Europe’s biggest economy hit by travel disruption in what ‘looks increasingly like a general strike’

Germany is in the grip of major travel disruption.

A three-day nationwide strike called by train drivers from Wednesday to Friday evening has added to travel chaos in Europe’s biggest economy, which was already reeling from ongoing farmer protests.

A walkout by the GDL train drivers’ union has brought rail travel in Germany to a near standstill, with national rail operator Deutsche Bahn only running a pared back emergency timetable for commuters.

Meanwhile, the head of the German farmers’ association DBV on Wednesday reportedly pledged to ratchet up protests, which started earlier this week when hundreds of tractors and trucks parked up by Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate.

In scenes more familiar to neighboring France, farmers in Germany have been blocking roads and highways with convoys of tractors and marching through major cities in a bid to pressure the government to scrap all plans to cut farmer’s subsidies.

“It really looks increasingly like a general strike. We haven’t had a general strike in Germany since 1906,” Carsten Nickel, deputy director of research at advisory firm Teneo, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Thursday.

“It is new in Germany. This concerted action and the level of political violence … the economy minister narrowly escaped, let’s say, physical altercations with a really angry mob of protesters last weekend. Those are scenes that we haven’t seen in Germany before,” Nickel said.

“We are obviously going into a crucial election year, right? Three regional state elections and the European Parliament elections so I don’t think that really bodes well,” he added.