The German establishment has been caught off-guard by the sudden emergence in force of major agrarian discontent as thousands of farmers took to the streets of Berlin and other regional centres Monday morning to protest the abolition of diesel fuel subsidies by the country’s green-left government.
Hundreds of tractors were seen simultaneously in the cities of Berlin, Leipzig, and Chemnitz as farmers rallied against government plans to abolish subsidies on agricultural diesel and introduce new taxes for their vehicles with farmers’ groups proclaiming the matter a clear red-line issue for their industry.
An estimated 500 tractors rolled into Leipzig alone as the dispute tests the resolve of Berlin’s already shaky traffic light coalition government, constantly in turmoil over poorly planned energy policy and a fiscal dispute that threatens Germany’s financial stability.
At the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin early this morning, hundreds of farmers shouted the slogan “Zu viel ist zu viel!” (Too much is too much!), with the farmers’ spokesman saying this is only the beginning of their opposition to the diesel austerity.
The farmers have already garnered the support of the liberal FDP party, currently propping up Olaf Scholz’s social democratic party, as well as the Green Party Minister for Agriculture Cem Özdemir who has come out in favour of the demonstrators saying that farmers have reached the “pain threshold” of what they can endure from government austerity measures.
In his comments, Özdemir points to the unfair burden the cuts are putting on farmers at a time of fluctuating prices and growing international competition, adding that the industry was in no way prepared to electrify in time to meet his own government’s demands.
The German government has so far defended the subsidy cuts on environmental grounds as both the populist AfD and centre-right CDU have harnessed rising agricultural anger against the ruling coalition.
Germany’s fiscal plans were set into disarray this month as courts ruled against government plans to transfer COVID funding into the green transition as constitutionally invalid with Green Party Minister Robert Habeck saying the diesel cuts were essential for plugging a €60 billion fiscal black hole caused by the ruling.
The president of the German Farmers’ Association (DBV) warns that if the government does not withdraw the measures “we will be everywhere from January 8, in a way that the country has never experienced before. We will not accept this.”
Similar to other countries, German farmers have also signalled their dissatisfaction towards Ukraine’s EU membership ambitions, arguing that the impact of the war-torn nation on the Common Agricultural Policy would severely undermine their business model.
A combination of poorly executed foreign policy, rising energy costs, and spiralling rates of immigration have increasingly made German voters turn their backs on the traffic light coalition.
Germany is not the first European country to experience farmers taking to the streets this year. The neighbouring Netherlands was politically rattled by the tractor protests over controversial nitrogen emission cuts, and the dispute between Eastern European farmers still rages on over the excessive import of Ukrainian grain.
https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news/farmers-across-germany-protest-diesel-tax-break-cuts/