Hundreds of farmers, tractors descend on Berlin to protest planned subsidy cuts
Thousands of angry German farmers with hundreds of tractors descended on Berlin on Monday to protest against planned subsidy cuts for agricultural diesel and the road tax for farming vehicles.
Germany's government faces calls to help farmers and car buyers by revisiting cuts forced upon it by a court ruling which blew a 60 billion euro ($65 billion) hole in its budget.
A coalition move to end subsidies for agricultural diesel drew criticism from Green lawmaker and Agriculture Minister Cem Ozdemir and from legislators belonging to Finance Minister Christian Lindner's business-friendly Liberals.
Opposition conservatives and Chancellor Olaf Scholz's Social Democrats also criticized the decision to end, with no prior warning, a program that paid subsidies to buyers of new electric vehicles, with critics saying the move would hit German carmakers already struggling with Chinese and US competition.
The criticism highlights the political cost imposed on an already fractious coalition by the Constitutional Court ruling, which dented the 2023 budget and delayed by weeks an agreement on a budget for next year.
With limited financial leeway, the three coalition parties, constrained by differing views on fiscal rectitude and government spending needs, took weeks to agree a replacement.
Farmers at the protest in Berlin said most farms were family-run and already working with small margins and that additional costs would force them to shut down their businesses.
Ozdemir earlier said the only alternative to keeping the subsidy for agricultural diesel was closing farms.
(Source: Reuters)
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