German budget consensus under fire over EVs, agricultural diesel

Germany's government faced calls on Sunday to help farmers and car buyers by revisiting cuts forced upon it by a court ruling which blew a 60 billion euro ($65 billion) hole in its budget. A coalition move to end subsidies for agricultural diesel drew criticism from Green lawmaker and agriculture minister Cem Ozdemir and from legislators belonging to Finance Minister Christian Lindner's business-friendly Liberals. Opposition conservatives and Chancellor Olaf Scholz's Social Democrats also criticised the decision to end, with no prior warning, a programme that paid subsidies to buyers of new electric vehicles, with critics saying the move would hit German carmakers already struggling with Chinese and U.S. competition.