A new European Economic Community (EEC) instead of the old EU

_ Peter Boehringer, Chairman of the Budget Committee of the German Bundestag, member of the German Bundestag. Berlin, 7 July 2021.

The AfD’s 2021 Dexit decision was right. Peace and prosperity in Europe cannot be maintained by the euro and the EU, but by free trade and freedom of movement within a new European Economic Community (EEC).

Introduction: The run-up to the Dexit or EEC decision

On April 10, 2021, the AfD federal party conference in Dresden made a long foreseeable and logical decision with a very large majority, which can also be described as historical. Most consider this decision to be a good one, but a group of few but vocal critics think it is fatal.

Although some call the part of the text on the AfD Bundestag election program 2021 a “Dexit” resolution, the word “Dexit” does not appear in it.

In fact, after years of debate and many years of dramatically increasing financial, legal and social encroachment on the part of the EU, the text calls for Germany to leave the current EU and at the same time return to a European Economic Community (EEC) as it existed until 1993.

First of all, here is the wording of the resolution:

“The vehemence with which the European Union has pushed the transformation into a planned economy superstate in recent years made us realize that our fundamental reform approaches cannot be implemented in this EU. We consider Germany’s exit from the European Union and the establishment of a new European economic and interest group to be necessary. “

The text with the clear demand for the EU to return to an EEC-like economic and trade community is actually just a logical further development of the AfD party conference program for the 2019 European elections, which had the following wording:

“DEXIT: the exit as the last option: If our fundamental reform approaches in the existing system of the EU cannot be implemented in a reasonable time, we consider an exit of Germany or an orderly dissolution of the European Union and the establishment of a new European economic and interest community to be necessary. “

Here is just a typical comment on the 2019 Dexit program text in the mainstream media:

“For their federal party congress, the AfD has published a key motion for the European elections – and it is so radical on the EU issue that even some AfD members want to defuse it.” [Stern, Jan. 2019]

Although the mainstream media also commented on the Dexit decided by the AfD on the Bundestag election program in Dresden in 2021 just as critically as the Dexit decision on the 2019 European elections program, a sustained one suddenly developed among European parliamentarians in 2021, especially in Brussels debate on this decision.

The current occasion was an actually rather soft, very generally formulated “Declaration of values for the future of Europe” by some right-wing and conservative parties in the European Parliament.

The viewpoints contained therein on the completely encroaching nature of the European Union today are well-known and realistic analyzes and demands of European patriotic parties on the state of the EU.

But since some see this declaration as a nucleus of a new patriotic parliamentary group to be formed in the European Parliament, it made some headlines. Since the AfD was not asked to sign for various reasons and this raised some questions and (false) claims about the role of the AfD Dexit demand, this will be investigated below.

The most important claims are checked for truth in the form of a “Q&A” list:

1. Has a large new right-wing group been set up in the European Parliament?

No. 16 European parties, some of which are very heterogeneous, have drawn up a relatively soft, vague and broadly compatible declaration on common values and possible common goals for Europe. Group negotiations could follow – with an uncertain outcome. Results can possibly be expected at the turn of the year 2021/22.

2. Can the coming parliamentary group negotiations with all these parties be successful?

No. These results are not predictable. The whole project could end without forming a new parliamentary group. Quotation from the original text of the declaration: “… with this document we are addressing all parties and groups that share our views, … whereby we respect the role of the current parliamentary groups.” will not necessarily affect the existing parliamentary groups in the European Parliament.

The co-chairman of the large right-wing Polish PiS group in the European Parliament, Ryszard Legutko, even downplayed the importance of the declaration: “There is no intention to form a new group in the European Parliament. This does not affect the configuration of the [current] groups / factions”. Thus, one will have to wait until autumn or winter 2021.

The signatories of the declaration are very heterogeneous and in some cases also very “flexible” in their positioning. They are not compatible with each other in all areas and sometimes act clearly against the interests of the AfD on important issues. For example, Ursula von der Leyen could not have been elected as Commission President without the votes of Salvini’s Lega, Orbans Fidesz and other right-wing parties. A parliamentary group membership of the AfD must therefore be weighed very carefully.

In private, many of the right-wing representatives of these countries make it quite blunt to understand that, despite all EU criticism, their aim is to continue to collect the EU money, which is ultimately largely German tax money or has a German credit rating for debt, guarantees and bond purchases.

3. Are parties / European parliamentary groups who have not yet signed the agreement to be excluded from the upcoming negotiations?

No. Negotiations in Brussels traditionally run to the last second. Here is another quote from the PiS representative: “Legutko suggested more parties might join the loose alliance backing the declaration.”

Main payer and main recipient countries of the EU have different perspectives on the EU. This is completely normal.

The patriotic parties in the other countries also all represent national interests. They understand the AfD very well. A Dexit would be entirely in the interests of Germany. Our Dexit attitude does not therefore exclude us from negotiations. There is not a single word in the declaration text that a country is not allowed to leave. On the contrary, many correct arguments in the text argue in favour of an exit. It would therefore be absurd if the only patriotic opposition party in the EU’s main payer state, Germany, were excluded from negotiations on a joint parliamentary group by patriotic parties who think nationally.

There is no reason to leave the AfD out. The other parties are also completely heterogeneous, their demands are partly incompatible, and the differences were not an obstacle to the joint declaration. And of course, the AfD group also shares the demands of the declaration.

The AfD representatives should therefore confidently defend the Dexit demand. If that would be impossible to do with the “right” friends, then they are not real friends. The AfD giving in would be unnecessary and much too expensive for Germany.

4. Is the AfD’s Dexit decision fault that the AfD was not allowed to sign the common declaration?

No. On March 19, 2021 (three weeks before the AfD federal party conference in Dresden with the Dexit decision) the FAZ headlined the partnership plans of the largest patriotic parties Fidesz (Hungary, Orban) and Lega (Italy, Salvini): “Fidesz: No to AfD, yes to Salvini”. Even at that time, before the Dexit decision, other parties involved declared that the AfD should remain outside of it for various, complex “intra-European parliamentary” reasons.

Of course, the Dexit decision today probably still plays a role with the initiators of the right-wing conservative “Declaration of Values”.

Italy, Hungary and Poland are strong net beneficiaries of the EU trillion redistribution, so that Germany’s exit and even only the return of the EU to an economic and free trade community like the EEC, which is aimed at by the AfD, would result in extremely high losses of transfer payments largely financed by Germany.

That could motivate these countries not to let the AfD into their alliance for the time being, in order to first build up pressure to soften the EEC proposal.

National right-wing populist parties in these countries are naturally motivated in the same way as their left-wing populist compatriots. Here, too, there are insoluble conflicts of interest between the patriotic parties in the recipient countries and the German AfD.

Thus, if the Dexit decision would actually play a significant role in the exclusion of the AfD: then the same blackmailing is going on here under patriotic parties that has made Germany “successfully” the paymaster of the EU for 30 years. But that is unacceptable for a party like the AfD, which has been critical of the euro and the EU since it was founded.

This contradiction between the respective national perspectives would then hardly be resolvable. Germany must no longer allow itself to be blackmailed by our borrowers and gift takers. Not even from rights. “Courage to Germany” applies here, not “to D-EU-tschland”.

As further reasons for a provisional exclusion of the AfD, observers cite the Russophobic attitudes, especially of the Polish PiS, as well as other issues.

5. Can the AfD do something to still participate?

Yes. The AfD negotiators must make it clear to the initiators of the declaration that they naturally share the same (very abstractly formulated) values of the declaration, but at the same time cannot ignore Germany’s national interest as a net payer of the EU.

From a German point of view, the Dexit demand is completely justified. Financially with hundreds of billions of accruing liabilities in Germany anyway – and the social and legal deficits of the EU are of course similar to all other signatory states. This representation of national German interests is not negotiable for the AfD – just like the other states represent their national interests.

The Dexit demand is a natural negotiating position of the only German party in the European Parliament and in the Bundestag that still represents German interests at all. It hast to be asked exactly for this reason, even if it cannot of course be implemented directly, but remains only a demand from a 12 percent opposition party in Germany for years to come.

Without this signal, however, the EU Commission would push even more anti-German politics or even more projects at German costs and liabilities.

A permanent exclusion of the AfD from this potential patriotic alliance is very unlikely: The AfD was not even cut by the other right-wing parties in 2019 when Prof. Meuthen requested the dissolution of the European Parliament (!) At the federal party congress at that time without the knowledge and will of the responsible federal program commission and got through …

The AfD was not even excluded by the other patriotic parties in 2019, when Prof. Dr. Meuthen through at the federal party congress at that time demanded the dissolution of the European Parliament and got it – without the knowledge of the responsible AfD federal program commission.

6. Does the AfD want to return to belligerent, national-chauvinist times with Germany without the EU?

Of course not: today’s EU is not the “united Europe” of sovereign fatherlands that the preamble to the German constitution (Grundgesetz) of 1949 called for. That is why the EU is not Europe, but the anti-model of what the authors of the German constitution wanted.

That is why the AfD is not asking the “system question” with the Dexit demand, but rather is implementing the demands of the German constitution and the Lisbon judgment of the BVerfG, which prohibits becoming a “federal” state of the EU without a respective referendum. And the EU is clearly acting like a federation today.

The AfD wants to return to the EEC with its so-called “Dexit” decision. At that time everything worth preserving and striving for in Europe had already been achieved: The free trade community and the free movement of persons [only] for Europeans was a reality with the EEC as early as the 1980s. This worked wonderfully up until the EU was founded in 1993.

Back then there were the most peaceful and fastest growing times in Europe in living memory – objectively, with much less tension than today in and with the EU.

7. One should not demand that! Will it even ever happen?

Yes and no. As an opposition one can and must demand that. As a national opposition anyway. No demand of the AfD yet been realized by the AfD directly. Neither in the Bundestag nor in the European Parliament. For that reason alone, any excitement among our European right-wing partner parties would be artificially played and / or irrational.

Some of the parties themselves had the exit demand for their country in the programs. The “original” of the idea, Nigel Farage’s “Brexit Party / UKIP”, has long been the idolized model of the patriotic parties in the European Parliament.

They have never accused UKIP of their (in the end even successfully implemented) main demand “Brexit!” Or even forced Farage to renounce it. And Great Britain was also a major net contributor to the EU.

8. A German exit from the EU would not be negotiable to the outside world! Is the AfD becoming radical?

No. The AfD’s euro exit demand was just as controversial at the beginning of 2016 and was sometimes perceived as “radical”. Today it is accepted by almost all AfD voters and a widely confirmed, completely normal part of all party programs since 2016.

Despite the claims of some internal AfD-Dexit opponents, Le Pen has also not benefited much by giving up the Frexit demand. The slight increase in the RN is due to Macron’s weakness.

Many German voters do not want to say goodbye to the EU because they listen to the permanent pro-EU propaganda of the mass media and therefore fail to see the real damage the EU is doing to Germany.

But even if this group is presumably overestimated at 60 percent, the AfD would still address the other 40 percent group, who are better informed about the nature and costs of the EU and can therefore gain a lot from the Dexit demand.

The Dexit decision or, more correctly, the proposal “European Economic Community à la EEC” of 1985/90 with free trade and the free movement of persons within the EU is completely correct and in no way radical. Nobody wants to go back to 1914 or 1939. The AfD wants to go back to 1990 …

“Radical” comes from “radix”, which is Latin for “fundamental”. Political tactics, power games under patriots in the European Parliament and the alleged negative external impact of the Dexit demand in the mainstream must not suppress the truth about the fundamentally evil nature of today’s EU from a German perspective.

The “realpolitical”, pseudo-elitist saying of supposedly superior strategists that there are factually correct decisions and truths in politics that are tactically or strategically wrong is a very dangerous one.

9. Is the EU good for Germany?

No: As already analysed, all the beneficial components of the confederation of states in Europe were already implemented with the EEC.

Today’s transfer euro and the EU debt capacity created since July 2021 at the expense of Germany, as well as the legal, ideological-totalitarian and social encroachment of the EU are disadvantages, all of which only occurred with the EU since 1992 (Maastricht), 2007 (Lisbon Treaty with Annexation of many national competencies by the EU) and 2010-onwards (EU permanent rescue programs until today).

The EU is completely different today than it was in the 1990s and even different than it was until 2020 before Corona.

With the financial and legal restructuring of the EU since summer 2020, the financial and legal encroachment of the EU has reached completely new dimensions:

The EU budget has reached 400 billion euros in 2021 compared to 150 billion in 2020.

A fully ideological so-called “Corona” program called “Next Generation EU”, debt-financed with over 800 billion euros.

A so-called “Corona” program of the ECB called “PEPP” for 1850 billion euros. Hundreds of billions of euros in liability damage for Germany every year.

In addition, breaches of contract: Hundreds of violations of the Maastricht Treaty; meanwhile permanent violations of Article 123 TFEU (de facto monetary state financing by the ECB, sometimes several 100 billion euros weekly); against Article 125 (no transfer and liability community, no euro bonds); against Article 311 (no EU debt), etc.

The EU now holds 80 percent of the powers the previously sovereign nation states of Europe held. The EU Commission and the ECJ are now even claiming the constitutional competence for themselves; and with it the last remnants of the core of national sovereignty, which according to the Lisbon judgment of the BVerfG of 2009 should never happen without a referendum. And it even breaks its own rules, i.e., the TFEU, as shown above.

In terms of society, the EU now governs in almost all areas – a loose confederation of states from the EEC era has turned into a totalitarian, voracious, centrally planned socialist bureaucracy monster.

Incidentally, the European patriotic parties understand all of this very well. However, as opportunistic recipient countries, they often have a different perspective on monetary and financial policy than the AfD.

As paymasters in Europe, we Germans have always been the lowest caste.

What would Germany have to lose with the magnitude of our damage caused by a Dexit today? Little: Germany had been the export world champion since 1960 and up to 1999 – in other words, despite the super strong Deutschmark, for 40 years until the introduction of the euro.  Europe of the EEC-era was peaceful and stable most of the time before the euro and the EU. Probably much more peaceful and under the rule of law than today.

10. The Dexit application was unwise, an unexpected surprise at the AfD federal party congress …

No. The EU exit or Dexit debate has been going on among euro critics for over 20 years. Since 2013 also in the AfD, since 2016 at every party congress; and, as mentioned at the beginning, almost word for word as it was in 2019 in the lead proposal for the European election program.

In the application book for the 2021 Bundestag election program, there were five Dexit applications with around 30 applicants a full three weeks before the Dresden party congress.

The Dexit application that was finally approved was even an alternative proposal from the federal committee responsible for democracy within the party (BFA9).

The special critical view of some Brussels MEUPs on the subject of Dexit / EEC due to possible difficulties in forming new parliamentary groups in the European Parliament was heard and weighed up by the party congress. Jörg Meuthen was crystal clear about this in his speech. It convinced a third of the delegates. The others found the EU disadvantages for Germany to be more relevant than possible parliamentary group negotiations in the European Parliament with a completely unclear outcome.

Today the EU has given up practically every business basis from its founding time in 1990/93.

And that is exactly how most of the delegates at the party congress saw it. In the 60-minute debate on the topic, all conceivable arguments were democratically exchanged, at the end of the meeting weighed up and the Dexit then decided with a two-thirds majority in a clear, rational, well-thought-out and formal manner.

11. Do European patriotic partners see the AfD as “not reliable” or “not grown up”?

No. This may be true in individual cases – but not because of the Dexit demand.

The Left keeps making the same claims against the AfD. It is defamation with the aim of building pressure so that the Germans do not openly speak the truth (“Germany has to pay everything in Europe”). Such elitist-arrogant sayings such as “not professional, not grown up” come up when the paymaster dares to resist and disrupt the supra-national harmony of the cosmopolitan and globalist EU-lites at Germany’s expense.

his blackmail game against Germany and the AfD has been going on for years. Both left-wing anti-national parties and the media are involved – and in Brussels, unfortunately, patriotic parties too.

Politicians from borrowing EU states sometimes agree from left to right about Germany’s financing “task”. Of course, highly supportive of the state, “serious” and totally unselfish. Just as five wolves and a sheep can quickly come to an agreement “democratically” and “professionally” about what to eat for dinner.

12. Can there be an EU without a euro? Is the Dexit demand really new in the AfD?

No. Without the main financing and transfer vehicle, the euro, through which all national debts, guarantees and ECB bond purchases in Europe are secured, especially by Germany (currently over five trillion euros), the stock exchanges would immediately lower their thumbs over the EU as well.

Realistic economists know: the EU would not survive a single day if Germany were to exit the euro. Implicitly or economically, the Dexit has therefore been part of the AfD program since 2016 (basic program) and 2017 (Bundestag election program) with the party’s euro exit resolutions.

13. Is the Dexit decision of the AfD election program only valid until the federal election on September 26th – and can it be revised afterwards?

A very dangerous theory. Since exactly the the AfD would be perceived as “not reliable” – exactly what the AfD is allegedly accused of in the EU.

No, the AfD should leave the undoing of democratic voting results exclusively to Merkel and the old parties. All arguments of the Dexit decision critics (if they are correct at all) were appreciated by the supreme sovereign – the party base members. Dresden was not a reflex decision, but years overdue; in times of the “Next Generation EU” this is even more so.

14. We want and need the “government” power in European Parliament, the Dexit demand would disturb this…

We still have to go a long way towards forming a “government” majority in the European Parliament. This is not an argument today – not even for the other patriotic parties in the European Parliament, which, even if the new patriotic parliamentary group would be successfully formed in 2022, will not have more than 20 to 25 percent of the seats for years to come.

15. Instead of leaving, would it not be possible to get the EU to carry out reforms in line with the AfD?

No. The AfD has been calling for reforms for years – since 2019 we have even made our remaining in the EU dependent on that.

Unfortunately, the EU is now ever more distant from reforms – since the Corona “bail-out” programmes and many new totalitarian Corona laws.

The AfD delegates at the party congress had heard the EU’s declarations of intent for years. But everything is visibly running in the wrong direction – due to the Corona measures even at a massively accelerated pace. The German EU and euro liability is now almost 3 trillion euros higher than in 2019. The arguments and reform invocations of the Dexit opponents were therefore found to be too easy and unrealistic.

The promises with which Germany was lured into the euro and the EU in the 1990s have all been broken. For any observer, the EU has not been reformable for years. And under no circumstances can it be reformed in such a way that it fits from a German perspective.

We now have 25 years of EU criticism behind us. Our fears to the detriment of Germany have always been exceeded by reality. How long should we wait for Godot, while everything in the EU has been developing exactly in the wrong direction since 2020 at the latest: An increasingly planned socialist, centralist-totalitarian structure, now with almost infinite debt capacity. “Almost” because even the German tax and asset substance is finite.

We must finally end the dangerous self-delusion.

16. Are there alternatives to a large patriotic parliamentary group?

Of course. The parties in the European Parliament often regroup.

Outside of Brussels, a parliamentary group without the AfD would hardly pose a problem to anyone anyway. Who knows exactly the highly complex and always fluctuating parliamentary groups in the European Parliament? Hardly anyone in Germany.

In addition, one could vote with other patriotic parties on a case-by-case basis, even without a joint parliamentary group, where it makes sense: cultural policy, national sovereignty, immigration, .. The votes could still be bundled for important votes in these areas.

In the case of the EU as a transfer community at the expense of Germany, there may be no common ground with the beneficiary countries. Not even with their patriotic parties.

One just has to be honest here. Let’s keep it with Moltke: march separately – strike together. Wherever it goes. That is in our national interest.

And over time there will be an offer of admission to the patriotic parliamentary group anyway. There is no getting around the central and largest payer state of the EU and thus the AfD, even in the opposition.

Conclusion and postscript

Today we no longer experience the harmless early EU of the 1990s. This has finally been history by 2021 at the latest.

Today, the EU is in breach of treaties, in breach of the German constitution, encroaching upon almost all areas of society and recently, even equipped with an almost limitless debt capacity. Neither the EU Commission nor the EU Parliament are actually democratically legitimized.

In short: The EU is radical, increasingly illegal, increasingly centralistic-totalitarian, planned socialist and it can finance its ideologically dangerous ideas almost without democratic control at Germany’s expense.

Our demand for an exit from the EU merely represents an adequate reaction to this situation, as it is imperative for a constitutional and national opposition party.

The German AfD needs to demand the Dexit. It receives new, expensive arguments for this every day. None of these are “merchants’ arguments”, but rather a question of character, economic and historical honesty, logic, consistency and ultimately even our existence as a sovereign nation of Germany.

One cannot support the farce or the absurd assertion of the “reformability” of this structure any longer. We have been doing this for almost 30 years. Let’s be honest in real politics: States have interests. And patriotic parties from different countries do have different interests concerning the trillions of euros that have been (re-)distributed via the EU since 2020.

National parties can of course still work together: the political right has a lot in common when it comes to questions of immigration, Western culture, Islamization or questions of sovereignty. However, one will not find consensus on all issues within a supranational alliance.

Not in an alliance like the EU, in which, using German assets, against national statehood, against German interests and against all conservative, liberal and subsidiary.

Anyone who, after 25 years of contrary development, still believes that this EU can be reformed in our sense and would ever return to the only constitutional state (loose confederation of states), – dreams.

Anyone who seriously believes that Germany can shoulder the monetary demands of the EU (including liabilities of several 100 billion euros per year) for a long time without becoming completely impoverished, – is excessive and ignorant.

Germany and Europe did have peace without the EU until 1993. And we had stability – without the EU and the euro. Sovereign nations trading with each other had peaceful real economic stability within the EEC framework even without a supranational EU umbrella, since with breathing exchange rates no irrecoverable trade surpluses and thus no tensions due to bad debts could accumulate.

Courage for the truth. In the end, the euro and the EU will collapse – it doesn’t matter whether the AfD demands the Dexit today or not. But the question is, from what height Germany will then fall. It is increasing very quickly by several hundred billion euros per year.

Our freedoms are also increasingly threatened or already abolished by the EU. That is why an exit before the end of the EU, which would otherwise completely impoverish us and then even dissolve Germany as a nation, is better than tactical waiting.

The AfD should position itself programmatically before history – otherwise we will no longer avert the maximum damage of the EU crash and then the entire wealth of the Germans will vanish.

The euro exit decision was also vehemently and loudly opposed by some AfD members in 2016/7. In the meantime, it has been confirmed at three program party conferences with over 80 percent majorities each and is now a good, established and important part of the AfD program DNA. This is exactly how it will continue with the Dexit-EEC decision in the AfD.

The AfD is primarily a German party. We are responsible for Germany first and foremost – and contrary to modern left-wing myths, there are almost no problems that can be solved only internationally.

Our task is to make it clear that provision of German money can no longer be “unlimited”. Then the EU comes to reason on its own. That is exactly what we have been asking Merkel for 16 years now.

If European patriotic parties stand for the sovereignty of nations, then they must allow other patriotic parties to leave the EU with their nation in a sovereign manner.

Thus, if European national parties actually terminate the friendship with the AfD for the sake of money, then that would be no real friendship and the sovereignty of the nations would be lip service only. Friendship that one would have to buy is no friendship.

The EU has been used by German left-wing politicians for decades to achieve via the Brussels detour what they cannot directly enforce in Germany. The EU is a thoroughly anti-German construct.

I was in the euro-critical national liberal APO long before 2013, thus in the run-up to the later AfD, without which the party could never have been founded. Even then, the vast majority of us were not only in favour of the euro exit, but also of the Dexit. This has been the case since at least 2003/5, when it was clear that Maastricht and with it the business basis of the euro would be mercilessly broken again and again; and by 2007 at the latest with the Lisbon Treaty, which finally endangered the sovereignty of the EU member states.

Unfortunately, Bernd Lucke was not ready to realize that in 2012/13. That is why the AfD had to repair this inconsistency in 2015/16 on the immigration issue and also on leaving the euro.

Today we see the atrocities of the EU practically every day. It is therefore high time for the AfD to finally be honest about the EU.

From the point of view of the southern EU countries, including patriotic parties there, it is understandable if they demand that German taxpayers continue to invest hundreds of billions per year in the EU project.

But this demand was recognized and rejected by a clever federal party conference of the AfD in Dresden, just as realistic observers have seen through and publicly criticized it for over 20 to 30 years.

It was the informed will of the Dresden AfD assembly to end “EU membership at any pric” and at German expense”, or at least to finally credibly threaten this end as the largest opposition party in Germany with the logical and realistic alternative option of a new European Economic Community which had proven its worth until 1993.

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