German Government Responds to Growing Unpopularity–by Introducing New Tax
AfD’s Alice Weidel said the proposal is less about easing pressure on the healthcare system and more about funding broader government spending priorities like climate, migration and Ukraine support.
AfD’s Alice Weidel said the proposal is less about easing pressure on the healthcare system and more about funding broader government spending priorities like climate, migration and Ukraine support.
Germany’s ever-clueless government coalition is planning to introduce a new ‘sugar tax’—as if its polling couldn’t get any worse.
Federal Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil and his fellow SPD colleagues in government say such a levy is required to help prevent illness and reduce the burden on the healthcare system. But critics argue that this isn’t their reason for the tax at all—that officials will simply use the cash to fund a number of their unnecessary schemes.
AfD co-leader Alice Weidel said on Tuesday, “This is not about health, but about financing climate, migration, and Ukraine policies.” She added that her party would “immediately abolish” the tax.
The AfD has also been critical of Klingbeil’s intention to increase debt to keep some of the government’s most costly and unnecessary schemes, such as the ‘green’ agenda, going. Weidel on Monday responded that “a real political turnaround [is needed] now.”
This coincides with the coalition’s plans to increase excise duties on tobacco and alcohol—what have been dubbed ‘sin taxes.’
Similar policies are being pushed across the rest of Europe. London is working on a “generational smoking ban,” which has prompted a mass of opposition from campaigners but has also caught the (approving) eye of Brussels. And in France, lawmakers have been pushing to ban nicotine pouches, despite some MEPs claiming this would breach European Union law.
Responding to the latest German push, the AfD’s Marco Eggebrecht jibed: “Oxygen tax when?” Former liberal (FDP) MP Jens Teutrine added: “If higher taxes on alcohol, tobacco, and a sugar tax are supposed to end consumption, then the excessively high income tax must apparently also be supposed to end working.”
Michael Curzon is a news writer for europeanconservative.com based in England’s Midlands. He is also Editor of Bournbrook Magazine, which he founded in 2019, and previously wrote for London’s Express Online. His Twitter handle is @MichaelCurzon_.
