WORLD WORLDWIDE ITALY GERMAN News Journal Update - (en) Italy, UCADI, #181: The peasant anger of the Germans (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

For months now, an unprecedented wave of strikes has shocked Germany as
a consequence of the economic crisis produced by the crisis of the
German economic system, based on the low cost of energy, guaranteed by
the agreements stipulated with Russia and which failed as a result of
the war in Ukraine . The disproportionate increase in energy costs has
forced the German government to massively subsidize both the energy
consumption of industry and that of private citizens, and to reopen some
coal-fired power plants, in an attempt to reduce the impact of the
higher cost of energy on production and on wages. The budget and
industrial and agricultural production were affected by these choices
and the country effectively entered into recession, with catastrophic
consequences on the public budget which, due to the constraints adopted
by Germany as a result of the shock suffered by the strong inflation
after the end of the First World War - which destroyed the country's
economy and paved the way for Nazism - cannot operate at a loss, but
must necessarily break even.
Faced with the needs of the war and even before due to Covid and the
expenses necessary to contain it both from an epidemic point of view and
for the economic effects that the epidemic has produced on the country's
production capacity, a ploy was actually devised by foreseeing that it
was possible to spend in deficit for sudden and exceptional needs. The
next step was to declare both Covid and the war exceptional events;
therefore it was possible to carry out budget deficit expenditure. This
made it possible to find the resources necessary to deal with Covid but
even more so to allocate substantial resources (around EUR100 million)
for the supply of weapons to Ukraine, to pay the ordinary operating
costs of a failing state, taking on the cost of the Ukrainian budget.
Still other resources were needed to manage the flow of Ukrainian
refugees and welcome them, but now the problems come to a head.
However, as a result of the green policies adopted by the European
Union, the country is committed to completing the energy conversion of
the production system, eliminating nuclear power plants, decommissioning
fossil energy power plants and drastically reducing carbon dioxide
emissions and to bring about To complete this program, considerable
resources will be needed that the federal budget does not currently
possess. However, the result of the energy transition policies in
Germany seems to be there so much so that last year greenhouse gas
emissions decreased by over 20 percent, reaching the lowest level since
the early 1950s, but the decline it came mostly from the reduction of
industrial production, and not from its reconversion to renewable
energy. Only 15 percent of all emissions reductions come from
technological innovations such as the use of renewable energy. German
companies are simply transferring their production abroad - where there
are no ambitious emission reduction targets like the German ones - or
reducing their activities.
BASF, the world's largest chemical group, has announced permanent staff
cuts at its headquarters in Ludwigshafen due to high energy prices.
While German gross domestic product fell by 0.3 percent, that
represented by energy-intensive activities such as the chemical and
steel industries plummeted by 11 percent. A positive fact would be the
fact that electricity produced from alternative sources has exceeded 50
percent of the total, but the government does not seem to understand how
critical the situation is that the German manufacturing sector is facing.
The Constitutional Court of Karlsruhe has rejected the establishment of
special extra-budgetary funds for the financing of environmental
policies and has established that the article of the Constitution which
since 2009 prohibits deficit spending above 0.35 percent of Annual GDP,
was violated by the trick with which the government intended
finance its policies. The only possible exception to the
constitutionalized "debt brake" is represented by the declaration of a
state of emergency, which has already been used - as mentioned - for
support allocations to individuals and businesses during the Covid
pandemic and for aid to Ukraine attacked by Russia, but the Court ruled
that policies in favor of the energy transition cannot be classified as
measures caused by an emergency. Thus the government was left with no
other option than to resort to a tax increase which hit the agricultural
sector in particular and therefore the farmers who went on strike
together with all the other categories of workers whose wages are
affected grip of inflation.

An unprecedented wave of strikes

The protests that are blocking Germany are taking place in a country
that last year experienced a recession equal to 0.3 percent of GDP,
while a rebound of no more than 1 percent is expected for 2024, to be
optimistic. In this situation, the goal of becoming a "climate neutral"
country damages Berlin's economy and is incompatible with the costs of
war. n order to make ends meet, the government found itself having to
make draconian cuts amounting to 17 billion euros in the various budget
items so as not to compromise those relating to the
energy transition and had the unfortunate idea of intervening on
subsidies to agricultural producers, already in difficulty due to the
increase in energy prices and the costs of applying ecological
regulations, and the expenses necessary to guarantee animal welfare
which have accumulated in recent years. Consequently, subsidies for
diesel used for mobility and rural work (equal to 2,900 euros per farm)
and exemption from road tax for tractors and agricultural machinery have
been abolished.
Thus the protest spread to different categories, the railway workers'
strikes blocked public transport, while metalworkers and public sector
employees, including teachers, had already taken to the streets in
December. In recent weeks, across sectors from metallurgy to
transportation to education, nurses have staged protests over the
economy's stunted growth and rising wages and prices. But that's not
enough: The Mittelstand, the middle class, protests and the consequences
are being felt. Germany is built on the Mittelstand: small and
very small businesses, be it a painter, a heating installer, a
bricklayer, a farmer, a farm, whatever it is, prosperity and well-being
are based on these thousands of businesses.
Therefore the protest is growing hour by hour, without distinctions
between Lands.

The tractors occupy Berlin

So on January 13 the demonstrators camped near the Door at temperatures
below zero, beer and mulled wine. Thousands of tractors blocked highways
and major German cities against cuts to agricultural subsidies. blocking
them and going so far as to occupy the Brandenburg Gate as a sign of
protest against the cuts announced by the government at the end of the
seven days of blockades and mobilisations; farmers were joined by the
rail transport strike which between Wednesday and Friday kept 80 percent
of trains stopped in stations across the country and the
mobilization continues.

Tractors in front of the Brandenburg Gate, in Berlin, following protests
by German farmers

Tractors outside the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin as German farmers
protest. The demonstrations prompted the government to partially
withdraw the reductions, promising to reinstate a discount on car taxes
and phase out a diesel subsidy over several years. years rather than
immediately. But farmers argue that this is an insufficient measure and
are asking the government to completely reverse the announced cuts.
The farmers' demonstrations, inevitably targeting the government, have
also attracted far-right demonstrators, raising fears that extremists
are trying to take advantage of the protests. The far-right AfD is
enjoying a surge in popularity, with between 21 and 23 percent
nationwide in terms of voting intentions and over 30 percent in some
parts of former Germany. East. It is a fact that the right has well
understood the contradiction arising from the government's unconditional
support for intervention in Ukraine and it is no coincidence that it
speaks out against this choice which constitutes an objective cause of
the economic difficulties that the government would be able to address
with different strategies and above all with greater economic
availability if only it looked at the objective interests of the country.
Farmers make no secret of their opposition to the war and Ukraine's
entry into the Union because they well remember the undue competition
from Ukrainian cereal products on the European market which hit their
profits, leaving part of the wheat and corn harvest unsold, but also
other cereals. Knowing well the mechanisms of the common agricultural
policy and living on lavish community subsidies, German farmers know
well that a possible entry of Ukraine into the Union would end up
absorbing most of the community resources intended for the
agricultural sector, and this is due to the mechanisms of rebalancing of
the agricultural market and management of surpluses that characterize
community agreements and the management of the agricultural market. The
fascist and Nazi right, unsurprisingly, is against the war in Ukraine,
and against the sending of weapons, and speculates on this contradiction
by driving a powerful wedge into the mood of the electorate, and
creating the conditions for the increasingly probable crisis of the
government red-green and the growth of its electoral consensus which it
intends to exploit by expelling migrants. Against this hypothesis and
against the right, on Sunday the 21st, one and a half million people
took to the streets throughout Germany. However, the country is sliding
towards technical recession and the government is engulfed in the
scandal of the budget tricks it resorted to to disguise the fact that it
was operating at a deficit; in
this situation admitting the excessive and unsustainable costs of war
becomes inevitable.

GL

https://www.ucadi.org/2024/01/23/la-rabbia-contadina-dei-tedeschi/
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