German fuel policy

Johannes Schneider Johannes.Schneider at gmx.net
Thu Sep 28 04:13:07 PDT 2000



> - I cannot work out how the German government is trying to appease popular
> protest against fuel prices.
>


>From my perspective it looks as if the German situation is much different
from the British one: 1. It looks as if the Blair government is in its deepest crisis, where as their German counter-part is much more popular at the moment. 2. Fuel prices are much more higher in the UK than in Germany 3. Certainly the working class does not like to pay increased taxes and higher fuel prices, but the protest are lead by the private transport business and the peasants. Since the peasants are highly subsidized at the expense of the working class and shifting transport from the train to private trucks is seen as partly responsible for the traffic jam, the protests dont spill over to other parts of the society. The unions oppose them. 4. The conservatives are using the protests as a tool to divert attention from their own funding scandal. The CDU/CSU is concentrating on the planned increase of the fuel tax at the beginning of next year, but obviously the tax increase is responsible for only a small share of the current fuel price increase. Most of the price increase is due to high oil prices and a weak Euro. Furthermore as a compensation for increased fuel prices the payments for the pension scheme were reduced.

So there is not so much need to appease popular protest, which is clearly sectional and manipulated by a still unpopular conservative opposition.

Johannes



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