LIVE: Merz and Weidel speak in the Bundestag

We are continuing our budget deliberations, and for today's debate we have agreed on a total speaking time of eight hours. We begin today with the portfolio of the Federal Chancellor and the Federal Chancellery. The floor for the opening of the debate goes to the member speaking for the AfD faction, Dr. Alice Weidel. Please proceed.

Madam President, Federal Chancellor, ladies and gentlemen, the voters in Saxony-Anhalt have made it clear to you in the language of the democratic sovereign, with all clarity: black-red is over. The people finally want a change of government, and they do not want more of the same. And the budget bill you have submitted today reflects exactly this more-of-the-same fumbling and is a declaration of surrender by your coalition.

Despite record tax revenues, you are unable to manage the citizens' money sensibly. Why? Because you are unwilling to free yourselves from the fetters of green ideology, of leftist mass immigration, and of socialist redistribution. Instead of saving, you are bloating this budget to almost 600 billion euros. And for that, you intend to take on more than one trillion euros — more than 1,000 billion euros — in debt by 2030. That is a gigantic figure and unprecedented in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany.

In fact, your finance minister — who, by the way, did not manage to produce a single figure in yesterday's finance debate. He did not cite a single figure in a finance debate. That too speaks volumes. And this very Mr. Klingbeil wants to raise 500 billion euros in new borrowing on the capital market next year alone. And with that, dear friends of the SPD and the CDU, your budget bill is clearly unconstitutional.

The Federal Court of Audit — which you want to punish with cuts for its candid words — warns urgently that your financial planning leads directly into the debt trap. You have already so badly damaged state finances that by the end of the legislative period, if you even remain in office that long — I doubt it — all tax revenues will go solely toward interest and social spending. Just imagine that. All tax revenues, record tax revenues, only for social benefits and for paying off interest. That is not sound budget policy. It is the opposite; it is unserious budget management on the part of this coalition.

But it goes further. With this, you destroy all political room for maneuver and leave scorched earth behind. And to put it in one sentence: yes, they say — if they could do arithmetic, they would know that it would be so. In one sentence: you are driving Germany into state bankruptcy in record time. That is what you are doing, and meanwhile deindustrialization is sweeping across our country with growing momentum. Germany loses 12,000 industrial jobs every month; last year 190,000 companies in Germany gave up. Every third German SME is planning to relocate abroad; the number of unemployed is rising again above the three-million mark; retail sales are collapsing to the level of the corona lockdowns. The state sector and the asylum industry are the only remaining growth sectors in Germany. That is what you have made of our country.

And dear colleagues from the CDU, I can see you from here, and there are interjections and protests coming. Let me tell you one thing: look at the colleagues to your left and to your right. One of the two will no longer be sitting here in the next legislative period once Friedrich Merz is finished with you. And you know that.

You declare the migration crisis to be over. Yet every year a six-figure number of migrants enters the country through the asylum back door, and another major city through family reunification. Most of them from Muslim tribal cultures. After Colombia, Germany is the country worldwide that has taken in the most refugees — 2.7 million, more than Colombia. I ask myself: why is that? Why have you taken in the most refugees worldwide? Why do you do that? You don't need to do any of this. And in Germany there live more than one million refugees whose asylum application has been rejected more than once. What are these people still doing in this country? They should be deported.

You claim that migration no longer plays a role in the election campaign. The citizens see it differently, because they have to live every day with the consequences of mass migration: with unsafe streets and rising crime, with the massive increase in sexual and violent offenses and over 750 gang rapes a year, with everyday knife violence and assaults in trains and train stations, with neglected and threatening urban landscapes, with violence in our schools and on our streets. — Madam, no, you may not interrupt. No, you know that is unusual. The colleague from the CDU knows that too. Not in front of you.

You must continue reading, because you have to deal every day with the consequences of mass migration: with the hatred of foreign groups toward what is our own, with hatred of Christians, with hatred of Germans, with hatred of Germany — and you still fund these people. That must finally come to an end.

And while the USA makes another attempt to end the murderous war in Ukraine, you are ramping up war propaganda, the confrontation with Russia, and are burning even the last bridges — in order to distract from your own catastrophic political record. Finally commit yourselves to peace negotiations, as the USA is doing.

The so-called energy transition is the greatest millstone crushing our economy and dragging it into the abyss. The energy transition is lost, burnt money. Nothing productive is created with it. Costly, dysfunctional parallel structures are subsidized while proven and cost-effective infrastructure is systematically destroyed. Germany's most modern and cleanest coal power plant in Moorburg was deliberately destroyed without it ever having been on the grid for a single hour. Our nuclear power plants — the safest in the world, which supplied cheap and CO2-neutral electricity around the clock — were shut down one after another and blown up by you.

While you blindly continue this energy-policy ghost ride, China is going into the future of energy supply with innovative nuclear technologies that were conceived and tested in Germany but never operated here. For the insane sums you demand from citizens and businesses, Germans get the highest energy prices of any industrialized nation, a crumbling infrastructure, and an increasingly dysfunctional state. And they get an economy that is being squeezed between crushing costs, crushing taxes and levies, and rampant bureaucracy to its knees, and a rapidly advancing deindustrialization. Long since, it is eating into the substance at BASF.

You find that funny. The voters out there see that the SPD finds it funny that deindustrialization is rampant in this country. And I would now like to name an example, and let us see whether you still find it so funny — because these were once your voters whom you have left so far out in the cold. These former voters of the former workers' party are now our voters, and they want political change. And I am citing this dramatic example because you are snickering there at BASF. In Ludwigshafen, fewer than 30,000 people work. That is as few as in 1954. Every month, 300 jobs are lost there. And that is the result of your policies. So stop laughing.

The German automotive industry is dying. The decline of Volkswagen is a milestone: 50,000 positions on the cut list, four plants facing closure in Emden, Zwickau, Hannover, and Neckarsulm. The savings and cutback programs of the automotive groups are sending shockwaves through the entire country. It affects service providers who are no longer needed and car dealerships that have to close one after another. And it affects skilled workers all over the country who are losing their jobs because their companies no longer receive orders and they therefore do not know how they will ever pay off the installments on their own homes. The German SMEs and the German middle class are dying quietly, and behind that stand family destinies — behind that stand people.

Management errors also play a role. The greatest management error is and remains the complacency with which certain corporate leaders parrot even the greatest political nonsense instead of resisting the economy-hostile energy transition, the internal combustion engine ban, EV central planning, the Building Energy Act, the Green Deal — that is, against the collected dull works of the green fool's cap.

Instead, production capacities were quietly and massively shifted abroad while people here lost their work. To this day, most remain silent and thereby share responsibility. On top of the permanent blackout danger that we owe to the failed energy transition, an existential gas supply crisis threatens this coming winter. You want to do without cheap pipeline gas from Russia. You let the Nord Stream pipeline be blown up right under your nose without a word or a deed. Instead of preparing for a future resumption of deliveries through the intact pipeline strands, you continue to reward the presumed masterminds of the attack in Kyiv with billions in payments at Germany's expense. If you have not yet noticed: our gas storage levels are at a record low. Storing gas should therefore be the top priority.

If the winter turns cold, price-driving purchases at astronomical prices or rationing threaten — which would take the last remaining strength from our economy and private households. And in this situation — Ms. Reiche knows this, by the way; she has to know it. I would be surprised if she did not. Listen to your colleague, Ms. Reiche. In this situation, gas should now be stored for the winter. But no strategic foresight that relies on resilience and diversification of Germany's energy supply can be discerned in you, and you are steering us, truly with eyes wide open, into a catastrophic supply crisis in the winter. Yet another total failure of this government.

Whoever works, pays taxes, and provides for themselves and their family is being plundered and taken for a fool. Whoever drives to work every morning bleeds at the fuel pump because of the far too high taxes at the tank. Whoever instead migrates into the social systems and lives at the expense of the general public is coddled and provided for around the clock — even if he is wanted on an arrest warrant. The Syrian in Witten who annoys people day after day with Islamist chants is financed by the job center without any questions asked. Just the same for the Syrian clan leader with his 32 children, some of whom are serious repeat offenders. But when an ordinary citizen — when an unemployed ordinary citizen — misses an appointment at the job center, all hell breaks loose. Around three-quarters of Bürgergeld recipients are foreigners or have a migration background. The costs are rising to astronomical heights. Why should the shrinking, working, and tax-paying population — the 'brown plebs,' as your social minister, the SPD social minister, likes to denigrate them — pay for this without limit and work themselves to exhaustion, while others spread out at their expense and live the good life here?

Yes, the truth hurts. The truth hurts. I can imagine that. Mr. Merz, the Germans are not too lazy to work more. They see that effort does not pay off because an unjust tax system takes everything away from them. Of one earned euro, only 46 cents remain, and that is robbery. Above all, however, people notice when they are being taken for a ride and cheated across the table. In Saxony-Anhalt, the citizens did not just punish you, they pulverized your party, the CDU. In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, you are already a small party, and at the federal level you are well on the way to becoming one. Justifiably so.

Because a denied political change has long been overdue, and it is possible. We must rigorously abolish unnecessary state spending and subsidies. By cutting unnecessary climate protection and transformation programs alone, as well as payments to politically promoted NGOs, double-digit billion amounts can be saved. We must immediately and drastically cut development aid and payments for global climate protection. At a total of 26 billion euros in development aid, Germany ranks ahead of even the USA. I ask myself: why is that? For the world there is all the money, but for our own people and citizens there is none.

We must clearly limit our payments to the EU. Almost one billion flows to Brussels every week, but only a fraction of it comes back. We want our money back, dear friends.

We must rigorously scale back the state apparatus and the public sector that you have so brazenly bloated, and we must stop the mass migration into the social systems, put a stop to the systematic abuse of social benefits, and above all rigorously deport illegal immigrants and criminal offenders. They have no business in our country.

We must end the failed energy transition and tackle re-entry into nuclear power. Keyword: resilience of our energy supply. The SPD is laughing again. For that, we also need cheap natural gas from Russia. We will work toward that for the German economy.

We must use the room for maneuver we have gained to lower the far too high energy prices and abolish the CO2 levy, lower energy taxes, and push through a reform of corporate and income taxes that brings genuine relief — and above all, drastically cut taxes on petrol and diesel. That would be a sensible government program for the people of this country. Mr. Merz, you have made it clear that you did not understand the message in your tragic, peculiar press conference on Monday. You did not understand the message the voters in Saxony-Anhalt sent you last Sunday. That is not further relevant, because your time has run out anyway. The citizens want a change of government, and they will get it.

In the next elections, the people will give the AfD — that is, us, the Alternative for Germany — a clear mandate to govern, in order to make different policies possible. And we will take that mandate seriously and accept it, to lead this country into a better future. Because Germany deserves it. The Germans deserve to be well governed. Thank you very much.

Speaking for the Federal Government, the floor now goes to the Federal Chancellor, Mr. Friedrich Merz. Please proceed.

Excuse me, Mr. Chancellor, for interrupting you briefly, but this is addressed to all members of the AfD. Just now, your party chair spoke, and everyone listened. And I would ask — yes, one has to endure that too, when you are shown a mirror. It will also have to be borne by you to listen to others. Opinions may differ here, and it is part of the rules to then also listen. The AfD will have speaking time later. You can put in everything you are now calling out. Mr. Chancellor, please.

Mr. Chancellor, excuse me as well — whistling is going on here. It will keep coming. No, now it is my turn. You will have the chance shortly in your own speeches to convince. Interjections are part of parliamentary business, but it is not part of it to permanently interrupt a speaker. One must also endure that there are different opinions. What one claims for oneself, one should also be willing to offer to others. Please proceed, Mr. Chancellor.

For the Alliance 90/The Greens faction, the member Katharina Drüge has the floor. Please.

Dear Madam President, dear colleagues, dear Mr. Merz, I want to tell you personally: I do not question your dismay and shock over this terrible election result in Saxony-Anhalt. We have often spoken with each other about it, and I know how terrible and dangerous you find this party. That is precisely why I think it is absolutely right that you entered into this confrontation with the AfD today in this way. But at the same time I have to tell you: that alone is not enough. That alone is not enough, because many people in this country are now expecting answers from you — answers as to what comes now, now that 44% far-right extremists were elected to an East German state parliament, and how dangerous this party is. We heard that once again today in Alice Weidel's speech. I have to say quite honestly, in the end that was not a speech. It was more like a scripted screenplay delivered at half speed. They always do that, Ms. Weidel, so that people do not quite catch on to how full of hatred and rage they truly are. It is always hard for you to control that. A scripted screenplay of rage, of agitation, of twisting facts. A screenplay that was staged so embarrassingly that you even invented interjections for yourselves that did not exist in this room at all — just because your manuscript said at that point that you were supposed to be outraged. The Bundestag exists for free speech, Ms. Weidel. You should try delivering that once, and not simply read out what someone has written down for you.

So, we are in a situation where a political disaster has happened, and there are people in Saxony-Anhalt who are now afraid. There is a democratic civil society asking what repressions are coming their way if the AfD really does end up governing in this state. There are people with a migration background asking whether they can still let their children play outside safely. There are queer people asking whether they can still walk down the street holding hands. And to all of them, Mr. Merz — and this is what I would have expected from you — we now have to give answers. Do you now have to give answers? What are you doing to protect the people in Saxony-Anhalt? Do you really have no plan? I'm asking the SPD this too. Did you really not prepare for this? I would have wished that you had stood here today and said to the associations and clubs that have fought so bravely for civil society and for democracy: if the AfD cuts their funding, then we will set up something like an emergency democracy fund at the federal level, and we will step in to a certain extent. What do you say to the people who are worried that an AfD interior minister might get hold of their most sensitive data? Could you not at least ensure that they are protected in terms of intelligence information from access by the far right and the Russians? We have long been calling on you to act. What kind of security are you providing for the universities in Saxony-Anhalt? Can you not at least ensure that Saxony-Anhalt cannot use its veto power to block university funding in all the federal states? These are things you could have prepared. These are things you should have prepared, because the people need some form of security and support right now. It is urgently time for you to act here.

And the second thing — and this is honestly what I expect from all of us as democratic parties in the German Bundestag — I would have wished for a serious struggle over the question of how could this go so wrong and what is our own share of the responsibility. I believe we all have that job now, and the answers to those questions are not easy. There is no Plan A. Democracies all over the world are currently struggling with these questions, whether in France, Poland, Hungary, the USA, Italy, or Great Britain. Everywhere, democrats are fighting against resurgent far-right extremism. So yes, it is an extremely difficult question that we all have to solve together, but at the very least there must be an honest search together, a struggle over what the solutions can be. That has to happen here. We are the German Bundestag. We were elected to give the people an answer to this. And I think everyone has to start with themselves. We Greens too. Yes, we Greens also tried a whole range of things in the fight against far-right extremism that clearly did not work. We went out into the streets for too long with the message of saving democracy, without noticing that the warning about the destruction of democracy by the AfD had long since lost its power to frighten many people, because democracy itself is no longer the value that many people hold — far away from the people. And that is why it happened to us Greens, in our efforts to protect what we consider worth protecting — the rule of law, freedom, human dignity, and indeed democracy — that we were suddenly perceived by some as defenders of a status quo in our country, a status quo that simply no longer worked for many people. And we want to and will do things differently.

And I would expect this reckoning with ourselves and the answers to it from everyone else. We have to get into the question of why and where people are voting for the far right in such high percentages. And I say very clearly: far-right extremism in Germany is not an eastern problem. Anyone who tries to conduct this debate that way is conducting it wrongly. And yet there are regional differences. It is the regions undergoing structural change and the structurally weak regions where the AfD was particularly strongly elected. Where industry has moved abroad and the jobs have been lost, and also where no bus comes and the last pub has closed. Whether you speak to people in Gelsenkirchen or in Ohio in the USA or in rural Saxony-Anhalt, the issues are similar. These have become places where people feel left behind, abandoned by a politics they think has forgotten them. And that is exactly where the AfD goes in. That is exactly where right-wing populists and radicals go in all over the world. They focus precisely here. With the toxic slogans of nationalism and national isolation. With the longing for a yesterday that they claim existed but never did. 'Take back control,' said Brexit. 'Make America great again' — a return to the past — is what Donald Trump has propagated. And that is what we have to give answers to as democrats. We have to give answers on how to make the local infrastructure work again. And you had a tremendous chance with the special fund to make something better in this country. It is so tragic, honestly, in this time our democracy is going through, that you did not use it better.

But we also have to give an answer to the methods that Ms. Weidel has just demonstrated here in perfection. The AfD's method is to stoke anger. To stoke anger at minorities as a distraction debate. Anger and frustration are deflected into anger at the unemployed and people with a migration background. And we have to counter that. Explaining and changing policy alone is not enough. And I don't want to be misunderstood. There is not one single reason why people vote for the far right. Many people simply vote for the far right because they want to vote for a radical right-wing party. That is also part of the truth. That has to be said here. And at the same time, we need a sensible strategy against the anger. The anger is stoked by the accelerants of social media, by algorithms designed by men like Elon Musk or Peter Thiel, whose stated goal is to destroy democracies. And that is why hatred is fueled, incitement is fueled, disinformation and false information. And if we do not manage to change the rules of the game on the internet, then we will be playing a game we cannot win, because the rules are set for us to lose. We have to act here.

And the second thing — and the second thing, I am personally convinced — we have to counter the spirals of anger stoked by the AfD with our determination. And I think, and I cannot spare you this, it is one of the greatest mistakes the Union under your leadership, Mr. Merz, has made in recent years: that you let yourselves be tempted by populism, that you did not keep your distance. Take, for example, the debate about citizen's income in the last federal election campaign. They promised people the moon. It was supposed to bring more than 10 billion euros in cuts, or five, or three, or two. The number kept shrinking, because in truth everyone who knew anything about the subject — and there are such people in your ranks too — knew from the start that it was completely impossible to push through this cut to citizen's income. And for a few cheap clicks, for a bit of stoking anger against foreigners, against the unemployed, for riding the wave a little, they exploited our system. In the end, they risked one thing, and that is their own credibility. Because unlike the far right, who never want to act, who never want to shape things — and they are trying to get around it in Saxony-Anhalt too, so they cannot be shown to be incapable — unlike the far right, you will be measured by reality. You have to deliver, and that is the greatest trap you set for yourselves when you knowingly claim things in order to ride the waves of populism that you cannot deliver. That creates frustration. That creates political distance between voters and you. We must not make these mistakes. And the same, honestly, applies to the issue of migration. I know that many of you in the Union believed that if you pursued the toughest possible asylum policy, you would shrink the AfD, because you would in effect be dealing with their core issue. But you have to realize that this idea has obviously failed spectacularly. Alexander Dobrindt has been interior minister for more than a year now. He pushed through the greatest possible toughness in asylum policy, including breaking the law at Germany's borders, including cooperating with the criminal Taliban — and still it has achieved nothing in terms of the AfD election results. It has achieved nothing. On the contrary, they have become even stronger. So we democrats can argue with each other about the right asylum policy, but your job is to explain where the difference lies between the Union and the AfD. I know there is one. Just be Christian democrats. Go into the confrontation, especially in the areas where it hurts. That is the job against populism.

And at the same time, we have now reached a point in our democracy where political debate alone may no longer be enough. And our Basic Law provides for a party ban as a last resort. And I can only appeal to you, to all democratic members of the German Bundestag. We now have to set in motion an application to examine an AfD ban. It is time. I can only appeal to you. I can only ask you, as members of the German Bundestag, to consult your own conscience. In the end, you are answerable to that, and we need you for a majority. And at the same time — and this is also enormously important to me today — let us not forget, in all of this, the great majority of people in our country who are democrats and who so stably uphold this society. Let us not forget those who commit themselves every day so that our country holds together. We have to take care of them. And I would wish, Mr. Merz, that you as Chancellor could acknowledge and appreciate that more, that you would not constantly nag the people in such a condescending way, that you would not lecture them, that you would not talk down to them. Somehow nothing is ever enough. The people in Germany — that is false. With that, you are currently getting even the most well-meaning people in this country good and angry. The staff of the healthcare system are not beneficiaries. They are people who work to the limit every day so that we are all well. And they deserve not only to be thanked from the heart, but also for us to simply support them more. That is what good policy is about. And the young people in our country, Mr. Merz, are not simply lazy or chilling in work-life balance. They have worries about the future. And if you look at the current PISA study, it is a declaration of bankruptcy by such a rich country that educational inequality in Germany is so high. It cannot be true that parents' wallets are so decisive for children's educational success. It should be about giving every child fair chances in our country. And regarding the worries about the future, Mr. Merz, you spoke about the Hürtwald Forest, and it was good that you were there. It is also important that you thanked the firefighters and all the rescue personnel here. But you said one sentence in the Hürtwald Forest by which the country will judge you. You said you want to do everything to combat the climate crisis. And I ask you: what follows from that? What follows from that? If you are to be taken seriously, you have to stand by such words. And we and the people in our country will judge you by that. The first thing you could do would be to reverse the cuts in the climate protection area in this federal budget. You could act very concretely there. You could stop all of Katharina Reiche's laws. Those are climate crisis tightening laws. At the very least, you would have to do that if you mean your own words. And the people in our country who deserve appreciation and support — above all, families with children. And against this background — and I say this to the Social Democrats too, I say this to Lars Klingbeil too — this federal budget is a disaster, it is a catastrophe, and you would have to completely revise it. You have decided in this federal budget to cut first of all at families, first of all at children. You are cutting housing benefit, and that hits exactly the families with children who go to work and still can no longer afford the exploding rents. With that, you are driving families into poverty. You are cutting parental allowance, making it even harder for young parents to reconcile job and family planning. You are cutting advance maintenance payments for the many single parents who need them to get by. And you are cutting — and I find this the bitterest — the 25 euros the federal government spends to support children in poverty. You are cutting first of all at the poorest children in our society. I can only say, such austerity policy is really socially unjust and shameful. And you had alternatives. You had alternatives if you chose to start with the richest rather than the poorest people in our country when it comes to levying burdens. You could ensure that people who inherit 300 apartments also pay inheritance tax. Why are you sparing them? You could ensure that the company car privilege is reformed. Why do you subsidize company cars and cut at children? You could ensure that flight tickets are not subsidized and that the money is instead used to fight child poverty. And you could finally take effective action against tax fraud. More than 100 billion euros are lost to the country every year through tax fraud. You would have to act here.

And in conclusion, I would like to say: yes, we democrats will continue to argue with each other. We have to do that in a democracy. But at the same time, we will continue to find compromises. That is what distinguishes us from the radicals together. We take responsibility for our country. We also find compromises when it is difficult. And perhaps we have to manage, especially in this time, to reinvent the political compromise a little. Let us campaign for that together. That is our job now.

For the SPD parliamentary group, Member of Parliament Dr. Matthias Miersch now has the floor. Please.

Madam President, dear colleagues, I believe we all feel that very fundamental matters are being discussed here today. It is far from being only about the federal budget. And Ms. Weidel, when you speak of hatred here, I say to you: take a look in the mirror. How much hatred have you sprayed from this podium today when you speak about Syrians? How many Syrian women and men are working in this country in care facilities, as doctors, who are necessary to keep this country alive? Dear colleagues, when you speak about the loss of industrial jobs, yes, that is also a major issue for us. But when you equally say that we have to leave the EU or the euro, then there would be many, many more jobs that you would destroy with your policy. And when you talk about Trump and his peace efforts, then look at what this Trump has done with Mr. Putin. He let him ride in his car. What did he achieve? Nothing at all. Dear colleagues, when you say that nuclear power plants are safe around the clock, then please look to France. Look at the countries where nuclear power plants now have to be shut down because the cooling water no longer works. That is the truth, even if it does not interest you at all. Yes, and then I want to tell you: we do not yet have an AfD government in Saxony-Anhalt, and my appeal to all democrats is to prevent that too.

But — and dear Katharina Drüge — there are recipes, and the best recipe against your politics is the constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany. I tell you this, because all the things you say here violate the constitution. When you, for example, simply tell us here that there are so and so many deportable or rejected asylum seekers, you conceal, for instance, that there are many grounds on which people are allowed to stay in this country even if they do not have asylum. That is stated here among other things. When you talk about the subsistence minimum and the social state, those principles are also in this constitution, and fortunately you cannot get around them. Dear colleagues, yes, and to everyone who currently has concerns in Saxony-Anhalt — and we all have them in our sights — and Katharina Drüge, I believe a little restraint would be appropriate here in saying that this Chancellor, this government, this coalition has no answers to that. With what confidence do you say that? You conceal — you conceal that this discussion has in fact been going on for many months, for example in the Conference of Education Ministers, for example in the Conference of Interior Ministers. Don't act as if you are the only ones there. No, we democrats from the Left Party, SPD, Greens, and CDU/CSU must not allow any doubts about us at this point. That is what it is about. Yes, and I say to the people who also have concerns now: here too, this constitution helps, because even if a federal state violates the constitution, we still have many, many possibilities. And beyond that, we will of course also discuss in this budget what we can do for cultural funding, for democracy funding, to remain present in Saxony-Anhalt as well. Dear colleagues, but — and now I come to all of us, and I am coming to the budget, don't worry — the question is indeed, and I ask myself this in many debates: how do we treat each other here when it is about us and our path? Because one thing must be clear: if we tear each other apart here, there is only one group that will be happy. And my request is also — and this is a lesson from what happened in Saxony-Anhalt — we democrats must return to a culture where there is a firm basis for us that is unshakeable, and from that we must draw strength, and not put the opposition between democrats at the center, despite all the legitimate disputes here. Dear colleagues. And yes, and then I come to us, to CDU/CSU and SPD, who have taken on responsibility in these times, and Katharina Drüge, who also tries to find compromises in many places where you have very different opinions. They can be criticized, they must be criticized, but it is damn difficult to take responsibility in these times, where it quickly comes down to yes or no, to white or black, and the center does not count. And therefore, dear colleagues, to us who take on responsibility: we must live up to our responsibility, especially in these difficult times. We must struggle for the best path, and in the end we must move this country forward. And therefore, in recent weeks we have all held conversations with citizens. We have felt the uncertainty in many, many places. And Mr. Chancellor, I am grateful that you too have acknowledged that one cannot simply operate here on the principle of 'eyes closed and charge ahead'. When, for example, the question of whether working for 45 years is worth more — apparently it speaks against the sense of justice for very many people — then that is a circumstance we have to deal with here. This is the place to discuss it, to struggle for the best path. When concerns grow over housing benefit, over parental allowance, but also over advance maintenance payments, then these are things we have to discuss with each other here and also bring to a goal. Because one thing is certain, dear colleagues: we are not making changes for the sake of change. We have to change. We have to adapt to the framework conditions. We have a disastrous budget situation. We have a world that is changing rapidly. We have a demographic development that simply forces us to act. And therefore, yes, we have to change, but we have to make it much, much clearer to the people, in my view, why we are doing it and how we are doing it. A few examples. We are currently talking about pensions, and the goal or question is how we deal with the 45 contribution years. But it is about much, much more. It is about security. It is about whether we have an old-age security system in Germany — not a matter of course in other countries of this world — that people can continue to rely on. And by the way, this commission report contains a great deal else, for example that as many professional groups as possible should pay into the system of the future, that we will not have retirement at 70 tomorrow, but perhaps at 92. Dear colleagues, this commission report is something worth discussing now, and I am very sure that if we as the democratic center manage to actually realize this old-age security, then that is proof that the democratic center can move things forward for the population. Dear colleagues. And the same applies to health insurance. Mr. Chancellor, you pointed out that it is a reform. It was not really one yet, but it was first and foremost an attempt to genuinely avoid and prevent contribution increases. Cuts, but also actual cuts in some places, because otherwise everyone would have had to bleed from higher contributions. We want to prevent that, dear colleagues. But it is about much, much more. It is about having a health system in the end — and that is by no means a matter of course in this world — where you can solidaristically rely on it when you need the general public, when you need security. And I say we need structural change now, and for example what we have agreed, that a person on statutory health insurance has exactly the same claim to a specialist appointment as a privately insured person, would be a reform that goes in the right direction, because we finally eliminate inequality. That is what it has to be about, dear colleagues. And the financial situation is what also occupies us here now in the budget plan deliberations. And Ms. Drüge, when you then say that this state invests too little, I can tell you: just look at this budget now. We have really put together a future package. We have record investments in the future. You cannot just wave that away. Dear colleagues. 51 billion have currently flowed into cohesion, into infrastructure, and also into important measures such as the construction of fire stations in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, police stations, etc. These are investments in the future that this country has not experienced for a long time — far too long a time. Dear colleagues, and we are investing at record levels. There is an increase of 60% in the area of research and development, because it matters to us that AI is also made in Germany here, that chips are produced here and not elsewhere. Dear colleagues, this budget contains future investments that move this country forward. We have to emphasize that again and again. And it is also about security, and we simply cannot pretend that we are not threatened. But it is not only about external security, it is also about resilience and independence. And that is why we are certainly also discussing and regulating how it goes on, for example with the raw material fund, the question of how we equip the THW, and all these things. There too, there are investments in this budget that build security. And let me also say this at this point: beyond the concept of defense, it is also about security when we invest in economic cooperation, because this globe is damn small and crises elsewhere can be here very quickly. That is why we also have to have stability there, also investment security there, dear colleagues. Yes, and we can continue to argue, and we must continue to argue, and we have different views, and perhaps we could decide quite different things on the one or the other issue. Let me say the wealth tax issue, or also the inheritance tax issue — we may get further once the Federal Constitutional Court has decided, but perhaps we will not get further either. And then, ladies and gentlemen, it comes down to the decisive question: will we manage to reach an agreement together, yes or no? I can demand a great deal from the opposition, and that is entirely your right. But in the end, it comes down to whether the democratic center of this country can move things forward through compromises, yes or no. And I tell you — and I tell you as a representative of a party that in over 160 years never had to change its name, that has always stood for this constitution since 1949. A hell of a lot is at stake. The SPD Bundestag parliamentary group knows its responsibility in these times, and it knows its responsibility to move these things forward together with you, dear colleagues from the Union, in the sense of the Federal Republic of Germany. Thank you for your attention.

For the Left Party parliamentary group, Member of Parliament... now has the floor. Please.

Madam President, dear colleagues, dear Chancellor Friedrich Merz, I am impressed. From your speech I heard line by line a measure of self-criticism. However, in its effect and in the reaction I was then surprised, because if you really want us young people of the young generation — to whom you have given a promise of prosperity in reverse — to believe in you, you have to change course now and not continue with more of the same. Let that be said to you. The fact is that with the budget you have presented you are continuing where you began. You are acting against the majority of the people in our country. Ever since Agenda 2010, which you are now continuing with Agenda Merz 2030, it has been exactly this social massacre that you are continuing to carry out. Mr. Merz, stop this wrong path. Do not drive our country further into the abyss. If you do not finally come to your senses now, our democracy will suffer serious damage. How does your budget stand? In the social area, in very many areas, there are minus signs everywhere. Cuts are only made in armaments. There, every third euro is supposed to flow in perspective. That is guns instead of butter politics. When I look at the 2027 budget plan: 140 billion for defense including the special fund. In the perspective planning up to 2030 we are at 183 billion for armaments. That is 30% of our core budget. Armament investments have the smallest possible economic effect and therefore we have to change it. The scientists at the University of Mannheim have calculated. In terms of economic return, investment in armaments is associated with 50 cents per euro of further effects. When I look at infrastructure investment, it has further investments of 2 euros as a consequence, and when I invest in the future of our country in day-care centers and schools, it is even up to 3 euros. That is where we have to go, dear colleagues. And let me say a word to the right-wing fringe, if we are already talking about armaments and peace. The AfD, which likes to present itself especially in the east as a peace party, would like to be angels of peace, yet especially when it comes to wasteful spending and armaments, they are always the first to raise their hand, and they have said again and again in the committees: armaments, militarization is exactly our thing. That is the duplicity with which you operate here, and that also has to be named here. What further consequences does the budget have? If you look closely at the figures: for housing benefit you are planning cuts of 600 million euros. You want to significantly halve the heating cost component. For child benefit supplement, 260 million euros are being cut. For advance maintenance payments, you are worsening the benefit by 400 million euros. And precisely for the program 'Living Democracy', which civil society needs more urgently than ever, you are cutting a further 20 million euros. Given the election result from the weekend, that is irresponsible, dear colleagues, and must be corrected. Another item, when I look at crisis prevention and peace promotion of the Foreign Office — a central building block for combating the root causes of flight — here too only the red pencil. A completely wrong signal. And when I look back once more, Mr. Merz, at the previous legislative period of the Bundestag: an outgoing Bundestag is once again tasked with tackling the debt brake, with the exception of defense and intelligence services above 91% — it is carved out. For schools, day-care centers, and housing it still applies, and that is irresponsible, dear colleagues. And it is also irresponsible to explain poor approval ratings by saying that you have not explained it well enough. You are pursuing an unsocial policy for our country against the majority of the people in the country. And that has to change. Dear colleagues, the families in our country understand all too well that they and their children are not a priority of this government. And given the immense sums flowing into the armaments sector, only one thing was foreseeable from the start: the armaments industry will thank you, because they are making the big money at the expense of taxpayers. An example: Rheinmetall, the operating profit rose by 74% in the first half year. A 74% increase to 786 million. That is redistribution from bottom to top, and we will not go along with that. Dear colleagues. Because it should not be the families who have to explain why they have to fight for every euro of housing benefit. It should not be children who have to explain their needs when it comes to crumbling schools. And it should not be the clubs that have to explain themselves when it comes to the daily promotion of our democracy. Those who have to explain themselves are the ones spending billions on armaments and rearmament while still taking the red pencil to the social state. And then, dear Chancellor Friedrich Merz, you say that the social state is no longer economically viable. Mr. Merz, that is called black pedagogy. First the budget is made small, then people are supposed to tighten their belts. The fact is, whoever cuts the social state also cuts purchasing power. What people are missing at the end of the month in their wallets, they cannot spend in the tills of shops and businesses. Especially when you look at the situation of our municipalities — and you have not said a word about that in your speeches so far. What does this budget mean for our municipal families? First the swimming pool faces closure, then the library, then the youth club, and all the other voluntary, municipal, social services that make this society worth living in are on the cutting list. And that is how you bankrupt a country from the bottom up, and we as the Left will not go along with that, dear colleagues. Because that creates frustration and it strengthens the feeling that the state is withdrawing from more and more areas of life, and that hurts, that hurts, and in the end it endangers our democracy. Dear colleagues, a look into the world of sports. My colleague Gürke will elaborate on this afterwards. Who was actually football world champion in 2006? Perhaps one or the other of you still knows. I had to look it up too. It was a damn long time ago. It was not Germany, it was Italy. Exactly. In that context, the motorway between Leipzig and Chemnitz was supposed to be finished in 2006. They are still building it today, still drilling and blasting. That says a great deal. The rail line between Leipzig and Chemnitz looks quite different. The southern section is supposed to be finished in 2035. The northern section is not even being discussed. On the squares in our republic, in recent weeks I have repeatedly noticed exactly these discordant notes in different places, different federal states, heard similar stories, and that is why we as the Left say: we now need a reconstruction plan, dear colleagues. And by that I do not mean a policy that only thinks in terms of electoral periods, but one planned for a perspective of at least 10 years. Given the scale of the challenge, we need at least 10 years of forward-looking planning. A reconstruction plan starts exactly at the places where we need it most urgently right now: in infrastructure, in investment in the future, in rail, in roads, in housing construction, in schools, in securing our jobs, and in the ecological transformation. Concretely, we need first more investment in housing construction. Last year, around 27,000 new apartments were subsidized in social housing. At the same time, 57,000 are leaving the subsidized sector, making a deficit of 20,000. We therefore demand 25 billion per year for new construction and renovation of housing. That creates housing, that creates orders for craftspeople, the construction industry, and our industry. Second focus, Mr. Merz, you touched on it: the situation in our schools. The investment backlog now amounts to 70 billion euros. I have heard your words, but as a teacher I can tell you clearly: students need warm classrooms in winter and cooled ones in summer. They need schools where windows can be opened, where toilets work and are usable, where school buildings are planned with perspective and not always housed in makeshift accommodations. And thirdly — and I expected more of this today, honestly, Mr. Chancellor — our economy needs an active industrial policy. The federal government and corporate headquarters have delayed the transformation for far too long. Now jobs in many regions of our country are on the brink. We need a comprehensive investment program so that our plants can also produce in the future: affordable electric cars, electric buses, batteries, microchips, and also climate-neutral steel. For that too, you need a plan, which you do not have. But we also say clearly as the Left: funding can only exist if there are job and location guarantees, if there is collective bargaining coverage and genuine co-determination by employees, because good industrial work sustains our social state. Anyone who works on the assembly line, at the machine, or in the laboratory must be able to co-decide during the transformation. Yes, this plan costs money, but we are firmly convinced there is enough money if everyone is involved according to their income situation. This country needs a reconstruction plan. Mr. Merz, you wanted people to feel that things are moving forward. With what you are presenting here, that will certainly not succeed. Thank you very much.

For the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, Member of Parliament Torsten Frei now has the floor. Please.

Madam President, dear colleagues, when you talk to the people in the country, to the employees in the companies, to the entrepreneurs who want to invest, to the families who are worried about their future, you are always met with one question: will Germany still be a country tomorrow in which prosperity is created and in which our children have better chances than we ourselves? And if you have heard Ms. Weidel's speech today, then the answer to that question is a very clear no. The AfD claims at every opportunity that Germany is in decline, and however many economic signs of turnaround there may have been in recent months, every positive development is played down, every achievement is denied, every problem is declared a catastrophe. And the AfD's political business model is not hope. The AfD's political business model is outrage. And if you ask the question, will Germany still be a country tomorrow in which prosperity is created and in which our children have better chances than we ourselves — if you have listened to the Chancellor's speech, you know that we give a different answer to this question than they do. To outrage we counter responsibility, and to doubt we counter courage. Dear colleagues. And for this reason we are not simply deliberating over a budget today. This budget and the program for upswing and employment are a directional decision, and they decide whether Germany invests or waits. They decide whether Germany meets the challenges of the times or avoids them. And the 2027 budget draft is the expression of our will to move Germany forward again. Our country does not have a problem of understanding. Our country does not suffer from a lack of analyses. The central question of our time is not whether we know the challenges of the country. We know the challenges. The decisive question is: are we prepared to do what is necessary? And precisely when it is uncomfortable, because the truth is also that Germany has lost economic dynamism in recent years. Too much infrastructure was neglected for too long, too many permits take too long. Our competitiveness has come under pressure, and the dramatically changed security situation demands that we take responsibility more than ever since the end of the Cold War. And therefore we cannot simply carry on as before. And therefore I would like to name four decisive tasks. Germany needs more investments, not at some point, but immediately. We need above all private investments, but we also need public investments. And therefore this budget sets a focus. We are investing from the core budget, from the special fund, from the climate and transformation fund — a total of more than 117 billion euros in 2027 for transport routes, for digitalization, for modern energy supply, in short, for the future of our country. And Germany needs strong companies. The prosperity of our country, dear colleagues, is not created in the plenary hall. It is created where people dare things, where investment and work are done. That is why we are lowering the tax burden of investing companies. That is why we are abolishing citizen's income. That is why we are passing labor market reforms and keeping wage ancillary costs stable. That is why we are working on permanently lower energy costs. That is why we are strengthening the competitiveness of our country. And because economic success has to reach the people, we are relieving families with an adjustment in income tax. Because upswing is not an end in itself. Upswing must serve the people. And my dear colleagues, upswing will only succeed with comprehensive bureaucracy reduction. Germany has to become faster. As mayor, I learned that in the end it does not matter to citizens whether the federal government, the state, or the municipality is responsible. They want results. They want the bridge to be built, the road to be repaired, decisions to be implemented. And as minister for the Chancellery, I learned that this problem is not limited to individual municipalities, but that it is a structural problem in our country. Too often we in Germany know what needs to be done, but too rarely does the doing succeed. And it is from this knowledge that this coalition acts. That is why on July 1 we passed the burden relief act, a genuine paradigm shift. For too long, anyone who wanted to reduce bureaucracy in Germany had to justify themselves. Too often, bureaucracy was taken for granted. And we are now turning that around, because less bureaucracy creates growth and growth creates prosperity. It will not be freedom that has to justify itself in future. It will be the restriction that has to explain itself under this coalition, dear colleagues. And fourthly, a strong Germany also includes security. Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine shows: freedom and peace are not a matter of course in Europe. Whoever wants peace must arm themselves. We do not count among those from the far right and far left — we heard that in the two speeches — of whom Winston Churchill once said, they are those who feed the crocodile in the hope that they will be the last to be eaten, ladies and gentlemen. And that is why we are investing 140 billion euros in more security for our country. We are protecting our country. With you, it is in danger, ladies and gentlemen. And we are strengthening our security authorities. We are giving our intelligence services new, real powers so that they are able to...

For the AfD faction, Mr. Deputy Tino Chrupalla now has the floor.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, dear fellow citizens, it is day three after the state elections in Saxony-Anhalt. The citizens have made it perfectly clear to you, worthy federal government, that they no longer believe in more of the same. They voted for a change and against the state bankruptcy into which the Merz government has finally maneuvered us.

And Mr. Merz, you quoted the president of the chamber of crafts, Jörg Dietrich. And I sometimes wonder whether you read all of his quotes, because he recently evaluated the work of your federal government and compared it to the biggest botch job in construction. That was your work. And I can only tell you, as a master craftsman: a botcher remains a botcher. He will never become an artist. And what do customers or voters do with botchers? They throw them out. And that is exactly what happened in Saxony-Anhalt.

It has not even taken a decade for it to become perfectly normal to cover the federal budget's basic expenses with debt. Like the traffic-light government, you too cannot manage to operate sensibly with the tax revenues raised. And it is definitely not because, Mr. Weidel, so little in taxes is paid. We do not have a revenue problem — I think we at least agree on that.

Through the overall package of tax burden and unaffordable social contributions, it is hardly attractive in Germany in 2026 to found a company. And it is becoming increasingly difficult to keep one's own business alive and, on top of that, to generate profits. Both corporate and consumer insolvencies have reached new highs this year as well, and that really surprises no one anymore. In the last seven years, we have lost almost 350,000 industrial jobs in Germany. This no longer affects only the automotive industry. So much for your growth figures, Mr. Merz. The only thing that is growing is the war industry, which is subsidized by the state. That is what your growth is built on.

Germany's key industries in machine and drive technology, in the chemical and steel industries, are in retreat or no longer exist. This situation describes the continuous deindustrialization of Germany, which by now nobody denies anymore, and which we warned about four years ago.

Mr. Merz, this has nothing to do with talking something down. But I personally do not believe that you gave any thought before taking office to what you as chancellor could achieve and, above all, what you wanted. You promised a great deal. The biggest disinformation apparatus was this federal government. You have kept none of it — none. Tax and further relief in the area of social insurance costs for business and industry, but also for the individual citizen. Retirees were supposed to be able to earn additional income more easily and cost-neutrally, and so on and so forth. Out of the grey autumn of reforms, and after the snow had melted, came the drab early autumn of reform, and both the economy and the pensioners went into summer reformless. In the end, you can so far present nothing substantial, nothing at all. And you are not putting forward anything today in your government statement either, apart from rising costs.

The number of civil servants is still rising, and the pension burden weighs on the taxpayer. There are still no solutions and deadlines that at least the new civil servants and also we members of the Bundestag pay into the statutory pension scheme. That does not exist yet, Mr. Mirsch. Instead, you produce social injustices and explain them away at the end with geopolitical developments. These explanations are easy and cheap, so that you as the German federal government can cover up your lack of courage to change. It has really by now become a sport to find the best excuses in order not to have to take responsibility for political failures. And that is exactly what we heard from you today, in series.

But you are supposed to shape the future of the German state. That is what you were elected for. You are supposed to set, for example, sensible frameworks within whose limits companies can settle and, above all, survive. That is what we need to talk about. Without them, there will be no welfare state and thus no social justice for those who work here creating value or who have worked for over 45 years. Let me illustrate this with the example of the automotive industry.

Your predecessor government pushed through the phase-out of combustion engine technology at breakneck speed. The majorities for it were there. This militant intervention in the backbone of the German economy has sustainably weakened its competitiveness. For ideological reasons and under the influence of a strong environmental lobby financed with tax money, from then on one produced and invested almost exclusively in electric mobility at the remaining German automotive locations.

So with this absolute decision, one rang the death knell several times over. On the one hand, one gave up — including on the part of the car manufacturers — the further development of the combustion engine. These are now even being produced in China for German car manufacturers. On the other hand, electric vehicles require other supplier industries that we either no longer have or never had — for example, battery production. And that is definitely not an innovation, but a return to the past. With the technology openness we demand, one could have done the one without giving up the other. Instead, tax money was once again spent in the form of subsidies for electric cars to make the state-ordained transition visible. None of these are success stories, ladies and gentlemen.

Your predecessors in office turned Germany from the world export champion into the world import champion. You are busily continuing that, and the costs keep rising. Still with the votes of the already ousted Bundestag, Friedrich Merz secured the majority for the chancellorship. It cost the taxpayer 50 billion euros, which disappeared into the Climate and Transformation Fund. On top of that comes a European economic policy, also carried by the Union, by Ursula von der Leyen, who concludes one-sided agreements with foreign partners. Industrial jobs are leaving Germany for low-wage countries. The analysis of the federal government and its experts: the blame lies with excessively high unit labor costs and the resulting lack of competitiveness of Germany. So you simply pass the problem on to the workers who have to worry about their jobs.

Take the impending closure of the Volkswagen plant in Zwickau. E-cars were and are produced there, but the economic attractiveness was rated so poorly that the end of production was decided — and we are talking about 8,000 jobs at the site, 20,000 when it comes to suppliers; the Saxon Ministry of Economy even speaks of 100,000 dependent jobs there alone. Yet the Volkswagen Group built new production sites both in the USA and here in China. The market and subsidy conditions there are clearly better.

So another region in Saxony will be left behind, starting with car manufacturing, through the crafts and medium-sized businesses, whose orders are disappearing. And what is your solution? Further sanctions and import restrictions against China. It is important to put one's own market at the center, but surely not in this way. The root cause analysis must eventually arrive at the point that it is the completely inflated energy costs, Mr. Merz, that make production in Germany uneconomic. We now have four times the energy, gas, and electricity prices here compared to the USA, China, Hungary, Poland. You can take any country in Europe — we are the absolute front-runner.

And then the circle closes again to sanctions and the self-imposed restrictions on energy generation. The ever-rising energy demand cannot be met affordably without coal, gas, and nuclear energy. We must make these energy sources usable again for German industry and, above all, for German citizens. And that is why you must finally put an end to the economic sanctions. Ladies and gentlemen, do you not see how your bans are harming our country? They destroy markets and industries, weaken the economy, and cause special debt in the billions. And do you know what is completely incomprehensible to me? You have once again collected 394.7 billion euros in taxes and still cannot manage to provide adequately for the citizens. Instead, you burden future generations with special funds for infrastructure, for climate neutrality, for the Climate and Transformation Fund, and for the Bundeswehr. Yet this money does not benefit our Bundeswehr at all, nor national and alliance defense.

The total expenditures of the federal budget amount to 669.3 billion euros in 2026, for which you have to take out loans of 203 billion euros. That means, as of July 2026, 3,187 euros of debt on the shoulders of every citizen. Interest payments alone will quadruple in the coming years. That is no serious budget policy. That is truly robbery of the citizens and, above all, a sin against our children and grandchildren.

And Mr. Mirsch, you spoke of fidelity to the constitution. This budget is unconstitutional. Look into the Basic Law that you held up. In a parliament, both the governing coalition and the opposition have a responsibility to this very constitution. And that is why I call on you all to join us in filing a norm control action at the Federal Constitutional Court. A quarter of all members of this parliament must co-sign it. I appeal to all of you. It is a decision of conscience for our country and for our citizens.

Dear colleagues, you are not only placing unimaginable financial burdens on the shoulders of our children and grandchildren — far worse, you are actively investing German tax money in the continuation of the war in Ukraine. The Süddeutsche Zeitung, note well, described your Ukraine aid on July 29 of this year as a black box, because parliament was not informed in full about the use of the funds and will not be. The Merz government, for example, invests in Ukrainian arms companies. You are thereby feeding the war and the deaths of Ukrainian and Russian soldiers.

If you really want change, then finally actively commit yourself to peace and to negotiations in Ukraine and in Europe and in the regions of the Near East, where terror and crime are still the order of the day. Come into conversation with all sides. Form your own picture and actively pursue diplomacy. As a middle power, we would be in a comfortable mediator position. That would be in Germany's interest.

But instead, you are ensuring that the weapons and war industry becomes established in Germany again. In my constituency, rail vehicles have been produced since 1849. The manufacturing plant in Görlitz was sold to an arms company in 2025. You, Mr. Merz, and your Union state minister-president Kretschmann are delighted when this war-readiness is pursued, as Mr. Pistorius is conjuring up. That is truly unbearable, and that is exactly what the people in our country do not want.

And far more reprehensible is the fact that with arms purchases in the USA you support their war business and contribute to rehabilitating their dilapidated state economy. All with German tax money and with special debt. Dear colleagues, these war games do not suit us, and it comes at the expense of everyone in our country. Already next year, the spending items for social affairs, defense, and interest will amount to 64% of the core budget. We must urgently change course — in favor of a genuine social market economy. Instead of weapons and war-readiness, we need investment in energy infrastructure, in health, in education, and in care. The German population is fortunately growing older, and it is precisely these people whom we must allow to benefit from social security and good medical care. You have earned that in your 45 working and contribution years.

Dear friends, furthermore we must limit access to our social security systems. And I want to clarify something once more: the AfD has nothing to gain from a regulated and profitable migration policy. But the immediate deportation of criminals and those not entitled to stay must finally stand at the very top of the priorities. The special financial status of Ukrainians in Germany must be ended. And Mr. Merz, even if you no longer want to listen — because you spoke about the crafts and addressed me on that — just look into the vocational school classes, where nowadays only two Germans sit in these classes. They are afraid to go to school. Finally talk to these schools, to these citizens. That is the reality.

We must finally put the welfare state back in focus to preserve future life in this country. And above all we must end the basic income support for non-young, able-bodied citizens, because then we can again achieve more as a community. That is the task a federal government must set. But I know full well that this federal government will no longer manage it, ladies and gentlemen. That is why social security on the basis of a healthy, growing economy can only come with a new federal government — and that with a federal government led by the AfD. Many thanks.

The next speaker in this debate is Dr. Wiebke Ester for the SPD faction.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, the AfD stands here shouting about record debt, and I would like to put that into perspective once more. First, it was a deliberate decision that we put our country in order and therefore invest in the infrastructure. You do not have to share that. But creating the impression here that we are facing a debt collapse is simply wrong. In international comparison, among the G7 states we are by far the country with the lowest debt-to-GDP ratio, and in historical comparison there is no problem at all.

What is far more interesting, though, is looking at the AfD's alternative budget, because it says: everything must become cheaper, everything must come down, no debt, and it is not financed at all. That is like walking into a restaurant and ordering a three-course meal, but slipping out the back before the bill arrives. That is the AfD's fiscal policy. And I tell you, we will be completely honest with people about what it costs to put our country back in order, and we will ensure that they may order the meal, but will not be able to finish it.

Ladies and gentlemen, many people we spoke with during the summer recess are worried. Worried because the world has become more confusing and more threatening, because jobs are being cut, because they are being called into question, because artificial intelligence changes so much not only in the workplace but also in everyday life, because we are in a profound transformation — and this transformation leads to uncertainty. That is understandable.

But honesty also requires saying that this uncertainty is currently being amplified, because many people wonder whether the resulting tasks can be mastered by politics, and because they too often come to the conclusion that we cannot do it. That is precisely what we have to work on. Our task is to provide security in times of change. Willy Brandt once said that every age wants its own answers and that one must be at the level of the age if good is to be achieved. And we have to work on being at the level of the age in all these fields that are undergoing change. Too often we are not.

That applies to the area of securing our democracy, because it is being attacked as never before in the history of the Federal Republic — from the Kremlin with propaganda, from outside but also from within. We have already had to listen to the examples here in the plenary today. Inciting anger is not an instrument that democracy relies on or that is envisaged in a democracy. But because there are destructive forces in our democracy, we — who weigh arguments and want to make rational decisions — must find answers so that our democracy remains as stable and our freedom is preserved.

Being at the level of the age also applies to strengthening the economic situation and to future-proof jobs, where we stand. Here too there is enormous change. Due to geopolitical upheavals, our export model no longer works, and that is why we finally need a European coordinated, open but strategic trade policy. We need a policy that supports how we can use the technological revolutions, above all artificial intelligence, for greater productivity and value creation in order to preserve our economic location and our prosperity. We need an active industrial policy that secures jobs.

Those are three fields of action in economic policy, but I also want to make a clear demarcation beyond that. Because we have uncertainty in change and would provide security in change, it will not be possible with the SPD to disparage employees or to degrade their work performance, saying that they work too little or that they take sick leave too often. Respect for people's life achievements comes first for us when it comes to economic policy.

And I say this quite clearly: we cannot expect more work to be done in the engine room of the MS Deutschland while the corks are popping on deck. We have to bring the ship to the level of the age together, and that also includes large tech corporations and multi-millionaires contributing so that we can finance, for example, more investment in education — and that the PISA results have clearly shown this, we all heard yesterday. We have therefore presented a concept for the inheritance tax, and I am counting on us addressing that topic when the Constitutional Court ruling comes this winter.

Ladies and gentlemen, in conclusion I want to say that we are very much at the level of the age when it comes to investments in our country. Investment is being made in schools, rail, and roads. We have a lot ahead of us, but we are on a good path. Thank you very much.

The next speaker in this debate is Claudia Müller for the Alliance 90/The Greens faction.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, it has to be said once. The Chancellor, Mr. Merz, sold people short during the election campaign when he kept saying that one only had to do a proper audit of the accounts and reform the citizen's income. That way one could simply save the budget and dissolve the special fund. They all knew that would never be enough. And that is voter deception, and the people know it, and for that they — and actually all of us — are getting the bill right now, and not only in Saxony-Anhalt.

And just as brazenly, the coalition is now dealing with the special fund. They are gambling away the future opportunities of our country, and yet they ran with the announcement that they were the last bullet of democracy. Quite honestly, I hope that really was not the last one.

But the Chancellor and many here have said today that we need a positive narrative, so let me propose one. Let us become a country where we come together again and have a common future project. A country that seizes the opportunities of the special fund and turns them into a project: Livable Homeland 2040. And we involve the people in it. We draw this vision of the future together and do not govern from on high, but with empathy.

Let us become a country where parties, government, and a constructive opposition agree on political goals across electoral terms and then implement them reliably and predictably.

Let us become a country that meets the world's challenges positively and full of drive instead of constantly brooding about the past. A country where climate protection is finally understood as an opportunity, where renewable energies are used as a job engine and a guarantee for freedom, security, and affordability. A country with buses and trains that run reliably, with schools, day-care centers, sports halls, and libraries that become favorite places where opportunity and community arise.

Because this country — this country we can be, and we can start right now. And in 11 days in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, you can also elect it.

The next speaker in this debate is for The Left faction, Heidi Reichinnek.

Madam President, dear colleagues, dear Mr. Merz, who will surely be back shortly. Your budget once again shows that you have no plan for how you can change life in this country for the better for the people. On the contrary, social security and labor rights are being hollowed out. The country is being handed over further to the fossil fuel corporations. Exploding prices are met with a shrug of the shoulders. Only at the stock exchanges are the registers ringing. BlackRock, RWE, Rheinmetall and Co. — they are rubbing their hands, and every donation to you and every former employment has really paid off for them.

But I am happy to remind you: you were elected by the people in this country. So for once, orient your policy towards them and not towards the big corporations.

But what do the people in this country get — the ones who keep this place running? Insults, pressure, higher costs, less support. The balance sheet of your government is social coldness and despair, rage and powerlessness. Those people way out on the far right are not elected because they have such great concepts or such clever heads. I mean, we just noticed that again from the two speeches — their speeches, dripping with contempt for humanity and racism. Either they deliberately told one lie after another — which I would of course never assume — or not a single person on their teams can use a search engine. But that is probably what happens when you hire people by degree of kinship rather than by competence.

Dear colleagues, that this brown seed still thrives is because you create the breeding ground for it with your policy of social coldness. But you are not only leaving people in despair; the economy is also sinking deeper into crisis, because your perspective is not that of the economy as a whole, but that of managers and bosses. And for them it is only about short-term profits, fat dividends for a few, and their own bonuses. Not about the long-term success of the companies, not about secure jobs, not about climate-compatible production, and not about anchoring the firms in the regions.

You still really think that if multi-millionaires and billionaires just get even richer, everything will be great and we will do good things for some reason or other. That children believe in Santa Claus is quite sweet, but that adults seriously think the trickle-down effect would increase the prosperity of the masses is rather embarrassing.

Volkswagen, for example, collected short-time work allowance, paid out fat returns — almost 30 billion in the last 5 years — and now plant closures and mass layoffs are looming. In the peace city of Osnabrück, VW is becoming an arms factory. The bosses are happy about their tax gifts, but they will not invest in the location because of it for a long time. Maybe just stop following the lobbyists who advise you or who sit at your government table. Maybe then your policy will get a little better.

Then maybe you would also drop the mantra that you can cut your way out of a crisis, because under this guise of saving, you are taking the very shirt off people's backs. In the Family Ministry alone, 1.19 billion euros are being cut, of which 470 million from statutory benefits for families. The war chest grows by 31.4 billion in the same year — 26 times as much. Your priorities are clear. It starts with the advance maintenance payment, with the plan to abolish it for children aged 16 and over. And it may surprise you, but these children also have to eat. They need clothes, they have hobbies, want to meet friends, perhaps get a driver's license — and 114,000 children will be affected by your plans. 114,000 children for whom one parent pays no maintenance, even though he is actually obliged to. And now you want to punish these children twice and say, well, we won't support them either.

Put pressure on the parent who does not pay instead of simply cutting 30% across the board and celebrating because the numbers look so good. That is just pathetic. And the next example is just as cruel. The child benefit supplement was once intended to support particularly poor families until there is a child basic income. Well, that is of course not coming now, and then you thought, then we can abolish the 25 euros too. 25 euros may not seem like much to some of you in government, but for 1.9 million families these 25 euros decide whether at the end of the month there is still a warm, balanced lunch on the table, or whether the child can at least go to the swimming pool once with friends.

These 25 euros mean participation for many — and you are taking that away from these children. And then someone from your faction stands in front of the camera this morning and says: well, but we are also cutting our own; this time we did not raise our salaries. Do you actually listen to yourselves when you say such things? People feel completely mocked by that. That really cannot be your intention.

But your goal seems to be that nobody wants to have children anymore, because you are cutting not only at the children but also massively at parental allowance. And then you want to sell us this cut — and I find that really brazen — as an increase, because the minimum and maximum amounts are rising. Yes, great. But for that, parental allowance is then only paid for 12 instead of 14 months. Do you really think parents are so stupid that they believe they cannot do the math? With the minimum parental allowance, 240 euros are missing; at the maximum, 2,400 euros. That is brazen.

And you are also continuing your vendetta against queer people. First your family minister stamped out the ongoing projects in the Democracy Live program. Then the Action Plan for Queer Living was completely abolished, and now you are also terminating a framework agreement that has existed for 8 years with the LSVD association, which provides young people with the counseling and support that you do not provide. It is unbelievable.

And also for affordable housing, one of the central social questions of our time, you have no answer. In your draft budget there are just 5 billion for social housing. With this rent crisis, that simply is not enough. We need 25 billion per year for social housing. That would really make a difference, help the struggling construction industry, and thereby boost the economy.

A nationwide rent cap is also long overdue, so that the brazen rent mafia led by Vonovia can no longer squeeze people for their returns. Just like a rent fraud law that truly deserves its name and finally sanctions this practice. And do you know why I advocate for this so convinced? Because I have been at people's doors. I was in Reinickendorf again this time, and a tenant came up to me and said: you are from The Left, you are the ones who always help us. Yes, he was right about that first. Could you please take a look at the house I live in? A Vonovia house. Yes, I really thought I would fall off my chair. The partition walls had been removed for months. All the cable conduits exposed, a fuse box with which you could switch off the electricity in the whole house — anyone could get to it. There were holes in the floor through which a small child could have fallen. There was water damage in the basement and in the apartment. And Vonovia had not moved for months — only when I wrote a letter with the federal eagle on it, which apparently makes the difference as to whether help comes or not.

Yes, you can jeer now — I know you are not so keen on the social side, but just listen for once. Only then did Vonovia react. But it cannot be that this depends on me and my people. There has to be a change in the system. We have to ensure that this cannot happen at all. We have to do genuine social housing policy — and you say it cannot be financed. You know yourselves that that is not true. Finally get rid of the debt brake. With armaments you are not so squeamish either. A wealth tax, a financial transaction tax, abolishing the inheritance tax exemption.

Mr. Weidel, the majority must be relieved — I agree with you on that. But that only works if multi-millionaires and billionaires are finally and fairly involved in financing it, if you create social systems that everyone really pays into. That is the right way. And it would also be long overdue that you take bold steps towards a climate-neutral future instead of orienting your policy after the fossil lobby at the cabinet table, which chains us ever more firmly to fossil energies and the dictatorships that produce them.

Since you have been in office, there are 15 billion in new climate-damaging subsidies on top of the existing 26 billion. If you finally abolished them, you would have money to invest in renewable energies. You could simultaneously relieve people, for example through a climate dividend. You could strengthen public transport, cycling, and walking so that fewer people are dependent on cars, and support those who still need one with a premium for buying used e-cars and by expanding the charging infrastructure.

That way you would also have money to finally help the municipalities. It cannot be that sick, elderly people and children suffer in hospitals, nursing homes, and schools at 35 degrees indoor temperature in summer, while you sit here in air-conditioned offices and wonder where the problem is. Families should just send the children with a bottle of water. That cannot be your intention. We need a real heat plan, and the federal level must finally invest. More than 16,000 people died from the heat in this year alone. You cannot simply say we will cheerfully carry on as before.

And therefore, Mr. Merz, if I hear from you once more — if you are there at all, that would already be something — but if I hear from you once more that you simply have to explain your policy better. I forget it; the people notice exactly what you are doing. That is the problem. When you stand here and say we have implemented a reform of the statutory health insurers so that contributions do not rise, but next year they do rise — then people notice. When they suddenly have to pay more for their medications, then people notice. When care collapses because emergency services, psychotherapists, and general practitioners say we can no longer manage it, then people do notice. People are not letting themselves be fooled, and for this policy the people are punishing you.

Saxony-Anhalt was not a warning shot. It was a major attack on our democracy, our Basic Law, and our social cohesion. So spare us your useless and dangerous keep-carrying-on slogans and finally do a social economic policy oriented towards the people. Finally make the course change we so urgently need, because I do not want to hear any more nonsense from the people here.

So, dear colleagues, with all understanding for the emotionality in these budget debates, I would be grateful if we could maintain a certain standard of language and simply refrain from words like 'fooling' and the like. I do not think that is very parliamentary, and it does not belong to our customs. Everyone should ask themselves whether that is the right linguistic style for this parliament. I do not believe it is.

And the next speaker in this debate is for the Union faction, Alexander Hoffmann.

Madam President, esteemed colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, allow me first of all two preliminary remarks. Ms. Weidel remains true to her line. She delivers a fact-free, hate-filled speech here, allows no supplementary questions, and when it comes to the echo, when it comes to taking the reaction on board, she is not there. But perhaps you will have the opportunity to pass that on to her.

Ms. Weidel speaks here of facts, but does not have the strength to allow my supplementary question. That is not only a sign of weakness, but a sign that she evidently does not trust her own facts. What is far worse, however, is that facts are being twisted here. The speech literally spoke of hundreds of thousands who continue to come into the country via asylum. I looked up the figures. First half of 2026: 39,000 first-time asylum applications. That is a magnitude like the last time in 2012. That is an achievement of this federal government, an achievement of this federal interior minister, and we will not let you talk that down.

And then you always talk about migration. A fixed building block of every one of your speeches is migration. Here you always talk about migration, but in the Russian embassy you do not talk about migration or migration as a weapon. In Moscow you do not talk about migration either. You do not talk about migration triggered by the war in Ukraine, and that is why it is a duplicity of the worst kind.

And Ms. Drüge, I cannot spare you my second preliminary remark. Because, you know, fundamentally I claim that I treat and perceive the Greens differently from the fringes, because I initially assume that you fundamentally mean well by this country. But I want to say in reply to your speech today, Ms. Drüge: then please also behave accordingly, because for the umpteenth time today you gave a speech that is nothing other than a most honourable crusade against the German Chancellor. Things are asserted here that he never said. And therefore my request, among democrats: please just refrain from that.

Dear colleagues, Saturday was a great day for this country. For the first time, it has succeeded in sending a European launch vehicle successfully into orbit. The message — a company from Bavaria, from the Federal Republic of Germany, standing behind it — is quite simple and good for our country. Bavaria can do space travel, and Germany can do space travel. And the topic of space travel is truly exemplary.

Because if we make the right decisions today in the field of space travel, we are deciding today whether we will be technological front-runners in 10 or 20 years. And the same applies to many other questions in the country.

But it is symptomatic, and that is what I want to address, of another phenomenon, because the truth is: there were two attempts. Elon Musk needed four attempts, and the first failed attempt was reported and discussed at great length. And the truly successful second attempt, which was an epochal event for the German technology location, received far too little notice.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are modernizing this country, and anyone who has ever modernized a house knows it does not happen overnight. It takes strength, patience, it takes money, and sometimes doubts do arise.

We are flanking this modernization of our country with this record budget 2027 and record investments. And a great deal has already been achieved in this area. A high-tech agenda with a volume of 18 billion by 2029. On July 1, the new basic income support came into force — promoting and demanding finally reunited again — and we are now tackling the combating of social welfare abuse in a second package. The migration turnaround, the figures I just cited, has been successfully implemented. Our country is becoming defense-capable with billions of investments in defense capability, in the new military service. And I do not want to make a secret of the fact that we in the coalition also wish things were different...

The next speaker in this debate is, for the AfD parliamentary group, Jörn König.

Madam President, honourable colleagues, dear athletes, sport and elite sport have been consistently neglected for decades. The figures speak a clear language. 362 million euros are earmarked for elite sport. For comparison, that is roughly as much as Germany spent on cycle paths in Peru in 2024. 25 billion euros, roughly 70 times as much, goes to foreigners as citizen's income.

362 million corresponds to a miserable 60 cents per 1,000 euros of the budget. That says everything about the standing of German sport under this government. Yet spending on sport would be a huge lever, for example for health. Studies say 1 euro spent on sport saves 4 euros in health expenditure. Beyond that, sport conveys the classic virtues such as honesty, discipline, punctuality, a sense of order, diligence, willingness to perform and a sense of duty. These are virtues without which you cannot build a successful country.

Furthermore, sport stands for social mobility. How many successful elite athletes, particularly footballers, would have reached their present income by conventional routes? Almost none. Opportunities for advancement are fundamental to the success and stability of a society. So success and stability are worth a mere 60 cents per 1,000 euros to the grand coalition. No wonder you are surprised by election results.

Of course, sport is fundamentally a matter for the states. Yes, but so is culture. The Commissioner for Culture and Media has a budget of 2.1 billion euros. The Minister of State for Sport and Volunteering, however, has only the aforementioned 362 million, one sixth. So there is still plenty of room for improvement for sport.

The 362 million include an increase of 10 million, so not even 3%. The core budget rose by 6%. Notice anything? You have neglected sport once again. There is an increase of 10 million euros, but there is also 6 million euros of new bureaucracy, namely the new Sports Agency and the Safport Centre. There is always money for new officials. So it runs as it does every year. Sport and elite sport are merely an annoying accessory to you. Yet every euro invested in sport helps young people in their personal development, keeps them off the streets and pays for itself many times over through better health.

A system, a system that does not motivate greater performance is guaranteed to go under. That is why you too will go under, because limitless money printing and sanction-free basic security, even for illegal immigrants, is the guaranteed path to ruin. Performance must finally pay off again, in sport as in life.

We sports enthusiasts from the AfD will table a number of motions, primarily to improve athlete funding. Even now, many athletes in Germany are lost during the transition from school to vocational training or from vocational training into employment. We wish the new Minister of State for Sport and Volunteering every success and hope for good cooperation. But I fear his term will be short, because this government is already finished. Thank you very much and sport frei.

The next speaker in this debate is Tim Klüssendorf for the SPD parliamentary group.

Madam President, dear colleagues, I must first share an impression with you that has become very clear to me in this debate. I think we are moving to the agenda too quickly. When I listen to the speeches and picture again how we are once again starting, even among the democratic groups, to indulge in petty squabbles and to go for short-term gains, then I think we have not learned much from the election result in Saxony-Anhalt three days ago.

I want to make clear, and Ms Weidel, you are still here, where I believe a great deal distinguishes us, and indeed all the groups from the Left through the SPD, the Greens to the Union, what distinguishes us from you. In your speech you speak of Muslim tribes. You do not say that by accident. You speak of tribes in order to suggest, in the very first word, that one society stands above another here, that another society is not civilised, lives by old standards and is not equal to ours.

And you do that quite deliberately. You speak of tribes because you want to signal to the people that these people are worth less. That is the message you convey with such statements. And you carry this equation further. You then speak about Islam. You speak about the fact that there are violent offences in Germany. You generalise, you bring together what does not belong together. Islam is not inherently violent, and one must distinguish, especially when one carries responsibility in this country, especially when one sits in this chamber.

It makes a difference whether these are people of the Islamic faith who have integrated into this country, who are an integral part of this country, or whether they are those who commit these violent offences and whom we must also name. And this mechanism of guilt, you do nothing but assign guilt. And you do that in every debate here, in every single debate. Whether it is about sport, we have just heard the example from Mr König, whether it is about the economy, about culture, you bring every political question back to this question of guilt and offload it onto individual sections of the population.

And that is the mechanism that distinguishes us from you, and the mechanism that leads us to draw this line from you. That is the mechanism that leads us to the fact that nobody wants to govern with you, because we stand on the foundation of the Basic Law and you do not. Because human dignity is inviolable. And it is precisely with such statements that you make here that you attack dignity. You attack human dignity. It has been said here many times that it does not say in the Basic Law that the dignity of Germans is inviolable, but the dignity of human beings. And that also applies to all those who have migrated to us.

But I also want to at this point...

Colleague Klüssendorf, there is a point of order.

No, don't allow it.

You generally allow no points of order.

I'll think about that, but at least this one.

Okay, understood. Just so that it's clear.

And still you laugh. I am not afraid of you, and I know that very many others here are not afraid of you either. You can shout across as much as you like. You will not break us with that. You will not break us with that.

But I also want to voice a piece of self-criticism, namely a mechanism that I myself use. When we talk about migration, we often come with the argument: well, but these people are needed in individual sectors. What happens if they are possibly no longer needed at some point? Let us think about whether we too have not already made the mistake and allowed ourselves to be led into this way of thinking, to evaluate people by an argument of utility. I think that also belongs in the debate, to reflect on that for ourselves.

And I do believe that today is also the time to talk about self-criticism. You did not win because you have the best programme. You did not win either because you propose great measures to get Germany back on track. You won, and one has to concede that to you, because you appeal to emotions. And we too, in today's debate, are again starting to present lists of measures. Everything we have done, which laws, that is no answer to emotions. The answer to emotions is to give belonging ourselves, to give a sense of security ourselves, to convey the impression ourselves that we are not doing politics against the people, but with the people.

And that too is a mandate for us that we must take up, that must be a lesson from this election result. And of course you can back that up with measures. And I do think that the PISA result from yesterday in particular is a point we need to talk about. We are talking ourselves, and I am not talking at all about what you are proposing, that is all unusable, but I am talking about ourselves. I am talking about the proposals we make. We too, as the SPD, print on every poster in every election campaign 'best education', and we are in government, and at the same time the quality of education in Germany is getting worse.

Then we cannot say we don't need you as a source of input. Now just hold your tongue. Really, we can discuss that on our own. Nobody needs you for this criticism. Nobody, because you have no answers. But it must be part of it that we question ourselves: what did we get wrong? Why does it stay at Sunday speeches and why can't we manage to get better here? And there are individual signs where we see something is moving. For example in Saarland, where fee-free daycare centres are being introduced from next year. Those are right steps, but it must not stop there.

That is why I campaign for us to take much, much stronger care of education policy in this country, even if it is not primarily our responsibility, and that it must not again fizzle out that we say this from the lectern, but that we really concretely work on it. And of course it also has to do with fairness. A value that shocked me particularly is the dependence on the family of origin, the dependence on material background.

And when I look at how unjust the educational path in this country is, also compared to other countries, then it must be high time that we do not shut ourselves off any further and must also levy a tax on the largest inheritances in this country, so that this money can finally be invested to compensate for these injustices that are passed on by the family of origin, for which no child in this country is to blame.

And the same applies, by the way, to the concept of reform overall. We too started in recent months to keep talking about reforms that make people's lives better. If I really summarise what reforms we have carried out that have structurally changed something in this country, then we are still a long way from the goal we share. Of course, it also involved savings measures for the things we got through before the summer, with the GKV Stabilisation Act.

And we should stop throwing sand in people's eyes, because they notice exactly that and we cannot go on like this. And that is why let us together, let us talk together about how we really shape reform, and our country needs reform, so that it makes people's lives better and that it is not just savings measures, so that people do not equate reform with cuts, because we urgently need it and because otherwise we will not have the acceptance of the people in this country, which we urgently need, the acceptance to push this reform through.

And one last sentence: we all have to work together, in conflict, in confrontation, but the opponent is standing there and that must also become clear here. Thank you very much for your attention.

Colleague Reichardt now has the opportunity for a short intervention. Well, no, rather yes, that is just what our system here says: if I do not allow a point of order, then there is the possibility of a short intervention. And we are enabling exactly that here. Please.

Mr Klüssendorf, I would like to preface this. Your party has 9% in Saxony-Anhalt, and it has that because it is also represented here in the Bundestag by people like you, because it is represented by people who have never done value-creating work in their lives, and that you present yourselves as workers here is an affront. But let me tell you the next thing. You spoke here about us discriminating against people of the Islamic faith. You rolled that out at length and said we were generalising.

Your party, in connection with gang rapes, with offences tens of thousands of times over in Germany, never speaks about which groups these are, but it speaks of a huge group, it always only speaks of men. I ask myself how you can stand here and accuse anyone of any attributions, when you place half the population under general suspicion of any crimes. That is the truth, and that is also the lack of credibility that you represent here, and that is the lack of credibility that your party has brought to where it is today. Thank you.

So, Mr Reichardt remains standing. Mr Klüssendorf may reply. I would only say now, hopefully you did not mean the women when you just referred to the men. So, Mr Klüssendorf, please.

The very fact that you make exactly this point, the very fact that you bring my words, which I chose carefully, where I spoke very, very clearly about the tribes that Ms Weidel referred to, the very fact that you bring that together in your very first argument with gang rape, the millions of people in this country of the Islamic faith, that in your first argument you bring up the topic of gang rape immediately, that is confirmation of my thesis: you are creating a climate.

You are creating a climate in which people, and I am not only talking about people of the Islamic faith, but all people who look different, who are walking down the streets in Saxony-Anhalt right now and are afraid, a climate in which these people are no longer safe. And you do exactly that with this language, with these arguments. And that is why I thought it was exactly right to note that here.

And I want to tell you something else. Why do we talk about men? Because far beyond the offences of gang rape, child pornography, domestic violence, violence against women, femicides, it is only ever men. And you cannot deny that either. And in doing so, unlike you, we are not placing men under general suspicion, but we are making clear, we are making clear where the problem lies, and it is frequently a problem caused by men, and not by people of the Islamic faith.

The next speaker in this debate is, for the Alliance 90/The Greens parliamentary group, Andreas Audretsch.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, Mr Merz was astonished how upset you got, how almost tearful, to be honest, you reacted to criticism being made of the politics you are pursuing. I consider that very appropriate. We are here to say what is. And the first point is, I believe, and I take this from the Chancellor, that the result of Saxony-Anhalt shocked him. I believe, and I take this from the Chancellor, that he sees the threat that is being brought in from outside, from Elon Musk, from Vladimir Putin, from Donald Trump, from others, and that he sees that the AfD is an extended arm of exactly that.

And in those respects praise is due, and it is good that he sees that and that he names it. And at the same time one must say, Mr Merz, you bear responsibility for the fact that anger is gradually spreading more and more in our society and that the division in our society is becoming ever stronger. What you are doing at the moment. What is a family in Germany supposed to think? What is a family supposed to think when housing benefit is halved? Children live in 70% of these families. What is a family supposed to think when the advance maintenance payment for 16 and 17-year-olds is simply scrapped? As if children no longer cost anything when they turn 16, when they turn 17.

What is a family supposed to think when parental allowance is cut at the same time? What is a family supposed to think when the child's immediate supplement is cut, is scrapped? What is a family supposed to think when the crisis relief is cut? And on the other hand you are not willing, not you, Mr Merz, to close a single fairness gap in the tax system, so that the richest, who use exactly these gaps, contribute a little bit more. You are not willing. That is what divides society. And that is exactly what must be said to you.

And it would be time for you to understand that you do not need a different narrative. People are not going to be taken for fools in such situations. They notice that. You need different policies. That is what divides society. Different policies would bring society together. And what also goes with that is that people can no longer bear being talked down to from above all the time. Lazy, freeloader, always ill, little pasha off to get new teeth.

That opens the door a little further every single day for exactly the actors I named at the beginning, which you have recognised, for the Vladimir Putins, who only want discord, and for Alice Weidel, who is trying precisely at that point to divide the country. You should do the opposite and not be part of this division of the country.

And the attacks from Saxony-Anhalt are going to get harder. You can count on that. Beatrix von Storch told ZDF's Maybrit Illner, and threatened cultural workers just one day after the election, very concretely. Everyone who is not active in creating value, everyone who in her interpretation is superfluous, they should now please worry. That is a very concrete threat against cultural workers in Saxony-Anhalt, and we know this script. We know what happens. We know the script from Poland, we know the script from the USA.

In the end history is rewritten. In the end museums are placed under censorship. And whoever is to receive funding, and it is written down quite concretely in black and white in what the AfD is now proposing, whoever is to receive funding in future will have to sign a declaration of allegiance to German national culture. One could ask, if one wanted to look at it amusingly, what that means for all the Italian operas performed here, but that is not what the AfD is about.

The AfD is about, and I see you grinning, that is exactly what you intend, cultural policy, Ms Weidel, you want to turn cultural policy into an instrument of power here in Germany, and what you intend with that is also clear. You speak of a culture of guilt. It heralds what we see in all authoritarian, dictatorial states around the world. Cultural policy is to become a test of party political loyalty. Defending freedom of expression is, in this phase, what we democrats must do.

Mr Wolfram, you have a mandate. That is exactly your mandate, to promote culture broadly. Now is not the time to cut culture broadly. To ensure that culture in Saxony-Anhalt has a future, free culture, free expression of opinion, and you have a task. We will judge you by how far you ensure exactly that. That is your mandate, Mr Wolfram.

The next speaker in this debate is, for The Left parliamentary group, Christian Görke.

Madam President, dear colleagues, dear Mr Chancellor, it is good that you are back, because this is about the sports budget of the Chancellery. You celebrated this year's budget as a record. 360 million euros out of a total budget volume of 555 billion. By Adam Ries's reckoning that is 0.06%.

Ladies and gentlemen, and everyone here who can put the figures in context, that is not a record figure, ladies and gentlemen, that is a confession of sporting poverty. Let us look at further realities of your splendid budget, where by comparison a single university in the USA spends 400 million more than we in Germany spend on sport as a whole. You really have to picture that. Or take your special programme for renovating municipal sports facilities: 333 million application volume with 7.5 billion euros, 22 times oversubscribed. The same with the swimming pool programme, oversubscribed.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is hard to imagine a budget being planned further away from actual need. And the Finance Minister still grandly promises a financing guarantee for the Olympics, but is not willing to pay in. Olympic dreams do not begin with a letter of intent or glossy brochures, they begin now in the municipal swimming pool, in the club, at school or with the athletes, who, half of them, you have to imagine that, those who are currently sports soldiers, have to scrape by on minimum wage level.

And it gets even better, ladies and gentlemen, you really want to play among the great sporting nations, but your only guarantors of success you simply put out on the street. Yes, I mean the EIS and the IAT, these are our technical and scientific medal factories. For years there have been millions missing there, also in this budget again, to pay the staff according to collective agreements at all. You have to imagine that. And the consequence is that these top people leave for the private sector. And as I said, that is unprecedented.

Unprecedented, Mr Chancellor, was also this drawn-out affair over the appointment of the Minister for Sport and Volunteering, and that also shows what standing sport and volunteering have for you. And we know each other, Mr Minister of State Raue, quite well, and so congratulations on this new challenge, but let me give you a few tips straight away for next year, a to-do list, this is concrete and costed.

First, sport and culture as state objectives in the Basic Law, long-term financing, multi-year funding and above all security for all squad athletes and not just the sports soldiers. Immediate collective-agreement pay for coach training, including payment according to collective agreements. It cannot be that we as the federal government undercut the collective agreements here. That is completely unacceptable. And above all, immediate equal status for disabled sport, and that does not need huge sums, 10% more every year. That is feasible, and that would be a contribution.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am coming to the end.

No, you do have to finish now.

Then thank you for your attention.

So, I have been a bit lenient with the last speakers. I would simply ask future speakers to mind the speaking time again. Well, that would be very kind. Now, for the Federal Government, we come to the next speaker in this debate, and that is Ronald Raue, Minister of State at the Chancellery. This is his first speech. Just sworn in and straight away it begins. Congratulations once again from this side on your new role.

Thank you. Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, members, dear friends of sport, this moment is a very special one for me. In my life I have stood at many starting lines, at World Championships, at Olympic Games, but today I am standing for the first time here at the lectern of the German Bundestag. And of course this place is new to me, but one thing feels very familiar. It is about responsibility. Back then it was about giving everything for my country. Today it is about creating together the conditions so that others can seize their chance.

When we talk about a budget today, we are of course talking about numbers. We are talking about more than 360 million euros for sport and around 27 million euros for volunteering. Ladies and gentlemen, the Federal Government is thereby raising sport and volunteering to a new record level. For this tailwind at the start of my new office I am very grateful.

But behind these numbers, for me above all, stand people: the child holding a ball for the first time and perhaps not yet knowing what talent lies within. It is the athlete who trains early in the morning while everyone else is still asleep. It is the coach who believes in her, perhaps even at a moment when she doubts herself. And of course the volunteer who stands on the sports field at the weekend, who turns out with the fire brigade or looks after people in his neighbourhood. It is precisely these people that we invest in, and that is why I am convinced that investments in sport and volunteering are investments in the strength of our country.

Ladies and gentlemen, three things are particularly close to my heart. We want to bring Olympic and Paralympic Games back to Germany, and for that I will work with all my strength. I know what Olympic and Paralympic Games can unleash, and that is exactly what I wish for our country again. A generation of Olympians with children who have role models, with children who dare to do something, and with children who above all are allowed one thing: to dream big.

But for that, a German bid must become more than the bid of a city or a government. It must become our shared bid, a movement behind which sport, politics, business and above all the people in our country stand.

Second, Germany is to belong again among the most successful sporting nations in the world. I know from my own experience that a medal is not created only in the final. It is created years earlier in training halls, on sports fields and on the water. It is created by coaches who encourage, demand and sometimes believe more than the athletes themselves. And it is created by framework conditions that make top performance possible.

That is why we will consistently implement the elite sport reform with the Sports Promotion Act, with the Elite Sport Agency and with better conditions and more recognition for our coaches, so that talent can once again become gold. I want athletes who are successful, but also athletes who say with conviction: I am proud to compete for Germany and I am proud to carry our flag.

And my third point is at least as close to my heart: volunteering. Because millions of people in our country take on responsibility for others every day, whether in a sports club, in the fire brigade or in the neighbourhood. Often without a big stage, often without applause, but never without effect. These people organise training, help when help is needed, create community and take on responsibility without first asking: what do I actually get for it?

These people hold our country together, and if we want that to stay that way, then we have to give something back to them. Less bureaucracy, more support and above all the appreciation you deserve.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have spent a large part of my life fighting for medals for Germany in sport. Today I may take on responsibility for this country in a different place, and perhaps this responsibility is a different one, but the conviction behind it is the same. Great goals are never achieved alone. They are achieved together. So let us together ensure that children can dream again, that achievement is possible in our country, and that those who take on responsibility for others know: this country sees you, this country needs you and this country stands behind you.

Sport and volunteering can make our country stronger. I will work for that, for sport, for volunteering, for our country.

And I see that time has run out. Perhaps we may still allow a personal word at this point. If there is one thing I learned in 25 years at the very top, it is that if you want to be sustainably successful, you need two things above all, and that is humility and fairness. Thank you very much.

The next speaker in this debate is Dr Götz Fröming for the AfD parliamentary group.

Thank you very much, Madam President. Ladies and gentlemen. We too, as the AfD group, wish the new Minister of State for Sport, Mr Raue, all the best for his task. You served our country as an athlete. Thank you for that.

But we miss the Minister of State for Culture and Media from the speakers' list. After all, as we have heard the figure, he has around 2.5 billion euros to distribute in the culture and arts scene. Yet he has managed to be unpopular with everyone there. Mr Wolfram, you were supposed to be a figurehead of this Federal Government. Your personal friend, Mr Merz, is not here right now. Why are you not speaking in this debate? Last year you were still allowed to have your say in both rounds. Well, perhaps that will come later.

It seems to be a kind of law that in a Western democracy the cultural scene is left-wing, and that this partly even far-left cultural scene is also funded with taxpayers' money when so-called bourgeois parties are in government. Why that is so is best described by a neologism of the journalist Ulf Poschert. He speaks of the 'Bückbürger', the bowing citizens. By that he supposedly means conservatives who always bow before the left because they are greatly afraid of otherwise being considered dusty, prudish, old-fashioned, or even, a truly terrible word, right-wing.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have to get back to saying that it is okay to be right-wing. It is okay to sit on the right in a democracy. Here in the middle there is only one line, you cannot all pile up on it.

Mr Minister of State, some had hopes of a conservative turn with your taking office. After all, a man took over the culture portfolio who had written a conservative manifesto that in places reads like an addendum to the AfD's party programme. And precisely because of that you dutifully distanced yourself from your own text, because the left-wing conformist press showed you the instruments of torture. And it is precisely this cowardice that the voters punished in the Saxony-Anhalt election campaign. You also mixed in there, and you got your just deserts.

And that is also a good thing, ladies and gentlemen. A cultural scene, ladies and gentlemen, that is paid by the state in order to confirm to the state how important its own independence from the state is, that has a certain entertainment value. And precisely here a conservative culture minister could have acted. Mr Wolfram could have said: enough of the notion that culture must politically educate the citizens in the name of the state. Enough of a funding system in which the right worldview opens up better career chances than actual artistic talent. Enough of the confusion of art and pedagogical care of the population. He could have said all that. That would have been conservative, that would have been liberal, that would have been courageous. You were unfortunately not.

Instead you yourself have become the subject of parliamentary debates. Talk was of your business connections, possible conflicts of interest and so on. None of that has really been cleared up yet. Mr Minister of State, if one wanted to sum up the 16 months of your term of office so far, you began with a somewhat grandiloquent introduction that you were in love with success, and then, apart from the exposure of the private affairs mentioned, there is really only hot air. In all that time you have actually only managed one bold action. That was the exclusion of three far-left bookshops from the German Bookshop Prize.

That is not enough for us, ladies and gentlemen. This whole Bookshop Prize, and by the way also the Publisher's Prize, that is several million, it all has to be put under review. We will apply the red pencil here, ladies and gentlemen.

We will also apply the red pencil to the so-called Cultural Council, which receives over half a million euros, an unnecessary umbrella organisation paid for with tax money that tells the Federal Government what culture is. We do not need that, ladies and gentlemen, all of that can go. Mr Wolfram, just as your friend Friedrich Merz wanted to be Chancellor, you wanted to become a Minister of State for your ego, for your biography, for your business card, for all the lovely invitations to the parties, but not for the citizens, not for Germany.

That is why the distancing from your own earlier conservative statements rolls so smoothly off your tongue, and that is why you too are only a mosaic tile in the great panorama picture bearing the title: the decline of the one and only once proud catch-all party, the CDU, into a party of bowing citizens. I thank you.

The next speaker in this debate is, for the SPD parliamentary group, Dr Karl Lauterbach.

Madam President, my dear colleagues, first of all I would also like to point out that there is a two-tier division in this Parliament. There are the democratic parties, and the democratic parties are presenting a budget here, or discussing a budget critically, that does not function in a parallel world, but that also tackles the real challenges of our time. Those are that our economic model has to change. It is dishonourable and naive and wrong to now continue and again rely on Russian gas. We were dependent on that for far too long. It has brought us into the problems we are now in, which we have to solve. That has to be recognised.

Secondly, we also have to recognise climate change. It is absurd to talk of a climate ideology. 16,000 deaths from heat this summer here with us. The forests are burning. We need the energy transition, we have to face that together. We can talk about details, but whoever denies climate change and does not face it lives in a world that is not the one we live in. We owe it to our children to solve these problems.

And we also have to face demographic change. 6 million employees in Germany do not have a German passport. It will not help to insult people with a migration background, to vilify them, more or less to place them under general suspicion that they are all potential criminals. We need these people, who work here every day, who stand by us as nurses, in the crafts. We need them and we will be more dependent on them. We must not insult and deter these people.

And finally, we also have to face the new security situation. The new security situation is a different one. Putin's criminal war of aggression against the Ukrainian people is also an attack on democracy, also on our state. And we are already in a hybrid war with Putin. It makes no sense that we cannot defend ourselves. Therefore the build-up of defence spending is right. And it is better that we produce drones and satellite technology and submarines ourselves than that we have to import them and become dependent again.

This budget takes on those challenges. Increasing defence spending is right. The KTF and the special fund are right. New jobs are being created there. China is showing us how. China exports photovoltaics, wind energy, electric cars and battery technology. In all these industries we were once technically leading. We have lost too much time through a pointless back and forth about a return to nuclear energy. Let us build these jobs up here. Our technology has been world-leading and we can recapture that lead.

And finally, we also have to, through the investments we are now making in research and technology, and the BMWF budget is being increased, in artificial intelligence, in biotechnology, microelectronics, mobility research, make investments that will increase the productivity of German workplaces. That is how we can meet demographic change and create jobs. Let us look forward together. The democratic parties will show that democracy can solve these problems. And that, in the end, is our best answer to the threats of fascism that we have to face in these hours.

The next speaker in this debate is, for the Alliance 90/The Greens parliamentary group, Tina Winkelmeyer.

Madam President, colleagues, dear Minister of State for Sport and Volunteering, welcome to the High House. I look forward to working together. We know each other, we have a lot to do, we will tackle that together. Unfortunately the drawn-out affair through the Chancellor really did not have to happen. It was never down to sport. Sport was ready. It took a bit too long. Sport did not feel quite seen. And it was right about that. So, now to the budget.

Sport thrives on us living integration. Integration strengthens the diversity of this country and of sport. And that is why every penny, every cent in sport is important, important in integration, and that makes us strong. And equally the fight against extremism and misanthropy. And in this budget this programme is being cut by 25%. That cannot be. We will continue to fight for that.

Nothing is being cut here.

The Minister of State knows it, talent alone will not make you a great elite athlete.

The next speaker in this debate is, for the Union parliamentary group, Dr. Ottilie Klein.

Madam President, dear colleagues, as the coalition we are betting on a strong and diverse culture. Even in times of financial challenges, we are committed to ensuring that Germany as a cultural location remains a beacon of cultural excellence in the world. That is the clear message of this draft budget, and there is really a great deal that is good for culture in this draft. To name just a few examples, the Federal Archives and the Stasi Records Archive will be significantly strengthened financially. For Thuringia, it is an important sign that federal funding for the preservation of the Wartburg is to be doubled. After all, it is a central place in German religious history. And also for the 200th

anniversary of the death of Ludwig van Beethoven, the federal budget is to provide up to 2.3 million euros for the Beethoven House in Bonn and further projects. And I am particularly pleased that the culture of remembrance is to be significantly strengthened financially. 10 million euros additional for the memorial sites. That is a clear and unequivocal sign that we want a strong and broad culture of remembrance. And especially after the election in Saxony-Anhalt, it must be clear that remembrance of the victims of the Holocaust and then the victims of the two German dictatorships are part of the foundation of our country. And if the AfD wants to downplay this part of history, then that is nothing less than a slap in the face to the victims who suffered under the two German dictatorships. It is an attack on our culture of remembrance and it is an attack on a foundation of our democracy and society. And we will not allow the AfD to whitewash our history, because whoever does not learn from history cannot shape the present and the future. Never again means never again, that is non-negotiable.

Dear colleagues, part of our country's historical responsibility is also the fight against antisemitism. In Germany, hatred of Jews must have no place, whether it is right-wing, left-wing, or Islamist antisemitism. This task goes far beyond the debates around the federal budget, and we will not accept that parts of the political spectrum simply look the other way on the issue of hatred of Jews.

We will not accept that The Left welcomes antisemites and antisemitic convictions in its ranks. When the Berlin Left organizes concerts at which violence and the murder of Jews are openly called for, that is more than a breach of taboo. Here, hatred is spread under the guise of freedom of art, and on top of that people dance and cheer. Ladies and gentlemen, The Left and its accomplices are creating a climate in which our Jewish fellow citizens have to live in fear. And they don't even find that uncomfortable. That is absolutely unacceptable, and we will oppose it with all our strength.

Dear colleagues, the past months have been shaped by debates about change and upheaval in our country, and last Sunday will undoubtedly remain in memory as such an upheaval and a low point. But that is not all. Now before us lies the danger that, 81 years after the end of the Holocaust, right-wing extremists and antisemites could once again take on political responsibility in Germany. As democrats and parties of the political center, we must oppose this with all our might. With clear priorities in this budget, with a consistent policy of the center, and an unequivocal commitment against every form of extremism. Thank you very much.

The next speaker in this debate is Lars Schieske for the AfD parliamentary group.

Ladies and gentlemen of the Presidium, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Merz, yes, the Chancellor's seat is unoccupied. Five weeks. The post of State Secretary for Sport was likewise unoccupied in this country for that long, and that in the middle of the final phase of the Olympic bid. The President of the Berlin State Sports Federation called that publicly scandalous. And he is right, that man. Christiane Schenderlein, the first State Secretary for Sport of this republic, axed after 14 months. She found out by phone. She was surprised and disappointed. Probably as disappointed as over 80% of Germans are with the Chancellor. He said he wanted someone with a certain degree of name recognition.

So those are the requirements profiles. Not expertise, not experience, name recognition. Then Kessler, World Footballer of the Year, UEFA director, and in 2009 a member of the Federal Convention for the Saarland SPD. She didn't come. In the end it was Ronald Raue, a deserving Olympic champion, no question at all, but not the first choice, but the Chancellor is familiar with that. Mr. Raue also ran for the SPD once, in my federal state, for the Brandenburg state parliament. In 2019 he said he had more or less been talked into it. Honestly, he had imagined politics to be more honest. Mr. Raue, you were right. The representatives of the cartel parties here are not so honest about that. And about a return to politics, he said back then, I quote him, politics was an excursion that I no longer see for myself.

And now, seven years later, a warm welcome back to politics. So much for honesty, but we still extend a hand to him for a substantive policy that really benefits our athletes, and that is sincerely meant. We are not prepared to stand for ideology. With this whole carousel of posts, one thing was not considered. Mr. Merz, the best sports politician of this house, sat right in your own ranks the whole time. Stefan Meier, CSU, in the Bundestag since 2002, former parliamentary state secretary in the Interior Ministry, spokesperson for sport and volunteering of his parliamentary group, experienced, well-connected, knowledgeable, someone who knows what he is talking about. He talks a lot and gladly, but a CSU man in the Chancellery is unthinkable, better someone with an SPD past. A party that got 16.4% in the federal election and behaves as if it were a 30% party. While they are handing out posts, a 25-year-old from Rostock throws herself toward the European Championship in Birmingham. Julia Ulbricht. Dropped from the federal squad, funding cut, a minijob to pay the rent in the best Germany of all time. With us things run differently. We have applied to raise athlete funding to 17.8 million euros. You all rejected that back then. You had nothing to say for the athletes back then. And I can tell you one thing, we will resubmit this motion in the 2027 budget. Sport freedom and thank you.

The next speaker in this debate is Katrin Cau for the SPD parliamentary group.

Madam President, dear colleagues, thank you once again for yesterday's welcome, back here again returned to parliament. I succeeded Frank Junge as a member of parliament. Frank Junge won the mayoral election in Wismar with 68% against the AfD, and that shows what is possible when democratic parties and civil society, yes, and culture stand together.

And what we just heard from the last speaker, and also what came before about culture, in no way offered any substantive engagement, but rather it is the usual manner of targeting a person, of discrediting them, of making assumptions about that person. But that is what one knows from your party, what we can follow in the media. Rostock, for example, the direct candidate for the state elections, used to be a bank robber. Perhaps you should look more thoroughly into your own ranks. The elections in Saxony-Anhalt are a disaster.

That a party has become so strong whose state association is classified by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution as right-wing extremist, shakes many people. And I share the concern that something has slipped in our country. Something that can only be stopped if we radically rethink the way and content of how we make and change politics. We cannot simply move on to the next item on the agenda. At the same time, we must not draw the wrong conclusions. A right-wing extremist electoral success needs and demands an explanation. One explanation is not 'the East'.

Hardly any region has managed as much change as East Germany. The consequences of these upheavals were very different, and the experiences with them shape people's views to this day. They shape how changes are judged, whether they provide security, open up opportunities, whether burdens and gains are distributed fairly, and whether the state remains reliable even when things get difficult.

And a concrete yardstick for that is young people. We talk a lot here about needing skilled workers, about needing the young generation once for carrying our economy and our welfare state. On top of that, they are supposed to defend our country. Then we must also create the conditions for that today. And the PISA results show once again, dramatically, and this hurts, how big this task is. Too many young people do not even achieve basic competencies. The performance peak is very narrow, and educational success in Germany still depends heavily on social background.

The Start Chancen program sets, as one instrument, and I want to emphasize that it is only one instrument, exactly at this structural problem. The federal government and the states are strengthening schools in challenging social situations together, and the same must now apply to childcare. Not every school, not every kindergarten needs the same thing, every child needs a fair chance, and this idea goes far beyond education policy. Equal opportunities arise when different starting points are taken into account, and that also applies regionally. MV is a rural state. Accessibility practically decides there whether public services are actually available. At the same time, we as a state contribute our strengths. Ports, maritime economy, renewable energies, culture and research. And for that we need the skilled workers, the modern infrastructure and the faster procedures. And this government draft provides important answers to that. But what will be decisive is what arrives on the ground, that investments are visible, that changes are socially sustainable. People have to notice more from the decisions than from the argument about them. And our politics must show what our country should look like in the future. For young people in East Germany, that means very concretely being able to learn well here, doing an apprenticeship or studying, finding work you can live on at any time, and having the freedom to stay here or to come back and build something. Thank you very much. Excuse me.

The next speaker in this debate is, for the Alliance 90/The Greens parliamentary group, Marlene Schönberger.

Madam President, Mr. Minister of State for Culture, dear colleagues, we asked the federal government what it knows about antisemitism in the cultural sector and what it is doing about cancelled concerts, contracts not being renewed, and the silent boycott of Israeli artists who are supposedly too critical in Israel and too Israeli in the rest of the world. The answer is remarkable. It has no figures. But it refers to the Institute for New Social Plastics. Jewish and antisemitism-critical artists who support those affected, advise cultural institutions and create culture themselves. They do irreplaceable work. Thank you for that.

Dear colleagues from the Union and SPD, how on earth do you explain that federal funding for the institute is being dropped with this budget? The situation of Jewish and Israeli artists is desperate, and you are leaving these people out in the cold. The Minister of State for Culture carries the fight against antisemitism before him, but he does not act. Correct that. Secure this funding.

We also asked what the federal government knows about the increasing attacks on Nazi remembrance sites. The answer was that it had heard of them, but had no concrete data. So, dear colleagues, we are leaving the employees at the memorial sites alone. We are calling for an office for the Association of Memorial Sites to network, to record needs, and for nationwide monitoring of attacks. What already exists for the SED dictatorship with the Federal Foundation for the Reappraisal must also be possible for remembrance of Nazi crimes.

Dear colleagues, antisemitism in this country threatens freedom of art, and rarely has the question of remembrance of National Socialism been so serious. We have the responsibility to act, and the opportunity—let us use it. Thank you.

The next speaker in this debate is Kerstin Radomski for the Union parliamentary group.