens of billions in foreign conflicts, while millions of Europeans can no longer pay their heating and household costs. Thirdly: Their experimental energy policy, which makes our economy uncompetitive and ruins our citizens. Nevertheless, you want to accelerate the green transformation. All of this costs more money that you don't have and our citizens first have to work out with jobs that put your policy at risk. Instead: Please focus on the essentials! We need more competitiveness for more prosperity, because compared to the world leaders, the EU currently only plays in the upper third of the second league economically.

Mr President! EU sanctions against Russia should be swift and painful – indeed, they do us more harm than Russia. This is precisely why the EU is undermining its own sanctions and continues to import large quantities of Russian gas at higher prices via Azerbaijan. For the same purpose, the Commission just approved a low-interest loan of EUR 400 million to Bulgarian gas company Bulgargaz, which it had imposed fines of almost EUR 80 million in 2018 for antitrust offences, but which is now allowed to supply Russian gas. In order to cover up the origin of the natural gas transported through the Southern European pipeline, there is a confidentiality clause. Their hypocrisy shows: Their sanctions fail. Finally, put an end to this farce and take care of peace and prosperity in Europe, because this is what the EC was founded for.

Madam President, More than 800 000 asylum applications have already been lodged in the EU in 2023. In addition, there are millions of Ukrainians, family laggards, visa recipients and countless newborns of child-friendly migrants, who usually become EU citizens by birth and thus secure asylum for their parents. According to an INSA survey by my group, three quarters of all Europeans want only qualified non-EU immigrants. But with the EU Migration Pact, the Commission is creating new secure access routes, rapid asylum procedures and extended family reunification, especially for the unqualified. Germany and Italy are smuggling migrants across the Mediterranean, and the CJEU is violating the law by declaring internal border controls in the EU illegal, so that illegals can travel unhindered to their preferred destination in the EU. Two questions arise: First of all, why do you never listen to the citizens here? Second, why do you want to turn Europe into Africa?

Mr President! Since the beginning of 2022, the ECB has raised its interest rates ten times minimally. Nevertheless, the euro interest rate level remains well below the German inflation rate of 6.4%. On the other hand, it is clearly above Spanish inflation of 2.4%. In a way, Europe is on its head. In the traditionally high-inflationary south, inflation is falling, while energy and food prices are exploding in the previously healthy Germany. The reason is clear: Germany has the stupidest energy, climate rescue and migration policies in the world. The Bundesbank is therefore calling for further interest rate hikes in order to reduce inflation, the southern states want the opposite. A dilemma for the ECB, because it has to make a choice in the straitjacket of monetary union. Either it protects the savings of German taxpayers, who already finance the lion's share of the EU budget and the 800 billion euro NextGenerationEU gift basket for the Mediterranean, or it keeps interest rates low to make bankrupt banks and highly indebted countries in southern Europe feel bad. But let's not fool ourselves. The ECB will no longer raise interest rates significantly, not only to save southern Europe, but also to finance the EU's global climate rescue and mass migration projects, which are largely co-financed by the expropriation of German savers and taxpayers via the ECB. As the EU speaks to the world, the financial markets are already reacting. The euro share of global SWIFT payments fell from 38% to 23% this year alone, while US dollars and China's currency continue to gain weight. Europe's decline is not only tragic, it is above all self-inflicted. The rescue would be so simple: Just do the opposite of what is decided here almost every day.

Mr President! Corrupt Polish officials and politicos have sold up to 250,000 Schengen visas to illegal migrants who immediately left for Germany, according to Polish media. The Polish government - ostensibly an opponent of the replacement migration to Europe promoted by Germany and the Commission - must immediately investigate the case and severely punish those responsible. If this does not happen, the Commission must intervene. This would actually have to be demanded by the German government, which instead operates state-sponsored German ferry services for illegal migrants in the Mediterranean and currently, as we know from Giorgia Meloni and Elon Musk, finances at least eight distress tugboats, which take in thousands of migrants every day 20 miles off the coast of Libya, in order to then set them back ashore in Italy more than 300 miles away. The same goes for Italy's coast guard, so that the population exchange does not rest for a day. According to Foreign Minister Baerbock, the Germans wanted this comprehensive ferry connection from Africa to Europe. The truth is: None of the senses wants this, and according to an INSA opinion poll two years ago, 80% of all Europeans want secure - not open - external borders. Because every African they bring here costs a modern welfare state an average of 14,000 euros each year.

Madam President, An EU state may not deport illegally entered migrants apprehended during checks at its borders. This was decided by the European Court of Justice on 21 September. The Return Directive, which is specifically aimed at terminating the residence of persons without a right of residence, thus becomes the Entry Guarantee Directive. The judgment is a prime example of judicial creation – that is, the arbitrary amendment of the law by a creative judiciary. Article 2 of the Return Directive clarifies: The protection against immediate removal applies only to illegal persons in a Member State and not at the external border of that Member State. The EU is taking measures against Member States for alleged deficiencies in the rule of law. With what right if one's own highest court openly breaks EU law?

Madam President, In March 2000, the Commission announced the Lisbon strategy to make the EU the most dynamic and competitive economy in the world by 2010. In 2010, the strategy passed, was postponed by ten years and failed nevertheless. In 2020, you conceded here, Madam President, that from now on you would care more about our well-being than about our prosperity. For Germany, this objective has been achieved: 6.2% inflation, well above the OECD average, little productivity growth, the halving of Germany’s export surplus, an 80% year-on-year decline in foreign direct investment, and –0.3%, the IMF’s worst growth forecast. As never before, German companies are relocating production abroad in order to escape high energy prices. I admit, Madam President, that you are achieving your goals, but the failure of your predecessors has always been more beneficial to our well-being than your success.

Mr President! The ECB calls for the introduction of the digital euro. The ECB Director and Banca d'Italia CEO Panetta said that the digital euro offers users anonymity, allows offline payments and is truly European. But we can pay offline for thousands of years, cash, or centuries by check or bank transfer. And if you have to pay digitally due to inner coercion, you can do so for years with private digital currencies and services. And the cash flows remain anonymous only as long as the ECB does not identify the parties involved, although it could easily do so at any time. We, as a European institution, could trust the ECB. I'll take this as a joke. After all, the ECB has given us Germans priceless real estate prices, record inflation and 15 years – at least 15 years – of falling living standards. Trust, please remember, arises from trustworthiness.

Mr President! In 2020, the European Commission bought millions of defective COVID masks. The Commission refused to investigate, citing the economic interests of the parties. In 2021, Commissioner von der Leyen negotiated vaccine contracts with Pfizer for 4.6 billion vaccine doses for at least 71 billion euros. Again via SMS, as she did as Secretary of Defense with U.S. consulting firms such as McKinsey. As more people are now afraid of vaccine damage than COVID and vaccine protection is limited, hundreds of millions of vaccine doses remain unused and are to be destroyed. But Pfizer cashed in his $71 billion. In the case of the Bundeswehr, the waste of money was still ten figures. The SMS, however, according to the Commission, with which von der Leyen drafted the contracts with Pfizer, were unfortunately all deleted, just as before in the Ministry of Defense. Then there are allegations of a conflict of interest, because von der Leyen's spouse is the owner of a biotech company that develops mRNA vaccines and receives millions of subsidies. Here too, reconnaissance is blocked. Mismanagement and administrative failure and corruption – not my words, but those of EU Ombudsman Emily O'Reilly.

Mr President! Tax evasion and tax avoidance are issues where European cooperation would actually make sense – probably the very reason why the EU remains so persistently idle here. Letterbox companies are vehicles that serve no economic purpose, but tax avoidance. They cost EU taxpayers at least €60 billion per year. Nevertheless, the political will to do something about it is lacking – probably because Eurocrats and MEPs partly benefit themselves from such constructions, as well as from taking advantage of lively contact with lobbyists and financially strong third countries. As a reminder: According to the Pandora papers Thousands of our politicians, including member states, corporate executives and the super-rich, tax-free invest millions and trillions of assets in the Caribbean, including their special friend Zelenskyy, who has channelled at least 40 million on offshore accounts through his wife Olena. Since most people like to hide this, I can only conclude: The majority of them want it that way and not otherwise.

Mr President! In the past, inflation was high in southern Europe and low in northern Europe. Now Spain has 1.6% inflation and Germany almost 7%. Inflation destroyed around €116 billion of German savings in 2021, up from €200 billion in 2022. The reasons are the disastrous energy and climate policies, the sanctions against Russia, which cut us off from cheap energy, and the ECB, which is tentatively raising interest rates but further expanding the money supply. The result: Savers have been losing 4 to 8% of their savings for years as a result of the difference between savings rates and inflation. The standard of living of the Germans is collapsing. According to Commission data, one in four Germans is at risk of poverty, and the Germans have the lowest median wealth in the euro zone. The EU and the German government have been destroying the entire life performance of the German middle class since the war. Why, I ask, should we fear Russia more than the EU or our own government?

Madam President, Commissioner! The Pandora Papers are leaked documents revealing secret offshore accounts of 35 leading politicians - presidents, prime ministers and monarchs - as well as vast offshore assets of more than 100 billionaires, celebrities and business leaders. Two years after its publication, the European Parliament is now giving its first opinion on the matter. The Danish rapporteur, my fair colleague Niels Fuglsang, deserves to be thanked for keeping a lot of nonsense out of the report, but also for stressing important shortcomings in European tax law. However, he was not allowed to address some sensitive issues: Because the European People's Party and the Renew Group refused to publicly reprimand EU Commissioners and European politicians mentioned in the Pandora Papers. The same applies to Member States with large deficits in tax and anti-money laundering legislation, such as Portugal, Greece, Croatia, Malta, Cyprus and Italy. Even more remarkable, however, is the case of a special EU favourite, Ukrainian President Zelenskyy, who has created a spider web of offshore companies in the Caribbean and Cyprus. There, he stows at least $41 million he received from oligarch Ihor Kolomoyskyj, along with EU aid he has secured from the authorities. To date, Maltex Multicapital Corporation, registered in the Virgin Islands, pays untaxed dividends to Olena Selenska, Selenskyj's wife. French moralist La Rochefoucauld said: ‘L’hypocrisie est l’hommage que le vice rend à la vertu‘ Hypocrisy is the tribute which vice must pay to virtue’. This timeless word applies in particular to the EU and its alleged fight for tax justice.

Mr President! The Council of Ministers has agreed on a new EU migration pact. With what result? Europe needs strict ceilings and external reception centres. However, the Council decides on minimum quotas for all Member States and high-speed distribution centres in the EU. We need clear, stricter rules. However, the Pact speeds up procedures and creates many exceptions that make any examination impossible. We need entry bans for illegal migrants. Instead, the term ‘illegal migration’ is abolished. This pact does not facilitate deportations or remigration, but invites the whole world to Europe. In the future, every climate refugee who does not like the weather at home will be accepted. They bring us tens of millions of foodies. According to three Northern European studies, each of them costs us 700,000 euros for life. Your migration plans are just as fantastic as your climate rescue. For they lack any reference to reality and to what they do. They're taking the Third World. We become the Third World.

Madam President, Commissioner! The European Parliament is calling for a new EU electoral law. After that, each voter would have two votes: one for national parties familiar to national politicians and a second for so-called transnational lists. With the second vote, citizens should vote for EU parties such as S&D, Renew and ECR, which no one knows, and for mostly foreign politicians whose language is poorly understood. Germans vote for Greeks or Bulgarians, Poles for Dutch or Finns for Spaniards. In the long term, all MEPs will be elected via transnational lists. The father of political conservatism, Edmund Burke, saw the close relationship and exchange between voters and elected persons as the core of parliamentarism. Their electoral reform has only one goal: To undermine this bond of trust and thus undermine democracy even further.

Madam President, The euro is the most expensive currency of all time. Mass migration brings us millions of foodies, but no skilled workers. And climate rescue leads to deindustrialization and mass poverty. The AfD has been saying this for ten years. The OECD is now making us right and, according to surveys, more and more Germans. Common sense is returning to Germany, it seems. And that is exactly why the pro-government Institute for Human Rights there is now calling for a ban on my party. If one speaks obvious truths in Germany, citizens are prosecuted under flimsy pretexts, and parties are banned. The decision on this lies with the Federal Constitutional Court, whose judges are appointed by the old parties on the basis of political opinions. This is the supposedly exemplary New German model of democracy and the rule of law that you want to enforce here in Hungary, Poland – and with weapons also in Ukraine. This New German model will also fail.

Madam President, Commissioner! If elections do not proceed as Brussels wishes, accusations immediately follow that Russia has manipulated or financed the winner. The two biggest cases of foreign interference in our politics here concern the EU itself. Firstly: In the Qatargate scandal, €1.5 million was found among MEPs at home or in suitcases, plus €22 million in accounts in Panama – payments used by Qatar and other governments to buy votes in this house. Secondly: Before the Italian elections in September 2022, Ursula von der Leyen threatened Italian voters: In the event of the formation of a Eurosceptic government, the Commission would take appropriate measures, including the removal of large sums of money from Brussels. Both, dear colleagues, are blatant examples of foreign interference in the democratic process. Russian assets are frozen on suspicion. But why don't they seize the assets of the von der Leyen family and put them on the sanctions list? Because here abuse of office and advantage are obvious.

Mr President! Former Bulgarian Prime Minister Kiril Petkov promised Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to help Bulgaria bypass the rules for joining the euro. Nothing new, because Mario Draghi, then still with Goldman Sachs, paved the way for Greece with swap transactions in the euro against high fees. Ten years later, we had the never-ending euro crisis. Later, Draghi became the biggest lawbreaker since the war. Von der Leyen is just as arbitrarily overriding the law. As Secretary of Defense, she awarded consulting fees to US consulting firms, and as Commission President, she negotiated billions of orders for COVID vaccines with Pfizer via SMS. She refuses to provide information about the content of the news and compensation to her family. But nothing happens. The EU is pushing rule of law concerns to tackle unwelcome Member States. The EU breaks the law if and how it likes it.

Madam President, The eurozone, along with Britain, has the highest inflation rate in the developed world. Rapidly rising energy and food prices mean: The standard of living is falling, citizens have to freeze, and savings are being destroyed. In 2022 alone, German savers were expropriated by around 200 billion euros. But the ECB raises interest rates by a ridiculous 0.25 to 3.7%, with inflation above 7%. So timidly, galloping inflation cannot be tamed. The situation is clear: The ECB is the vicarious agent of ailing banks and irresponsible governments, whose debts it simply inflates away by low interest rates at the expense of citizens. The fact that inflation is not destiny but willed is demonstrated by Switzerland with 2.6% inflation, Taiwan with 2.3% and even Russia with 3.5% – countries with sound budgetary management that do not want to save the global climate.

Madam President, If the Germans are crazy, half the world wonders. And the answer is: Yes, because Germany suffers from helper syndrome and belongs on the couch. For 15 years, Germany has been trying to save everything and everyone. You seem to have saved the euro, but at the expense of monetary stability and at the expense of the savers and pensioners who finance your record inflation and debt. The Wall Street Journal called your global climate rescue the stupidest energy policy in the world, because with a share of 1.3% of global CO2 emissions, Germany cannot save the climate, but you ruin the German middle class and our citizens through priceless electricity, heating costs and forced renovation. Those who cannot afford this, the US real estate fund gratefully buys the long-saved house far below value. They also want to save migrants. Every single one of the additional five, six, seven million people from the Orient and Africa that we have had more in the country for ten years costs us around 700,000 euros on average, or 17,500 annually, for life. Africa generates a new Germany of 85 million people every 18 months: Do you want to save them too? And finally, your Russia policy: Together with Merkel, you led Germany into a low-cost energy dependence on Russia. Then the big brother just blew up the Nord Stream pipeline. They persistently deny any reconnaissance and impose almost monthly new sanctions against Russia, which do us more harm than Russia. And you are supplying weapons with which the West can prolong the war, but Ukraine cannot win it. The German government and the EU suffer from helper syndrome, but they do not help anyone, but do self-harm. The psychoanalyst Alfred Adler saw the causes of the helper syndrome in the consciousness of his own inferiority. The helper tries to overplay his own problems by turning to those who are even worse off. He is not at all interested in whether his help is fruitful, because by doing so he could no longer relativize his own inferiority. The patient Germany belongs in therapy to overcome his weak self-esteem and to free himself from the helper syndrome, because the bill of your pathological altruism unfortunately does not pay your government, but our citizens.

Mr President! When the EU gave itself a common currency, it had two options: either a soft currency with high inflation and a central bank printing money simply to keep export industry competitive and keep highly indebted member states from bankruptcy, or a hard currency modelled on the low-inflation D-mark and a central bank firmly behind savers and pensioners, forcing the government to adopt prudent fiscal policies. With the adoption of the Maastricht rules and an inflation target below 2%, the choice seemed clear at the time. But 30 years after Maastricht and after three ECB presidents from Mediterranean countries, we have double-digit inflation rates, clammy banks and record debt. Almost every state disregards the Maastricht rules. Everyone in Europe wanted a German currency, but no one wanted German budgetary management. After Draghi successfully licensed the euro, the Commission and the ECB are now calling for the strict fiscal rules to be abandoned. Minister Lindner is completely isolated in the Council. The role of the new Germany in the new EU should be clear: Shut up and pay up – Shut up and pay! It is becoming increasingly clear that Germany needs to rethink its relationship with the EU. But I'm afraid Mr. Lindner will capitulate. Today, by the way, is May 9.

Mr President! The European Parliament and the Council of Ministers are negotiating the new EU Migration Pact, which aims to facilitate asylum procedures, create new access routes, expand family influx and abolish the illegal concept of migration. Von der Leyen is even considering a European Union of Migration and Destiny, in which Europe absorbs Africa's population surplus. According to two studies by the University of Amsterdam and the Danish government in 2020, every migrant from Africa and the Orient cost a modern welfare state just under 600,000 euros. Today, this makes almost 700,000 euros for life or 17,500 euros annually. More than 5 million migrants from Africa and the Orient live in Germany today than in 2014. The annual cost is at least 88 billion euros. Africa bears witness to a new Germany with 85 million people every 18 months. If the German government took them up, that would be 1.5 trillion euros. Their migration pact is insane!

Mr President! Last month, Christine Lagarde was the victim of a joke call. Unintentionally, Lagarde revealed: The digital euro is about total state control over citizens' money. Lagarde literally: ‘We have in Europe a threshold above EUR 1 000, you cannot pay cash. If you do, you take your risk, you get caught, you’re fined, or you go to jail. Our citizens will be controlled, only for very small amounts – around EUR 300 or EUR 400 – will there be no control’. Payments over 1000 euros are to be controlled and at some point everything over three or four hundred euros. Cash payments guarantee freedom, because no bank or state can know what you bought where, how and when. Cash protects against negative interest, expropriation and loss due to bank insolvencies. Lagarde got bogged down on the call, and now we know: The digital euro should deprive us of this freedom of cash payment.

Mr President, the EU is introducing a new regulatory framework for crypto—assets, which offers some consumer protection, may deter businesses operating from within the EU, but above all raises serious privacy concerns. The new rules impose extensive compliance requirements on crypto—asset providers which need to obtain an EU operating licence. Crypto—asset providers also need to provide real—time information about pricing processes and trading volumes. This requires considerable technical expertise, which raises entry barriers for SMEs. Crypto transfers above EUR 1 000 between exchanges and unhosted wallets owned by private individuals are now automatically reported to national authorities, regardless of any money laundering or terrorism—related suspicions. The EU is criminalising decentralised finance and its users. The fight against money laundering and terrorist financing should be fought against the Islamist terrorists and the NGOs financing them, not against ordinary citizens that are venturing into crypto for a safe store of value in times of runaway inflation and unaffordable real estate. Under the guise of anti-terrorism and anti-money laundering, the EU is establishing a total financial surveillance state. This should be a grave concern for anyone who takes privacy and individual rights seriously.

Mr President! Germany pays 37 billion euros gross annually and over 26 billion euros net to the EU. This means that Germany pays almost half of the total EU budget net and every German 444 euros of EU gross contribution per year. In addition, Germany's contribution to the EU Recovery Fund of over €200 billion from 2021 to 2026, i.e. €33.3 billion per year or a further €397 per person per year. In total, each German pays a Fron of currently over 840 euros annually to the EU. In addition, there are, first, the Bundesbank's indefinite, unsecured and irrecoverable 1.2 trillion Target2 loans to the ECB system, for which every German is liable at around €14,300 so far, and, second, the €1.5 trillion asset losses of our savers as a result of the ECB's monetary and inflation policy. What do the Germans get for allowing themselves to be consumed like moths by the flame through the fallacies of the EU? The highest energy prices in the world, mass migration, which costs us an additional 100 billion euros a year, insects and worms in food, a Green Deal, which should de-industrialize us like the Morgenthau Plan once did, and a foreign policy that can soon plunge us into a European war.

Mr President! In 1970, Sweden's per capita income was almost 50 percent higher than that of Denmark. Today Sweden is poorer than Denmark. The cause: Almost a third of today's Swedes are not Europeans, but only 10 percent of Danes. A crucial difference, because every migrant from Africa and the Orient costs a Western European welfare state on average almost 700,000 euros for life, according to Dutch and Danish studies. In 1983, Denmark had the most liberal immigration law in the EU. But then the country came to its senses: Illegal migrants have been deported, citizenship rights have been tightened, asylum benefits have been reduced and family reunification has been made more difficult. Today, Denmark has the best welfare state and one of the highest wage levels in the EU. Sweden and Denmark are just one example of the inverse relationship between migration and economic performance. In order to survive, we need Danish conditions all over Europe!