Protests gather steam

The dissatisfaction of European farmers with the policy of Brussels officials is spilling out onto the streets

Workers in the agricultural sector of Germany, France, Poland, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Lithuania, the Netherlands, some regions of Belgium and Austria went out on strike. They have been joined by farmers from Spain, Italy and Latvia. France is rocked by protests across almost the entire country — 85 out of 96 departments. Its capital is blocked, too. The strikes in Lithuania are going on locally and only at weekends for now. Yet, a wave of outrage has been growing since the beginning of the year. Farmers from different countries flock to Brussels to express their claims to the European Parliament directly… 

Germany

The European Union stinks of manure and burning, traffic is difficult on the roads, people are yelling that agriculture is on its last legs...

Problems in common

In June 2022, the European Union agreed to temporarily lift the import duty on Ukrainian agricultural products and open duty-free corridors for its transportation to other countries. The decision was unprecedented — the EU had always jealously defended access to its market. However, the critical thinking of European officials, obsessed with assistance to Ukraine, completely let them down.
As a result, agricultural products flooded into EU countries bringing down prices and putting local farmers in conditions where they were forced to sell their own goods significantly below cost. Just in the first year of such ‘care for Ukraine’, 29.5 million tonnes of Ukrainian corn, wheat, rapeseed and sunflower were imported to EU countries.
Due to the fact that land transportation, by railway and road transport, is much more expensive than sea transportation, it was profitable for Ukraine to sell its agricultural products without moving far from its borders. Thus, out of 29.5 million tonnes, 38.2 percent (11.3 million tonnes) of imported goods entered the countries bordering Ukraine. In Poland alone, 3.93 million tonnes of Ukrainian wheat worth €201m, rapeseed for €414m, corn for €556m and sunflower for €482m were purchased during this period.
In total, according to Eurostat, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria purchased Ukrainian wheat, rapeseed, corn and sunflower for the sum of €4.03bn just in the first year. The EU countries, which do not have a common border with Ukraine, did not fall behind much.
Another 16.7 million tonnes of Ukrainian wheat and corn were delivered to EU countries as part of the Black Sea Grain Initiative that, despite promising to feed the starving countries of Africa and Asia, turned out to cater for Europe’s needs more.
Furthermore, a conflict is already brewing in the EU over the import of Ukrainian sugar — French sugar beet producers demand that it be re-exported outside Europe. This is because, just like in the case of grain, Ukrainian sugar on the European market deprives local producers of the chance to sell their products at reasonable prices. On top of that, the European Union imposed sanctions against Belarusian and Russian fertilisers shortly after the start of the special military operation. As a result, the prices for fertilisers skyrocketed, which made local agricultural products even more expensive.
The Green Deal adopted in the EU also dealt a blow to agriculture. Its absurdity led to the fact that in the Netherlands, one of the world’s largest exporters of agricultural products, they started to talk about the need... to close livestock farms altogether. Allegedly, they emit too much nitrogen into the atmosphere. Also, meat can be made from vegetable ingredients…

Poland 

Romania

Germany 

They ‘took it into account’

The EU spends billions of euro on military support to Ukraine taking away this money from the economies of their own countries. The proposal to extend a special permit for Ukraine for expanded access to the EU market until June 2025 became the last straw for European farmers. That is, European officials are ready to completely finish off their own agricultural sector in the next two years.
Under the same brand of assistance to Kiev, EU countries are raising taxes, reducing subsidies, eliminating support programmes for their own citizens and national businesses, as well as introducing
additional restrictions and prohibitions.
Already affected, farmers are unable not only to adapt, but to exist in the conditions offered to them by Brussels. And calls to support Ukraine at the cost of their own well-being only irritate European peasants and push them to take active action.
Farmer protests in the European Union are not uncommon, yet the demonstrations of 2024 have become the largest in the entire existence of the EU. More so, they continue to snowball. Blocked kilometres of roads and border crossings, burning tyres and bales of straw, manure that villagers use to generously fertilise the streets, prefecture buildings, town halls and catering establishments,
foreign trucks with agricultural products, which are now being unloaded directly on the roads — all of this is surging up and threatens to move into a phase of violent confrontation. Military equipment has already been deployed on the streets of Paris against the discontented. It is peaceful so far, but one spark is enough.

Sooner or later, the European Union and national governments will have to either make concessions to the protesters, or use force to remove farmers from the streets. There is nothing to make concessions with — billions of euro have been pumped into Ukraine and EU countries have no money left to save their own economy. Also, any concessions are fraught with the fact that the next day, protesters will be joined by workers from other sectors of economy causing the situation to escalate exponentially, up to a complete and uncontrollable chaos, on the verge of which the European Union has been balancing for the second year.

In the meantime, the EU leadership ‘took into account the concerns of farmers in a number of countries’ related to the unrestricted import of Ukrainian agricultural products. This was stated by Polish Agriculture Minister Czeslaw Siekierski on January 23rd after a meeting of the EU Agriculture and Fisheries Council. 
European agricultural manufacturers do not want to tolerate it anymore. Just because another five to ten billion for Ukraine, ten million tonnes of Ukrainian agricultural products on the EU market, and there will be no more farmers in the European Union. Hence they are on strike hoping that European officials will hear them. Yet, hopes seem to be in vain — the European Union, which has undertaken to orchestrate an arms race for Ukraine, is no longer able to hear anyone, even their own citizens who need help.

Italy

Lithuania 

TO THE POINT

Belarus and Russia continue to build mutually beneficial co-operation in the agricultural sector. In particular, the volume of chicken eggs supplies from our country to Russia is growing convincingly. According to the results of 11 months last year, Belarus accounted for 94.1 percent of import of these products, said Alexey Polishchuk, Head of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Second Department of the CIS countries.
The President of Belarus, while visiting the First National Trade House in Minsk, instructed our food manufacturers to share chicken eggs with Russians. When speaking about the shortage of eggs in Russia, Sergei Bartosh, Head of the Agriculture and Food Ministry, noted that we are ready to supply the available surplus of chicken eggs and meat to Russia.
Based on the results of 2022, Belarus accounted for 71 percent of total poultry meat imports to Russia. Over the 11 months of last year, the quantitative indicators of supplies increased by 5.3 percent. The figures for food eggs are even more solid — 94.1 percent of imports to Russia, as Alexey Polishchuk noted.
Last year, the countries completed the main directions for implementation of the provisions of the Treaty on the Creation of the Union State for 2021–2023 and 28 sectoral union programmes, including those envisaging the formation of a common
agricultural market and elimination of barriers to mutual trade. Now, new plans have been developed that provide for additional coordinated steps in the agricultural and food sector.

By Alena Krasovskaya