MOrgan Oddi, a 44-year-old French farmer living in the hills of Brittany, set out on a 12-hour train journey via Paris and ended up in the Belgian capital, Brussels. There she joined tens of thousands of farmers who took to the streets on Thursday to demand that EU leaders do more to resolve their economic woes.
Oddi, head of the French agricultural union Confederation Paysanne, said farmers across continental Europe were already suffering from declining incomes, high costs and poor conditions brought about by competition from cheap imports. He says he is. But now, with the EU announcing stricter environmental policies, things threaten to get even worse.
“Things are already tough for farmers. They are overworked and completely overburdened,” Oddy told TIME. “And now the EU wants to conclude further free trade agreements, which will create insurmountable competition.”
After weeks of protests across the continent, they intensified in the Belgian capital on Thursday, with tractors blocking main streets and burning tires, while farmers from Germany, France, Belgium, Italy and Greece filed eggs in the European Parliament. They threw guns, set bonfires, and even toppled a statue of 19th-century British businessman John Cockerill.
Why are EU farmers protesting?
Currently, the agricultural sector accounts for 11% of the EU’s greenhouse gas emissions, and the EU hopes to reduce emissions by reviewing the current Common Agricultural Policy (a system of subsidies worth about $60 billion annually). ing. The new policy is part of the European Green Deal, which aims to make the bloc climate neutral by 2050 and requires farmers to dedicate at least 4% of their arable land to unproductive land. is included. You should also practice crop rotation and reduce fertilizer use by at least 20%.
However, many farmers argue that these measures will make Europe’s agricultural sector less competitive against imports. On Thursday, representatives of farmers’ unions told reporters they were “generally fed up” with “over-management” and rules dictating what to do with farming.
For Audi, who spoke to Time magazine on behalf of the European Coordination Via Campesina, which represents the voice of Europe’s peasants, the anger is fueled by contradictions. “On the one hand, we are being asked to farm more sustainably, which is well deserved because we know it exists because the climate crisis is affecting us. That’s the thing,” she says. “But at the same time, we need to continue producing as cheaply as possible, and we are now in a situation where that is not possible.”
Many of the grievances are shared by farmers across the continent, but their concerns also vary by country. In Germany, farmers are protesting the Berlin government’s plan to phase out tax breaks on agricultural diesel in order to balance the budget, saying this will lead to bankruptcy. In the Netherlands, farmers are resisting demands to reduce nitrogen emissions. In France, farmers’ unions are unimpressed by the concessions offered by President Emmanuel Macron’s government and are fighting for better wages, less bureaucracy and protection from foreign competition.
The Ukraine war has made matters worse, with Russian aggression causing a supply gap, disrupting trade flows and raising energy, fertilizer and transport costs for farmers in many EU countries.
What measures is the government taking to resolve the situation?
What measures are EU governments taking to support farmers?
After Thursday’s protests in Brussels, President Macron called on the EU to implement agricultural reforms, saying Europe’s agricultural sector is facing a major crisis and calling for an EU joint effort to guarantee fair prices paid by food giants to farmers. He said introducing the mechanism would require “substantial” changes to the rules. And a supermarket. Newly elected French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal also announced a $160 million aid package for struggling French farmers, prompting two major farmers’ unions to call on their members to cancel protests. He announced that he would instruct them to do so.
“Everywhere in Europe, the same questions arise: How can we continue to produce more and better things? How can we continue to tackle climate change? How can we avoid unfair competition from abroad? What should we do?” Attal said Thursday when announcing the move.
Attal’s pledge follows nearly $430 million worth of measures already announced by several European governments to allay farmers’ anger, while at EU level, the European Commission continues to allow agricultural subsidies. However, it proposes relaxing green farming requirements.
But as EU leaders struggle to balance the need to protect agricultural livelihoods while reducing agriculture’s impact on the climate, farmers like Oddi remain angry. has stated that they will continue to mobilize for protests. “Our main request is to obtain European legislation that ensures that the price we get covers the cost of production, including revenue,” she says.