Farmers’ protests: ministers ask the EU for subsidies – 02/27/2024 – Market

Ministers have urged the EU (European Union) to increase funding for the €60 billion-a-year Common Agricultural Policy subsidy scheme in a bid to calm recent protests by farmers, who have blocked roads and set fire to tires in the center of Brussels. .

The CAP, which consumes around a third of the EU’s combined budget and is the oldest of the bloc’s policies still in operation, is designed to provide a steady income to farmers to ensure food production.

But as farmers held their latest protests on Monday over rising costs and environmental regulations, ministers meeting in Brussels to discuss emergency measures to calm farmers said more money was crucial.

Charlie McConalogue, Ireland’s agriculture minister, told the Financial Times that the CAP has eroded in real terms over the past few years and “must be strengthened in terms of its funding”.

“Food security and support for food production [devem ser] placed back at the center of European budgetary considerations,” he said, in a call echoed by ministers from France, Poland and other eastern European countries, according to diplomats present at the talks.

The PAC represents 386.6 billion euros of the bloc’s common budget of 1.21 trillion euros, which runs from 2021 to 2027. Around 80% of the scheme’s money goes to just 20% of farmers.

The debate over the increase comes amid heated arguments over priorities for the EU’s joint budget, with governments reluctant to contribute more due to tight national finances and the need to spend more on defense after Russia launched its large-scale invasion of Ukraine two years ago.

Piet Adema, Dutch agriculture minister, said that rather than increasing the CAP, member states should have more flexibility in how the funds could be used, but that consumers should also accept the need to pay more for their food. .

“There must be more transparency across the entire food supply chain: where are profits made, where are losses made, and how can we influence this?” Adema said. “The amount of money you pay for your food compared to 20 or 30 years ago has relatively decreased, so when we as a society want our farmers to produce honest, sustainable products, we have to pay for them.”

Farmers have not only called for more funds, but also for an easing of environmental regulations and a reconsideration of trade agreements that they say are allowing cheap food imports to undercut prices for EU producers.

In Brussels on Monday, hundreds of tractors blocked streets near where ministers were meeting. Some charged at riot police and destroyed barbed wire barricades set up around the main buildings.

Several protesters threw manure and held signs with slogans such as “leave a future for our children, don’t kill our parents.” Police used water cannons to put out burning tires.

The demonstrations follow weeks of protests in EU countries including France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Romania and Spain. Farmers blocked a major highway in Poland on Monday and threatened to continue their blockades for more than 20 days unless their demands were met.

French President Emmanuel Macron missed a G7 meeting over the weekend while spending 13 hours meeting with farmers at the country’s annual Salon de l’Agriculture trade fair. He called for “calm” after facing protests at the event.

Ministers agreed that proposals put forward by the European Commission last week aimed at cutting red tape for farmers to access CAP funds were “a step in the right direction”, said David Clarinval, Belgium’s deputy prime minister, but “more measures ambitious” were necessary.

The commission has already withdrawn a main proposal to reduce pesticide use and excluded emissions reduction targets for agriculture from a document outlining options for future EU climate policy.

Agriculture will be on the agenda at the EU leaders’ summit in March, an EU diplomat said.

In a letter to the commission on Friday, Copa Cogeca, the main agricultural lobby group, said the bloc’s environmental agenda had resulted in “a regulatory tsunami, with many rushed consultations, top-down targets without evaluation and proposals approved without feasibility studies”.

But Via Campesina, one of the groups behind Monday’s protest, which represents small food producers and agricultural workers, said: “Putting an end to various measures aimed at protecting the environment is an easy solution that meets the needs of agribusiness entrepreneurs. Administrative simplification measures are necessary, but obviously insufficient to guarantee income for our farms.”