At the beginning of the closed meeting of the CSU regional group in the Seeon monastery in Upper Bavaria, he described the Habeck incident as an “impossible” derailment “that should not take place like this.” Protesting farmers blocked a ferry pier at the North Sea port of Schlüttsiel with their tractors on Thursday afternoon and prevented the economics minister from leaving the ferry. The protest action caused widespread criticism in politics.
The deputy leader of the Union parliamentary group in the Bundestag, Andrea Lindholz (CSU), also called the farmers’ protests “absolutely understandable”. The traffic light government wants to continue to close budget gaps at the expense of domestic agriculture, she told the Düsseldorf-based “Rheinische Post”.
Union parliamentary group vice-president Steffen Bilger (CDU) accused the federal government of making a “rotten compromise” because the abolition of the agricultural diesel subsidy was still planned. Federal Agriculture Minister Cem Özdemir (Greens) “should work to ensure that farmers have good conditions to produce high-quality regional food. To do this, they need support for agricultural diesel,” Bilger told the “Rheinische Post”.
As a result of the Federal Constitutional Court’s budget ruling, the traffic light government decided to make billions in cuts and, among other things, to abolish benefits for farmers in vehicle tax and agricultural diesel. After violent protests, Berlin rowed back this week. The vehicle tax relief should remain and the diesel subsidy should not be abolished immediately, but gradually by 2026.
However, farmers’ protests continued. The German Farmers’ Association is calling for the diesel subsidy to be maintained in the long term and more recognition for the profession in general. Nationwide protests are planned for next week. After the blockade campaign against Habeck, there are fears that farmers will become increasingly radical and the protests will be infiltrated.
Bilger defended the farmers against this. “Farming families are predominantly business-oriented and have a keen sense of free riders who are actually not interested in farming,” he said. However, Lindholz also warned that the protests must remain within the framework of the rule of law. “Anything else is unacceptable and damaging to the democratic process.”
