Thousands of angry farmers participated in Thursday’s revolt against EU environmental policies in front of the European Parliament building in Brussels. The demonstrators blockaded the entire EU district with hundreds of tractors and besieged the Parliament building, and were only stopped at the barricades by the Belgian police’s high-pressure firehoses and tear gas.
Shortly afterwards, it seemed every party now wanted to help the farmers. As the parliamentary group representatives gathered for their Friday pre-plenary press briefings, the green policies they voted into law prompting this conflict were quietly forgotten.
One after the other, the spokesmen all came out to say that the farmers had legitimate concerns and that their group was looking forward to next week’s debate about how to help them the most effectively. The smear that protesting farmers are ‘far right’ magically evaporated.
“Don’t act as if you’re the number one supporter of farmers,” warned ID’s Deputy Secretary-General Tobias Teuscher as the dramatic effects on Brussels functionaries of the protest became obvious at their press events.
“For us, it is clear that we must listen to farmers, we must listen to their concerns,” the socialists’ (S&D) representative, Utta Tuttlies said, adding that “we should not go into nationalistic sentiment against each other.” She said the socialist group was ready to put forward actions all through the food chain, “from farm to fork,” to protect farmers’ income and increase their bargaining power.
“Renew Europe made the sustainable future for farmers a priority,” according to the liberals, boasting that they had secured a place for the farmers’ debate on next week’s plenary agenda. It’s hard to imagine they faced any opposition after Thursday’s protests.
In a wilfully absurd moment, they then claimed the exact opposite of what brought every protester onto the streets: “Our group believes that farmers are a part of the solution to achieve our climate and environmental goals,” before calling for an “honest, public” debate on sustainable agriculture and a “food chain that works for all.” Not a great start to an honest debate!
The Greens were able to go even a step further, presenting the issue as a socio-economic problem that was unrelated to the green transition. “Farms and farmers are suffering across Europe,” Greens Spokesman Alex Johnson said. “It is essential that farmers can make a decent living from what they produce. We must fix the social and economic aspects of the system so that we can help farmers adapt to the massive challenge of climate change.”
The Left group’s representative used similar arguments too, saying that farmers had “legitimate reasons to be angry,” such as agri-business corporations, bad trade agreements, and a broken food production model. While these are all important contributors to the crisis, this still leaves out the reckless environmentalism and climate doom policies that top every protester’s priorities. “In next weeks’ debate, The Left MEPs will be demanding respect for farmers,” the spokesman added.
The EU’s rushed green agenda was only addressed by the two reality-based conservative party groupings, ECR and ID. “It is clear that the EU environmental policy has gone too far. We are living in a situation that the ECR group has been warning about for a long time,” ECR’s Michael Strauss said, adding that the majority in the house has always taken farmers for granted and that his party will continue working toward solutions that mitigate the green transition’s disastrous effects.
ID Deputy Secretary-General Tobias Teuscher addressed his colleagues even more bluntly after having sat through the whole charade. “I’m surprised to hear all these declarations today of solidarity [with farmers] from representatives of political parties in Brussels, Strasbourg, and their own capitals voted for legislation that is making farmers’ lives worse,” he said.
“You all voted for Fit for 55, for example, which is destroying our agricultural sector,” Teuscher went on. “So today you need to take responsibility.”
The key debate about the farmers’ protests in the Strasbourg plenary is scheduled for Wednesday morning and should play out more or less along the same lines as the Friday briefing. As Teuscher mentioned in the end, conservatives very much look forward to confronting their colleagues with the consequences of their own actions.
European farmers meanwhile should exercise extreme caution about trusting their reality-bending newfound ‘friends’ in the EU Parliament.
