German farmers block roads with tractors in subsidies protest

Partial U-turn by Berlin fails to avert nationwide action by farmers and
hauliers that could last for days

Mon 8 Jan 2024 13.49 GMT

German farmers have blocked city centres, highways and motorway slip roads
with tractors, severely disrupting traffic around the country in an
escalating dispute over planned cuts to tax breaks and subsidies in the
agricultural sector.

“We are exercising our basic right to inform society and the political
class that Germany needs a competitive agricultural sector,” the president
of the German farmers’ association, Joachim Rukwied, told Stern magazine on
Monday.

A sign on a protesting farmer’s tractor in Gottingen, Lower Saxony, saying
‘If the farmers are ruined, your food will be imported’. Photograph: Tubal
Sapkota/Pacific Press/REX/Shutterstock

“That’s the only way to ensure the supply of high-quality, homegrown food,”
Rukwied said, adding that the protests, which brought the centres of cities
including Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne and Bremen to a near-standstill, could
last all week.

Slow-moving tractor convoys and full-scale blockades hit traffic nationwide
before dawn, with authorities in the rural northern state of
Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania announcing that all autobahn on and off ramps
were blocked.

In several regions, farmers brandishing signs such as “No farmer, no
future” and “Your policies are a declaration of war against farmers” were
joined by hauliers protesting at a hefty increase in road tolls for heavy
goods vehicles.

Farmers’ vehicles blocking Strasse des 17 Juni in Berlin. Photograph: Filip
Singer/EPA

More than 2,000 tractors were registered for each inner-city demonstration,
with farmers gathering in Berlin from late on Sunday evening at the
Brandenburg Gate in the heart of the government district – already the
scene of a large protest in December.

The protests went ahead despite a partial government U-turn last week. A
tax discount for agricultural vehicles would be retained, Berlin promised,
while a diesel subsidy would be phased out over three years rather than
being axed immediately.

Tractors parked in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin during the
farmers’ protest. Photograph: Monika Skolimowska/AP

The unpopular three-party coalition headed by the chancellor, Olaf Scholz,
infuriated farmers last month by announcing the subsidy cuts, part of an
emergency package to find billions of euros in savings after the
constitutional court ruled the 2024 budget was illegal.

The farmers’ association said it was still insisting on the plans being
reversed in full and would go ahead with its planned week of action despite
fears that far-right groups and others could try to capitalise on the
protests.

The government said on Monday it was not considering further changes to the
phase-out of agricultural subsidies. “In the end, a government has to
decide and has to lead the way, and that can’t always be to everyone’s
satisfaction,” a spokesperson said.

Farmers and hauliers take breakfast amid the Berlin protest. Photograph:
Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Farmers and hauliers have been the first groups to protest in what could
become an unprecedented wave of cross-sector industrial action as Germany’s
economy, long the powerhouse of Europe, struggles with a damaging
combination of short-term and structural problems.

On Sunday, the train drivers’ union GDL announced further strike action –
starting with freight on Tuesday, extending to passenger trains on
Wednesday, and lasting until Friday – after talks with the state-owned rail
operator, Deutsche Bahn (DB), failed.

The two sides have been trying to agree on a deal on working hours, which
GDL wants cut from 38 to 35 a week without a reduction in salary, and a
€555 (£480) a month pay rise. The union has already staged 20- and 24-hour
strikes in support of its claims.

Martin Seiler, DB’s chief human resources officer, said the strike was “not
only completely unnecessary, but we also consider it legally inadmissible”.
The operator was prepared to compromise, he said, but if necessary would
ask for an injunction.

<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/08/german-farmers-block-roads-tractors-subsidies-protest>

--
Spike