12/17/2023 4:27 pm (current 12/17/2023 4:30 pm)
Farmers want to reach the Brandenburg Gate with tractors ©APA/dpa
In Germany, farmers are mobilizing against the planned abolition of the agricultural diesel subsidy and vehicle tax exemption. The German Farmers Association called for a demonstration in Berlin on Monday under the slogan “Too much is too much”. Farmers want to reach the Brandenburg Gate with large tractors, and Green Agriculture Minister Cem Özdemir is also expected to speak, according to German media reports over the weekend.
The planned cuts are part of the German federal government's budgetary consolidation, following the decision of the Federal Constitutional Court. However, environmentalists also consider subsidies to be harmful to the climate.
Farmers' president Joachim Rukwied called on the traffic light coalition in Berlin to withdraw its plans for the cuts. Otherwise, agriculture in Germany would have no future. Özdemir also criticized the cuts as “problematic”. Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck (Greens), however, defended the plans for traffic lights in the agricultural sector.
The FDP in the Bundestag announced on Sunday that it would veto the plans of the head of the coalition, of which it is a member. “The FDP parliamentary group does not consider the heavy burden on agricultural companies to be acceptable,” club president Christian Dürr said on Sunday afternoon, according to the dpa. “People often talk about supposedly climate-damaging subsidies without looking at the social and economic consequences of abolishing them.”
The head of the opposition CDU, Friedrich Merz, had previously said that “each agricultural company would be burdened with an additional 4,000 euros in taxes per year”. The cancellation will cost the entire industry a billion euros, said a CDU parliamentarian.