Tens of thousands of Germans protested on Saturday against Germany’s biggest austerity drive since World War II, adding to pressure on German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s increasingly unpopular coalition.
Merkel’s Cabinet on Monday last week unveiled plans for 80 billion euros (US$96.30 billion) in budget cuts and taxes over the next four years, but faces a challenge convincing parliament, unions and voters to accept the savings package.
Organizers said between 15,000 and 20,000 people demonstrated in Berlin, in one of the biggest protests against government reform in recent years. Police estimated that up to 10,000 people took part in protests in Stuttgart.
Protesters’ banners read “The crisis is called capitalism,” “Employment, human rights, secure future for everyone” and “Pensions should be enough to live on.”
Merkel’s government proposed saving 30 billion euros over the next four years in welfare, mainly from unemployment benefits, and slashing thousands of federal government jobs. The proposals have prompted criticism both from the opposition and from within Merkel’s own ranks.
A new poll by Infratest dimap showed that 79 percent of Germans thought the savings package was not socially balanced and 93 percent thought measures were not enough to meet the government’s savings goal.
Saar state Premier Peter Mueller, a member of Merkel’s conservatives, criticized the savings package for weighing disproportionately heavily on the poor.
“If you have to tighten your belt, then the biggest belts shouldn’t be immune,” he told German magazine Wirtschaftswoche.
Mueller said the introduction of a luxury tax on goods such as yachts, expensive cars and champagne “would be a contribution to more tax justice and acceptance of savings measures.”
Merkel, however, rejected accusations the package was unfair and told German paper Bild am Sonntag that people knew “that we have to save and reduce the deficit.”
Her government aims to bring the structural deficit of Europe’s biggest economy within EU limits by 2013, but wants to avoid raising taxes after vowing to do exactly the opposite when she took power in October last year.
Merkel argued that businesses and the civil service were also contributing to budget consolidation.
The government wants to raise an extra 2.3 billion euros per year by taxing the profits of nuclear power station operators and introducing an “environmental” tax on domestic air travel. In addition, a financial transaction tax is expected to raise 2 billion euros a year from 2012.
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