The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party on Sunday accused the government of inaction over high fuel prices and called on Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s coalition to pull together on emergency measures.<\/p>\n
Fuel prices have skyrocketed, said the party, which in a poll by INSA last month ranked neck-and-neck with Merz’s conservative CDU\/CSU alliance, with 26% support among the electorate.<\/p>\n
“What is the government doing? It is standing idly by,” said party and parliamentary group leader Alice Weidel on the sidelines of a closed-door AfD meeting in the eastern city of Cottbus.<\/p>\n
Weidel demanded an immediate cut in energy tax and the abolition of the CO2 levy on fuel.<\/p>\n
As in many countries, prices at the pump have soared in Germany after the Iran war all but halted the passage of oil tankers through the crucial Strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n
On Saturday, coalition leaders met in Berlin for talks on the energy price crisis, government sources said.<\/p>\n
Demands for action on fuel prices were echoed by the German Farmers’ Association in view of the burden on its members amid soaring fuel and fertilizer costs.<\/p>\n
AfD co-leader Tino Chrupalla on Sunday also slammed plans of the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) – a member of Merz’s coalition – for what he denounced as excess profits taxation of oil companies.<\/p>\n
“The state is currently collecting those excess profits,” Chrupalla said, stressing that Germany’s finance ministry must return that to the public.<\/p>\n
At Sunday’s meeting, the AfD members of the lower house of Parliament adopted papers on economy and energy, pensions and social affairs, while reiterating their core demands.<\/p>\n
These include calls for tax cuts, higher tax allowances, a return to nuclear power, the resumption of gas supplies from Russia and the abolition of the CO2 levy.<\/p>\n
In the short term, tax cuts are to be financed, for example, through spending cuts, “including in climate ideology,” the AfD lawmakers said.<\/p>\n
Weidel called on Merz’s party to cooperate on emergency measures for businesses and consumers.<\/p>\n
She also signalled to the CDU “that we are ready at any time to implement these reform measures in the German Bundestag. The majority is there … The CDU just has to do it.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party on Sunday accused the government of inaction over high fuel prices…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3994,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[452,456,4018,393,1334,5,3861,4017,455],"class_list":{"0":"post-3993","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-afd","9":"tag-alice-weidel","10":"tag-emergency-measures","11":"tag-friedrich-merz","12":"tag-fuel-prices","13":"tag-germany","14":"tag-parliamentary-group","15":"tag-parliamentary-group-leader","16":"tag-tino-chrupalla"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3993\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}