Protests against the opening of the new European Central Bank

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Rally on the Frankfurt Römerberg, u. a with Sahra Wagenknecht , here at the microphone (March 18, 2015)
Burned out police car (March 18, 2015)
Damage caused by an attack on the first police station in Frankfurt (March 18, 2015)

The protests against the opening of the new European Central Bank on March 18, 2015 in Frankfurt am Main were largely initiated by the left-wing political alliance Blockupy and were accompanied by serious riots by several hundred militant demonstrators, in which at least 150 people were injured. 26 demonstrators were arrested. A demonstration that took place on the same day on the Römerberg with 17,000 to 20,000 participants, however, proceeded peacefully. Blockupy had already in 2012 and 2013 days of action at Euro Tower carried out with the aim of the daily operations of the European Central Bank to disturb (ECB) in Frankfurt am Main and against European financial policy , in particular the austerity of the Troika with regard to the euro crisis and the Greek debt crisis protest .

prehistory

As part of a European day of action against capitalism , a demonstration took place in Frankfurt on March 31, 2012, which was to lead to the construction site of the new ECB building. Already at the beginning of the demonstration, which according to various counts between 4,000 (police) and 6,000 (organizers) people took part, there were riots. Among other things, the ECB building and a police station on the way were damaged by paint bags and stone throwing. After the police separated around 100 participants from the rest of the demonstration with a cauldron , the demonstration was prematurely broken up. Subsequently, there were clashes between demonstrators and the police until late at night, as well as property damage and arson in the city area. The police estimated the damage to property at one million euros.

Before the opening of the new building for the European Central Bank , which was planned for autumn 2014 but was postponed to 2015 in June, the Blockupy alliance called for so-called monthly opponents from the end of March 2014, following the example of a form of action taken by the Startbahn West in the 1980s "Fence walks" at the construction site of the new building in Frankfurt.

From November 20 to 23, 2014, Blockupy organized a “festival” in Frankfurt am Main with panel discussions and working groups on topics such as the international networking of “ counterpower ” and the future of social infrastructure in Europe. After the European Central Bank moved into its new building at around the same time, around 2,000 Blockupy supporters demonstrated with a protest march from downtown Frankfurt to the ECB site on November 22, 2014. In the afternoon, around 100 activists forced their way into the property, which was secured with a temporary construction fence, and threw paint bags at the entrance portal. The police used pepper spray to clear the ECB premises again. According to the police, nine officers were injured in the clashes, Blockupy said 20 protesters were injured.

On January 18, 2015, around 200 Blockupy representatives from various European countries met in Frankfurt and announced that they would disrupt the planned opening ceremony of the new ECB building on March 18, 2015 by means of peaceful sitting, standing and dancing blocks and, if possible, disrupting city traffic paralyze. A rally against the Troika's crisis policy was called for in the afternoon, followed by a demonstration . The city had banned one of the originally registered two demonstration marches for security reasons.

There were also calls for participation on right-wing extremist websites , which were followed. “Skirmishes” between left-wing protesters and members of the Autonomous Nationalists have been observed. The Office for the Protection of the Constitution is checking whether right-wing extremists were involved in acts of violence in Frankfurt.

In February 2015, the ECB decided to invite just under 100 guests to the official opening ceremony at a meeting of the Governing Council. Politicians and journalists criticized the ECB because, for security reasons, it only allowed agency journalists and reporters from the Hessischer Rundfunk , but not representatives of the press. Because of the expected blockades, the ECB advised its employees to work from home that day.

course

On the evening before and early in the morning of the day of protest, violent riots and property damage occurred in various parts of Frankfurt . According to Blockupy, around 6,000 demonstrators marched through the city in small groups, including around 1,000 from abroad. A few days earlier, the police had erected extensive barriers around the ECB in Frankfurt's Ostend with the help of NATO wire and had set up water cannons from across Germany. Much of the car traffic in Ostend, as well as a tram line, had to be diverted. According to various press reports, the approximately 10,000 police officers deployed included members of the Federal Police's GSG 9 .

Protesters set dumpsters and several police cars on fire and damaged a number of shops and public buildings with paint and stones. There was also property damage and injuries to the fire brigade, transport companies and bystanders. The police chief expected damage in the millions. The police responded by using batons, water cannons, pepper spray and irritant gas grenades . The bus routes, an underground line and tram traffic throughout the city have been discontinued.

In the afternoon around 8,500 people took part in a rally on the Römerberg , which a broad alliance, including the trade unions, had called for. The speakers there were u. a. Sahra Wagenknecht from the party Die Linke , the globalization critic Naomi Klein , the cabaret artist Urban Priol , Giorgios Chondros from the Greek ruling party Syriza and Miguel Urbán from the Spanish party Podemos . Around 17,000 to 20,000 people took part in the elevator through downtown Frankfurt. It was largely peaceful.

Evaluation and summary

While some organizers and representatives of the Blockupy movement regretted the violence, others explicitly did not distance themselves from it and blamed the escalation on the police. Alongside other politicians, Federal Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière also criticized the violence of parts of the demonstrators and threatened "the full rigor of the rule of law". In a demonstration observation on March 18, 2015, the Committee for Fundamental Rights and Democracy found that parts of the demonstrators had violated the Blockupy action consensus and had dominated media coverage as a minority. The police had not countered these groups adequately: Burning barricades and cars had not been extinguished, smoke and smell remained, so that the impression of violent unrest against the press was reinforced. Police researcher Rafael Behr saw the violent protests as "ritualized" and "predictable" and denied that they were "a new quality of violence". In the case of corresponding statements by the German police union, it would be a matter of keeping its own members. The level of violence during the protests against the construction of the West Runway during the 1970s and 1980s was no longer reached.

There were different statements about the number of injured. The police reported 150, including two seriously injured, and the press reported more than 200 and up to 350. Most of them were demonstrators and police officers. According to the police, over 4,000 people were involved in the riots. 525 people were fingerprinted , 26 people detained by police . Pre- trial detention was ordered against an Italian demonstrator . On June 2, 2015 him the Frankfurt District Court sentenced for aggravated breach of the peace and attempted grievous bodily harm to 14 months imprisonment on probation .

By April 2017, 645 of the original 675 investigations against demonstrators had been closed. Six defendants were sentenced to suspended prison terms of up to one year and nine months. 14 other people were sentenced to fines under penalty orders . The Hessian Minister of the Interior Peter Beuth stated that during the police operation the prevention of danger , not the prosecution, was in the foreground. The damage caused to property was stated by the Hessian state parliament member Marius Weiß at 1.6 million euros.

Web links

Commons : Protests against the opening of the new building of the European Central Bank  - Collection of images

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Moritz Zimmermann: Riots in Frankfurt. Riot against capital . Frankfurter Rundschau , April 1, 2012
  2. ↑ Georg Leppert, Hanning Voigts: More than one million euros in damage after riots. Frankfurter Rundschau , April 2, 2012
  3. ↑ http://www.hr-online.de/website/rubriken/nachrichten/indexhessen34938.jsp?rubrik=36082&key=standard_document_52218883 ( Memento from July 3, 2014 in the web archive archive.today )
  4. ↑ "Your system must go away". For the first time the European Central Bank faces its critics: The activists of Blockupy accuse the institute of protecting the banks and harming the citizens. Director Benoît Cœuré defends the euro bailout policy: Without the ECB everything would have been much worse. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , June 28, 2014, p. 30
  5. ^ Protest at the ECB construction site. Blockupy activists start walking the fence. In: FAZ . March 31, 2014, accessed May 14, 2014 .
  6. ↑ Program overview . Retrieved April 14, 2018 .
  7. ^ Blockupy protest festival in Frankfurt. Protest without a state act. In: taz . November 20, 2014, accessed November 23, 2014 .
  8. ↑ Katharina Iskandar: Critics of capitalism storm ECB premises. In: faz.net. November 22, 2015, accessed July 7, 2015 .
  9. ^ Alina Leimbach, Martin Kaul: Blockupy in Frankfurt. First class in the police blockade , the daily newspaper , March 17, 2015
  10. ^ Day of protest against Troika policy for the ECB celebration. In: faz.net. January 29, 2015, accessed July 7, 2015 .
  11. ↑ Blockupy in Frankfurt am Main: State of emergency around the ECB . Spiegel Online , March 18, 2015
  12. ↑ Frankfurt prohibits second Blockupy demonstration. In: FAZ online. March 12, 2015, accessed March 14, 2015 .
  13. ↑ extremism. Protest from the right . In: Der Spiegel . No. 13 , 2015, p. 18 ( online ).
  14. ↑ https://www.stuttgarter-nachrichten.de/inhalt.frankfurt-main-ezb-eroeffnet-neubau.7f68f323-9bea-43be-829b-59996acfaa38.html
  15. ↑ “Total incomprehension” for excluding the press. In: FAZ March 13, 2015, accessed on March 18, 2015 .
  16. ↑ Newspapers are not welcome. In: Frankfurter Rundschau online. March 11, 2015, accessed March 15, 2015 .
  17. ↑ Central bank orders home work. In: taz online. March 11, 2015, accessed March 14, 2015 .
  18. ^ A b Justus Bender, Katharina Iskandar, Jonas Jansen: In a state of emergency. In: faz.net. March 18, 2015, accessed July 7, 2015 .
  19. ↑ Police begin operations at the ECB. In: Hessischer Rundfunk. March 13, 2015, archived from the original on April 2, 2015 ; accessed on March 14, 2015 .
  20. ↑ Fabian Eberhard, 28 water cannons, GSG 9 and 10,000 police officers , derbund.ch from March 18, 2015 , Katja Thorwarth, Blockupy on Twitter: Don't forget umbrellas , FR online from March 17, 2015 , Lisa Brüssler, ice in action , blog Article on Jetzt.sueddeutsche.de from March 18, 2015 , accessed on July 7, 2015
  21. ↑ a b Lenz Jacobsen: And stones fly out of the middle. In: zeit.de . March 18, 2015, accessed March 18, 2015 .
  22. ↑ tagesspiegel.de
  23. ↑ Barbara Schäder: Blockupy wants to continue , Stuttgarter Zeitung, March 19, 2015
  24. ↑ a b c Der Tagesspiegel, March 19, 2015, page 1: De Maizière threatens left-wing extremists. In:
  25. ^ Violent excesses, fire and tear gas in Frankfurt. March 18, 2015, accessed July 7, 2015 .
  26. ↑ Above-ground local transport is largely discontinued. In: FAZ online. March 12, 2015, accessed March 14, 2015 .
  27. ↑ hr-online.de: Disabilities in city traffic: trams stopped, streets blocked. In: hr-online.de. March 18, 2015, archived from the original on April 9, 2015 ; accessed on March 18, 2015 .
  28. ↑ blockupy.org
  29. ↑ 17,000 demonstrate against the ECB . ( Memento from March 18, 2015 in the web archive archive.today ) In: hr-online.de. March 18, 2015. Accessed March 19, 2015.
  30. ↑ . In: handelsblatt .com, March 18, 2015.
  31. ^ Afp: Germany: Blockupy organizers distance themselves from violence. In: zeit.de . March 18, 2015, archived from the original on April 4, 2015 ; accessed on March 18, 2015 .
  32. ↑ Blockupy does not distance itself from violence. FAZ , March 19, 2015, accessed on March 19, 2015 .
  33. ↑ Blockupy: Demonstration observation on March 18, 2015. (PDF) In: Committee for Fundamental Rights and Democracy. May 1, 201, accessed August 24, 2015 .
  34. ↑ Rafael Behr: Blockupy-Demo: "We had everything much worse". In: zeit.de . March 18, 2015, accessed September 13, 2015 .
  35. ↑ a b 4,000 unrestrained offenders . ( Memento from April 2, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) hr-online, March 19, 2015; accessed on March 19, 2015.
  36. ^ Germans Protest European Austerity Measures. In: New York Times online. March 18, 2015, accessed March 20, 2015 .
  37. ↑ Beyond the road traffic regulations . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , March 20, 2015, p. 5
  38. ↑ Police chief takes stock of the Blockupy protests , picture, March 19, 2015
  39. ↑ Helmut Schwan: Bouffier thanks the police, Wilken should pay , Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, March 21, 2015
  40. ↑ Blockupy activist confesses to throwing stones at police in court. In: faz.net. June 3, 2015, accessed July 7, 2015 .
  41. ↑ Status: August 2017. A procedure has not yet been concluded. Source: Frankfurter Neue Presse: An overview: The struggles of the left scene in Frankfurt - Frankfurter Neue Presse. In: fnp.de. Archived from the original on August 11, 2017 ; accessed on August 11, 2017 .
  42. ↑ The flood of crimes at the Blockupy protests in Frankfurt two years ago has no consequences. In: Wiesbaden Courier. April 21, 2017. Retrieved April 22, 2017 .