Thousands of German farmers launched a week of protests this Monday against the cuts in agricultural subsidies stipulated by the Social Democratic, Green and Liberal Government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz. With temperatures below zero in some places, columns of hundreds of tractors blocked roads and highways in Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg, North Rhine-Westphalia, Lower Saxony and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, among other states, and cut off traffic in cities such as Hamburg, Munich, Bremen, Cologne or Berlin, where they stood before the emblematic Brandenburg Gate.
The outbreak of anger in the German countryside, which began in December and is now reaching its peak, comes from the budget readjustment that the ruling coalition has been forced to make in a hurry after receiving a blow from the Constitutional Court (TC). In mid-November, the high court ruled that a reallocation of money carried out by the Government from 2021 to 2022 was illegal because, for various reasons, it violates the constitutional debt brake.
As a result, and after a few weeks of pre-Christmas internal fighting between the three parties, the Executive, faced with the urgency of adjusting the budgets also for 2023 and 2024, decided among other things to reduce in the latter some of the so-called “climate subsidies”. “harmful”, such as the price of plastic packaging or agricultural fuels.
The official amount to be saved in the fiscal year 2024 – still pending parliamentary approval, scheduled for February 2 – is about 17,000 million euros on a budget of 450,000 million, but in reality the necessary savings are greater – close to 30,000 million – due to various interest adjustments, unaccounted expense forecasts and previous deficit.
The unexpected cuts in agricultural subsidies have so angered farmers that the Government has softened them with tweaks – announced last Thursday – that do not at all satisfy the German Farmers Association (DBV).
Thus, instead of abruptly ending the tax exemption on agricultural diesel as the tripartite initially wanted, the cut will be progressive: the subsidy will be reduced by 40% this year, 30% in 2025 and will end in 2026. The Executive also agreed to maintain preferential treatment in the tax on vehicles for forestry and agriculture.
But the DBV insists that the modifications are insufficient and demands that all cutback measures be reversed, that is, that farmers can continue requesting a refund of 21.48 cents per liter of diesel used in agricultural machinery. According to a report from the Ministry of Agriculture – whose head, environmentalist Cem Özdemir, largely supports farmers but has been swallowed up by the situation – this reimbursement represents an average of about 2,900 euros per company per year.
“We ask for understanding from the population; “We do not want to lose the support and solidarity that we have received from a large part of the population,” said Joachim Rukwied, president of the DBV, who warned that farmers “will not accept the tax increases planned for the agricultural sector.” The protests in the form of blockades of traffic and logistics routes will continue throughout the week and will culminate on Monday the 15th with a demonstration in the capital.
The effort could be in vain. The Government is not considering any additional changes to its plan to gradually eliminate agricultural subsidies, a government spokesperson confirmed this Monday at a routine press conference in Berlin. “In the end, a government has to decide and lead the way, and that may not always be satisfactory for everyone,” he added.
The conservative opposition – the Christian Democrats CDU and the Bavarian Christian Social CSU – support the farmers, and attack what they consider an imperative of the Greens in the federal government. The farmers’ anger is also a matter of interest to the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which issued a statement “supporting the protests of farmers and other citizens against high energy prices and the deindustrialization of Germany.”
The president of the German Farmers Association (DBV), Joachim Rukwied, also warned against far-right activists who join the protests to promote their own objectives, a concern shared by the Minister of the Interior, the social democrat Nancy Faeser, who He said that the authorities are alert about it. “We must assume that right-wing extremists are infiltrating the demonstrations to attack the state and defame certain political leaders,” said Faeser.
On Thursday night, around thirty angry farmers harassed Economy Minister Robert Habeck, preventing him from docking the ferry on which he was returning from the Christmas holidays on a tourist island in the North Sea.
Both the DBV and the police have called on protesters to behave peacefully, and this has largely happened. The banners read slogans such as “Enough is enough”, “Agriculture thinks in generations, not in legislatures”, “Green ideology brings us farmers to our knees” or “Without us, there is no food”.
In addition to the farmers’ continued roadblocks, the train drivers will go on strike from Wednesday to Friday – they already went on strike before Christmas – as the state railway company Deutsche Bahn refuses to accept their demands for reduced working hours. salary increase and compensation for inflation. Therefore, travel this week in Germany is expected to be complicated.
