German Truckers Block Traffic

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WIRE:09/09/2000 12:15:00 ET German Truckers Block Traffic in Fuel Price Protest

BERLIN (Reuters) - German truck drivers and farmers brought traffic to standstill in the northern town of Hildesheim on Saturday in a protest against rising fuel prices. Police said some 100 trucks had blocked streets in the town for about three hours following a protest on Friday evening in the northern town of Uelzen where 40 trucks, five tractors and five buses had massed to mark a visit by Transport Minister Reinhard Klimmt.

Protesters in Hildesheim had fastened placards to their trucks with slogans such as: "Nowhere are drivers so squeezed as in Germany" and "Oil prices are ruining us." Klimmt, who on Friday said the government would not reduce controversial "ecology taxes" on fuel and noted petrol was still considerably cheaper in Germany than elsewhere in Europe, later addressed some 100 demonstrators in Uelzen. Opposition parties and motorists organizations have been turning up the pressure on the Berlin government to ease energy taxes since mass action by French protesters this week won concessions from Paris. French truckers and farmers slowly began lifting their blockades on Saturday after choking fuel supplies across the country. Paris has offered the protesters a 15 percent cut in diesel fuel taxes, but the drivers want a 20 percent reduction.

Finance Minister Hans Eichel said on Saturday Germany would not answer higher oil prices with cuts to energy taxes, noting that taxpayers were already due to get major relief next year when a government tax reform program kicks in. Speaking to journalists on the fringe of a meeting of finance ministers in Versailles, Eichel said anybody who had cut energy taxes "had already lost" and was just handing money to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder"s center-left government, which rules in coalition with the Greens, plans to increase petrol taxes by six pfennigs (2.6 U.S. cents) per liter each year through 2002 to fund reductions in state pensions contributions. The conservative opposition warned that Germans would copy their French neighbors and take to the streets if the government did not cut fuel taxes. "The government must at least forego the next step of the ecology tax to counteract the weakness of the euro," said Dirk Fischer, transport spokesman for the Christian Democrats. The Environment Ministry said it understood consumers" anger, but said the best thing drivers could do was save petrol by driving more slowly or switching off their engines when stopped at traffic lights or held up in traffic jams

http://abcnews.go.com/wire/World/reuters20000909_597.html

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), September 09, 2000

Answers

switching off their engines when stopped at traffic lights

"Stupid is that stupid does" - Forrest Gump's mom

-- spider (spider0@usa.net), September 09, 2000.


I certainly have to agree on that.

Forest Gump's mom was a fountain of wisdom compared to these European politicians.

-- Uncle Fred (dogboy45@bigfoot.com), September 09, 2000.


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