Jörg Meuthen
EU Unemployment Insurance
AfD Kompakt, August 14, 2019
[Jörg Meuthen is a national chairman of the Alternative für Deutschland and
he leads the AfD’s delegation in the European Parliament.]
It is fully in order that the German employers reject a European unemployment insurance. Such a common unemployment insurance as Ursula von der Leyen and Emmanuel Macron are planning for the EU would penalize those countries which have set up competitive labor markets. That would concretely mean that Germany must pay for the entire EU’s unemployment. No one who represents Germany’s interests can want that. The AfD is therefore committed in the EU Parliament and in the German Bundestag for the maintenance of a national unemployment insurance and against the creation of an EU unemployment insurance. We are optimistic that we will be successful since the EU Treaty states that the relevant competence belongs to the member states.
The German employers forewarn of surrendering the principle of unanimity. In that they are also fully in order since Brussels is urging that in the future the [EU] Council should decide social policy with a qualified majority instead of unanimously. What sounds good and harmless means that the profiteers of a common social system could in any given situation outvote Germany. A bottomless barrel would thus be opened and the financial consequences for Germany would be unforeseeable.
[Translated by Todd Martin]
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