What Gunnar spoke about.

25

Nov

2021

Speeches EN

Watch

The International Day of Elimination of Violence Against Women and the State of play on the ratification of the Istanbul Convention (continuation of debate)

Mr President, the Istanbul Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence is the first European convention to impose legal duties specifically to protect women. It’s been ratified by most EU Member States. The EU is now calling on the remaining six members to follow soon. Two comments. Of course, women should be protected against violence. However, why only women? Men are as likely to suffer domestic violence as women. Why don’t they merit protection? Second, some States object to ratification because they fear the courts may interpret the convention too broadly and apply it to gender matters unrelated to domestic violence and violence against women. The convention is specifically aimed at both, and the text freely refers to both, but little else. The Vienna Convention on the Laws of Treaties requires that treaties be interpreted in good faith and according to their ordinary meaning, unless that meaning is woefully unclear or absurd. Yet the EU, and some national courts, commonly construe legal provisions dynamically, that means against their wording and to further purposes the courts invent and impose. The only safeguard against this undemocratic practice of judicial lawmaking by unelected and politically appointed officials, is the literal, or text-based, interpretation. What there is need for is a convention against judicial lawmaking, not the judicial extension of the Istanbul Convention.

22

Nov

2021

Speeches EN

Watch

One-minute speeches on matters of political importance

Madam President, Stephan Harbarth, the President of the German Constitutional Court recently declared Poland fell short of German rule of law standards. Moreover, the Polish judiciary was not independent. Two comments – first, Poland’s top court has questioned the supremacy of EU law over national constitutions, a position which is exactly that of Germany’s top court, except the German judges wilfully ignore any EU treaty violation, and the German government tells them to. Second, the federal government effectively controls the appointment of all top judges in Germany, who are often signed up members of political parties. Harbarth himself is a former deputy leader of Merkel’s party and will now decide complaints involving laws he himself advocated. While the judge rapporteur of the recent pro climate rescue judgment is close to the Greens and married to a green politician. Perhaps, I conclude, Poland should not match German standards.

10

Nov

2021

Speeches DE

Watch

One-minute speeches on matters of political importance

Mr President! Since 2015, at least five million so-called refugees have followed Angela Merkel's invitation to the world to come to Germany and the EU. According to a recently published Danish study, the citizens of this German world rescue policy cost more than 100 billion euros every year. Now German politicians renew their invitation to the world, and immediately thousands gather in Belarus to travel illegally to Germany via Poland. Polish troops rightly deny them this illegal border crossing: None of the migrants has a ground for asylum, because according to Article 31 of the Geneva Convention on Refugees, at most they are entitled to temporary shelter, which comes directly from an unsafe third country. Belarus is not such a state. Poland is acting in accordance with international law. The calls of the German government, on the other hand, endanger the future of Europe as a whole.

10

Nov

2021

Speeches DE

Watch

Disclosure of income tax information by certain undertakings and branches (debate)

Madam President, The EU is not a state, but an international organisation, that is, it cannot determine its tasks at will, but can only act on the principle of conferral. Tax legislation is not part of its contractually assigned tasks, but remains the prerogative of the nation states. According to Article 115 of the EU Treaties, the EU may act only if the Member States decide unanimously. That is why the EU is now adopting legal acts on the exchange of tax data, which can be welcomed as measures to purportedly protect freedom of establishment under Article 50(1) of the Treaties, but which has nothing to do with taxation. In this way, tax laws are passed by a majority. This circumvention of unanimity is abuse of rights and breach of contract. But the EU calls it the rule of law.

20

Oct

2021

Speeches DE

Watch

Increased efforts to fight money laundering (debate)

Mr President! The European Commission is calling for the establishment of another EU supervisory agency, stricter cash controls and an EU asset register. Under the guise of anti-money laundering, it registers and monitors what all citizens own, buy, sell and drive. This is not about money laundering. Hungary's law regulating the funding of LGBT and migration NGOs, foreign universities and the media has been overturned by the CJEU as an encroachment on the freedom of capital. But if the EU itself restricts the freedom of capital, it is legal. Even the EU Court of Auditors complains that the EU does nothing against money laundering in the smuggling of migrants – after all, a €6 billion industry. This is about citizen surveillance, invasion of privacy and the phasing out of cash, not money laundering and tax avoidance.

19

Oct

2021

Speeches EN

Watch

The Rule of law crisis in Poland and the primacy of EU law (debate)

Mr President, Poland’s top court decided it can set aside EU law when that law either exceeds the EU’s powers, as limited by the Treaties, or violates the Polish Constitution. The judgment is clear, concise and correct. The EU is not sovereign and, according to Article 5 of the EU Treaty, EU law only has primacy where the Member States delegated powers to the EU. Where powers are unclear, however, the EU cannot be a judge in its own cause. The national higher courts therefore must needs enforce the limits of the EU Treaties because the Member States alone, as sovereign democratic entities, can define their conferred powers to ensure the EU does not judicially extend its own powers by competence creep. The Polish judgment is almost identical with the Lisbon Judgment of the German Verfassungsgericht, which too found, first, that the EU is neither sovereign, nor does it enjoy the same legitimacy as Member States, and, second, asserted its own power to review EU acts if they are ultra vires or violate the German Basic Law. There’s one difference, however. Whereas Poland takes its own highest court seriously, the German Verfassungsgericht was simply ignored when, last year, it held the European Central Bank had violated the EU Treaties. It seems Poland is defending the rule of law here, while Germany is ignoring it.

6

Oct

2021

Speeches DE

Watch

Banking Union - annual report 2020 (debate)

Madam President, Olaf Scholz, arguably the next German chancellor, wants to complete the EU banking union through the joint deposit guarantee EDIS. This is also intended to save and rehabilitate northern European savers of dilapidated banks throughout the eurozone. After Brexit, Germany already pays around 45 billion euros to the EU annually. In addition, there are around 100 billion TARGET2 loans to the euro zone and around 80 billion euros expropriation of savers due to negative interest rates from the ECB and rising inflation. And the so-called common asylum policy, whose rules everyone disregards, costs the Germans another 40 to 60 billion euros every year. In addition, there are the insane costs of climate rescue. Nowhere are wage-related taxes higher than in Germany, except perhaps in Belgium, nowhere are indigenous birth rates lower and people older than in Germany, Italy and Japan. And nowhere are electricity prices higher than in Germany – the trend continues to rise. They're acting like we're in Schlaraffenland. Because the German government imagines itself as economically omnipotent as the USA after 1945 and powders up the money for megalomaniac currency, financial, migration and climate projects that must fail because they are against the world order and reason. Whom the gods want to destroy, they make mad at first. And so be sure: Once the German credit rating is downgraded, it's over with your indulgence letters, social experiments, bank rescues and your world rescue madness!

6

Oct

2021

Speeches DE

Watch

The state of play on the submitted RRF recovery plans awaiting approval (debate)

Mr President! The EU recovery fund of well over 700 billion euros is illegally financed by Eurobonds and is supposed to mitigate the economic and social impact of the coronavirus wave. In fact, the Fund is a shadow budget that violates the prohibition on debt laid down in the Treaties in Articles 310 and 311 and serves to finance and bribe Eastern Europe to swallow the EU migration pact and EU-regulated sex education for preschoolers. Hungary and Poland, however, do not want hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants, nor early sexualisation, nor before literacy. Poland alone will receive almost 40 billion from the fund, but the money will be blocked in the first place. Hungary and Poland are accused of political interference in the judiciary and a lack of media freedom. Spokesman against both is Germany. But in Germany, all high judges are effectively appointed by the government, prosecutors are politically bound by directives, and public broadcasting is government-funded and controlled. I believe it is time for German restraint and the end of EU double standards.

6

Oct

2021

Speeches DE

Watch

Reforming the EU policy on harmful tax practices (including the reform of the Code of Conduct Group) (debate)

Mr President! Politicians like to scourge state-damaging practices of taxpayers. Let's talk about tax-damaging government practices and spending. The German government has brought at least 2.5 million migrants into the country since 2015, including newborns of asylum seekers. Every unaccompanied minor migrant costs the German taxpayer 65,000 euros per year, other migrants slightly less. That makes a total of at least 40 to 60 billion a year for life. The EU also has the most expensive currency in the world. The euro alone costs Germany around 100 billion euros per year in TARGET2 loans and 80 billion in lost savings rates, many times more expensive for climate rescue, from which only green financial jugglers benefit. In Hungary, citizens pay 15 percent flat rate on income and families with four children pay no taxes at all. In Russia, every family with two children receives a state payment to buy a property. All this, and in addition, they also get an unpoliticized education and cultural system without early sexualization for elementary school students. All of this is possible outside the eurozone. In the eurozone, we have debt-financed socially degenerative special programmes.

6

Oct

2021

Speeches EN

Watch

Pandora Papers: implications on the efforts to combat money laundering, tax evasion and avoidance (debate)

Madam President, when asked to assess the historical importance of the French Revolution, Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai famously said: ‘It is too early to say.’ Today we know the Revolution failed. For the Pandora Papers have once again confirmed that the very rich remain tax exempt, and avoid paying tax perfectly legally. Two comments. First, many of the tax evaders are from countries which are among the largest recipients of German and EU development aid or of EU recovery funds. Yet neither Germany nor the EU wants to impose sanctions on those countries or persons. Where action could be, but isn’t, taken, there is obviously no political will to stop mass tax evasion by the super-rich. It is all idle talk here. Second, it is noteworthy that while most of the non-Western tax evaders are politicians, most Western evaders are celebrities and companies. The reason is obvious: Western politicians are rarely plutocrats, but mere gatekeepers of the plutocracy. That explains why this House is plundering the middle classes and pandering to the plutocracy. The middle class is today’s third estate, and our politicians are the second estate, which is legitimating rule by the first. It is Europe before 1789 but with fewer Europeans.

16

Sep

2021

Speeches DE

Watch

EU transparency in the development, purchase and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines (debate)

Mr President! The EU failed, not succeeded, in the COVID crisis. We had the biggest economic slump in the world because it was sloppy at the beginning and then the lockdown policy was all the harder. East Asia did not have a lockdown. Despite tougher measures, the EU, together with the UK and the US, has the highest death rates. Despite higher costs, less has been achieved. And as inefficient as the EU was, so intransparent is it. The disclosure of the contracts was massively blacked out. For example, it remains unclear why Sanofi, who cannot deliver, got a contract and money from Leyen. It is also unclear why prophylactic drugs such as ivermectin disappeared at the beginning of the crisis. It is clear: It is not the companies, but the taxpayers, who are liable for the consequential damage caused by the vaccines, which are only partially authorised. We know that vaccinated people still suffer from COVID, perhaps less often and usually less severely. On the other hand, the extent of short-term side effects is not fully clarified, the long-term ones remain completely uncertain. It is undisputed that vaccinated people continue to infect others. Clearly, above all, the restrictions on freedom in the crisis, bans on assembly, curfews and now in many states discrimination against the unvaccinated up to shopping bans for the untested and work bans under Mario Draghi. If the EU has achieved anything in the COVID crisis, it is that people are now not vaccinated for medical reasons, but to regain their rights first. What a success! And yet you are never tired of talking about the rule of law.

16

Sep

2021

Speeches DE

Watch

The situation in Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya

Madam President, In the Kakuma refugee camp, Kenya hosts around 200,000 migrants, mainly from Ethiopia, Somalia and Eritrea. This year there were arson attacks against lesbian residents in the camp. Now the sexual minorities are to be transferred to the EU if their situation does not improve. This House also wants to extend EU asylum law to climate migrants and pregnant women who have been denied abortion in Africa. Do you really know what you want? Africa's population will grow from 1.4 billion people to over 2.5 billion by 2050. If the EU grants asylum to even a tiny fraction of it, let's say 0.5 percent, it will ruin our welfare systems without improving the lot of people in Africa in any way. Nevertheless, you want to bring dozens, if not hundreds of millions, of people from Africa to Europe in the coming decades. In June, a 24-year-old Somali who came to Germany in 2015 as a so-called refugee killed three women and injured five others in Würzburg, Bavaria. In 2019, an Eritrean threw an eight-year-old boy in front of a moving train in Frankfurt. The Kakuma refugee camp is 8,500 kilometres from the European Parliament in Strasbourg. Before we debate the protection of African lesbians from Somali and Ethiopian migrants in Kenya, shouldn't we first protect our own women and citizens from Somali or Ethiopian migrants? What do you have against Europeans?

16

Sep

2021

Speeches EN

Watch

Government crackdown on protests and citizens in Cuba

Madam President, on Thursdays this House is fondly debating issues in faraway places about which we know little. Today it is Cuba. Presently, there are shortages of essential foodstuffs and medicine and problems in the management of the COVID virus wave. The issue today is whether or not to condemn Cuba for its mishandling of public protests and restrictions of media freedom. We unreservedly condemn police violence against peaceful protestors and restrictions on civil liberties in Cuba or elsewhere. However, let me remind you that during the COVID crisis, EU Member States have imposed unprecedented curfews and limits on our freedoms of assembly and of expression, especially on social media. In France and other Member States, no one can now enter restaurants, bars or even supermarkets without a valid COVID passport or test. In Italy, Mario Draghi is making the COVID passport compulsory for workers and, apparently, also considered restricting access to polling stations to the vaccinated. Even this House is still considering restricting entry to holders of COVID passports. Before taking others to task, I strongly recommend we get our own House in order first.

15

Sep

2021

Speeches EN

Watch

Media freedom and further deterioration of the Rule of law in Poland (debate)

Madam President, the EU is currently withholding Poland’s corona funds because Poland is allegedly politicising the judiciary and limiting foreign ownership of the media to minority stakes. Let’s compare Poland’s reforms with reality in Germany again. In Germany, public prosecutors are not independent. Judges may be members of political parties and top judges are all effectively appointed by the governing parties. Recently, Chancellor Merkel engineered the elevation of a vice-chair of her own parliamentary party to the presidency of the august Constitutional Court, to ensure the Court will never rule against the ECB again. Meanwhile, the key media channels in Germany are all effectively controlled by political appointees, while RT is denied a TV licence. The rule of law, let me remind you, does not countenance double standards.

15

Sep

2021

Speeches DE

Watch

Implementation of EU requirements for exchange of tax information (debate)

Ms. President! Tax avoidance and evasion are real problems to be addressed. We support this goal, but not without objections. Firstly: We have not only a tax avoidance problem, but a tax avoidance problem. Multinationals zSome of them pay less than one percent tax on their EU profits, and international banks are all too happy to shift their billion-dollar profits. offshore. We have a tax fairness and a tax waste problem and therefore far too high taxes. Hundreds of billions of taxes are being wasted on world rescue projects such as unqualified mass immigration past the labour market directly into the social network and a climate policy that must fail because the EU's contribution to global CO2 emissions of less than 8% is virtually meaningless. Secondly: Tax-exempt and exempt from money laundering regulation NGOs, although MONEYVAL, the European Court of Auditors and the Financial Action Task Force All warn, billion-dollar pro-migration and climate rescueNGOsTrusts and foundations also acted as vehicles for money laundering, terrorist financing and tax evasion. End the EU exemption for politically compliant NGOs! And thirdly: Please bury your plans for an all-encompassing EU asset register as soon as possible. Tax policy is not a competence of the EU, but of the Member States. So if you want to fight tax evasion, please do so in accordance with the law and not illegally. In the rule of law, I think, the end does not sanctify every means.

14

Sep

2021

Speeches DE

Watch

Direction of EU-Russia political relations (debate)

Mr President! This report accuses Russia of expanding its sphere of influence, discrediting Western liberal democracy, disregarding international law and LGBT rights, and, listening, pursuing its own national interests. Perhaps it is part of EU climate policy to launch politically new ice ages. The report is hardly a recipe for better relations with Russia. Please consider: Who has been assisting NATO in its post-liberal crusades from the Atlantic to the Hindu Kush for 20 years? Who is funding the Western NGOs in Russia? And who intervened in violation of international law in Iraq and Libya? Who is different from the EU and its members? Compared to Russia, however, quite unsuccessful. Afghanistan teaches: Russia learns from mistakes – the EU never learns.

7

Jul

2021

Speeches DE

Watch

State of play of the implementation of the EU Digital COVID Certificate regulations (debate)

Mr President! The COVID certificate digitally proves whether its holder has been vaccinated, tested negative or recovered from COVID-19. The Commission claims that the certificate ensures the free movement of persons in the EU. Compatibility with systems of non-EU countries also facilitates travel abroad. Under EU law, the certificate is not a precondition for entry into other Member States. The Commission also considers that it does not discriminate against non-vaccinated persons. So far, so good. However, Member States are free to allow entry only to certificate holders. For example, vaccinated people could enter unhindered, while non-vaccinated people would have to be tested again and again every time they cross the border. As a result, this means discrimination against non-vaccinated people: Vaccinated travel freely, non-vaccinated travel only with test. Anyone who wants to exercise their basic rights without restrictions or has to travel a lot in the future will hardly get around vaccination. Vaccination was once intended to protect against disease. Today, it is used in the EU to protect against disenfranchisement.

6

Jul

2021

Speeches DE

Watch

The 70th anniversary of the Geneva Convention (debate)

Madam President, The Geneva Convention on Refugees is a document of humanity and charity. After the Second World War and the Cold War, it protected persecuted and displaced people, but it also respects national sovereignty, the right to national character and the distinction between citizens and foreigners. The Convention does not contain a general right to asylum, nor does it grant the right to naturalisation or illegal border crossing. Article 31 requests safe third countries, namely only the nearest safe third countries, persecuted persons, and only those whose lives and freedoms are threatened at home, to provide temporary refuge until they return home. Refugees should be placed close to culture and home so that they are not uprooted. Merkel's opening of the border since 2015 does not authorize the Refugee Convention, nor does she authorize transcontinental settlement projects such as the EU Migration Pact or the de-Europeanisation of Europe. That's why you want to reconsider the convention and expand its grounds of asylum to include climate and abortion law. Because according to the literal interpretation of the Convention, hundreds or a few thousand would have a real reason for asylum every year, but you want tens of millions of migrants.