What's driving the wave of tractors taking to the streets in Germany and Europe?

Germany is the latest European country to be hit by a wave of farmers’ protests. In a week of nationwide action that runs through January 12, farmers in the European oil economy are protesting against proposed cuts to subsidies for fuel used in agriculture.

Convoys of thousands of tractors and trucks have caused traffic chaos and isolated several cities in recent days, with production even halted at a Volkswagen facility in the northern city of Emden.

Last week, a ferry carrying German Economy Minister Robert Habeck back from a family holiday on the island of Hallig Hooge off Germany’s northern coast was blocked by hundreds of farmers, angry over government plans to cut diesel subsidies.

World - What's driving the wave of tractors taking to the streets in Germany and Europe? — Banners reading “Enough is enough” (left) and “Agriculture thinks in generations, not in (legislative) periods” are stuck on tractors during a protest against the federal government’s austerity plans, in Halle an der Saale, eastern Germany. Photo: AFP/Al Jazeera

Similar protests have spread across numerous European Union (EU) member states, with some cases turning violent.

Protests in the Netherlands have occasionally sparked major blockades in recent years, aimed at pushing for planned measures to tackle chronic nitrogen pollution. The protests in the “land of windmills” even spawned a new political party in 2019, the populist Peasants’ Movement (BBB).

In Belgium, Spain and France, farmers have also taken to the streets to express their discontent over the impact of environmental reform plans and high costs. Poland and other Eastern European countries have seen similar protests, but these have largely been linked to the flooding of EU markets with cheap Ukrainian grain.

Important Similarities

Jan Douwe van der Ploeg, an agricultural sociologist and former professor at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, sees a key similarity in many of these cases: Protection of the status quo.

Concerns often relate to “the right to continue to use subsidies that were obtained in the past, or the continued use of fossil fuels or pesticides. All of which are very clear manifestations of industrial agriculture,” Van der Ploeg told DW.

Although they are all protests, protests in different countries are triggered by situations specific to those countries.

Germany's protests have been over diesel subsidies, Spanish farmers recently targeted water-saving measures and French protesters' concerns include irrigation and fuel costs, as well as EU trade policy.

World - What's driving the wave of tractors taking to the streets in Germany and Europe? (Figure 2). — A long line of trucks waits on the road in Przemysl, southeastern Poland, to cross the Polish-Ukrainian border at Medyka. Medyka-Shegyni is the only border crossing that has not been blocked by Polish truckers demanding the EU reinstate transport quotas to limit the number of Ukrainian trucks entering Poland. Photo: Straits Times

However, with fertiliser and fuel prices soaring in Europe since Russia launched its military campaign in Ukraine, farmers say they are feeling the squeeze across the continent despite much higher food prices on supermarket shelves.

According to Anne-Kathrin Meister of the German Rural Youth Federation (BDL), agricultural productivity simply cannot keep up with rising costs.

“If you only compare the price increases of machinery, pesticides and fertilizers, productivity has never increased at the same rate,” Meister told DW by phone from Berlin.

The challenges of the past few years have added up to the current challenges, Meister said. While the German government’s focus on cutting subsidies has been on diesel engines and vehicles, “it was just the last straw that broke the camel’s back.”

The German agricultural sector is not opposed to environmental reform, but farmers need more support, Ms Meister stressed. “Farmers are the first to be affected when flora and fauna are degraded,” she said.

The rise of the far right

For the German government, there are also concerns that the protests are being exploited by the far right – something German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser highlighted this week.

Economy Minister Habeck has sounded the alarm about online posts related to the protests, as well as the display of nationalist symbols.

At the January 8 protest, many tractors had banners emblazoned with the logo of the far-right nationalist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which is currently second in the polls with 23% support.

On its social media channels, the AfD painted a picture of ordinary people “ruined by an irresponsible political leadership” and called on people to join what the party called a “general strike”, The Guardian reported.

World - What's driving the wave of tractors taking to the streets in Germany and Europe? (Figure 3). — German Vice Chancellor and Economy Minister Robert Habeck was unable to board the ferry on the evening of January 4, 2024, due to a blockade by farmers. Photo: Euronews

Joachim Rukwied, chairman of the German Farmers’ Association, has tried to distance the protests from extremists. “We don’t want right-wing and other extremist groups who want to overthrow the government at our protests,” Rukwied told Germany’s Bild newspaper on January 7.

Farmers’ unease is being viewed with concern in Brussels. Above all, EU officials are concerned about a setback to ambitious climate targets enshrined in law. The European Commission, the bloc’s executive body, has set an overall target of net zero emissions by 2050. For agriculture, planned changes include a 50% reduction in chemical pesticides by 2030.

With EU elections scheduled for June, some worry how safe these well-laid plans will be if the European Parliament tilts to the right.

This risk was made clear during the political furore over the Nature Recovery Act, said Marco Contiero, an activist from the EU branch of the climate campaign group Greenpeace.

The law was narrowly passed by the European Parliament last year after a last-minute “resistance” led by the centre-right European People’s Party. The EPP, the bloc’s largest legislative group, has positioned itself as a defender of farmers’ interests against plans to return farmland to natural habitat.

“Conservative parties as well as more right-wing parties have decided to use or abuse agricultural communities as an electoral tool to achieve better results,” Contiero told DW .

Minh Duc (According to DW, The Guardian)

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