"Madam President, ladies and gentlemen. Nobody needs the digital euro. Not the banks, not the companies and certainly not the citizens. Anyone who wants to pay electronically is already doing so today. Those who want to preserve their privacy use cash. Anyone who has had enough of fiat money and is concerned with sound money has #bitcoin in their wallet.

Nobody needs the digital euro except the ECB and politicians who have something else in mind. Namely the total surveillance of citizens. I know, a lot is promised: data protection, everything secure. Nobody has any intention of spying on anyone.

This is all as credible as the great promises: When the euro was introduced, no bailouts, three percent rule, ban monetary state financing. Today the ECB does nothing else. And the Maastricht Treaty is just paper.

Today the ECB promises the highest data protection standards for the digital euro and tomorrow every transaction will be monitored and citizens will be completely transparent. In China, people are very effectively controlled with the digital central bank money, those who behave in accordance with the state have access to the money, those who don't are unfortunately out of luck.

It's called Social scoring and with the digital euro and it's also possible here without any problems, just like state control. A flight booking - CO2 budget used up, donating to unapproved organizations is out of the question. Eating unvaccinated like in a pandemic - the money is not released, a digital nightmare. And that's why we don't need a binding vote on the how - we don't need the entire digital euro at all. And that's exactly what the German government needs to fight for. Thank you very much."