Farmer protests continue & more – 11th Jan 2024

Hallo from BA! This is the Rorshok Germany Update from the 11th of January twenty twenty four A quick summary of what's going down in Germany.

We have been following the labor dispute between the union of locomotive drivers (or GDL), and the national train company (or DB). This week the GDL won two small victories, as they came to terms with a regional train company without going on strike. This is the second time a regional train company agreed to the demands of the GDL.

They also clinched a preliminary victory in court. Last year, the GDL founded a cooperative temporary employment company, which put a lot of pressure on the DB. The cooperative is owned by the employees, and is trying to poach employees from the DB, which is why the DB sued the GDL. In court, the DB argued that the founding of the cooperative disqualifies the GDL from its union status. The court said it couldn’t rule on this question in the frame of the injunction hearing and allowed the GDL to strike. This issue will make its way through the courts, but for now the labor dispute, including strikes, continues.

For several weeks now, farmers across the country have been protesting and blockading major highways and cities. At the heart of the issue is the introduction of automotive taxes on farming vehicles and the cutting of subsidies for fuel used in farming.

Due to the protests the government backed down and agreed not to cut subsidies from the farming industry. Organizing the farmers’ protests is the farmers association, which is a powerful lobby group advancing the interests of industrial farmers.

Still, smaller groups that are invested in sustainable farming have joined the protests. The issue is complicated because the subsidies are harming the environment, but cutting them doesn’t advance the ecological transformation of the farming sector.

Still on the farmers’ protests, last Thursday the 4th a group of protesters blockaded a ferry carrying Robert Habeck of the Greens, the minister of the economy, and prevented him from getting off the boat. The minister has long been a target of extreme right groups. This blockade of the ferry is another sign of the increasing presence of far-right extremists at the farmers’ protests.

While some groups of farmers have expressed their concern and distanced themselves from far-right ideology, the farmers association, the main actor in the protests, has not. The blockade of the ferry is a clear step towards radicalization and violence. Even though some protests displayed violent language and symbolism, like traffic lights made from paper hanging from gallows (the traffic light is the symbol for the ruling coalition as its colors correspond to the colors of the ruling parties), the protests themselves have stayed peaceful.

Moving on to politics, there’s a new party in the German political landscape. Sahra Wagenknecht, a former member of the party The Left, has founded her own party: Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance – Reason and Justice (or BSW). For many years The Left and many progressive movements have criticized Wagenknecht for her conservative and sometimes almost nationalist standing on immigration.

It came as a surprise, considering the conservative nature of the party, that a few members of parliament, mostly former members of the party The Left, joined the BSW group in parliament in December. On Monday the 8th the party was officially founded and the first party convention is expected by the end of this month. The political direction of the party remains, as typical of Wagenknect, strict on immigration, conservative on cultural issues, and progressive on social and work-related issues.

Let’s go back to demonstrations for a second. A court in Berlin has sentenced four defendants to monetary reparations and two years in prison on probation. In twenty twenty the accused violently attacked a team of journalists belonging to the second national television station, or ZDF. At court the defendants apologized and stated that they thought the team belonged to a far-right group that was holding a protest that day.

Twenty twenty was a year of unprecedented violence against journalists, with assaults on sixty-nine journalists while reporting, only surpassed by the following year, with attacks on eighty-three journalists. Most attacks happened during or alongside demonstrations against COVID restrictions.

For contrast, in twenty nineteen when the European Center for Press and Media Freedom only recorded fourteen assaults

Annalena Baerbock, the foreign minister, visited Rafa, Egypt, on the 9th delivering humanitarian aid products to the border crossing with the Gaza strip. In a press conference in Cairo she called for a twenty-four-hour opening of the border crossing, increases in humanitarian aid, and emphasized that hospitals in Gaza “must be able to do their work”. There were no mentions of a cease-fire and she stopped short of her American counterpart’s criticism of the airstrikes the Israeli armed forces conducted.

Still on foreign policy, the government issued a preliminary approval for exports of the Eurofighter fighter-bomber jet to Saudi Arabia. The aircraft is a joint project by Germany, the UK, Spain, and Italy, which means that all four countries have to approve the export. Several previous German governments have not allowed weapon exports of any kind to Saudi Arabia due to its involvement in an armed conflict with the Iranian proxies in Yemen. The governments announced that due to Saudi Arabia’s stance in the Israel-Hamas war, the kingdom can be called a trusted partner. However, it is more likely that the approval has to do with the Inner-European rivalry of German and French aircraft manufacturers. If the sale isn’t approved, German aircraft companies simply won’t have anything to build and could suffer greatly in competitiveness in relation to their French rivals.

One German company that hasn’t been competitive for quite some time is Galeria Kaufhof. The traditional chain of department stores has, for the third time in three years, declared insolvency. Previously Galeria was bought by the Signa-Holding, an Austrian company which is currently embroiled in insolvency cases itself. Signa-Holding also just sold their 50 % share of the New York Chrysler building. Galeria Kaufhof has long been unprofitable, but currently it seems that by closing about 20 % of their stores they hope to be saved by a new investor once again.

Karl Lauterbach, the Minister of health, announced on the 9th of January that a reform of the remuneration system for general practitioners will increase the pay of doctors and limit the bureaucratic effort. In the days between Christmas and New Year many general practitioners went on strike to demand better pay. Lauterbach also tried to calm fears of increased health insurance costs. So far, the announced reforms only affect general practitioners, specialized doctors are not yet included—so they were not happy.

And to finish off this week, some good news, or troubling news, judge for yourself. Kai Wegner, the mayor of Berlin, has made his love life a public topic when he publicly announced his relationship with Katharina Günther-Wünsch, who happens to be the senator (basically a minister) of education in his cabinet. They are both members of the conservative Christian Democratic Party.

The two publicly announced their relationship on Friday the 5th through their lawyer and said that “they would strictly separate the private and the business”. But this didn’t appease the critics. The opposition has warned of conflicts of interest and said that it’s impossible to think that their relationship won’t affect political decisions.

Aaand that's it for this week!

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