As the first ever chancellor candidate for the AFD. What can Germany what would the world expect from a chancellor? Vital.
What would be your top priorities? Well, actually, I would like to correct something. I don't want to be impolite, but you just labeled our party as right wing, which is not correct in my perspective.
We are a a libertarian conservative party in Germany, so we perceive ourselves standing in the mirror and actually wanting to introduce sane and serious policies because we see that this country is in need of real reforms. Let's have a look at Germany right now, where it stands after 20 years, after 16 years of ongoing America. And after three years of the traffic light coalition.
Actually. Funny name, right, isn't it? Germany is not in a very good state.
We have the highest energy prices worldwide. We are in the middle of a migration crisis. We got a a million influx of immigrants, illegals.
We don't know. Germany actually has literally has no borders, no border control, nothing. So we have criminal rights skyrocketing and taxes are too high.
So a middle class taxpayers earning, let's say, €50,000 a year has to pay over half. So I think there is a lot of room of real policy making, lowering taxes and then having also a serious energy policy. Germany is the only country having switched off nuclear power plants.
So this country government has imposed a obnoxious policy making having a industrial country like Germany just being supported. Sorry. Sorry.
It's very important to have a status quo here to to to have an industrial country like Germany, just like being of being dependent on solar and wind power. And this is not serious. Right.
So translate that into me for a sort of top three policies, policy initiatives that you would put in if you were chancellor of Germany. Mm hmm. Border control.
Lowering taxes. And switching on the nuclear power plant. And one of the other sort of things that I think sort of concerns many people within our audience, particularly investor business and economists community, is this idea of withdrawing from the euro.
Of withdrawing from the EU, which would be seen by many in the mainstream. Yes. As economically catastrophic for Germany.
Many of the right wing parties that have been successful in Germany have abandoned this initiative. You have not. Why?
We don't see that the European Union in its current state is a and is an institution that is working well. Right. So what we need to have is free trade among the European countries, but we don't need all the bureaucracy.
So example, the European Commission, which is actually not voted. Right. So you have a executive power like the commission with also legislated legislative power, and that is not elected.
So this is a huge democratic deficit. So this commission decided just to forbid diesel and benzene like all the the traditional fossil mortar. Right.
So what happens is that they actually ripped off the the German automotive sector. And this is also in my perspective, something. It's a it's it's something like a a in a socialist policy making that you destroy the market mechanism within Europe.
And that's a reason why we say, look, we don't need a commission that is actually destroying the foundation of our continent. What we need is free trade among the European countries. Many people are critical of the EU on many of the points that you make here, but very few are making the case for withdrawal from the EU and specifically on the euro.
What how do you envision that happening? Is it a return in Germany to the Deutschmark? Is it then?
Explain to us the mechanics of how you imagine that working if you had your way. Well, this is the entire this the entire discussion around the deficit. Right.
So we think that the European treaties need to be reformed so that every country within the European Union has a right, first of all, to have a veto against the Commission, for instance, and that the Europe that the German government could say, okay, we don't agree, we say no. So the veto power in the European treaties and if a country wants to leave the European Union, why not falling automatically into a free trade zone? I highly recommend just a free trade zone because all the bureaucrats, thousand of them like like eating up taxpayers money, they just disturb real competition among the European countries.
We don't need all of these bureaucrats that have actually who who have no clue what they are doing and destroying our foundation in the European Union. Look at. Look at the German car market, for instance.
But of course, this was also the Brexit dream. And that is a dream that I think by most accounts has not really materialised for the United Kingdom. And in fact now trying to restrict trade deals with Europeans for that.
The reason is very simple. Actually they used the Brexit, the European Union use of Brexit to actually exclude Great Britain from the from the from the European market. That was actually almost arrangement.
No, but you cannot do that. You cannot do that. This is not competition.
This isn't. This is no market competition. What we need to have is a free zone and someone who decides, Actually, I have something against like.
Like Cameron did. He said, Look, I don't agree with open border policies. I don't agree with your policies at all.
So please reform yourself. And if say don't move, it is it is his right as a sovereign state. Just to step back and say, look, we step out.
But then a country, it should automatically fall in a free trade zone. Right. But shouldn't do are sort of are sort of sometimes different on the issue of the United States and Donald Trump.
No, it's it's sorry. It is nonsensical. It is nonsensical because the European Union in this current state is not democratic, first of all.
And secondly, you have no real competition. And I ask your perspective on the election in the United States, the relationship with Donald Trump and Germany, who maybe shares some of the same views, particularly on immigration, but also in a sort of very nationalist view of things, would be very damaging economically for Germany. How do you imagine that relationship?
How damaging do you think that could be to Germany? How does it change your view of the United States as very critical over its influence over Germany and Europe? Well, first of all, when I saw the elections in the US, I almost had physical pain.
How Donald Trump and his family. Was disparaged by the mainstream media. I and so I really had physical pain to see that like how unfairly he was treated by the mainstream media.
So I have to be very frank. Am I actually put my thumbs up for Donald Trump? We have huge hope, hopes with this in his presidency.
And I really hope that he puts an end on this tale of a war in the Ukraine because the European member states are actually not willing or capable of doing something like that. So we have to tell the truth that we are not capable anymore. And I think because you asked me on trade policies, I think of that gambling with tariffs and actually imposing them effectively is a huge difference.
And. Having a lock on our car makers, for instance, because German policymakers, they are they always say, okay, German car makers might be hit very harshly by tariffs, but they are already there with with our plans. BMW, mercy, this Volkswagen, they have almost, I think, 25,000 employees in the US.
So the firms, the companies, the German companies, they are already in the US. And do you know why? Because of high energy prices here in Germany.
So the policies, these noxious policies being imposed on German companies by our own policymakers actually let them to to build plants in the US and abroad, because here they cannot produce anything anymore on a competitive level. And another question that you had your co-chair out this weekend talking about Netto and the relationship of Germany to NATO's saying that basically Germany should consider leaving NATO's and its current arrangement. Is that a position that you agree with and on what basis?
Well, this is not exactly what he said. He said that we need to strengthen the European pillar within the NATO. And what does it mean?
Well, our security interests are pretty much different from the US within the NATO. And I think in my opinion that the Europeans should put their act together doing more within the natal. Germany, for instance, would never have been paying 2% of GDP at all.
So therefore Donald Trump is perfectly right to. So we need to contribute to to to NATO, but it's also in our responsibility to formulate our national interests, because our national interests is quite different from the US. And it's very simple why the US is very far away.
And here in Europe we have this war in front of our doors. So our security interest is completely different. Do you see Germany's interests as more aligned with Russia's interests than with the interests of the United States?
Well, absolutely not. Absolutely not. I think Germany should have taken a more diplomatic part, but Germany failed in doing so.
And I think that Donald Trump is really capable to sit together with the with with Russian diplomats, with Putin, to formulate a freedom treaty, because what we need is a is freedom, because otherwise I am in fear, to be honest, that this conflict, this terrible war, may escalate. And on the question also of Ukraine, you've also talked about sort of reconnecting with with Russia, reconnecting Russian gas, basically going back to the old German model of lower cheap Russian gas coming into support industry. Why are you so confident in being so dependent on Vladimir Putin, particularly in light of what we saw over the last few years?
Why are you so confident to hand that dependency to Russia rather than with people that you have potentially a longer track record with of a cooperative relationship and a more diversified source of energy? Well, being dependent on Russian gas, you should really ask this question and get America, because the policy you're advocating is not. No, no, wait.
We want to have cheap energy and secure energy in Germany. This is this is what I stand for. And this is my humble opinion.
This will be the right policy. And the. The energy market is highly disturbed.
In Germany, we are the only industrial country having switched off nuclear power plants. You have to imagine this, right? So what we need to do is going back to cheap and secure energy support.
Otherwise our entire companies get bankrupt or they go abroad like thousands of people sit on the streets because the German companies actually go abroad. They go to the U. S.
, they go to China, they go to the neighboring countries because we cannot guarantee energy support anymore. So we need nuclear, we need gas, and we also need coal. And all of this like the solar and wind power plants.
You cannot do this in Germany. It's not possible. And and you don't need to be a very smart person actually, to come to this conclusion.
This is a funny thing, actually. And in answer to a question of European politics, again, sort of having seen some of the other far right parties or you dispute that categorization, but some of the parties that say some of the similar things, they have gone more to the center. When you think of the Le Pen in France, we think of Meloni in Italy.
Is that something, an outline, a blueprint that the AfD is willing to follow in order to gain real influence in the German political debate? Or do you think that they have basically sold out? Well, once again, in Germany or the label of far right is being labeled on people or party like.
When people go to work, they earn money. They want to have border control people who who want their children to have a very good education. They're all labeled as white wing.
So I don't understand this label. I just suggest everyone to read our program, first of all. And yeah, we are concerned.
We are a conservative Libertarian Party. And what we want to have is we want to have a future for the next generation here. And we don't want to have this chaotic policy, politics being imposed on the people.
And if you have a look on the Chris Democratic Party thread race mats, it's a leftish Socialist Party already. So, Chancellor Merkel. Is the first green chancellor.
Germany. Had she ruined our country. She destroyed our backbone.
And this is the responsibility of the CDU of socialist policy making.
