German farmers block roads with tractors in subsidies protest – Best not withdraw subsidies until there is a fair market
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
Jon Henley, Europe correspondent
Mon 8 Jan 2024 08.49 ESTLast modified on Mon 8 Jan 2024 11.04 EST
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.