German farmers gathered in Berlin on Monday to protest against planned cuts to tax breaks for diesel used in agriculture, part of a deal reached by the government to plug a hole in the country\u2019s budget. Leaders of Chancellor Olaf Scholz\u2019s three-party coalition last week agreed on measures to fill a 17 billion-Euro (USD 18.5 billion) hole in next year\u2019s budget, saying they would achieve that by reducing climate-damaging subsidies and slightly reducing some ministries\u2019 spending, among other measures.<\/p>\n
That was necessary after Germany\u2019s highest court annulled an earlier decision to re-purpose 60 billion Euros originally meant to cushion the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic for measures to help combat climate change and modernise the country. The manoeuvre fell foul of Germany\u2019s strict self-imposed limits on running up debt. As more details of the deal have emerged, so has discontent, notably over a plan to cut tax breaks for agricultural diesel and scrap an exemption from car tax for farming vehicles.<\/p>\n
Even Agriculture Minister Minister Cem \u00d6zdemir has protested. He told ARD television that farmers have \u201cno alternative\u201d to diesel. \u201cI\u2019m not shutting myself off from us having to save, but it must be done in a way that we take people along with us \u2013 and farmers are the ones who supply us with food,\u201d \u00d6zdemir said. \u201cThese cuts \u2026 overburden the sector.\u201d Farmers in tractors streamed into the capital on Monday for a protest at the Brandenburg Gate.<\/p>\n
Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck, a member of \u00d6zdemir\u2019s Green party, warned against picking apart last week\u2019s budget deal and said that anyone wanting to reverse planned cuts must come up with a way to finance doing so which is acceptable to all. \u201cAs politicians, we are obliged to enable an overall solution,\u201d Habeck told German news agency dpa. \u201cWhat politicians can\u2019t do is shirk responsibility and only say where savings shouldn\u2019t be made.\u201d Habeck\u2019s Economy Ministry faces criticism from within the governing coalition over another aspect of the budget deal \u2013 an abrupt end to subsidies for buying new electric cars, which originally were due to stay in place until as late as the end of next year.<\/p>\n
The ministry announced on Saturday that no new applications would be accepted after Sunday night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
German farmers gathered in Berlin on Monday to protest against planned cuts to tax breaks for diesel used in agriculture,\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":17576,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[186],"tags":[5417,5418,539,5416,5415,5420,4640,2495,5414,4638,3782,379,5419],"class_list":["post-17568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world","tag-agriculture-minister-minister-cem-ozdemir","tag-alternative-fuels","tag-climate-change","tag-cuts-to-tax-breaks","tag-diesel","tag-electric-vehicles","tag-fossil-fuels","tag-german-chancellor-olaf-scholz","tag-german-farmers","tag-global-warming","tag-protest-march","tag-subsidies","tag-vice-chancellor-robert-habeck"],"reading_time":"2 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17568\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}