It is almost 12:30 p.m. on Monday, January 15, when the German Minister of Finance, Christian Lindner, comes to address the thousands of farmers gathered in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, who are showing their anger against the government’s policy. But in front of him, the boos and whistles are so virulent that the president of the German Farmers’ Federation, Joachim Rukwied, feels obliged to take the microphone to ask the crowd to demonstrate ” respect ” towards the minister.
The call for calm has no effect. For the next twenty minutes, Mr. Lindner struggles to make himself heard amid the invectives – ” Get out ! », ” Liar ! », “Hypocrite! » – which disrupt his speech. However, he spares no effort to flatter his audience. Recalling his past childhood “near meadows, fields and forests”the Minister of Finance affirms that “the farmers’ protest is legitimate” and that they are right to demand “more freedoms and less bureaucracy”. But, he adds, he cannot promise them “more aid from the federal state”.
However, this is precisely why German farmers are mobilized. Following the drastic tightening of the budgetary screws to which it was forced by the Constitutional Court of Karlsruhe, on November 15, 2023, the government declared that it wanted to create a tax on agricultural vehicles and eliminate the tax rebate on agricultural diesel. Faced with the outcry caused by these two announcements, he renounced the first and amended the second, saying he was ready to gradually reduce this tax advantage by 2026, rather than ending it suddenly this year.
A debate in the Bundestag
These setbacks have not calmed the anger of farmers. On January 8, they began a “week of actions” which gave rise to tractor parades, highway blockades and rallies all over Germany. This culminated in Berlin on Monday with a large demonstration which brought together between 30,000 people, according to the organizers, and 8,500, according to the police.
At the end of this week of mobilization, unprecedented in its duration and scale, nothing has been resolved. “The subject of agricultural diesel must be resolved. Then we can talk about the rest.”, declared Monday the president of the German Farmers’ Federation, Joachim Rukwied, determined to continue to put pressure on the government to completely abandon the rebate on agricultural diesel. Failing to obtain a precise response from the executive on this point, the farmers’ representatives met on Monday with the heads of the majority parliamentary groups. They promised to hold a debate on the future of their sector in the Bundestag on Thursday and to take several concrete decisions by the summer.
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