Farmers in Germany are blocking roads with tractors to protest against cuts in subsidies. Around 200 tractors are parked near Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate.
There are also traffic jams in Baden-Württemberg, North Rhine-Westphalia, Saxony and Bavaria.
The government reduced subsidies to save money because a court said their budget plan was against the law.
The cuts didn’t work and now people are worried that the argument will make the far right more popular.
In response to the blockades, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said that blocking people from going to work, school, or to see a doctor will make people upset and cause arguments.
The farmers are very angry, and their group, DBV, wants the government to stop all the plans to reduce subsidies for farmers.
“Joachim Rukwied, the head of DBV, said that if things don’t change, there won’t be enough good food available. ”
Ministers are rushing to fix a money problem of tens of billions of euros after a big decision in November by Germany‘s highest court. The court said the government’s budget was not allowed.
However, later ideas to stop giving farmers tax breaks for agricultural diesel have been weakened. Now, the change will happen gradually over time. The government decided not to get rid of special treatment in vehicle tax.
However, farmers are still angry and a group of protesters stopped the Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck from getting off a ferry last week.
The protest caused a lot of people to be angry and worried that political discussions in Germany are becoming more extreme.
But the other leader of the far right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, Alice Weidel, said that the incident proved that the vice chancellor was not being respected anymore.
“He would rather escape on a ferry than talk,” she wrote.
The AfD is getting more popular in the polls and has been scoring higher than the three parties in power.
The group in charge of Germany is having a lot of arguments and it’s causing tension.
Important local elections will happen later this year in three eastern states – Saxony, Brandenburg and Thuringia. These elections will show how the people in these areas are feeling.
Train drivers are going to go on strike, which will create more problems for the government.
The GDL union in Germany has announced that its members will go on strike starting this Wednesday because they are in a disagreement with the railway company Deutsche Bahn over their wages.
As the tractors arrive in central Berlin, it is a bad start to the year for Chancellor Scholz’s government. It also comes with predictions of slow economic growth for a country that is often called the EU’s “powerhouse”.