German farmers dig in against subsidy cuts.

Hello, and you're listening to the marketplace morning report live from the BBC World Service.

I'm Leanna Byrne and a very good morning to you. German farmers are continuing to protest over the government's move to revoke key

tax privileges.

These proposals stem from a budget crisis after a court ruled that the country's

2024 budget was illegal.

The BBC's Jessica Parker is in Berlin.

Hello Jessica.

Hello.

So just give us the background to Germany's budget crisis. Why is the government

there facing a financial black hole? Yeah, I mean it's a black hole of tens of

billions of euros and it is after in November last year there was this bombshell ruling by Germany's

constitutional court which essentially declared that the government's

plan budget was unlawful so they had to go back to the drawing board try and find some

savings and this is where this all began in terms of the farmers protest

because they proposed to end farmers tax breaks on agricultural diesel and abolish

this preferential treatment they get as well in terms of vehicle tax.

That latter proposal has now actually been dropped because of the controversy and the plan to

and end tax breaks on agricultural diesel that's now going to be phased in rather than brought

in abruptly but it doesn't seem to have really sufficiently

assuaged farmers anger, so this week farmers are protesting up and down the

country. And what were farmers saying in terms of those subsidy cuts, how would they

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