After criticism from farmers
Now the fisheries fund has to suffer from cuts
January 5, 2024, 3:09 p.m
Due to the Federal Constitutional Court’s ruling against the second supplementary budget for 2021, the traffic light is initially planning subsidy cuts for agriculture. Now the government is rowing back – and is planning cuts at the expense of fishing companies. The FDP is calling for a different solution.
The federal government has partially cashed in on its cutback plans in agriculture – instead, savings will now largely be made at the expense of a transformation fund for fisheries. For 2024, fishing companies will only have 109 million euros available instead of the planned 670 million euros, according to the Federal Ministry of Agriculture. A further 75 million euros will be saved by not developing a new funding program for environmentally friendly forestry measures.
After a long struggle, the traffic light government announced billions in cuts in the budget for 2024 in December as a result of the Federal Constitutional Court’s budget ruling. Some of them affected farmers, whose benefits for vehicle tax and agricultural diesel were to be removed. Then Berlin rowed back: the vehicle tax relief should now remain and the diesel subsidy should not be abolished immediately, but gradually by 2026.
Fisheries fund receives far less than planned
The money that should be saved at the expense of farmers will largely come from the budget of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, especially from the auction of licenses for the construction of offshore wind turbines. The federal government raised 13 billion euros last year, five percent of which should flow into the so-called fisheries component, with which the responsible ministry of Cem Özdemir promotes environmentally friendly change.
Instead, the fisheries fund only receives around one percent – 134 million euros – of the wind energy money, according to Özdemir’s ministry. A further 25 million euros must also be raised for fisheries research, which should actually come from the Climate and Transformation Fund (KTF). So that leaves 109 million. The KTF was also supposed to finance a new funding program for forest owners worth 75 million euros, which will also be canceled.
Criticism from the FDP
The agricultural policy spokesman for the FDP parliamentary group Gero Hocker, who is also president of the German Fisheries Association, criticized the agreement and announced further changes to the parliamentary procedure. “I thought it would be smarter to take the money from where it is not needed anyway instead of taking it away from the fishermen,” he told “Spiegel”. For example, money that was planned for the animal welfare-friendly conversion of stables is not needed.
The federal government’s retreat has not yet brought the farmers off the barricades. The sector had already called for major protests in December. Nationwide actions are planned for next week, which the German Farmers’ Association wants to stick to. DBV President Joachim Rukwied called for “the complete reversal” of the proposed cuts.