By IRNA,
Berlin : Germany is facing a ‘hot summer’ of social protests as Chancellor Angela Merkel unveiled her tough austerity program which included unprecedented social spending cuts affecting mostly lower income people, families and elderly.
As part of Germany’s biggest post-war cuts, federal spending for Europe’s largest economy will be slashed 80 billion euros by 2014.
Speaking at a news conference in Berlin where Merkel announced the painful saving cuts, the German leader said, “These are serious times, these are difficult
times.”
The largest portion of savings for the government will come from reducing social welfare spending.
Beneficiaries receiving long-term jobless benefits will no longer be able to accumulate pension rights and will also be stripped of a benefit of 184 euros
for each child.
Other Germans who get that child benefit will see it reduced.
Numerous leftist parties, church groups and labor unions have pledged to resist the plans of the center-right government, warning that the nation’s
social peace was seriously endangered.
The powerful trade union Ver.di emphasized that the poor should not shoulder alone the nation’s debt.
Ver.di chairman Frank Bsirske said the government was “placing unilateral pressure on the poor.”
Meanwhile, the head of the labor union DGB, Michael Sommer said the fiscal cuts had “to do nothing” with saving money.
They wanted to get the money of the poor “to spare the rich,” he said.
“No one should underestimate our anger …,” Sommer added.
He called for the introduction of a special wealth as well as financial transaction tax, in addition to raising the inheritance tax.
Labor unions have already announced they would kick off a series of nationwide demonstrations in opposition to the government starting June 20.
The opposition party The Left (Die Linke) announced also plans for “huge protests” over Merkel’s social cuts.
It vowed to form a “wide range resistance pact” against Berlin’s austerity measures.
The co-head of the Left party Klaus Ernst said it was unfair that employees, retirees and families would have “to foot the bill for the gambling of the bankers.”
The sentiment was echoed by the general secretary of the opposition Social Democrats Andrea Nahles who pointed out social cuts created a “social imbalance” in a sense that they disproportionately affected society’s most vulnerable segments.
She slammed the Merkel administration for not daring to tax financial speculators which caused the global banking crisis in the first place.
A fellow party member of Nahles warned that the implementation of Merkel’s austerity package could result in a “loss of trust in (German) democracy.”
Thomas Oppermann voiced major concern over Germany’s future social stability as the government is desperately trying to consolidate its household budget.
Although it remains uncertain as to how massive and intense the countrywide social protests could get, it is clear that the government will be confronted
with a wave of demonstrations in cities across Germany over the next weeks.
A spokesman of a jobless advocacy group, Martin Behrsing stressed that the resistance against Merkel’s social cut program would be fierce and could include the occupation and blockade of government agencies and major companies.
We will do anything to create problems for the government which has to understand that it will be “painful,” he told the Berlin-based daily Neues Deutschland.
Behrsing predicted that the protests could be even bigger than last year’s student demonstrations.
It has to be an attack on big capitalism. Everyone has to join in the upcoming protests. No one can say this has nothing to do with me, he added, pointing to plans for the first major demonstrations in Berlin and Stuttgart on Saturday.