Why the German countryside is keeping its finger on the pulse of Olaf Scholz's government

CARMEN VALERO Berlin

Berlin

Updated Tuesday,16January2024 - 01:17

• Germany German farmers begin a week of blockades with their tractors in protest against subsidy cuts
• Germany A group of farmers prevent the arrival of the German Minister of Economy on his return from vacation
• Germany Germany's Social Democrats stay the course despite being in the polls

German farmers have stood up to Olaf Scholz's government across the country. They have blocked motorways and towns with up to 10,000 tractors in protest at the aid cuts that save them from ruin, but the tripartite of Social Democrats (SPD), Greens and Liberals (FDP) has turned a deaf ear. Their concern is that the far right will take advantage of the protests to expand their niche of votes. "When pitchforks hang from tractors or head to private homes, a line has been crossed," said Economy Minister Robert Habeck, who warns of the "formation of extremist groups that display nationalist symbols at protests and circulate fantasies of overthrow. Liberal democracy is a treasure to be defended."

The president of Thuringia's Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Stephan Kramer, agreed, although none of the images projected by Habeck were seen in the protests. "In recent years, right-wing extremists have tried to infiltrate every form of legitimate civil protest and penetrate the centre of society by posing as the real representatives of the people, so it's not really a surprise that farmers' protests are now also being used," he said

Extremism researcher Matthias Quent also lumped farmers and extremists together. "Nationalist, far-right and conspiratorial actors are trying to politically instrumentalize the movement. They are not interested in agricultural diesel, they want to paralyze Germany." And to counter the popular support for farmers, which is the majority of the population, psychologist Pia Lamberty argued that issues such as agriculture give extremists an ideal projection. "On the one hand, you build the good people, the farmers, and on the other side are the evil elites, who supposedly don't understand them, who try to disintegrate society."

Farmers have not entered the political game. Their struggle is less sophisticated. They fight for their existence and exert pressure or do it their own way. They demand that the cuts that the government needs to make to adjust the 2024 budget, still not approved by the Constitutional Court's ruling, are not made at their expense. At stake in this case were preferential prices for agricultural diesel and the motor vehicle tax for vehicles used for agricultural purposes. Together, the two measures were expected to generate savings of €950 million. Farmers have already managed to make the scissors half, but they will keep up the pulse until the entire measure is abolished.

On Monday, the week of protests culminated in Berlin. On the rostrum set up next to the Brandenburg Gate, the leaders of the farmers' and ranchers' associations shouted louder and clearer against "a political class that lives in a bubble, far from the needs of the people" and "does not know what it is to work hard from dawn to dusk to earn less and less."

Among the guests in the gallery was the finance minister, the liberal Christian Lidner. He had asked to address the demonstrators, but the crowd responded to his first words of thanks "for not having allowed himself to be manipulated by the extreme right" with roars and boos: "Enough is enough!", "Resign!", "Come and plow!" Lindner hit them back. "You have lost your way, please turn back. Society has a responsibility to agriculture, but agriculture also has a responsibility to society. If you want new subsidies, you also have to give up the old ones," he said.

The gap between the countryside and the city is widening, and there is a political crux in that. The political clientele of the SPD, Greens and FPD is in the urban centres, where the majority of the electorate is concentrated. The countryside is more sparsely populated and mainly votes for the conservatives of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and, in recent years, the far-right AfD.

This explains the position of the parties in the face of the protests. Bavaria's deputy head of government, Hubert Aiwanger of the Free Electors party, has made this clear. He has called warnings of infiltration of the farmers' protests "deliberate denigration by the left" and blames the farmers' anger on the tripartite policy, which threatens the very existence of the state. Farmers see it that way, too. One of the most recurrent banners in the mobilizations has been "GreensYellowsReds, dead farmers".

The chairman of the CDU, Friedrich Merz, is also on the side of the farmers, in fact, in its new basic program, the CDU explicitly recognizes its role as a defender of the countryside. "We are the party of agriculture, forestry and rural areas." Climate and environmental protection are important, but farmers need "freedom rather than detailed specifications."

In September, there will be elections in three federal states, all in the east of the country, with large areas of depopulation and large agricultural areas. The AfD leads all polls, followed by the CDU. And this in a context in which the parties of the federal government are bleeding in support. If the general election were held this Sunday, the CDU would win by a margin and Linder's FPD would not even be able to enter the Bundestag.

Beyond the political reading of the protests and the political use made of them, the truth is that agriculture has faced numerous restrictions in recent years, including animal husbandry, soil management, the use of pesticides and fertilizers, as well as rising costs.

"In the last five years, the main farms earned only €62,400 on average, which is not enough to cover costs, and these, unlike employees, include contributions to health insurance or old-age insurance," explained Jan-Malte Wichern, press spokesman for the North Rhine-Westphalia Chamber of Agriculture. "There are good years and bad years for farmers, but above all there is a structural problem. Farmers are often unable to pass on their production costs because prices are not set by them.

The environmental organisation Greenpeace believes that an end to agricultural diesel subsidies would be bearable in view of high food prices and many other subsidies. "With all the sympathy for farmers, making agricultural diesel cheaper by the state is expensive, harmful to the climate and should be abolished."

But the truth is that in the range of subsidies there are hundreds that could be considered "harmful". According to the Federal Environment Agency, there are more than €65 billion in Germany waiting to be dismantled, some of it well protected by lobbyists. Aid for agricultural diesel amounted to EUR 000 million.