Here are the economic causes and political effects of the tractor protests in Germany
Farmers' protests in Germany are turning into social conflict with potential political effects. Pierluigi Mennitti's in-depth analysis from Berlin
On one side the square, with thousands of tractors returning to invade Berlin and concentrate in the shadow (so to speak given the gray weather) of the Brandenburg Gate. On the other, diplomacy, and the attempt at dialogue, in the rooms of the majority parliamentary groups, with delegations from the farmers' association and the government parties facing each other in search of a possible compromise. The one on subsidies for diesel is difficult, especially after the closure of the Finance Minister Christian Lindner, possible on other points that could alleviate the pain of the rural world (but not of consumers). According to rumors from the Süddeutsche Zeitung , the Green Agriculture Minister Cem Özdemir would put forward the proposal for a tax on meat, milk or eggs which could generate billions for agricultural companies (but further weigh on the pockets of citizens already oppressed by increases in the food in recent months).
FARMERS' PROTESTS CONTINUE IN GERMANY
The week in Germany opened more or less as the previous one, one of the most turbulent in recent years, ended. Farmers on the streets of a hundred or more cities, motorway entrances partially blocked during peak hours of commuter traffic, plus silent trains piled up in stations due to the three-day strike of railway workers (which ended last Friday), restaurateurs displaying signs of solidarity with the farmers at the entrance of the premises while the menus inflated the prices due to the return of VAT to 19%.
We are not yet in the presence of French-style rebel scenarios, but the economic crisis that Germany has rediscovered after almost two decades of almost uninterrupted growth is turning into social conflict. And for the economist Daniel Stelter, a well-known business consultant and author of a popular podcast hosted by the Handelsblatt, the specter of a more structured protest movement like the yellow vests across the Rhine is more than concrete. “The government has exceeded the citizens' patience by failing to promise climate funds and further increasing taxes,” Stelter said in the last episode, “I never thought that something similar to the yellow vest movement in France could happen in Germany. Now I think that every day that politicians insist on portraying the protests as the result of external factors – war, inflation, the Federal Constitutional Court – instead of looking for the causes in their own actions, the danger grows.”
A CONFUSED GOVERNMENT
The deterioration of the social climate was inevitable in the face of a confused government, made up of three different forces forced to coexist by the law of numbers and which had staked everything on the division of tasks to use the treasure left as a legacy from Angela Merkel's "fat years" .
In the programs at the beginning of the legislature, the SPD would have strengthened and consolidated the welfare state, the Greens would have accelerated the path of the energy transition, the Liberal Democrats would have given shape to the digital revolution that has been neglected for too long. Thanks to the care of this innovative government, Germany would have made up for the delays in modernization accumulated under the (almost) eternal chancellorship and would have continued its glorious path even in times of declining globalization.
Putin's tanks in the Ukrainian lands have turned everything upside down and the consequences of the ongoing war have hit the German economic system in a much more radical way than the "Scholzian" rhetoric of the Zeitwende , the turning point, would have us imagine. The truth is that the government has not drawn all the consequences from this epochal rupture, still trying to keep together the needs (including electoral clientele) of the three parties.
WHERE FARMERS' ANGER COMES FROM
Today it is almost a detail that the widespread and noisy farmers' protests are inspired by a material measure: the cut in diesel subsidies, decided in a frantic attempt to chase the warnings of the Constitutional Court, which ruined the government system of funds special by forcing the 2023 and 2024 budgets to be rewritten. If anything, one can smile at the mockery of a ceiling on the new public debt, made constitutional in accordance with economic dogmas and a certain top-of-the-class arrogance, today transformed into a noose that suffocates aid and investments.
The dissatisfaction is deeper, it embraces various groups and sectors of workers and the population, it affects operators of companies that were once the pride of the country, such as the Deutsche Bahn railways, and which have now become a laughing stock throughout Europe. It feeds on the crisis (on Monday the Statistics Office certified that 2023 was a year of recession, with GDP decreasing by 0.3%), on inflation which raises prices and reduces wages, on the dead end entered with an energy transition that requires citizens to have money that is in short supply to change boilers and that has put the pillar of German industry, the automobile, under pressure, leaving it dependent on Chinese technology and raw materials.
There is an anger that has been simmering for some time, which has remained undetected in recent years of economic growth. But, at least as far as farmers are concerned, it already exploded with a bang five years ago, right on the central European axis that goes from the Netherlands to Germany, as the articles that we present in the links remind us. Then it was a question of countering the measures on the more restrictive use of glyphosate-based products and nitrates, drawn up by a minister considered a "friend", the Christian Democrat Julia Klöckner. Today the conflict is with a government in which the rural world sees only enemies: the liberals linked to industrial bosses, the social democrats dedicated to looking after the interests of unionized workers and guaranteed public employees, not to mention the Greens, the real target. Even more so since the competent ministry is led by an ecologist, the former child prodigy Cem Özdemir, led by the nose by his colleagues who decided on the cuts and today forced to attend the protests amidst booing, denying his own government and the measures it has adopted. But on Monday the boos did not spare even the liberal Finance Minister, Christian Lindner, who had the courage to appear in front of the demonstrators to reiterate the end of state subsidies. The farmers didn't like it.
POLITICAL SCENARIOS
This time the protest therefore takes on a political value. It is no longer a question of opposing a specific unwelcome measure, but of opposing an overall policy of a government that is considered hostile. And the party landscape today offers expanded alternatives. There is not only that of the Union, the Christian Democratic alliance of CDU and CSU, the traditional supporter of the interests of the rural world, but the more aggressive and systemic one of AfD, the nationalist party with far-right streaks (as demonstrated recently by the scandal of secret meetings with neo-Nazi exponents to organize mass expulsions of foreigners), which is soaring in the polls. Especially in the East, where in the autumn the political future of Germany will be at stake (rather than in the European Championships) with elections in Saxony, Brandenburg and Thuringia. AfD is the first party with percentages well above 30% and in Thuringia, the spiritual and cultural heart of Germany, it could even manage to govern alone.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/proteste-agricoltori-germania-cause-conseguenze/ on Mon, 15 Jan 2024 15:44:58 +0000.