In Europe, agriculture is definitely not a subject like any other. The crisis which shook the peasant world at the start of the year saw, in record time, the Twenty-Seven take radical measures to respond. The greening of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) was largely sacrificed, aid to Ukraine reduced and the free trade agreement with the Southern Common Market (Mercosur) postponed. As for the Green Deal, designed to bring the European Union (EU) to carbon neutrality by 2050, it largely spares farmers, despite the urgency of the fight against climate change.
There is a gap between the weight of the agricultural world on the Old Continent and the importance of the CAP, which makes it possible to distribute more than 50 billion euros in aid per year throughout Europe and represents a third of the community budget. But, as President Emmanuel Macron insists, the CAP, which today remains the EU’s largest expenditure item, must, first and foremost, ensure that the Twenty-Seven have their “food sovereignty”.
Recent history has, in fact, shown that it could be dangerous to depend on third countries which are not always very friendly: Europeans will long remember their helplessness in the face of a China which refused to sell them masks during the crisis linked to Covid-19 or the consequences of Moscow’s decision to cut off their gas tap.
Fear of a large-scale movement
That’s not all. As the European elections approached, scheduled for June 6 to 9, the Twenty-Seven, first and foremost France, feared that rural anger would fuel a movement like that of the “yellow vests” at the community level and that it fuels a far-right vote already in strong growth, according to the polls.
“Vladimir Putin and his friends are doing everything in their power to poison public debate throughout Europe”, accused Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the Commission, on February 23, denouncing the Kremlin’s exploitation of certain farmers’ demonstrations. In the parades, we saw “people who do not hide their support for the Kremlin and pursue objectives other than the interests of farmers”assured the Czech Prime Minister, Petr Fiala, on the social network X, on February 19.
In this context, the Twenty-Seven did not hesitate when, in January, farmers demonstrated throughout Europe, from France to Germany, from Italy to the Netherlands, via Spain, Portugal, Romania, Poland or Hungary. At the heart of their recriminations, the European Union (EU), which they accused, in bulk, of having designed an overly bureaucratic CAP, concluded trade agreements to their disadvantage, adopted a costly Green Deal or organized unfair competition from Ukrainian products, free to enter the domestic market without customs duties since the start of the war.
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