Jörg Meuthen
EU Reconstruction Funds
EU Parliament, Brussels, May 27, 2020, P9 CRE-PROV (2020) 05-27 (1-022-0000)
[Jörg Meuthen is a national chairman of the Alternative für Deutschland and he leads the AfD’s delegation in the European Parliament where the AfD is part of the Identity and Democracy party.]
Herr President. Frau Commission President.
Chancellor Merkel’s promise was unmistakable: There will be neither euro bonds nor Corona bonds. Now? Now you assent to a so-called Reconstruction Fund with a volume of 500 billion euros; the super-sized, initially on credit, then to be tax-refinanced, gift watering can for the European Commission, without present basis in the law, since the EU on good grounds for long has been denied doing its own borrowing – which however in the general nonsense of these days appears to bother no one anymore.
And now you come, Frau Commission President, in here today and make demands. This complete madness was for you insufficient; you now want a scoop more of 250 billion euros to dispose of. That is, I say it quite clearly, complete madness. The price to be paid by the citizens of the [European] Union for this madness will be gigantic.
You throw the money about – not yours, but that of the taxpayer – simply as if there was no tomorrow. What you are doing is entirely irresponsible. It is a knowledge-free, voodoo economics with which you here are oppressing the citizens. It is monetary as well as fiscal hara-kiri.
Yet most men do not understand that because they are plagued with quite different concerns and because they are not accustomed to think in the categories of such large numbers. You make use of that with your absurd designs which you so hypocritically and falsely commend. There will be a wicked awakening.
I implore the governments of Austria, the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden to reject this madness.
[Translated by Todd Martin]
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