2024-01-20 04:30:06
The European countryside is in turmoil. From the Netherlands to Romania via Poland, Germany and the south of the continent, farmers are expressing their discontent. After a week of massive mobilization, German farmers threatened new actions on Thursday, January 18, reinforcing the fear of community institutions that this protest movement would spread, like that which agitated France in 2018-2019 with the “yellow vests”, and benefits the far right.
These mobilizations, even if they emerge each time for reasons specific to them or linked to national decisions (increase in taxes on diesel, competition from Ukrainian imports, reduction in the use of pesticides, limitation of discharges of nitrogen or greenhouse gases, increase in fallow land to preserve biodiversity), come at a time when discussions are tense in Brussels.
Proponents of productivist agriculture, such as the National Federation of Farmers’ Unions (FNSEA) or its European counterpart, the Committee of Professional Agricultural Organizations-General Confederation of Agricultural Cooperatives (COPA-Cogeca), denounce the European Green Deal or Green Deal. This political initiative supported by the European Commission must engage the Twenty-Seven in an ecological transition and sets objectives for reducing the use of pesticides as well as the development of organic agriculture, or the protection of biodiversity.
“If the ambitions of the Green Deal are justified in the context of the fight once morest climate change, they pose a problem for the agricultural sector. The subject has been exploited and the debates have become polarized”believes Jérémy Decerle, MEP (Renew Europe).
“30% of the European budget intended for agriculture”
Tensions are increasing as the European elections loom, scheduled for June. “In 2024, there are major deadlines with the European elections. We must keep in mind that 30% of the European budget is intended for agriculture”underlines Arnaud Rousseau, president of the FNSEA, who adds: “There are many heatwaves in European agriculture. The roots of these protests are the same: there is a misunderstanding between the reality on the ground and the decisions taken by governments. »
In Germany, the straw that broke the camel’s back smells of hydrocarbons. When Olaf Scholz’s government decided, in December 2023, to complete its budget, to eliminate so-called “climate-damaging” subsidies overnight, in particular public aid for agricultural diesel, it had no idea that it would would trigger such a movement among operators.
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