Europe's angry farmers fuel backlash against EU ahead of elections
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[February 01, 2024]
By Michel Rose
MONTAUBAN, France (Reuters) - In the last 12 months, the cost of running
Jean-Marie Dirat's lamb farm in southwest France has jumped by 35,000
euros ($38,000), driven up by increasingly expensive fertilizers, fuel,
electricity and pesticides.
Money is so tight that this year he won't pay himself. To his surprise,
he even calculated he would be eligible for the minimum welfare benefit,
given to society's poorest.
"My grandfather had 15 cows and 15 hectares. He raised his kids, his
family, without any problem. Today, me and my wife, we have 70 hectares,
200 sheep, and we can't even pay ourselves a salary," Dirat told Reuters
at a roadblock made of hay bales that barred access to a nuclear plant.
Other farmers in the French southwest, where a nationwide movement
started, complain about red tape and restrictions on water usage, as
well as competition from Ukrainian imports let into the European Union
to help its economy during the war.
Farmers elsewhere in Europe are similarly disgruntled, with protests in
Germany, Poland, Romania and Belgium coming after a new farmers' party
scored highly in Dutch elections.
Their blockades and pickets are exposing a clash between the EU's drive
to cut CO2 emissions and its aim of becoming more self-sufficient in
production of food and other essentials following Russia's invasion of
Ukraine.
Just five months before elections to the European Parliament, the revolt
is fuelling a narrative that the EU is riding roughshod over farmers,
who are struggling to adapt to stringent environmental regulations amid
an inflation shock.
French far-right leader Marine Le Pen's lieutenant Jordan Bardella
blames "Macron's Europe" for the farmers' troubles. Le Pen herself says
the EU needs to quit all free trade deals and that her party would block
any future agreements, such as with Mercosur countries, if it wins
power.
Worryingly for French President Emmanuel Macron and other EU leaders,
opinion polls show farmers' grievances resonate with the public. An
Elabe poll showed 87% of French people supported the farmers' cause and
73% of them considered the EU was a handicap for farmers, not an asset.
National governments are scrambling to address farmers' concerns, with
France and Germany both watering down proposals to end tax breaks on
agricultural diesel. The European Commission also announced new measures
on Wednesday.
But the protests could amplify a shift to the right in the European
Parliament and imperil the EU's green agenda. Poll projections show an
"anti-climate policy action coalition" could be formed in the new
legislature in June.
"The far-right's strategy is to Europeanise the conflict," Teneo analyst
Antonio Barroso said. "Farmers are a small group, but these parties
think they can attract the whole rural vote by extension."
VOICE FOR THE COUNTRYSIDE
Different political catalysts have spurred farmers from France to
Romania into action.
In Germany, a week of protests against high fuel prices culminated last
month in a rally of 10,000 farmers who gummed up central Berlin's
streets with their tractors and jeered Finance Minister Christian
Lindner.
The far-right Alternative for Germany party, running high in the polls
on a lackluster economy, tried to capitalize, dropping its usual
opposition to subsidies and saying farmers demands should be met.
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Smoke rises from objects set on fire as people gather in front of
the European Union headquarters as Belgian farmers use their
tractors to block the headquarters, as they protest over price
pressures, taxes and green regulation, grievances shared by farmers
across Europe, in Brussels, Belgium February 1, 2024. REUTERS/Yves
Herman
In March 2023, discontentment with climate and agriculture policy
helped new party BBB win regional elections in the Netherlands, the
world's second-biggest agricultural exporter.
Its list for June's EU elections will be led by Sander Smit, a
former EU parliament adviser who wants to be "a voice of and for the
countryside", campaigning for an easing of EU restrictions on
agricultural land use.
"The EU must start working again for citizens, farmers, gardeners,
fishermen, for communities, families and entrepreneurs," Smit, 38,
said.
French unions like the powerful FNSEA have brought discipline to the
farmers rallies, avoiding the violence seen during the "yellow vest"
protests that rocked France in Macron's first term and already
winning concessions from the government.
But unions say they can't control who farmers will vote for.
WINDS TURNING
In France, support from the EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP)
means farmers, although politically conservative, have historically
been more pro-European than the average voter.
In the 2022 presidential election, Le Pen did less well among
farmers than in the rest of the population, while pro-European
Macron outperformed, according to an Ifop/FNSEA poll.
Now, however, some farmers say they are tempted to vote for Le Pen's
Rassemblement National (RN) in June in protest at the EU's climate
drive, which they complain crushes production and leaves space for
global competitors.
"Europe is putting us on a drip to let us die silently," Pierre Poma,
a 66-year old retired farmer in Montauban in the southwest, told
Reuters.
He joined the RN a few years ago and ran for a parliamentary seat in
2022, garnering 40% of the votes compared with the 15% Le Pen's
party won in the same constituency in 2017.
Poma, who used to grow peaches, pears and apples, says he had to
sell his house because he could not turn a profit. He blames red
tape and the EU's farm-to-fork strategy he abhors.
After visiting farmers' motorway blockades in recent days, he is
confident like-minded parties will be a force to reckon with in
Brussels after June.
"Our group is growing, in Germany, in Hungary, elsewhere. It's the
end of a world, the end of the policies of the past," Poma said.
($1 = 0.9258 euros)
(Writing by Michel Rose; Additional reporting by Anthony Deutsch in
Amsterdam, Thomas Escritt in Berlin, Kate Abnett in Brussels and
Anna Koper in Warsaw; Editing by Catherine Evans)
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