Can the EU soothe farmers’ anger as protests keep spreading?

As elections approach farmer protests are growing, writes Stephen Cadogan

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. 

In her State of the Union address last September, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen promised a "strategic dialogue" with EU farmers.

At the time, she called for “more dialogue and less polarisation” in the political debate on food systems.

Her promise may have bought her some time, with farmers welcoming the renewed interest around the EU's top table in the sector, which has been under pressure since 2019 from the covid crisis and the war in Ukraine, and an upsurge in climate action regulations.

But time ran out early in 2024, with the wave of agricultural discontent first seen in the Netherlands in 2019 spreading to large-scale protests in more than 15 member states, with the biggest protests in Germany, France, Poland, and Romania. The polarisation von der Leyen feared has set in and will make the dialogue with farmers that she launched last Thursday difficult.

Farmers protest against the German government's planned cuts to agricultural sector subsidies near the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany.

Thirty European food chain organisations were officially invited to take part, and the initiative will last until the summer. Included will be EU farmers and agricultural co-ops, young farmers, and organic farmers, alongside NGOs such as the World Wide Fund for Nature, the EEB network of citizens' environmental organisations, and the BEUC consumer organisation. Financial institutions and academics were also invited to share ideas and listen to farmers’ needs.

But actions rather than dialogue may be needed to reassure farmers while — in the words of their Copa-Cogeca representative organisation at EU level — "the European regulatory machine continues to operate at full speed, ignoring the geopolitical, climatic and economic context that is undermining farms and farmers' incomes".

On Thursday, von der Leyen posed four questions. How can we elevate the standard of living for farmers and the attractiveness of rural communities? How can agriculture be sustainable within planetary boundaries? How can we better harness knowledge and technology? How can we enhance Europe's food system for a competitive, thriving future?

Structural imbalances

At this stage, the response from many in EU farming might be "tear it up and start again". Because everything has changed, according to the Farm Europe think tank of experts, many of whom have held high offices in the European Commission and Parliament. Farm Europe says it isn't cyclical problems or passing bad temper that have farmers up in arms, it is structural imbalances caused by EU agriculture policies devised in the previous era of almost free credit and low inflation.

It says that even as covid-19 and the Ukraine war plunged Europe into a new world, the EU ran with the idea that less food production would solve problems. Just as Putin’s Russia, and other major powers, started using food as a geopolitical weapon, the EU reduced public support for agriculture, to be reallocated to other priorities, says Farm Europe.

Much public support has of course been diverted to the EU's Green Deal bid to be climate neutral by 2050. For farmers, the Green Deal includes reduced use of plant protection products and fertilisers, a big increase in organic farming, and more farmland set aside for nature. A recent study by INRAE, France's National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment, estimated the Green Deal may reduce production from European farms by 15% (but by 26% for arable crops).

Dutch-Irish woman Caroline van der Plas led the pro-farmer party of the BoerBurgerBeweging (BBB) to become a major player in European politics.

The Commission points to its new €300bn five-year Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). But Farm Europe points out that inflation has returned, "melting the economic value of CAP subsidies like snow in the sun". When the diverting of public support away from the CAP is combined with inflation, a huge amount of CAP direct aid to farmers disappears, according to Farm Europe. The think-tank says farm incomes are now at the same level as in 1995, leaving farmers poorly positioned for the high-cost transitions forced on them by the Green Deal.

And from the farmers' viewpoint, things can only get worse. 

The Green Deal measures have not yet had their full impact, many of them are still under discussion. Even as farmers object to them, and the strategic dialogue continues, the European Commission will pile the pressure on the week after next, by calling for greenhouse gas emissions to be cut 90% by 2040.

That is the recommendation of the EU’s Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change, which recently warned that efforts are falling short of the 2050 climate neutrality target. One of its seven key messages was that agriculture needs reining in because its emissions have been largely unchanged for 20 years. It’s the area where the lack of progress is “most notable,” according to the Advisory Board, which says the EU must slash production and consumption of products such as meat, dairy and eggs. It suggests pricing farm emissions is one of the ways to do this.

Free trade agreement

As if this wasn't enough to enrage farmers, von der Leyen's Commission Executive Vice-President, Valdis Dombrovskis, told EU agriculture ministers earlier this week that "conclusion of negotiations with Mercosur is within reach before the end of this mandate. We work to seize this opportunity, which is of major geopolitical importance."

This news that the EU is still chasing a free trade agreement with Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay could be the last straw for around 3.6 million livestock farmers who fear the EU market being swamped by cheap beef from South America. France, with a huge beef industry, leads EU opposition to such a deal, and Ireland opposes the trade deal if beef is included. "Should this agreement be announced, it would further reaffirm the lack of consideration of farmers' valid concerns, pushing many into an unbearable situation," said Copa-Cogeca.

However, most industries across the EU would welcome such a deal, and what may be of greater concern to the Commission is that the Greens/EFA lobby, on which it depends heavily for Green Deal support, says the deal would be "a setback for people and planet". Their opposition has deepened since climate change sceptic Javier Milei became the new president of Argentina.

The rush by the von der Leyen Commission towards climate action and trade deals may give farmers' representatives in the strategic dialogue an advantage of sorts. They know the Commission has only weeks to live up to all its promises because EU decision-making will grind to a halt as the 2024 European Parliament elections approach in June. EU leaders must keep at least one eye on the elections. This may call for a softly softly approach to the unhappy protesting farmers sitting in their tractors, clogging up the roads and cities of Europe, who represent a block of 27-30 million potential voters.

At the very least, the grievances that led farmers in individual member states to protest must be considered, while the structural imbalances seen by Farm Europe have to await the new EU administrations after the elections.

Maybe von der Leyen can persuade her colleagues in Germany to go easier on their plans to abolish diesel subsidies for farmers and to increase agricultural machinery taxes.

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The EU could help the Macron administration in France to appease farmers before the European election, fearing they may otherwise back Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party. The farmers' grievances include limitations on irrigation, and environmental over-regulation stemming from the EU's Green Deal.

Tariff-free imports of Ukrainian agri-food depressing markets in Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria are the main grievance of protesting farmers and truckers in these member states.

It is probably too late for the EU to make life easier for farmers in the Netherlands. Unhappy with government plans to cut nitrogen emissions from farms, they formed their own BBB political party, which made a significant breakthrough in Senate elections, and is now likely to be a coalition partner in the new government led by Geert Wilders, the anti-EU, anti-immigrant, Islam-critic, far-right politician, who wants to trash the country's climate policies.