Former Federal Minister of Transport Peter Ramsauer has been heavily criticized for a derogatory statement about migrants. In an interview with the magazine “Mittelstand Digital” of the Association of Self-employed North Rhine-Westphalia and the Federal Association of Small and Medium-Sized Entrepreneurs, the CSU politician warned that uncontrolled immigration also posed the risk of “vermin” entering the country.
Demands immediately came from the Left Party that Ramsauer had to give up his Bundestag mandate because of “flawless incitement to hatred” or that the Union should expel him from the parliamentary group. The statement was also hotly debated on social media.
When asked about the immigration of skilled workers, the magazine first quoted Ramsauer as saying, in which he referred to a statement by former Chinese ruler Deng Xiaoping: “If you open the windows too wide, a lot of vermin come in.” That means – applied to the problem of immigration – that we have to be careful not to bring any random economic migrants into the country in addition to the skilled workers.”
With the statement, Ramsauer triggered a wave of outrage, and as a result the relevant passage disappeared from the interview. The magazine could not be reached at the request of the German Press Agency. Ramsauer himself tried to limit the damage in the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung”: The quote from Xiaoping was (…) made and was not intended for publication,” the newspaper quoted the 69-year-old as saying. “I would never make such a degrading comparison do with immigrant specialists or migrants.”
Ramsauer railed against ex-Chancellor Merkel
In the rest of the interview, Ramsauer railed against former Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) in unusually harsh words: “Like the refugee policy, the phase-out of nuclear energy is one of the most catastrophic political mistakes made by the then Chancellor. It is not without reason that I tell the AfD parliamentarians that they Merkel would have to erect a monument because the AfD owes its parliamentary existence solely to Angela Merkel’s policies.”
Ramsauer stressed that he had personally pointed out to Merkel that the nuclear phase-out would result in higher electricity prices, greater dependence on gas supplies, additional electricity imports and rising CO2 emissions. “Angela Merkel dismissed my warnings as wrong,” stressed Ramsauer.
“Full understanding of Viktor Orbán”
With regard to the right to asylum, Ramsauer also called for massive restrictions on immigration directly at the EU’s external borders and less financial aid for asylum seekers. The communities in Germany have long been overwhelmed with the admission of people. “We have Angela Merkel to thank for this unfortunate development in Germany,” said Ramsauer. He himself has “complete sympathy for Hungary’s Prime Minister Orbán, but also for the Poles, who want to decide for themselves who is allowed to come to their country and who is not.”
Ramsauer also sharply criticized the work of the current federal government: “I have been a member of the German Bundestag for 33 years. In all my political offices I have never experienced such disgraceful and catastrophic legislation.”
He expects a clearer naming of the grievances from the Union: “Unfortunately, we in the Union are often afraid of saying something that the left side defines as unspeakable. That’s why we have to be much clearer and shouldn’t be afraid of saying to be put in the right-hand corner,” said Ramsauer.
According to Ramsauer, Hubert Aiwanger does this very cleverly with his free voters in Bavaria: “He mainly addresses the protest voters and prevents them from voting for the AfD with his politics. Aiwanger makes the new Franz Josef Strauss.”
Interview Ramsauer
