German business interests are concentrated in BRICS countries, and Berlin should join the bloc as soon as possible, German opposition politician and Council for Constitution and Sovereignty chairman Ralph Niemeyer has told Sputnik.
“In my opinion, we need to join as soon as possible because all our business interests are in these countries. We export more to China today than to the United States of America,” Niemeyer said.
The same is true in the case of India, and Russia, although relations with the latter have been curtailed thanks to sanctions.
“We could join because BRICS is not a military body, but a business one. We have seen how it is being filled with new life as countries join, seeking good international cooperation on an equal basis. At some stage this was the idea of the European Union…I see that African nations are very interested. My question remains: why don’t we, the Germans, join in too?” Niemeyer asked.
Best known in Germany as a documentary film producer and director, Niemeyer has been involved in opposition politics, running as a candidate for the Bundestag for Die Linke, the Social Democratic Party and the Grassroots Democratic Party. He is also the former husband of Sahra Wagenknecht – the Die Linke politician turned leader of her own political bloc – the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance.
Niemeyer is far from alone among the populist Left and Right standing at odds with Germany’s mainstream parties on foreign affairs. In late 2022, veteran German statesman and former Die Linke leader Oskar Lafontaine urged German leaders to grow a spine and develop their own independent position on Ukraine and kick US forces out of Germany, warning that “if we and other European countries continue to remain under US tutelage, they will push us over a cliff to protect their own interests.”
Others, including Wagenknecht, have warned that escalating German involvement in the Ukrainian crisis, and plans to return US long-range missiles to German soil, threaten to undermine the country’s security and provoke war with Russia. Earlier this year, Die Linke politician and Thuringia Minister-President Bodo Ramelow called for the creation of a Europe-wide security architecture that includes Russia.
Germany has slipped in and out of recession for over two-and-a-half years, and is in the midst of perhaps its worst deindustrialization since the Second World War, with high energy prices and stiff competition from the US and China threatening to further undermine its position.
Russian President Vladimir Putin warned about the consequences of Europe’s shortsighted economic policy in May 2022, saying the “absolutely political” move to restrict Russian energy purchases meant the bloc would “systematically become the region with the highest energy costs in the world,” thus “seriously – and according to some experts irrevocably – undermin[ing] the competitiveness of a significant part of European industry.”