After protests German farmers remain ‘very dissatisfied’ with federal government

German farmers’ rallies marked the beginning of European demonstrations, but while they have largely ebbed away, they remain unsatisfied with how the national government works.

At the beginning of the year, farmers in Germany protested for weeks against subsidy cuts and bureaucratic requirements planned by the ruling parties SPD (S&D), Greens (Green/EFA) and FDP (RE), the so-called ‘traffic light coalition’.

However, since the protests’ peak at the end of January, there has been little news on farmers and their problems.

In retrospect, the German Farmers’ Association considers the protests to have been largely successful, as some of the government’s plans to cut subsidies were cancelled, Bernhard Krüsken, secretary general of the German Farmers’ Association, told Euractiv.

Nevertheless, German farmers are still “very dissatisfied” with the government, he said.

The government failed to address one of the farmers’ key demands: maintaining diesel subsidies, which led to mass protests in December.

Even if the government proposal of a complete abolition of agricultural diesel subsidies will not take place immediately, in three years, the controversy “has led to an enormous loss of confidence in the federal government on the part of the farmers,” said Krüsken.

Therefore, the association will continue to fight for the continuation of the subsidy for agricultural diesel and the three-year delay in abolishing the subsidy “gives us the opportunity to continue to fight for it politically,” Krüsken emphasised.

However, farmers are not expecting the demonstrations to continue.

Agricultural policy plays a major role in the current EU election campaign and will likely remain an important issue in next year’s German election campaign. However, after the votes are counted, the cards could be reshuffled again over agricultural diesel subsidies.

The measures taken by the German government

The subsidy removal was part of broader budget cuts to plug a €17 billion budget gap after the Federal Constitutional Court recently ruled the original budget unconstitutional.

Several motorways and city centres were blocked at the end of 2023, and in January, the protests culminated in a rally in Berlin with 30,000 people and 5,000 tractors.

Unable to withdraw the diesel subsidy matter, the Federal Government looked for other ways to support the agricultural sector such as reintroducing income tax rate smoothing at the end of March, among other things.

This would allow weak years of revenue to be offset against better years for tax purposes. However, the EU Commission has yet to approve the measure.

In addition, the German Ministry of Agriculture is now increasingly responding to Europe-wide calls to reduce bureaucracy. On Wednesday (27 May), the ministry published a progress report.

The problems farmers face “relate to the reporting of the same data to different bodies, unnecessarily repetitive application and verification obligations or rigid rules that are difficult to reconcile with practice,” Agriculture Minister Cem Özdemir said in a press release.

The EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) regulations are also a thorn in the side of the farmers’ association and according to Krüsken, their implementation is not practical for farms.

To help farmers in the current CAP support period, “there will no longer be a mandatory minimum share of unproductive arable land,” a spokesperson for the Ministry of Agriculture told Euractiv. In addition, checks and penalties for small farms of up to ten hectares will be suspended.

These measures have not been decided by Germany alone but have been approved by all EU member states at the European level since 13 May.

[Edited by Oliver Noyan/Angelo Di Mambro/Alice Taylor]

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