Status: 15.01.2024, 17:30 PM
By: Georg Anastasiadis
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With a large demonstration in Berlin on Monday, the farmers once again put up a front against the policies of the traffic light government. A commentary by Merkur editor-in-chief Georg Anastasiadis. © Monika Skolimowska/dpa/Klaus Haag
The government is heavily counted. The series of errors in the traffic light has led to this and the current farmers' protests could herald the knock-out for Scholz and his coalition partners. A commentary by Georg Anastasiadis.
It is not so easy for the traffic light to get rid of the ghosts it has summoned with its foolish agricultural diesel decision. Yesterday's large-scale demonstration showed that the farmers have arrived in Berlin. They are a new key player in federal politics and will remain so, even when their tractors are gone. With the demand of their president, Joachim Rukwied, that politicians must "get out of the Berlin bubble" and look again at working citizens, farmers have become the voice of the social centre, which is even heard by the Federal President. On the other hand, the attempt launched by the chancellor and his Green climate minister to push the farmers into the corner of right-wing subversives and end the protest with a word of authority has failed.
Now that the hut is on fire, the Greens want an animal welfare levy
It was, as usual in the traffic light, his own co-coalition partner who thwarted the Scholz-Habeck manoeuvre: FDP leader Lindner now ennobles the protest of the farmers, whom he had called on to turn back a few days earlier, as "deeply peaceful". This shows the confusion in the traffic light and their helplessness in dealing with the demands. Now that the hut is on fire, the Greens are coming around the corner with their animal welfare levy, which would be nothing more than a new tax on meat, butter and milk at an inopportune time. It would make the lives of people who are already plagued by inflation even more expensive, so that they limit the consumption of agricultural products. For farm owners, Lindner's offer to cut back on the rampant agricultural bureaucracy, which robs more than a few farmers of the joy of their profession, should also be treated with caution in exchange for more expensive diesel. Just how little such oaths can be trusted was shown by the finance minister himself at the weekend, when he overturned the climate money that had been firmly promised to the citizens.
Olaf Scholz is right about one thing: the government is heavily counted in the corner. But it wasn't the farmers' pitchforks that got them there, but their own lack of empathy and an almost unbelievable series of serious technical errors, from the heating law to the budget tricks to agricultural diesel. The parliamentary groups of the SPD, the Greens and the FDP will have to do it more skilfully than the chancellor if they want to get the cow off the ice in the parliamentary procedure that now follows on the agricultural diesel cut. A lot is at stake, for everyone: just as many farmers are fighting for their economic existence, the government is struggling not to completely lose control of a troubled country.
George Anastasiadis