If you are driving in Berlin, you can unexpectedly get stuck in long traffic jams for days.

The reason is blockades by environmental activists.

The demonstrators, who call themselves the "last generation", repeatedly sit down on the Berlin city motorway A 100 and its access roads.

They did it more than 30 times in the past few days.

Organized in small groups, they place groceries on the road, many stick the palm of their hand to the asphalt with superglue.

Under the motto "Save food - save lives" they are calling for an immediate law against food waste and an immediate change in agriculture so that greenhouse gases from agriculture are reduced.

Markus Wehner

Political correspondent in Berlin.

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Demonstrators again blocked sections of the highway on Thursday.

The police pulled a heavily pregnant woman out of a traffic jam in a car and took her to the hospital with blue lights flashing.

Many motorists are upset because of the blockades.

Some drivers pull protesters off the road themselves, usually with little success because other protesters immediately take their place, as videos on social media show.

A video circulated on Twitter showing a driver punching an activist in the face.

"Cross-border and unacceptable"

The dispute as to whether such forms of protest are justified and legal has now reached federal politics and is even splitting the traffic light coalition.

The Green Federal Environment Minister Steffi Lemke defended the actions of the climate protectors.

"It is absolutely legitimate to demonstrate for one's concerns and to use forms of civil disobedience," she said at an event on Wednesday, according to the "Tagesspiegel".

The Green Party leader Ricarda Lang made a similar statement: civil disobedience is a legitimate means of political protest, she said, although she qualified that it must remain peaceful and that no human life should be endangered by the actions.

Justice Minister Marco Buschmann of the FDP contradicted the Greens on Thursday:

“In German law, civil disobedience is neither a justification nor an excuse.

Unannounced demonstrations on freeways are and will remain illegal,” he wrote on Twitter.

Some actions appear particularly dangerous.

Last Friday, two climate protectors abseiled from a bridge in the Schöneberg district onto the A 103 motorway, and the police blocked the lane in both directions.

The group also recently blocked the motorway exit near the Virchow Clinic.

Since the drivers had not formed an emergency lane, the ambulance could not get through to the hospital.

Berlin's Governing Mayor Franziska Giffey from the SPD said days ago that the way in which protests are being made in Berlin for climate protection and against food waste is "cross-border and unacceptable".

Interior Senator Iris Spranger from the SPD said on Thursday that the blockades endangered human lives.