The Frankfurt Motor Show this year faces an ecologist opposition of unprecedented scale, mixing demonstrations and attempted blockage, a sign that even in Germany the automotive sector is no longer a sacred cow.
"The car industry has defrauded on diesel and contributes to the climate crisis worsens," accuses Gerald Neubauer, spokesman for the Campact group, who is co-organizing Saturday a major demonstration against the "pro -car".
Thousands of people, according to the police, have planned to join the Frankfurt exhibition center on Saturday the evening before an attempt to block the show.
"We want a transport revolution," claims Tina Velo, spokesperson for the pseudonymous collective "Sand im Getriebe" behind the blockade call on Sunday.
This combination of legal and illegal actions characterizes the climate defense movement that has been progressing for months in Europe, and is now targeting an industry that has long been untouchable by its importance to the German economy.
But the industry has been weakened since the 2015 scandal of Volkswagen's rigged diesel engines broke out, and the Frankfurt Motor Show crystallizes criticism of the industry as climate urgency enters public debate.
From the opening to the press on Tuesday, Greepeace launched the protest: twenty activists dressed in green jackets inflated in the back of a SUV a giant black balloon with the inscription "CO2".
"The auto industry still has not understood the climate crisis, and instead of celebrating fuel-hungry SUVs here, manufacturers have to put an end to these urban tanks and shut down the combustion engines," he said. AFP Benjamin Stephan, activist of the NGO.
The group also demonstrated Thursday on the stands of Volkswagen and BMW while Chancellor Angela Merkel visited the show.
Protesters mounted on SUVs and displayed placards showing cars with the inscription "Climate Slayers".
These massive vehicles are even more controversial in Germany since a SUV mounted on a high-speed sidewalk killed four passersby including a young child last week in Berlin. Voices are now rising to demand their ban in the city centers.
"You have to get out of gasoline and diesel, get out of the combustion engine and reduce the number of cars," says Neubauer.
The Frankfurt show "is a symbolic place, where political leaders meet those of the automobile to applaud a transport system of another time," denounces Tina Velo to AFP. "We have to give up the car, we want cities without cars."
Tina Velo represents a more radical faction of the German environmental movement, ready to act illegally to attract attention – unlike the demonstrations of thousands of high school students and students of "Fridays for Future".
In addition to Greta Thunberg's climate strikes, movements such as the European network Extinction Rebellion are spreading like wildfire from London to Paris, via Berlin.
Most of the time it is to temporarily block a place: in Germany, the group "Ende Gelande" had managed in June to occupy and force the temporary stop of a large open pit brown coal mine.
What galvanize an anti-car movement: "the car industry is under pressure, it no longer has the support of society as a few years ago, because it missed evolutions," says Tina Velo.
"Sand im Getriebe" expects "a few hundred people" Sunday, enough, according to Tina Velo, "to disrupt the living room".
The activists' attention will then turn to Berlin, where the government is due to present measures on 20 September to combat climate change – a day already marked by calls to protest in many German cities.
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