In the last months, the European Farmers organized themselves to a historical degree, promoted an overwhelming season of protests and gained many concessions from both national governments and the European Union.
Now, as the old continent prepares itself for the EU elections, they have promoted another round of demonstrations that, while not as large as some of the previous efforts, are nevertheless a vivid reminder that the Union has to pay attention to the people who produce the food they eat.
To being with, yesterday (3), Spanish and French farmers blocked roads along their mutual border through the Pyrenees mountains.
They protested unfair competition from outside the European Union, places where the failed, crippling ‘green’ EU environmental policies do not apply.
Reuters reported:
“With EU elections looming on June 6-9, French and Spanish farmers used dozens of tractors to block both sides of the border on the AP-8 highway in the Basque Country and the AP-7 highway in Catalonia.
‘Since we have European elections, let’s see if our politicians take the sector seriously and listen to our demands’, Spanish farmer Josep Juscafrase, 54, told Reuters.”
About 500 farmers from Poland and other European countries protest in Brussels
Activists are demanding that EU authorities abandon environmental policies, which, according to protesters, threaten the future of European agriculture. pic.twitter.com/o8aGNNlbOt
— Sputnik (@SputnikInt) June 4, 2024
The European Farmers revolt resulted in extended subsidy allowances and a watering down of parts of environmental policies, such as a removal of farming emissions cuts.
“At the Catalan border with France, farmers played soccer and cooked paellas while blocking crossings, creating long queues of cars and trucks.”
Associated Press reported:
“In a final push on Tuesday, militant agricultural groups from more than a half dozen nations were converging on Brussels in a show of force that they hoped would sweep the progressive Green Deal climate pact off the table and give farmers the leeway they had for so long in deciding how to till the land. There too, the impact of the far right was clear, with representatives from several EU nations attending the protest that drew hundreds of tractors.”
Centrist parties have started to approach the right after the unrelenting demonstrations across the bloc.
“For years the EU became the globe’s trendsetter which earned plenty of plaudits on the international stage, but lost its farming base, which was increasingly lost in myriad rules that sometimes pinpointed when could be sowed and reaped, and even had satellite surveillance to check on it. It was fodder for the extreme right, which railed in the European Parliament and in countless demonstrations about bureaucratic interference.
And at EU and national level, ambitious plans have already been curtailed. In the Netherlands, the new coalition plans are rife with measures that largely meet the demands of farmers and counter those of environmentalists. The coalition is dominated by the extreme right party of Geert Wilders.”
Farmers have become militant in a way not seen in decades. Europe better listen to them.
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