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Analysis: How do the EU farmer protests relate to climate change?

By Orla Dwyer - The Conversation, February 5, 2024

From Berlin and Paris, to Brussels and Bucharest, European farmers have driven their tractors to the streets in protest over recent weeks. 

According to reports, these agricultural protesters from across the European Union have a series of concerns, including competition from cheaper imports, rising costs of energy and fertiliser, and environmental rules. 

Farmers’ groups in countries including Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Lithuania, Poland and Romania have all been protesting over the past couple of months. 

The UK’s Sunday Telegraph has tried to frame the protests as a “net-zero revolt” with several other media outlets saying the farmers have been rallying against climate or “green” rules. 

Carbon Brief has analysed the key demands from farmer groups in seven countries to determine how they are related to greenhouse gas emissions, climate change, biodiversity or conservation. 

The findings show that many of the issues farmers are raising are directly and indirectly related to these issues. But some are not related at all. Several are based on policy measures that have not yet taken effect, such as the EU’s nature restoration law and a South American trade agreement. 

Do Working-class People Really Care About Climate Change?

Bus Drivers Strike with Climate Activists in 57 German Cities

By Berit Ehmke and Yanira Wolf - Labor Notes, April 8, 2024

Public transit workers across Germany have broken new ground by coordinating our contracts—nearly all of them nationwide have expired over the last four months—and shutting down bus systems with strikes in 57 cities.

To add to the pressure, we’ve done something new for our union and for Germany: we’ve formed an alliance between local transport workers and climate activists, including the students who have been leading massive school walkouts.

The devastating effects of climate change are already rocking Germany: major heat waves, flooding, and water shortages. A growing movement demanding climate action has made real headway—our energy and industrial sectors have almost halved their climate pollution over the past 30 years. But on transportation, our third-biggest source, we’ve made nearly zero progress.

To beat climate change we need more buses on the road. We’re building a movement to double bus service. After three decades of cuts and privatization, we need a major federal funding boost.

But these jobs have become so tough that most agencies have huge worker shortages. To make the climate impact real, we’ll also need to raise the floor for wages, breaks, and schedules—making this a good enough job that workers will sign on and stick around.

Climate activists join public transport workers in strike across Germany

Lessons from Germany for a Just Transition

By Florian Ranft and Johanna Siebert - Green European Journal, January 19, 2024

External shocks, coalition infighting, and an opportunistic far right have driven the German government’s approval rate to a new low. Contested climate policies offer Greens in Berlin and across Europe some useful lessons: to gain support from the people, the green transition needs to address social concerns, allow for democratic participation, and be implemented locally.

Economic recession, budget cuts, and the rise of the far right are the new reality in Germany – an explosive mix, we know from historical experience. Little over two years into government, the self-proclaimed “coalition of progress” is being put to the test. The approval ratings of the coalition parties ‒ the Social Democrats (SPD), the Greens, and the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) ‒ are at a new low, even though the coalition has implemented many of its policy pledges. 

While it’s not uncommon for mid-term approval ratings to be low, the government is going through a particularly tough time. Setting out with the ambition to “dare more progress” by boosting renewables, expanding affordable housing, and raising spending on education, the governing parties have found themselves sidetracked. The multiple interlocking crises of Putin’s war in Ukraine, surging energy prices, the rising cost of living, and higher borrowing costs certainly played a role.

On top of that, the ideological differences between the coalition partners have made finding common ground on economic and social reforms difficult. This is particularly true for climate policies, as demonstrated last year by the dispute over the Building Energy Act. The Green party’s flagship bill ‒ aimed at phasing out oil and gas heating systems ‒ was vehemently opposed by the FDP as too costly, opening a rift in the coalition. What was intended as a major step towards reaching Germany’s emission target in the building sector has now been so watered down that the country looks unlikely to reach its 2030 emissions reduction target.

While the Greens are pushing for pragmatic change within the limits of what’s possible, the FDP ‒ reflecting a reform-sceptic electorate ‒ is calling for a return to “fiscal prudence” after Germany suspended the constitutional “debt brake” for the fourth year in a row in 2023. The SPD and its Chancellor Olaf Scholz play the role of mediating the tension, while also pushing their own signature policies such as increasing the minimum wage to 12 euros per hour and expanding social security benefits. Yet, there is an open question regarding Scholz’s leadership within the coalition. Especially in terms of international politics, the chancellor’s agenda seems directionless in light of global challenges. 

Meanwhile, the (far) right has been capitalising on the governmental infighting. Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is successfully taking advantage of the general discontent and the heightened sense of economic and social insecurity. In the latest state elections in Bavaria and Hessen last October, the AfD achieved its best-ever results in western Germany. Since last summer, the AfD has been steadily ahead of all government coalition parties in national polls. Today it is in the lead in Brandenburg, Thuringia, and Saxony – three East German states due to hold regional elections this year. And it is also making gains at the local level, with the AfD’s first county commissioner in Sonneberg, Thuringia, and first mayors in Raguhn-Jeßnitz, Saxony-Anhalt and Pirna, Saxony. Although these are relatively small cities, the political victories have a high symbolic meaning.

The furore over the Building Energy Act appears to be a taste of what’s to come. The more ambitious and far-reaching the climate proposal, the stronger the political and societal resistance – a development that tends to play into the hands of far-right actors. How can progressives counter the far right’s challenges without compromising their reform agenda ahead of the European elections in June? 

Big 3 Say Shorter Work Week is Unreasonable - But They Do it in Europe

Building alliances between Labour and the Climate Justice movements

The first signs of an ecological class struggle in Germany

By Franziska Heinisch and Julia Kaiser - Progressive International, March 31, 2023

On 3 March 2023, on the occasion of the global climate strike, a special political alliance took to the streets in Germany: side-by-side, climate activists and public transport workers went on strike. In at least 30 cities, climate activists visited workers’ pickets and brought them along for joint demonstrations. According to Fridays for Future, a total of 200,000 people participated in the nation-wide protests.

The way employers reacted showed that this alliance of workers and climate activists is a potential threat to the ruling class. Steffen Kampeter, CEO of the Confederation of German Employers (BDA), publicly denounced them on the morning of the joint strike day as “a dangerous crossing of the line”. He said that the German service union ver.di was blurring the lines between strikes for collective bargaining and general political concerns, thereby entering the terrain of political strikes. To the delight of campaigners, this accusation contributed to the fact that the joint strike dominated the news that day.

This unity between the labour and climate movement was long overdue: a wider and more affordable public transport system is one of the central measures to achieve socially just climate protection. However, the mobility transition in Germany has so far been made impossible: many employees in local transport work in shifts under terrible conditions and barely make ends meet — with salaries just above the minimum wage. Many therefore decide to quit their jobs. There is already a shortage of tens of thousands of drivers. And this problem will only get worse in the coming years. At the same time, ticket prices are rising steadily and the passenger transport systems, especially in rural areas, are thinned out.

Fossil Fuel Industry Phase-Out: Three Critical Worker Guarantees for a Just Transition

Germany: War, gas price protests and solidarity with Ukraine: An ecosocialist perspective

By Federico Fuentes and Christian Zeller - Green Left, October 19, 2022

Across Europe, protests have been growing over rising gas prices, with Germany no exception. Politicians have sought to blame Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine — or, alternatively, sanctions imposed by Europe — for the situation.

But is this the case? How should ecosocialists approach the interrelated issues of climate, war, gas prices and international solidarity?

Green Left’s Federico Fuentes discussed these issues with Christian Zeller, a professor of economic geography and editorial board member of the German-language journal, emancipation — Journal for Ecosocialist Strategy. Zeller is also the author of Climate Revolution: Why we need an ecosocialist alternative (available in German).

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