Another day, another tractor blockade. Earlier this week, all economic activity at the Belgian port of Antwerp ground to a halt as hundreds of farmers prevented access to freight. In Spain, tractors blocked motorways near Seville and Granada, and in Catalonia. As a rolling wave of rural discontent has made itself felt across Europe since the start of the year, only four EU member states have remained unaffected.
Numerically, farmers account for only 4% of Europe’s working population. But as Europe’s political leaders are belatedly coming to realise, the burgeoning crisis has outsize implications. A perfect storm of factors – including rising energy costs, competition from lightly regulated foreign imports and supermarket profit-gouging – have driven angry farmers off the land and on to the streets of capitals. But in disputes that touch on some of the faultlines of contemporary culture wars, there is a growing danger that the EU’s green deal takes the rap for a crisis incubated elsewhere.
Ahead of European elections in which they aspire to make major gains, radical right parties such as AfD in Germany and Marine Le Pen’s National Rally are using opposition to environmental reforms as a recruiting agent and campaign theme. In Brussels, and in national capitals, a degree of green backtracking is already under way. As the momentum of the farmers’ protests grows, the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, last week shelved plans to reduce the use of pesticides and softened targets on cutting non-CO2 emissions.
Announcing those concessions, Ms Von der Leyen was right to say that in the context of the multiple challenges they face, farmers “deserve to be listened to”. Too often in the recent past that has not been the case. In the Netherlands, a politically tin-eared plan to reduce nitrogen emissions by summarily closing thousands of farms led to a rebellion that helped topple the government. It also, indirectly, gave an opening to the nationalist demagogue, Geert Wilders, who surfed the anti-elite, insurgent mood to win the subsequent election.
But damaging tactical retreats on green issues are hardly the way forward. Instead, a persuasive strategic vision of the future of European agriculture is urgently required – one with sustainable farming as its centrepiece, but which also tackles the injustices that have fuelled discontent. As most farmers recognise, environmental adaptation is a necessity in a landscape increasingly to be shaped by drought, floods and heatwaves. However, the common agricultural policy, which funnels subsidies to large-scale industrial farms and away from struggling small and medium-sized producers, also needs to be reformed.
Similarly, the pursuit of free-trade ambitions – such as those driving current talks between the EU and Latin America – should not be allowed to expose Europe’s farmers to competition with producers who are not subject to the same environmental regulations. And more generous resources should be deployed, at state or EU level, to help beleaguered farms cope with the triple whammy of rising costs, squeezed margins and the green transition.
Last month, as the rumble of tractors began to be heard from Paris to Berlin, the European Commission coincidentally launched a new “dialogue” on the future of EU agriculture. A central theme will be the provision of proper support for rural communities. If the vital goals of the green deal are to be protected, the talk will need to swiftly translate into action.
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