2024-01-11 19:51:07
WORLD – Tuesday January 9, French farmers from the canton of Seltz-Lauterbourg joined the German demonstrations on the other side of the border. Charles Wollenschlaeger, cantonal president of FDSEA 67, looks back on this day of mobilization.
In the morning, the Haut-Rhin farmers met near a roundabout on the German border, near the Iffezheim dam. Thirteen tractors then joined the hundred or so agricultural vehicles gathered across the border.
“The demonstrations went very well. We were very well received. It warmed their hearts that we participated. We demonstrated with them and when we returned to France, twenty German tractors followed us until the roundabout on the French side to slow down traffic. We went back and forth like that several times,” Charles Wollenschlaeger told us.
“All farmers in the European Union are in the same boat”
After speaking with his neighbors, the cantonal president of FDSEA 67 notes that they are primarily concerned by the end of tax advantages on non-road diesel (GNR) announced by Berlin last December. “They simply want to keep the aid granted for years by their government. There is also the CAP subsidy which is reduced every year. They would like the German state to compensate. And then of course, there are also the constraints environmental and ecological, and all the administrative paperwork that Europe requires them to complete, like us.”
In addition to the financial question, he notes that all European farmers feel a lack of consideration. “They too would like their work to be better recognized. We’re all there. Each country still retains its specificity, but all farmers in the European Union are in the same boat.”
This is why Mr. Wollenschlaeger deplores the fact that there are not more French farmers joining the Germans. His union actually authorized him to demonstrate for a day across the Rhine, but according to him, they were the only ones, for the moment, to participate in their neighbors’ movement. Note that on the other side of the Rhine, the demonstration in which he participated, and which is continuing, was not organized by a union. Still according to Mr. Wollenschlaeger, other border farmers, coming from Austria and Hungary, also joined the German demonstrators.
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