German farmers block roads with tractors in subsidies protest
Partial U-turn by Berlin fails to avert week-long nationwide action that government says could be co-opted by rightwing extremists
German farmers blocked city centres, highways and motorway slip roads with tractors at the start of a week-long, nationwide protest over planned cuts to agricultural sector subsidies that the government said could be co-opted by rightwing extremists.
“We are exercising our basic right to inform society and the political class that Germany needs a competitive agricultural sector,” the president of the German farmers’ association, Joachim Rukwied, told Stern magazine on Monday.
“That’s the only way to ensure the supply of high-quality, homegrown food,” Rukwied said, adding that the protests, which brought the centres of cities including Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne and Bremen to a near-standstill, could last all week.
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Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/08/german-farmers-block-roads-tractors-subsidies-protest