Farmers across Germany are intensifying their protests against planned government cuts to the agricultural sector. Tractors again at the Brandenburg Gate.

Kilometer blocks with thousands of tractors on the German motorways, problems at the entrances and also the centers of large cities throughout Germany, from Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg and the North Rhine-Westphalia to Berlin and the Brandenburg Gate, where since dawn about 500 tractors and trucks have been parked in protest. And all this while schools are opening and many workers are returning to their jobs today after the Christmas break.

German farmers are intensifying their mobilizations from today for the subsidy cuts planned by the German government, with a basic request that the subsidy for the diesel fuel used by agricultural vehicles remain intact in the coming years.

“We ask for understanding from the citizens. We don’t want to lose the support and solidarity of large sections of society towards farmers,” says the president of the German Farmers’ Union, Joachim Ruckwidt. In any case, the farmers are determined to keep up the pressure in the coming days, while a large, “pan-German” demonstration in Berlin is also planned for Monday 15 January, with the aim of bringing tractors outside the chancellery in protest.

For its part, however, the German government does not seem willing to make further concessions in favor of farmers, beyond the gradual, until 2026, and not finally immediate abolition of the subsidy for diesel. “The German government is not thinking of changing anything else,” a government spokesman said Monday morning at the regular briefing.

Concern about exploitation by far-right extremists

However, the warnings of the German security authorities about the infiltration of radicalized far-right groups as well as supporters of conspiracy theories in the rural mobilizations, in order to take advantage of the momentum to cause unrest and thereby changing the spirit and the real goals of the rural demonstrations, also cause a feeling.

The derailment of a North Sea ferry a few days ago, when farmers from the state of Schleswig-Holstein attacked the ferry carrying Vice-Chancellor and Minister of Economy and Energy Robert Habeck, is still fresh in the minds of many.

“The blockades have not solved any problems,” said Interior Minister Nancy Fesser from the Social Democrats, while Liberal Finance Minister Christian Lindner believes that the planned mobilizations of farmers across the German territory are disproportionate.

The main opposition leader of the Christian Democrats, Friedrich Merz, also appealed to farmers to demonstrate “peacefully” and respect the law, stressing that their protests should not be exploited for other purposes.

Source: DW