“Maybrit Illner”: Özdemir takes the Greens severely – “Moral acidic attitude” | EUROtoday

As of: 3:39 a.m | Reading time: 4 minutes

SSince the start of this week, farmers have been venting their discontent on Germany’s streets. With tractor convoys and blocked motorway entrances, they’re protesting in opposition to the deliberate abolition of tax breaks for agricultural diesel. The federal authorities remains to be sticking to it. Unlike initially deliberate, the abolition is now to happen in a number of steps by 2026. However, the federal government has withdrawn its plans to abolish tax exemptions for agricultural and forestry autos.

“Government under protest – what else will the traffic lights enforce?” Maybrit Illner requested her friends. Federal Agriculture Minister Cem Özdemir (Greens) and the Prime Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia Hendrik Wüst had been on the present. Author Juli Zeh, economist Clemens Fuest and “Spiegel” journalist Maria Fiedler accomplished the group.

What is at present happening behind the scenes within the present federal authorities turned clear firstly of this system. Illner wished to know from Özdemir whether or not he supported the federal authorities’s proposal to abolish subsidies for agricultural diesel. He answered tightly: “I had to sign it now.” If it had been as much as him, nonetheless, the resolutions wouldn’t have been vital, Özdemir adopted up.

With this place, the Green minister is nearer to the CDU than to his personal occasion. “Both decisions must be taken off the table,” demanded Union Prime Minister Wüst, who was talking from Cologne. The CDU politician criticized the farmers who must pay for the site visitors mild’s unconstitutional funds coverage. Wüst was alluding to the background of the austerity measures. After the Federal Constitutional Court declared the supplementary funds for 2021 and the “climate and transformation fund” unconstitutional in November final yr, the federal authorities was lacking round 17 billion euros for 2024.

“A group with one percent of economic output gets five percent of the burden”

The President of the “ifo Institute”, Clemens Fuest, can’t perceive why the federal government needs to get a lot of the cash it needs to save lots of from farmers. “A group with one percent of economic output gets five percent of the burden,” Fuest calculated, “so you ask yourself: What have they done wrong now?”

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Also – not like the deliberate local weather cash – no compensation was offered for the lack of subsidies. “They’re not beginners. Everyone involved knew that this would not go through under any circumstances,” fuest fuest.

Özdemir sees the choice as a “drop that breaks the camel’s back”. However, his predecessors as ministers are additionally answerable for this: “I didn’t fill the barrel. Many of my Christian Democratic colleagues have already filled the barrel.”

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Zeh additionally sees a motive for the farmers’ frustration within the fixed paternalism from politicians. “To say: ‘You are either stupid children who have to explain everything to them, or you have to act as one, otherwise you won’t believe in us’, I think is fundamentally wrong,” says the creator. The farmers usually are not opposed to alter, however they don’t wish to be handled like little kids.

Fuest is satisfied that politicians’ fixed reliance on scientific findings is inflicting discontent not solely amongst farmers, however throughout the inhabitants as a complete. “They act as if it was scientifically determined that we have to achieve this or that climate goal by 2030,” mentioned the economist, “nothing has been scientifically proven when it comes to political decisions. It has to be decided democratically.”

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Illner wished to know from Özdemir why the discontent of many voters was directed on the Greens. The Federal Minister of Agriculture criticized his personal occasion severely. “If the recipient misunderstands something, it could also be the sender’s fault,” defined the Green politician. In the previous, the Greens had “moved through the landscape with a morally sour attitude”.

For Zeh, the Greens have develop into a logo of an smug politics with no different. Wüst, who’s in a coalition with the Greens in his state, turned even harder. People get “annoyed” when politics turns into extreme and “the heating law marches into the basement”. The occasion would now get this.

For Zeh it’s clear how the inhabitants’s protests could possibly be decreased. A unique strategy is required: “No more eye level, Doppelwumms. Anything that sounds like kindergarten has to go.”