Speeches

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen! Today we voted on the new crisis protection rules in the banking sector. It is crucial that taxpayers are not asked to pay for the bailout of banks again, as they did in the financial crisis 15 years ago. That's why we need strict rules for banks in crisis. But we should also have learned from this how, for example, regional banks have been able for decades to be a pillar of the European medium-sized real economy, combining this with systematic safeguarding of their institutions and risk minimisation. Its institutional protection schemes are subsidiary protection schemes. They can exist in parallel, untouched, within the stricter rules for deposit insurance. Everything that contributes to the security and stability of the banking sector must be preserved. But the harmonization of the systems now decided for the sake of harmonization ultimately weakens the tried-and-tested institutional protection systems. For many regional banks, this is the opposite of what CMDI actually wants to achieve.

Mr President! The Maastricht rules are based on economically nonsensical goals, have led to economic polarisation in the EU, fuelled by six-pack and two-pack in 2014. The rules worked best when they were out of place. Now we would have the chance to achieve cohesion through a reinterpretation. Debt sustainability analyses could have worked, but deep mistrust continues to lead to discipline and debt reduction as primary targets, despite the fact that we in the EU are facing the biggest challenge in the history of the Union with the transformation. I prophesy: It will again be the case that the rules only work when they are exposed. We will lose many years, which are crucial for investment and decision-making, for the future viability of our European Union.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen. In Germany, the term ‘Dönerpreisdeckel’ is trending. It is synonymous with people worrying about not being completely blank by the twentieth of the month because of the increased prices. We are in the midst of a cost of living crisis. However, this development is not only a result of inflation, but is fuelled by the greed of dominant companies. They take advantage of inflation to make an extra large cut at the expense of the general public, and that's dishonest. Here, we legislators need to outgrow ourselves in order to keep society together. We need new, unconventional ideas, a profit cap for essential goods, for example, in times of crisis. I give everyone their profits, their profits, but maximizing the profits of a few in crisis costs us all too much in the end. That is why we need a fair fiscal policy for cohesion.