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Written by Kate Abnett
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – European policymakers rolled back rules to protect nature and cut tariff-free imports of Ukrainian grain as farmers’ protests resonate with voters ahead of elections. established restrictions and repealed new laws restricting the use of pesticides.
From Poland to Portugal, farmers won remarkable concessions in response to a wave of street action, reshaping the European Union’s green politics just months before European Parliament elections.
Environmentalists and analysts say the policy rollback underscores the considerable political influence of farmers, as mainstream parties seek to prevent far-right and nationalist parties from gaining votes in rural areas. It is said that it shows.
Farmers again blocked roads around the European Union headquarters in Brussels last week and sprayed fertilizer to protest low incomes, cheap food imports and red tape. In doing so, the bloc’s agriculture ministers backed a new set of changes to weaken green rules related to the spending of tens of billions of euros in agricultural subsidies.
During the last European elections in 2019, the Green Party made great strides and environmental activist Greta Thunberg was named Time magazine’s Person of the Year.
“The 2024 elections will be the year of angry farmers,” said Fran Bogović, a Slovenian member of the European Parliament and a farmer himself.
This effort to appease farmers has affected key pillars of EU policy, putting pressure on the bloc over the Green Deal and free trade agreements.
EU Environment Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevicius said last week that EU countries had refused to approve a landmark law to protect nature, leaving it unclear whether the policy would be passed. He warned of a “devastating” blow to credibility.
Other environmental measures are also in limbo ahead of the election. EU countries last week called on Brussels to scale back and possibly postpone new anti-deforestation policies, saying they could harm local farmers.
In March, French senators voted against ratifying the EU-Canada Free Trade Agreement, symbolizing the EU’s desire to open markets and promote competition.
The EU also agreed last month to extend tariff-free access to Ukrainian food producers while imposing tariffs on imports above a certain level in response to farmers’ protests.
Some farm groups acknowledge that policymakers’ responses to the protests are likely related to June’s election, but weakening green rules is not what they want. claims.
“Our demands[for fair prices]are not really being met,” said Dutch farmer Leonard van den Berg, head of agricultural group La Via Campesina.
rural dissatisfaction
Farmers make up 4.2% of the EU’s workforce but generate only 1.4% of the region’s gross product. But their protests are echoing far away in rural areas, where grievances with policymakers and questions of cultural identity run deep.
A report commissioned by the European Commission of Regions and released last month found that Eurosceptic votes were high in many rural areas, where concerns such as immigration and declining economic opportunities drove populist parties.
An Elab poll in January showed that 87% of French people supported the farmers’ cause. According to a poll by the Institute for Market and Social Research, nearly eight in 10 people in Poland supported the farmers’ demands.
The far right in France and elsewhere paints the farmers’ protests as a sign of a rift between urban elites and rural toilers. Antonio Barroso, an analyst at Teneo, said that while farmers are a small group, the far-right believes it can draw on a broader range of rural votes.
Simone Tagliapietra, a senior researcher at the Bruegel think tank, said far-right parties are vying to be the standard bearers of farmers’ discontent and are using it to illustrate the perceived failures of environmental policies they consider elitist. .
“This is prompting mainstream parties to readjust their policies,” Tagliapietra said.
In France, farmers are a growing number of supporters of Marine Le Pen’s far-right party, National Rally. She called for an end to the EU’s free trade agreement.
Asked last week why farmers have proven so effective at influencing policy decisions, agriculture ministers in Brussels explained that farmers are the backbone of rural economies.
“Everyone needs to eat every day,” said Finnish Minister Sari Essaya. “(Agriculture) is one of the fundamental areas that we should support.”
Ireland’s Agriculture Minister Charlie McConlogue said Europe needed to learn from the havoc wreaking havoc on food supply chains from Russia’s war in Ukraine.
“We cannot take food security for granted,” he said.
Environmental activists warn that environmental policies are being loosened at a rapid pace in the name of political expediency.
Greenpeace said changes weakening environmental standards related to subsidy spending under the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) were made at lightning speed without proper consultation.
“What they are now presenting as a series of simplified adjustments is a CAP reform that was literally put together in a week,” said Marco Contiero, the group’s head of EU agricultural policy. I have exaggerated the proposal a little.
“This is a political thing, it’s being played as an election card,” he said.
A European Commission spokesperson said the CAP amendments were “carefully calibrated and aim to maintain high levels of environmental and climate ambition”.
The spokesperson said the Commission consulted with four EU-level agricultural associations and EU member states before proposing measures to reduce bureaucracy for farmers.
(Reporting by Kate Abnett in Brussels; Additional reporting by Philip Blenkinsop in Brussels; Reporting by Sybil de la Hamide in Paris; Editing by Richard Ruff and Susan Fenton)
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